Dine Out Lauderdale & Flavor Palm Beach

Cash Cow: Bargain Menus Are Moooving Your Way Getting our dining fixe at a reasonable prix has never been easier than it will be this fall, when Flavor Palm Beach rolls out the roster of Palm Beach County restaurants serving three-course dinners for $30, and three-course lunches for $20, for…

First Bites

You all know the Proustian tale: French guy, now pretty old and sad, bites into butter cookie and is suddenly and viscerally transported back to a childhood room at teatime. We all have our own madeleine. Short Order wants to hear your earliest food memory. The gnosh that woke you…

Georges Farge Forges Ahead in the Grove

Georges Eric Farge charges through the loud, jam-packed room in a Gallic gallop, frantically waving his arms like a drowning man — except this frolicsome Frenchman is submerged only in adoration. He is grinning, hugging, sweating, slapping backs, and emitting a whistle with his lips that pierces the cacophony like…

Summer Q-Tips

Johnny V’s Kicks BBQ Up a Notch Don’t try this at home. On Fort Lauderdale’s Las Olas, on the last Thursday of every month, Johnny V is staging Barbequlooza for $4 per person. Oops, must have mis-read – that’s $40 per person. Sound a little dear for barbecue? Maybe not,…

Jamaican Food out in the Boondocks? Irie!

Last Wednesday, I checked out the new weekly reggae party, Summer Outbreak, situated way-the-F-out west at the Seminole truck stop off U.S. Hwy 27. I’ve got a preview of the event in this week’s Night & Day section, detailing a little bit about its formation at the hands of Harry…

Por Fin Is Fine

Por Fin: “At Last.” As in: At last, five years after owner Carlos Centurion purchased the property, and two and a half years after breaking ground for construction, the beautiful two-level Spanish restaurant is finally open for business on the corner of Ponce de Leon Boulevard and Anastasia Avenue in…

Beer, Ball, Burgers

If it’s one thing we Americans know how to do, it’s fry up a perfect burger. The French oughta take a page from the Brass Ring’s cookbook.

New Yard, New Grill

Interior view of The Grill on the Alley. I received two press releases today regarding a pair of upcoming dining establishments. One announced that The Grill on the Alley, a Beverly Hills hangout for Hollywood’s movers and shakers since 1984, would be opening in Aventura this October. The ambiance promises…

Tipico! An Authentic Guatemalan Restaurant

Thanks to local advice and a couple of friendly posters on chowhound, I’ve found my Guatemalan restaurant — and practically right in my own back yard. El Chapin in Palm Springs has fabulous tamales, homemade tortillas, and meat-heavy breakfasts. Review next week. –Gail Shepherd…

Rare Fruit Council Sale, West Palm Beach

[above, Pam RuBert’s quilt, “Banana Split Pose.” See more here. Argghh, I can’t believe I’m going to miss this! And on my birthday! I leave for NYC Saturday morning — will somebody PLEEEEEEASE pick me up some banana trees???? Gail Shepherd Tropical Fruit Tree Sale / South Florida Fairgrounds (West…

Mango Festival and Brunch This Weekend

International Mango Festival Date: July 12 – 13, 2008 Location: Fairchild Tropical Garden 10901 Old Cutler Road Coral Gables Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden invites you its 16th annual International Mango Festival featuring the mangoes of Africa. The weekend features, among many other activities and mango tree sales, the celeb-studded Ninth…

Purdy Good

Bartolome Grill & Restaurant’s 54-seat dining room is handsomely attired in black (tables, chairs, linens, pillars, bar, lofty industrial ceiling, waiters’ outfits) and vivid red (seat cushions, bar backlighting, waiters’ ties). Two walls are predominantly glass, which lightens and expands the space considerably; the rest are painted a grayish white,…

Denny’s Rolls Out Late Night Menu

Thank god for PR companies, because I really would have been bummed to have missed the news about Denny’s new late-night menu, served only between the witching hours from 10 to 5 in the a.m. At first, I thought I’d post the photo above in our weekly WTF Is It…

Cheap Eats: Out of the Blue Cafe

Jose D. Duran The Midtown Steak Sandwich at Out of the Blue Cafe. Where: 2426 NE 2nd Ave., Miami 305-573-3800 What $15 Gets You: A sandwich, panini or salad with a drink. Located on the fringes of Wynwood, Out of the Blue Cafe feels oddly out of place among the…

Recession Busters

Recent articles have explored some of the revenue-enhancing measures that restaurateurs have undertaken to counter rising food costs — smaller portions, cheaper ingredients, professional pickpockets to work the dining room, and so forth. Many establishments will no doubt also rely on Miami Spice, the annual discount-dining program that begins August…

A Little Bellyaching

Just back from Guatemala, and jonesing for raw fish and the curative powers of pickled ginger, we dragged our sorry carcasses and knotted, rebellious intestines over to Sushi Jo in West Palm Beach late Sunday for a bit of s&s. We just couldn’t resist that Guatemalan street food, could we?…

Still Lazy After All These Years

Baleen was an instant hit when it debuted at the Grove Isle Hotel & Spa in March 1999, and for good reason: The heavenly outdoor patio, with white gauzy curtains billowing in the breeze, proffered a panoramic vista of Biscayne Bay that was, and still is, difficult to beat. The…

Raw Deal

If vegans are a “Hezbollah-like splinter faction” of the vegetarian movement, as Anthony Bourdain once wrote, then raw foodists would be that group’s loopiest fringe. Like vegans, they don’t eat products derived from animals, but they also shun chemically processed or pasteurized ingredients — and of course abide by the…

Kobe Raises the Steaks

Jeffrey Chodorow, head of the China Grill Management restaurant empire, has always brought a Ziegfeld Zeitgeist to the table. Sure, he hopes customers laud service and cuisine at CGM’s two dozen-plus venues. But he also wants them to consider the dining experience as akin to attending the theater or spending…

Flapjack Flip-Off VIII

In the spirit of this pugnacious presidential primary season, we proudly present a special Kitchen Sink Edition of the eighth annual Flapjack Flip-Off. “Anything Goes” is the theme this year, as our quartet of unwitting restaurant contestants will be permitted to sling apples, chocolate chips, flag lapel pins, or any…

Value Veal

Ristorante Fratelli Milano’s umbrella-shaded tables are tightly clustered together on pinched, pedestrian-clogged SE First Street. Two dozen indoor seats are just as closely cramped in the windowless aisle of a room, where harried waiters squeeze through impossible spaces with oversize white bowls of pasta in their hands. This ain’t exactly…

Andú Lounges

The new Andú’s retro-futuristic design dares to depart from the restaurant world’s recent tilt toward timid, if tasteful, taupe-toned settings. Tables shine in white Plexiglas, banquettes are silver-gray, and globular white sculptural murals hang on the walls not taken up by floor-to-ceiling windows. Hand-blown glass bubbles form a circular curtain…