If you haven’t yet made it through your holiday gift list, do the following two things immediately: 1. Finish reading this review. 2. Go shopping. More specifically, drive to Bal Harbour Shops and buy the damn gifts already! Why Bal Harbour? Partly because the bargain stores have long been emptied…
When the clock strikes twelve on New Year’s Eve, the Cuban tradition is to eat twelve grapes to ensure good luck for each month of the new year. The custom evidently originated in Spain, around 1900, derived from the hope that one year’s good wine grape harvest might be repeated…
They are the unclean, the defiled. Outcasts. Outlaws. Social pariahs, shunned by the righteous for their apostasy. They’re smokers, the only group it’s still PC to hate. But even these bottom-dwellers, the dregs of the dregs, smokers of the Duffel Bags of Death known as cigars, deserve a place to…
Sometimes it seems as though you can’t swing a strand of spaghetti in this town without hitting an Italian restaurant — and not just any Italian restaurant, but one whose idea of authenticity is white linens on the tables, Ol’ Blue Eyes on the stereo, and a big-bellied waiter in…
It might seem like we first began hearing about Karu Restaurant & Y sometime during the Clinton administration, but in actuality it has been only two-plus years since Cesar Sotomayor began work on his mega-ambitious project to create “a sanctuary of art, cuisine, and entertainment.” Sanctuary is an apt word,…
“Think about all the places we find propaganda right under our noses,” reads a coffee mug for sale in the Wolfsonian design museum’s Dynamo Café. “Like coffee cups.” It’s a reminder of the Wolf’s old days. Before heir Mitchell Wolfson Jr. gave his eccentric private collection to the State of…
Totally trashing an eatery is generally neither fun nor fair. But one thing that does justify joyful decimation is when a restaurant undeniably demonstrates deliberate disrespect for diners. And that’s a fair description of the experience two dining companions and I had recently at Cheli’s Café. After a brief initial…
Each year Sunny Isles Beach welcomes more than a million vacationers to its two-and-a-half-mile stretch of fine sand and sparkling waters. When a Russian company began building apartments in the area in 1996, the City of Sun and Sea also began welcoming a substantial influx of folks from that country…
“To tattoo something on your body for the rest of your life without knowing it means ‘trash can lid’ or ‘dog taco pants’ is stupid.” That’s a sound piece of advice offered by a Website specializing in “100 percent accurate kanji translations,” kanji being a Japanese ideographic symbol representing an…
It seems Portugal has never quite gotten out of the shadow of its bigger, more renowned, more influential Spanish neighbor. Think Sonoma to Napa, St. Paul to Minneapolis, Shrub to Darth Cheney. It’s too bad, really, because Portugal is a fascinating country in its own right, with a distinctive culinary…
Now that the performing arts center is finally operational, how soon will it be before the rest of the much-vaunted downtown Miami gentrification process happens? How soon until the area becomes a genuine 24/7 urban center with relatively sophisticated people walking the streets and enjoying nice restaurants and civilized amenities…
If you were to visit Hiro’s Yakko-San once a week and sample five items each time, it would take seven and a half months to taste every offering (and you’d still miss some of the specials that change nightly). I don’t make it to this Japanese restaurant nearly that often,…
Just a few days ago, my wife and I were sweating under a relentless sun in the dusty little Yucatecan village of Tikul, sitting at a Formica-top table in some nondescript dive. A halfhearted slo-mo ceiling fan above us mocked the concept of cool as I reached, again and again,…
The recipe for successful crêpes is easy: eggs, milk, flour, a little butter or oil. Cook in a nonstick skillet or one of those odd-looking French crêpe pans that resembles an upside-down pot. The recipe for a successful crêpe restaurant … well, that’s a little more complicated. French Box Café,…
“Write what you know” is probably the most common advice given to would-be scribes. And despite the initial impressiveness of menus that rival War and Peace in size and scope, it’s darn good advice for chefs too. The temptation to try to be all things to all people invariably results…
Tom Billante can’t stop opening restaurants. Ever since founding the Ferrari’s chain of Italian cafeterias in the 1970s (which was later sold to Cozzoli’s), he has teamed with family members and other partners to launch one eatery after another along South Florida’s east coast (and his former, once flourishing Mezzanotte…
Most diners, including reviewers, are sensible enough to take cost into consideration when reflecting upon a restaurant meal. If served, say, a savory but less-than-stellar sirloin for $15, we are apt to cap any negative judgment with a modifying sentiment: “It might not be the best steak I’ve ever had,…
In the beginning, there was the hamburger, a simple round of chopped beef slipped into a soft white bun. And the hamburger begat the cheeseburger, which begat the double cheeseburger with large fries, which begat the turkey burger and the tuna burger, the mushroom burger and the veggie burger. And…
If I sound a sardonic note or two in this review, it is likely because of my current battle with PPDS, or post-Post depression syndrome. Although affecting only a minuscule segment of the population, PPDS is highly prevalent among those who have dined at Post Restaurant and Lounge. Symptoms include…
Elsie is standing behind the counter of LC’s Roti Shop, explaining that when the neon signage outside was first erected twenty years ago, “they charged by the letter, so I shortened my name to LC.” The little storefront shanty has hardly changed a whit since — it still has more…
It’s a corporate world and we just live in it. Art, music, literature, film — not to mention daily minutiae such as toothpaste and automobiles — are conceived, packaged, promoted, and sold by gigantic, faceless entities that have all the conscience of a great white shark and all the commitment…
Renaisa Indian Restaurant, located just east of Biscayne Boulevard, boasts indoor and outdoor tables facing the Little River canal off 79th Street — not exactly a Venetian vista, but diners seem to love sitting by just about any body of water. That’s one reason for Renaisa’s success over the past…
