Most locals know NE 167th/163rd Street as a shopping destination, not as a restaurant row. But the roughly three-mile strip between I-95 and Biscayne Boulevard is the closest thing our town has to a Chinatown — though it’s actually more of a Pan-Asiantown. On their way to Home Depot, Wal-mart,…
There exists an inherent elegance through simplicity.” That’s one of Chef Jeffrey Brana’s talking points concerning the cuisine at his and wife Anna Elena’s new Coral Gables dining establishment, but he could just as well be describing the 50-seat restaurant’s modest decorative scheme. Pale yellow walls in the tasteful rectangular…
Ask any resident of a major city, from San Francisco to Lima, Peru — or even citizens of not-so-major cities like Portland, Oregon; or Richmond, British Columbia — where the local Chinatown is, and they’ll have no trouble directing you to some dense enclave of Asian culture and businesses, where…
“Where Cuba meets the Far East” is Oriente at Cardozo’s motto, which on paper isn’t a bad idea. The crisp, light flavors and exotic spices of Asia offer a potentially tantalizing contrast to heartier, homespun island fare. A little yin and yang, so to speak. Throw in American-style salads and…
Is there any scarier word on a restaurant menu than healthy? Okay, maybe vegan. “Fat is flavor,” chefs say, which is why a well-marbled steak cuts like butter and tastes like heaven, why a half-pound of butter suspended in an emulsion of acid and herbs is as natural an accompaniment…
Restaurant reviewers find our prey many ways, most of them as unexciting as the way African big-game “hunters” find theirs — by using savvy local guides rather than doing any real hunting themselves. But occasionally one does stumble out of some metaphorical mist and find oneself, accidentally, in Brigadoon. (For…
There’s nothing quite so satisfying as sitting peacefully by a river and composing poetry. Finnegan’s Way? Can’t really say. Maybe that’s not entirely true — dining by a river can be just as rewarding, and even more so for those not as fortunate as I to be blessed with poetic…
The first duty of food is to be really delicious.” Cindy Pawlcyn, one of my favorite chefs in the Napa Valley, made that statement, and it’s God’s own truth. Of course, in our little town, that’s like shouting “Long live Fidel!” from atop the Freedom Tower. Too many local restaurateurs…
Brothers Nicola and Fabrizio Carro are probably a little freaked out right now. Orchestrating the daily culinary operations at a bustling newcomer like Quattro Gastronomia Italiana is a tall enough order, but the two Piedmontese chefs are also busy getting acquainted with cooking in America for the first time. This…
It’s a bit mind-blowing, when one is of an age that one rarely is offered anything but the least serious illegal drugs, to realize one’s place of employment is perceived as a citadel of crunchy-granola neo-hippies. But the proof is right there on the menu of the Daily Creative Food…
When the Clinton Hotel on South Beach’s Washington Avenue first finished refurbishment in 2004, the in-house (or, more accurately, side-of-house) restaurant was the pish-posh Pao Chinese. Pao’s seats were initially filled by foodie fannies, but about an hour later, the fickle SoBe populace was hungering for something else. Enter Aigo,…
Town Kitchen & Bar evokes a decidedly cosmopolitan mood. This is partly attributable to its urban-industrial design, with exposed ceiling pipes and poured concrete floor and walls, one of the latter horizontally striped by a photo-mural of Times Square. Plus there’s a bustling big-city bar scene, where suits and skirts…
We do love our trends here in little old Miami. Unstructured jackets, shoes with no socks? Done that. Velvet ropes, snotty doormen, $300 bottles of crappy vodka? Done that too. Asian-fusion cuisine, Dwyane Wade jerseys, dance music, stupid faux-martinis? We have sooo done all of that. Next up: wine bars…
Like the rest of the Deco properties that dress Ocean Drive, Ocean Five Hotel possesses a pleasantly primped pastel exterior and an in-house restaurant whose tables spill out to the sidewalk. No doubt it draws its share of out-of-towners looking for a spot to stop for postbeach burgers and beers,…
Northwest Seventeenth Avenue in Liberty City is not exactly a “restaurant row” tourist track. It’s not even a volatile developing destination-dining road (like Biscayne Boulevard in the past few years) for car-cruising foodies. It’s more of a reasonably speedy alternative to Biscayne, simply a way to zip north/south faster than…
Anokha isn’t the prettiest restaurant in town. The small, faintly lit, 36-seat room boasts bare beige burlap walls, a black ceiling, and … well that’s about it, other than shiny-top tables and wooden chairs (plus some outdoor seating). You’d hardly know this was an Indian establishment except for a scattering…
So here’s my dilemma: I had dinner at Vin Brule the other night. It’s a cute little place — cute as a button, in fact — almost at the downtown Miami end of Coral Way. Nothing fancy, just your classic neighborhood café. Handful of tables on a terra-cotta tile floor,…
During the sultry stretch of summer between early July and early September, Siruis, the Dog Star (and brightest in the sky), rises and sets in sync with the sun. The Latin term for this is dies caniculares, or dog star days, which has since been modulated to dog days, or…
WYSIWYG, in computer parlance, describes an interface that allows users to see an onscreen document as it will appear once it’s printed rather than having to guess at the end result: What You See Is What You Get. In the food world, menus listing daily specials are WYSIWYG — or…
There are cakes. Carrot. German chocolate. Cinnamon bundt. Coconut buttercream. Cakes, cakes, and more cakes. Plus cupcakes, and cookies the size of hubcaps, and chocolate ganache truffles piled like miniature cannonballs, and six types of brownies — all rich, fudgy, and gooey. Did you say pies? Key lime, pecan, apple…
Regis Philbin has returned to prime time. The Mets have once more found their way to first place. Joe Lieberman faces forced retirement back to private life. And The Oasis Restaurant is again dishing humble, healthy, mostly Mediterranean fare at its former storefront location in Miami Beach. All happy homecoming…
I have seen the future of fast food, and it is in Kendall. Kendall? Are you kidding? Kendall. I am not kidding. The future of fast food is a pinhole-in-the-wall storefront in a typically behemoth suburban shopping center a couple of impossibly jammed intersections off Florida’s Turnpike. Bearing the somewhat…
