Certain foreign foods adapt better to Americanization than others, just as certain sit-down dishes adapt better as street eats than others. Pizza, for instance, adapts both ways excellently when the adapted version is at its best, like good New York-style pizza by the slice. Sure, a typical N.Y. “vegetarian” slice…
Bangkok native Thanu Sinevang got his culinary feet wet in a little hometown joint called the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. That was in 1968. Four years later Thanu moved to America, whereby an apparently pronunciation-challenged chef dubbed him “Joe.” This has been his moniker ever since, though after a maturing tenure…
Chihuahua” is a tricky word. It defines both a teensy dog and the largest state in Mexico, and, depending upon which linguist you ask, translates to either “dry and sandy land” or “place where sacks are made.” The reason I bring up Chihuahua at all is because this is where…
At New Times we restaurant reviewers basically get to pick our own review victims. Oops, I meant subjects. Anyway, this is a good thing, because when editors get to think up the story ideas, one sometimes ends up writing stuff that is so weird it leaves one’s head reeling. Last…
In the Midwest, diners line up outside frozen custard joints. This may seem strange to East Coast gourmets, who are used to thinking of hot-ticket eats in terms of, say, Emeril’s, not Dairy Queen. This is likely because those of us who grew up along the Atlantic seaboard think of…
I did not spend my childhood frolicking amid the fig trees of Calabria. I did, however, grow up on the sixth floor of a Brooklyn apartment building, where the aromas of meatballs and garlic and tomato sauce drifted upward from the Casciano household three stories below. While these olfactory memories…
In some countries the best typical food is generally found in restaurants; in others the best food is home cooking. But in general the trend in almost every country I know for nouvelle interpretations of traditional cuisine is certainly shifting the “where to find the best” toward where the pros…
Statistics tell us we’ve got ourselves a nation full of fat, dumb kids who apparently can only tear themselves from television sets long enough to stuff a couple of Big Macs down their chubby little throats. So now we have the new Miami Children’s Museum helping out by giving young,…
Why I originally went to La Fe turned out to be not the reason I ended up rather liking it after several visits. I went because I’d read an ad that claimed the place was an eat-in café as well as a bakery, with salads and sandwiches that sounded hipper…
The Starbucksian transformation of SoBe’s west side is progressing along quite nicely these days. The developers are certainly thrilled — these people get the same sort of excitement from watching a row of historic houses being razed that a foodie does after stripping all meat from a rack of baby-back…
After three summer shopping spree meals that would be described most kindly as disappointing (more accurately as hideous, and in one case hideously overpriced), my feelings about the food options in the otherwise super-snazzy new Village of Merrick Park mall had settled into Shopper Survivalism. Until the much-anticipated opening of…
Impoverished Neapolitans originally made pizza as a means of using up their abundance of tomatoes in a filling, inexpensive manner — a drizzle of olive oil, a sprinkling of herbs, and they’d pop the tomato-topped bread into a searing wood or coal-fueled oven. Back then you could traipse the streets…
Houston’s, the Cheesecake Factory, and other popular dining chains manage to attract packs of hungry Aventura residents by offering comfortable settings and consistent fare that challenges neither palate nor pocketbook. So when Scott Fredel, former co-chef of Rumi, decided to enter this neighborhood with his own dining establishment, he charted…
It has always seemed to me, to paraphrase an old sentiment, that Kendall is a nice place to live but I wouldn’t want to visit there. Then I somehow find myself in one of the more terminally suburban parts, and realize I’m not so sure about living there, either. Whoa,…
In 1995 China Grill opened to both raves and rabidly raving rants, and it’s been that way ever since. It may take diners arriving after 8:30 to 9:00 p.m. half an hour to get seated (still), but once seated, they are never on the fence; no one, it seems, has…
My wife has long accused me of getting carried away with my work, her latest repetition of this charge brought on by my decision to attend our friends’ Halloween party dressed as an arepa con queso. She seemed skeptical of my claim that the masquerade had nothing to do with…
I have spoken with residents of the Miami Design District and can report that they are not high on Grass, the new restaurant/lounge on NE 40th Street. “We’re just starting to develop a nice, easygoing neighborhood vibe here,” said one disgruntled homeowner. “The last thing we need is this pretentious…
Grinders are what I call ’em, due to many formative years living in New England, but elsewhere in the country monster meat/cheese/veg sandwiches go by other names, most easy to understand: submarine, torpedo, and zeppelin for the blimp-shaped roll; hero for the formidable size. Some, though, were more of a…
For the 43rd consecutive year, Arbetter’s Hot Dogs will not be serving free baked beans “the day after the Boston Red Sox win the World Series.” The Sox are an undeniably fine baseball team, and as of this writing have just steamrolled into the American League Championship Series, but anyone…
Around this prostitution-trafficky stretch of Biscayne Boulevard, the term “hot” has traditionally been more associated with the word “pants” than with “food.” That changed last year with the opening of Renaisa, in the rather dilapidated building long occupied by the Bimini, a basic bar/fried fish joint on Little River that…
Since opening in Loehmann’s Plaza eighteen years ago, Chef Allen’s Restaurant has raked in prestigious dining awards the way most of us accumulate bills: rated “best restaurant in South Florida” by Gourmet magazine, voted “best food in Miami” in the 2003 Zagat, winner of Wine Spectator’s Award of Excellence, recipient…
There’s (arguably) more argument in America about what constitutes real barbecue than about what constitutes justification for declaring war — unless the war is between differing ‘cue factions, in which case just about any difference of opinion is reason enough to start shooting. Some purist pit-fired wood barbecuers even go…
