I have a friend who likes to order his pasta al dente. I laugh every time we go to a restaurant together. In this age of trend-conscious restaurateuring, springy noodles cooked “to the tooth” are a given, his have-it-my-way directive equivalent to ordering a Whopper “on a bun, please.” Or…
I’m homesick for New Orleans, though I’ve never actually lived there. Moist breezes blowing into sudden summer pyrotechnics. Distinctive architecture housing distinctive modern-art galleries. Tugboats guiding cargo ships up and down the muddy river. Dialects and accents blending as if in a Cuisinart switched on high. And over it all,…
Certain candies have commemorative powers for me. I can’t see a Heath bar without remembering cramming for college exams, a Milky Way without recalling the Sunday night stuff-my-face ritual before the starvation diets that always began on high school Monday mornings, a Charleston Chew without tasting once again the sea…
In last year’s movie Safe, Julianne Moore plays a well-to-do homemaker stricken with environmental illness. She becomes allergic to the chemicals floating around her A not just to car exhaust, cleaning solutions, and pesticides sprayed on supermarket fruit, but to her new sofa, her husband’s cologne, her own makeup. So…
In my mother’s kitchen, I am pupil. I am disciple, apprentice. In my mother’s kitchen, I am prep cook and sous chef. And in my mother’s kitchen, now that I’m grown, I am also sometimes rival. My mother’s kitchen is not only in her house. My mother’s kitchen is every…
Midseason, midbeautiful weather, I am, like most Miamians, inundated with houseguests. Which means eating out in my neighborhood almost every night, not for the purposes of writing critical reviews but for pleasure, visiting restaurants I’ve liked in the past in the hope that my guests will find South Beach dining…
Fans, by definition, are enthusiastic admirers of someone or something, ardent in their appreciation. You’d think they’d be easy to please, more willing to forgive small lapses than those who are indifferent. But I’ve found some fans’ expectations to be so high that they’re often the harshest critics of all:…
Miami didn’t need a second Yuca. The original fine-dining nuevo cubano restaurant in Coral Gables is a Latin-theme culinary mecca, having drawn Dade diners for six successful years. It’s consistent enough to bring ’em down from Broward and Palm Beach and pull ’em up from the Keys. Distinctive enough to…
Homestead gives me the creeps. All that fresh air. The crops. The flat, wide-open spaces. The townspeople, who all know each other by name, as if anonymity were the eighth sin. The vaunted historic downtown district, which rolls up its sidewalks at sundown. The stuff, in short, of which my…
Local romantics nursed broken hearts when Restaurant St. Michel, the 90-seat Coral Gables establishment often cited for its scintillating atmosphere and sexy food, caught fire this past June. Though most of the flames were confined to the kitchen, damage from smoke and water forced the gorgeously renovated Hotel St. Michel…
Would-be restaurateurs, take note: It is possible to move up the waitstaff ladder into ownership. But you might not want to ask Vicki Pruitt and Neal Spangler for pointers. Ten years after she and Spangler took over Cisco’s Cafe, until then an outlet of a Mexican bodega-type chain run by…
My first boyfriend was Korean, and I think I fell in love with his culture’s cuisine as much as I did with him. While the other kids had lunch at Burger King or a pizza joint, Steve and I would dash over to his house, where he’d pull all manner…
Imagine waiting tables in a fantastically busy new restaurant. Imagine your section filled with hungry people, parties that all sat down at the same time. You have to greet the customers, hand out menus, fill water glasses, open wine, deliver bread, describe the specials, take orders, distribute food. You panic…
Everyone knows about hotel restaurants. How they used to be terrible, the last refuge of lone business travelers and budget weddings. How they started to improve in the last decade, hiring four-star chefs and presenting provocative menus that reflect the latest food trends. How they’ve made every effort to draw…
I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions. My husband will tell you it’s because I have no willpower and can’t live up to whatever silly vow I make. But the truth is I think they’re a waste of time. Almost all of them have to do with improving the health…
BEST HOT DOG STAND Mr. Coney Island 260 NE 167th Street North Miami Beach 945-8901 Since Nathan’s closed down a few years back, there are only two real contenders for local wiener supremacy. One is Arbetter’s Hot Dogs (8747 Bird Rd.), the other Mr. Coney Island. The two represent highly…
I must appear ethnically generic, because people frequently mistake my nationality for something other than what it is. The most memorable time this happened was in California. An Iranian cab driver asked me if I was Italian. When I replied that I was Jewish-American, he intentionally got lost and charged…
Many people find big, noisy, sophisticated eateries intimidating. I, on the other hand, am scared of the small, cozy, intimate kind. The fewer seats in the restaurant, I figure, the more likely it is the diner will be noticed. The clang of your cutlery echoes off the walls. Your conversations…
I was already planning on grabbing a bite at Tempo in North Miami Beach when an old high school friend of mine from New Jersey called. “I’m in Miami,” she said. “Wanna do dinner?” I couldn’t have engineered a better coincidence. I spent more time with this woman sitting in…
Catering and restaurateuring are similar occupations. Both involve serving tasty meals to finicky clientele. Both require putting in punishing hours. Both demand creativity. It should follow, then, that the skills learned in these jobs are interchangeable A that the caterer who so desires can also be a restaurateur, and vice…
I don’t ever want to be mistaken for a tourist in this town. Unless I’m on Ocean Drive, in which case I don’t want to be mistaken for a local. On Ocean Drive, tourists have the advantage. They don’t get asked for directions. They don’t get annoyed when boutique-keepers ask…
As a young girl, I was sick frequently enough that my mother and I developed a ritual: On the way home from the doctor’s office, pockets full of penicillin, we would stop off at a little Cantonese place around the corner. Forget chicken broth. Strep throat, flu, tonsillitis — whatever…
