Best Jewish Deli 2001 | Wolfie Cohen's Rascal House | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Miami | Miami New Times
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Best Jewish Deli

Wolfie Cohen's Rascal House

The best Jewish deli in South Florida is the Rascal House, of course. Need we say more? Of course. This isn't some sissy Southern-belle category like Best Sorbet. This is the real thing. You got your pastrami and corned beef, both as fatty as you could get at the Carnegie, or even Katz's, in Manhattan. (If you don't like it fatty, maybe you should move to Califrigginfornia.) You also got your blintzes, which at the Rascal are homestyle, meaning that the cheese -- or blueberry, or whatever -- filling is enclosed by delicate French-type crêpes rather than the thin but tough layer of pastry cement you're probably used to. You got your genuine grated-not-mashed potato pancakes -- oniony, crisp, and reasonably thin -- not those fat squashed potato puffs many establishments sell to those of you who don't know their latkes from their tushies. You got your clientele at surrounding tables that's a typically Miami mix of Cuba and New York: "¡Mira! Oy!" And Rascal House's very firm waitress-dominatrixes will make sure you return often enough to keep your soul filled. If these mother figures make you feel guilty about not calling your own mom lately, you can FedEx a Rascal cheesecake home. Strawberry is best. In short you got somewhere not even a visiting New Yorker could complain about. So, what's not to like? Come! Eat!

Best Key Lime Pie

Shorty's Bar-B-Q

Once was a time when picking a good key lime pie was simple. A half-dozen well-known ingredients and a straightforward preparation added up to a consistent product that would always deliver that sweet-tart bite. You don't meddle with a good thing once it's perfected. But this is South Florida. People meddle. So you never know just what to expect from a particular establishment. Some places produce a sort of lime-flavor cheesecakelike confection, while others prepare a bright green yet bland sliver of custardy pie. Let's not even get into the variety of crusts and overdone whipped cream or meringue toppings. Ideally you want a pie that's a pale green and tart as a Granny Smith apple but with an underlying creamy sweetness that takes the edge off. It's a good finish to a meal of sweet, smoky barbecue ribs. Shorty's, a south-county throwback to the Fifties, delivers both of these well. Belly up to the long wooden benches and eat yourself silly. But save room for the bakery-delivered pie, $2.79 worth of simple delight. Open Sunday through Thursday 11:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m., Friday and Saturday till 11:00 p.m.

Best Kountry Kitchen

Cozy Corner

It is indeed a cozy, homey sort of diner on a bustling corner of Miami Springs' business district. The walls are hung with fancy quiltwork and needlework, old black-and-white photos of the town circa 1930, and antique Coca-Cola paraphernalia; real and fabricated ferns and flowers are everywhere, and delicious-looking cakes, pies, and pastries sit on counters in those covered glass stands. It's plain country-good eatin' here: meat loaf and mashed potatoes, eggs and grits -- even one of the greatest dishes ever to come out of the South, biscuits and gravy. Breakfast is served anytime, and there are many excellent and reasonably priced specials. But the real test of a kountry kitchen is the waitresses. You won't find the actress-student birdbrain type at Cozy Corner. Here the food servers have weathered years on their feet, memorizing prices, and carrying three plates on one arm (if they have to). In other words they're much like the unpretentious throwback the restaurant is.

Best Late-Night Dining

11th Street Diner

There is a moment in the night, usually after the clock passes 3:00 a.m., when if awake, the body hits a crossroads. Either go to bed or push on to the dawn's first light. If the choice is to forgo sleep, sustenance is usually a must. For a hot meal there is no better place than the 24-hour 11th Street Diner. Whether it's pancakes or fried chicken, the diner serves quality food at reasonable prices. An added bonus for late-night owls is the possibility of a celebrity sighting. The proximity to South Beach clubs makes the eatery a natural stopping place for the famous. Recent hungry partyers seen chowing down include pitcher Livan Hernandez and rapper-turned-actor LL Cool J. (See, the famous haven't departed the Beach; they've just moved on to better and cheaper places.)

Best Late-Night Slice

Steve's Pizza

Don't get us wrong. Steve's pizzas -- hot wheels of steaming mozzarella on firm, chewy crusts -- are a delicacy any time of day (and Steve's starts baking 'em around 11:00 a.m.). But sometime around 3:00 a.m., when you're on your way home from a long night of bar-hopping or you're already in bed, wishing you had just a little something to nosh on, a slice from this (nearly) round-the-clock pizza stand acquires transcendental meaning: Someone in the universe cares -- cares enough about you to stay up slingin' dough, running the oven, churning out pizza pies (all the way to 4:00 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays). It's just so beautiful, man.

Best Lemonade

Eat'n Colors

Zesty, refreshing, cool, and minty. Yes, minty. Making lemonade may seem trivial, but at Eat'n Colors it's become almost an art form. Mixed with bits of fresh mint leaves, a tall glass will quench your thirst and offer respite from not just the heat but the overwhelming demands of life. Nature supplies the crew of Eat'n Colors with lemons, and they make wonderful lemonade for us to enjoy. So enjoy!

Best Literary Lunch

Sheldon's Drugs

The late Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer and his wife, Alma, used to visit this soda fountain and drugstore at least once a day, sometimes twice. For lunch Singer often ordered the grilled cheese on white. The prolific short-story writer and novelist was at Sheldon's in 1978 when a courier from the Nobel Prize committee showed up at his Surfside home with the news he had won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Sent to the drugstore to find the author, the courier interrupted Singer's midday meal. The unassuming writer reportedly replied with characteristic aplomb, "Oh, okay," and resumed eating. Singer probably liked the place, says owner Ethel Spector, wife of the late Sheldon, because the backstore diner treated him like any other customer. A sign printed on typing paper above a table near the coffee station states that Singer learned he won literature's greatest award in 1979 while sitting at "this" table. Even if they got the year wrong and have since moved the tables around, there's something inspiring about eating near where genius dined. In addition to its literary charms, Sheldon's is a soda-fountain aficionado's dream. They serve old-school sundaes with pineapple goo and chocolate sauce; banana splits; New York egg creams; phosphates; ice cream sodas; and thick, rich milkshakes in tall frosted glasses with both a straw and a spoon.

Best Mexican Restaurant

Divina

We thought proprietor Alejandro Garcia and chef-wife Lorena Vega-Beuggie were completely nuts when they reopened Divina. They'd formerly operated this Mexican haute-cuisine restaurant for only seven months a couple of years ago, and while they got great reviews and built a loyal clientele, landlord problems forced them to give up the space. But when they saw that Divina's successor, Chow, had gone out of business, they decided a little resurrection was in order. Can't say any of Vega-Beuggie's fans were dismayed; that corn torte with poblano cream sauce she makes produces a powerful craving, and, admittedly, we also were suffering without our regular fix of squash blossoms and cuitlacoche. Our goal now? To let everybody in on the secret of their success, so the duo will have no choice but to expand their hours to include a divine lunchtime.

Best Milkshake

Knaus Berry Farm

Many praise the Knaus Berry Farm cinnamon rolls, so tasty not a one has ever lasted long enough to grow stale. Others have noted how heavenly a confection is the key lime pie created by these German Baptists, who share with the Amish a partiality for long beards and dark formalwear. But truth be told (no matter what the cooks are wearing), on any given day the longest line here is for the milkshakes. Smooth, fruity, and flavorful, the shakes come in strawberry, chocolate, raspberry, pineapple, vanilla, key lime, and mango. So sweet and creamy, in fact, that it just might appear these Baptists have a taste for sin after all.

Best Milkshake

Knaus Berry Farm

Photo by Laine Doss
Many praise the Knaus Berry Farm cinnamon rolls, so tasty not a one has ever lasted long enough to grow stale. Others have noted how heavenly a confection is the key lime pie created by these German Baptists, who share with the Amish a partiality for long beards and dark formalwear. But truth be told (no matter what the cooks are wearing), on any given day the longest line here is for the milkshakes. Smooth, fruity, and flavorful, the shakes come in strawberry, chocolate, raspberry, pineapple, vanilla, key lime, and mango. So sweet and creamy, in fact, that it just might appear these Baptists have a taste for sin after all.

Best Of Miami®

Best Of Miami®

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