My recent panning of some of Miami’s Hispanic eating establishments seems to have gotten folks wondering if I’m a bigot. After my negative reviews of the new (and dreadful) Malaga and the historic (and dreadful) Botin, the mail poured in. In a letter to me, Donald Berger of Hollywood was…

A few years ago New York Times restaurant critic Ruth Reichl postulated that because Italian restaurants are so common, new ones need an angle in order to attract customers. At the time she was reviewing yet another mediocre Manhattan caffe, this one attempting to distinguish itself from the other strands…

Just recently I was sipping a martini at the Deco Bar in the National Hotel during happy hour when a woman approached me, crossing over from the other side of the room to do so. “Is that your baby?” she asked. “Yes,” I answered with a smile, full of justifiable…

Something terrible has happened to Victor’s Cafe. I feel sick to be so blunt about it, but not any more nauseated than I was during a recent dinner at the restaurant. Since it opened on SW 32nd Avenue eight years ago, I had always considered Victor’s, the Miami outpost of…

I’m a little ticked off at Food & Wine. To celebrate the magazine’s twentieth year of publication, writer Jonathan Hayes chose what he considers the world’s top twenty food cities, including “culinary capitals” such as Paris, Rome, Bangkok, and Oaxaca. In a short paragraph about each city, he mentions premier…

My husband has a problem with our relatives receiving medical treatment from residents (doctors in training). So when there’s an injury in our family — something that occurs more than you might think, given the fact that we’re all avid athletes — we avoid teaching hospitals such as Jackson Memorial…

I’m always sucked in by the aura of mystery that surrounds Miami’s Russian restaurants, several of which have popped up in recent years. Perhaps the cuisine — which seems exotic compared to the fare offered by the glut of Italian and Cuban-American places here — catches my fancy. Maybe it’s…

The media’s relentless monitoring of the fire aboard the Carnival cruise ship Ecstasy had smoke coming out of my ears. For one thing, the live press conferences informing the public that the cause of the fire was still unknown — not exactly breaking news — kept interrupting my personal daily…

Perhaps the last person you’d expect to be running the Panamanian eatery Las Molas, located on the site of a former Nicaraguan restaurant in the Hispanic enclave of Sweetwater, would be a woman with the Irish surname McNish. But then this is Miami. You can’t necessarily tell someone’s nationality by…

In the past, the areas around the University of Miami have failed to cater to the undergraduate, live-on-campus student population, which numbers more than 8000. Defined on the east by busy South Dixie Highway and on the west by homes, the campus’s perimeter has always lacked a certain collegiate vitality…

South Florida-based cookbook author Steven Raichlen’s office looks pretty much like you’d expect. Located in a rectangular cottage behind the Coconut Grove house he shares with his publicist wife Barbara Seldin Raichlen, the office features an entire wall given over to Raichlen’s cookbook collection. Galleys for his new book, The…

In South Florida chefs sometimes mimic the occupational track of major league baseball managers. Get fired from or quit one team/restaurant, hire on at another, then another, and occasionally even wind up back where you started. In 1996 chef-proprietor Robert Guerin sold his Coral Gables restaurant Louisiana — which he’d…

As sons and daughters of exiles, some members of the first generation of Cuban Americans to be raised in Miami no doubt feel somewhat cheated — especially those sensitive artist types. Some can’t read, write, or speak Spanish as well as their parents do. Others have lost ties with relatives…

South Beach neighborhoods are not born. They’re made. Witness the latest area to catch developers’ fancy: The triangle of land wedged west of Alton Road, north of the Venetian Causeway, and east of Biscayne Bay is quite literally on the rise. One condominium building and some townhouses have already been…

“Miami is a big city but a small town,” observes Jake Klein, the 26-year-old chef-proprietor of the new South Miami restaurant JADA. He is referring to the six-degrees-of-separation phenomenon that seems to dog him. Only in Klein’s case (he’s the “JA” of JADA) it’s more like two degrees of separation:…

Here’s a deeply flawed syllogism. Major premise: Miami is known for its Spanish-speaking population. Minor premise: I live in Miami. Erroneous conclusion: I speak Spanish. Here’s the unvarnished truth: Miami has many Spanish-speaking residents. I live in Miami. I am not one of those Spanish-speaking residents. And at the risk…

Talk about your cross-cultural referencing. For a textbook example of good ol’ American capitalism in action, look no further than the local Italian restaurant scene. Approximately a dozen new caffes and trattorias open here each year, more than half of which somehow survive. The competition is keen, which in general…

I’ve learned not to take too seriously anything that comes my way via the Internet. Petitions, virus hoaxes, chain letters — not only are they not worth reading, but I would never, as suggested, mail the garbage to everyone I know. But then there’s the “Neiman-Marcus cookie” story, about a…

Alejandro Garcia, co-owner of the six-week-old Mexican restaurant Divina, understands that a menu should be more than a utilitarian way to convey information. He realizes that a menu’s look, its presentation, its feel contribute significantly to a patron’s first impression. As a result, each item on Garcia’s oversize, raffia-tied menu…

Thank El Nino for providing us with an all-purpose scapegoat. The unusually potent storms associated with the weather phenomenon have wreaked havoc all over the country, handing us a ready excuse for just about everything. Late to work again? It’s El Nino’s fault for knocking out the electricity and rendering…

“There’s no such thing as Dutch food,” an acquaintance informed me when I mentioned I was on my way to Kendall’s Goodies from Holland Cafe, a Dutch market and restaurant. “Holland’s got beer and cheese — that’s it. All I do when I go there on business is lie on…

Newly licensed drivers are accidents waiting to happen. At least that’s how insurance companies think of them. In theory, the fewer miles a driver has logged, the more likely he or she is to err on the road and damage persons or property. So companies are probably justified in charging…