A funny thing happened on my way to becoming a restaurant critic — friends stopped inviting me over for dinner. It didn’t happen gradually or politely. One day I was a welcome guest who always brought a bottle of wine; the next I was persona non grata. A case of…

My office mail has been especially interesting lately. In a letter that he penned completely in French, a chef by the name of Charles Salliou recommended a Sunny Isles restaurant called Cafe Vicko. Salliou had no way of knowing, though he might have surmised from having read my columns, that…

Sedate. Restrained. Understated. Hardly terms one usually uses when describing a South Beach restaurant. And certainly not adjectives you’d normally associate with chef Geoffrey Murray, who for the past six months has been quietly impressing diners at the Tiger Oak Room in the Raleigh Hotel on Collins Avenue. When chef-proprietor…

In an effort to create the quintessential bistro, the owners of La Fontaine, the newest addition to Coconut Grove’s Streets of Mayfair theme-restaurant conspiracy, have attempted to cram virtually every element from every known bistro into one place. Proprietors Craig Liman (a Johnson & Wales grad and former China Grill…

I confess to a liking for all things Russian: the elaborate, gilded art and domed architecture; the language from which springs my last name, meaning “royal carriage-maker”; ice-clear vodka, my liquor of choice; and the food. Especially the food. It must be my Russian heritage that makes me crave beef-filled…

Seems I couldn’t give away a free meal recently. At first a friend would agree to dine with me and then he or she would ask, “What’re we eating?” “Cuban food,” I’d answer. Each potential guest immediately came up with an excuse why he or she couldn’t make it. One…

New Yorkers seem to understand: Cigarette smoking in restaurants should be discouraged. Disallowed. Okay, banned. I really should be more prudent when it comes to using the b-word, because I believe that U.S. citizens have the right — as long as cigarettes are legal — to light up. Our city…

Fine dining in the Keys has always been somewhat problematic for me. Seems as if any time I read or hear about a supposedly great, upscale restaurant down there and then visit it, more often than not I find the reputation has been inflated. Usually turns out that the view…

When I reach with my pinkie to type the ampersand in Smith & Wollensky, the steak house that opened in December on the edge of South Pointe Park in Miami Beach, I frequently wind up writing Smith $ Wollensky instead. A psychologist might account for this slip as a manifestation…

Let the naysayers natter: They declared the redevelopment of Las Olas Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale a lost cause, Atlantic Avenue in Delray Beach a waste of time, and South Beach an unsalvageable ghost town. (They’re the same ones who now lament the dearth of parking spaces, the jacked-up rents, and…

I’ll travel out of my way for good barbecue. I’ll also go the distance, as it turns out, for bad barbecue. Miami is woefully deficient in the slow-cooked rib arena. We’ve got a couple of places I’ll settle for, one or two I like well enough, but nothing that’s exceptional…

After I read the latest article to extol Miami’s New World restaurants — a spread in the November issue of Gourmet magazine — I thought (and not for the last time, I suspect): Nice piece. But what about Fort Lauderdale? Long before local voters resolved to change Dade’s name to…

I remember standing in front of an open refrigerator, scanning the packed contents and yelling, “Mom, there’s nothing to eat in here!” “What are you talking about?” my mother invariably replied. “I just went shopping.” It wasn’t that there was no food, of course. Just no appealing food. Nothing interesting…

Wander down Ocean Drive, stop for a bite at the Terrace, the outdoor cafe at the Tides, and you’ll be treated to an experience much like any other on the strip: You’ll stand for long minutes at the host station waiting to be noticed, you’ll be seated at an out-of-the-way…

‘Tis the season to start dreading the holidays. Commercial warfare is on, tinsel and tacky lights are up, and hollow good cheer abounds, soon to be followed by the inevitable extra pounds. But those aren’t the reasons I’m miserable. I actually kind of like the round of social events and…

When a restaurant makes the evening news, it’s usually something you’d just as soon not hear about: a fire, a shooting in the parking lot, a record number of health violations. Whatever the tragedy, that kind of mention can spell doom for an eatery, and I cringe in sympathy for…

Every year, whether I’m teaching elementary school or college English, I ask the same question on the first day of class: Do you read? And every year I see only one or two hesitant hands go up, half-acknowledging that reading a book or newspaper might be just as legitimate a…

I’m not a diehard baseball fan. Not that I’ve got anything against America’s pastime, or that it completely fails to interest me. I occasionally ask my husband about the scores of important games, watch a challenging contest on television, or (more rarely) allow myself to be dragged to the stadium…

Last week I had one of those head colds no Comtrex can touch. My sinuses were so swollen that I felt like a river after the spring melt. I pulled abdominal muscles coughing, I couldn’t speak or breathe, and, let’s face it, you could have served me mud for dessert…

I’ve been married for a while now, but I still remember the combination of expectation and dread brought on by a blind date. The opening of the door to a complete stranger with whom your mother, neighbor, or colleague set you up. The visual assessment, ranging from “hot stuff” to…

In a city filled with Italian restaurants, distinguishing yourself from your competition is a tough task. After all, every Italian worth his tomatoes can make a decent gravy out of them. And every Italian’s mama has her own family recipes to pass down, whether her offspring be future restaurateurs or…

I hate being overheard in restaurants. One day at Sushi Hana, where the tables are ridiculously close together, I was telling my in-laws an anecdote I’d heard at the office. The man at the next table, a stranger, began glaring at me. “Where’d you get that information?” he demanded rudely…