In the June 30 issue of the Wine Spectator, food writer John Mariani claimed that Miami’s “overly hyped restaurant scene is deflating…fast.” To prove his point, he cited the departures of some of our most noted chefs: Douglas Rodriguez (from Yuca), Kerry Simon (from Starfish), and Norman Van Aken (from…

Health experts advise that establishing a solid relationship with your physician is vital to maintaining your health. So I treat my doctor to dinner. Young, good-looking, and possessed of a dry sense of humor, Dr. B is an excellent date, and I’m not just saying that because he writes me…

Animal-rights activists make poor dining companions. They boycott tuna for the dolphins and shrimp for the sea turtles. They object to chicken, beef, and veal on hormonal or moral grounds. And, like a guest of mine did recently, they ask servers who are better equipped to describe the pesto butter…

Revitalizing a restaurant is one of the most difficult tasks a proprietor faces. Once a place earns any kind of a reputation (good or bad), it’s hard to alter; ad campaigns or lower prices aren’t likely to change the dining public’s established perceptions. One popular ploy is simply to rename…

Though I hadn’t thought much about eminent domain since I learned about it in the sixth grade, the term took on new life for me when the decade-old Gourmet Diner fell victim in the fall of last year. The 40-seat North Miami Beach fixture was leveled to make way for…

South Beach’s high-profile, high-price restaurants are scared. Facing the summer after a slow-starting and not particularly profitable season, some eateries are following the long-standing Joe’s Stone Crab policy and taking a vacation. (At Joe’s, of course, the practice is timed with the stone-crab season.) But around these parts, temporary closings…

I take a surreptitious interest in watching my dinner guests eat, if for no other reason than the fact that I enjoy people who also love food. So I can understand why, at Hallandale’s two-month-old Club Dynasty, the multitude of cooks (master chef O.A. Chu and his thirteen assistants) deserted…

According to a recent issue of a la carte, a food-industry newsletter, American consumers choose French restaurants over any other. Though by and large willing to eat sauteed dirt if they’re told it’s a delicacy, most restaurant critics also admit to preferring a particular ethnicity when it comes to dining…

Emily Post probably wouldn’t have enjoyed dining with me. Oh, I can etiquettize with the best of them, elbows off the table, napkin on my lap, spine stiff as a carving board. I know which fork to use when, on what side of the place setting my bread plate appears,…

Thanks to an uncommon surname, I’m a target for small-world coincidences. Handy players of Jewish Geography easily mark me as the daughter of a man with whom they were schooled, the niece of a woman they knew way back when. So it was with no real surprise that I listened…

In a capitalist system competition allows the strong to prosper and the weak to fall by the wayside. Thus an aspiring restaurateur might gamble on success by opening his eatery near other eateries, hoping that by offering a superior product and service, he might become one of the winners. A…

Of all the ethnic cuisines popularly available in the U.S., Indian seems to be the least appreciated and the most misunderstood. Nowhere is this truer than in Miami, where we feast on Asian cuisines A Thai, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean A but tend to overlook their neighbor, represented locally by only…

For the past six months, Coral Gables eateries have been playing the restaurant version of leap-frog, musical chairs, and hide-and-seek. Didier’s gave up its Alcazar Avenue location to Mozart Stube, only to resurface months later on Ponce de Leon Boulevard. Justa Pasta, whose husband-and-wife ownership team Doug and Maureen Cogen…

One summer when I was very young, my father drove us to Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, famous for the hurricanes that bombard the coast there. As it turned out, August was not the best month for a visit; it rained on us for twelve days straight. Essentially a beach town…

The Beach wears me out. Even as spring break sputters to a stop and the Grove finally shows signs of emerging from the yearly onslaught, South Beach roars on, as if the season were as high as the sun. The restaurants seem to mutate faster than the people who frequent…

A year ago Ruth Fertel told Entertainment News & Views that what spurred her to mortgage her house in order to buy a small dining establishment called Chris Steak House was a “gut feeling.” For Fertel, following her own instincts has led to a 37-restaurant, $80 million chain that moves…

I once asked a former museum curator for advice about investing in art. “For collecting, buy what you like,” he said. “For investing, play the stock market.” “What if I already have stocks?” I asked. “Buy more,” he replied. I am of a similar opinion when I hear people refer…

The menu at North Miami’s two-month-old An American Place Waterside Restaurant contains a quote from the late food deity James Beard, friend and mentor of the restaurant’s proprietor Larry Forgione: “The truth is, one must be inspired to cook.” Indeed, the best chefs are not those who merely know what…

Several months ago I received a menu in my mailbox. This isn’t at all unusual — menus are deposited in my box at the office all the time. All too frequently they’re unremarkable, or notable only for the amount of typos they contain. What distinguished this one was its lack…

It had been a long time since I’d dined on Ocean Drive. Locals don’t bother with it much any more. Sure, we’ll take a stroll on our way to and from the beach, but come dinnertime we’d rather go hungry than subject ourselves to the hordes. This rule of red-lining…

Restaurateurs are a superstitious lot. They save their first hard-won dollar bill as a good- luck charm, often pasting it conspicuously on the cash register. If they’re chef-owners, they might wear the same necktie every day or favor certain whites. They won’t allow others to touch their knives. Most of…

Strictly speaking, no one fiddles at Fiddler’s, the three-month-old Hungarian/German/French addition to Coral Gables’s ethnic dining scene. On the other hand, it seems as if everyone at this restaurant is fiddling around. A musician plays selections from Fiddler on the Roof on a cembalo, an instrument that looks like a…