Trivia Pursuit Take this easy quiz and get a grip on the gossip: 1. You know it’s starting to be a good season when: a) Carmen the Restaurant is forced to add 30 seats. b) License plates from Quebec are spotted in North Miami Beach. c) Pacific Time relaunches lunch…

So you think you’re up on the scene. You’ve been around town for years now. You know how to work the velvet ropes, the back doors, the bouncers. You’ve got a head full of secret passwords from party promoters and an e-mail inbox crammed with invites from club impresarios. So…

I was attending an advisory board meeting for the newly launched Feeding the Mind project, whose mission statement is “to provide culinary education to women who are interested in the industry, but do not have the financial resources necessary to get formal education,” when founder Carmen Gonzalez looked to me…

In town filming a promotional documentary about Miami at the Forge, a member of the Washington, D.C.-based West Beach Entertainment crew recently confessed she loves this city because “there’s ceviche on every menu.” Too true — in the last few weeks alone, I’ve had scintillating versions at Azul, Bizcaya Grill,…

Virtual shopping has its, well, virtues. For one thing, browsing Websites is a great way to procrastinate. You can source products you might have had no idea otherwise even existed — vanilla-scented aromatherapy slippers, anyone (www.CasualLivingUSA.com)? And for those transplants whose relatives have the bad luck not to have moved…

I will always remember the outraged response I received from an acquaintance when I blithely confessed that my daughter won’t eat, among a shopping list of other items, anything green (unless it is a “wild watermelon” gelatin dessert or the squiggly neon noodles that Kraft has started to add to…

Forget BAM — Emeril’s looks to be a veritable SLAM dunk. The buzz-driven gastrognoscenti are descending in droves, overwhelming the restaurant formerly known as the Gaucho Room. Indeed the polished dining room, dominated by wine refrigeration units that could make any half-knowledgeable enophile drool with envy, has completely evolved from…

My neighbor Jerome was standing in my kitchen, a place he has been at least a couple of times a week for the past several years. But that night, apparently, he was looking with new eyes at the CapriSun® strawberry-banana easy-open pouches of juice; the Smucker’s Snackers®, no-refrigeration-needed packages that…

I wish to retract the following statements: “Hardly anyone has come out of [Miami’s] noted kitchens and opened, to either local or nationwide acclaim, an innovative restaurant. Yes, many of the chef-proprietors have ‘placed’ their people in high-profile positions or been on the hiring end…. But it still appears that…

Our October is the rest of the nation’s March — a month of transition, a medium for change, and a means for projection. It may be less scientifically precise than the National Hurricane Center, but what happens in October is frequently a more fundamentally accurate reading of the culinary currents…

It’s official — and it’s Esquire: Food critic John Mariani named Carmen the Restaurant one of 2003’s “Best New Restaurants in America” in the magazine’s 22nd annual survey. About the eatery in the David William Hotel, the only one that Mariani recognizes in the state of Florida, he writes that…

Consider the gift basket. Stuffed with incredibly edible comestibles ranging from fresh fruits straight out of boutique orchards to artisan cheeses cured at dairies that exist in determinedly rural communities, it serves a multitude of occasions. The basket celebrates births and other Hallmark holidays, commiserates deaths, brings in money for…

What do you get when you take Browns — a two-story building with seven-foot ceilings built in 1915 with the now-prohibited, nearly extinct first-growth Dade County pine — lift it up four feet and move it back fifteen feet, and drop it on cinder blocks? A Myles Chefetz establishment, of…

After too many years of all-you-can-eat buffets, comfort foods, and huge portions in à la carte restaurants, Miami, meet the new gimmick in town: tapas — what you and I already know as Spanish appetizer-size items like tortillas (omelets), fried calamari, and white anchovies, and what Katrin Naelapaa, director of…

By now it’s probably common knowledge that the Miami Herald has undergone yet another redesign, one that includes the September 18 launch (or return) of the Thursday food section. What you may not realize is that Miami New Times is also about to debut some more comprehensive coverage of the…

This season the word on the street is “yip.” As in, Jinny Yip, who is opening Miss Yip’s Chinese Café in the former Bambú space. I’ve heard she’s hired a terrific Chinese chef and that we can look forward to authentic cuisine. Let’s keep our collective fingers crossed that her…

Funny how a phrase can change in meaning over the decades. Take “curbside pickup,” for instance. It used to refer to recyclables — glass, newspaper, tin cans. You know, garbage. But in recent years, thanks to chain restaurants like Chili’s and Romano’s Macaroni Grill, it has gained a new definition…

About ten years ago, I started habitually breaking one of the cardinal rules associated with drinking alcohol: I began ordering wine in Asian restaurants. Retribution from the community at large was swift — based on the supposition that only somebody who couldn’t not drink would order Chardonnay with cashew chicken,…

In an Orlando Business Journal article published on August 11, the same day Norman Van Aken debuted his eponymous restaurant in the Ritz-Carlton Orlando, Grande Lakes, Van Aken is quoted: “Comparing our restaurant opening to that TV show is like comparing the Harvard Law School to the Circus Maximus.” He…

Forget about one. Nine is the luckiest number. If you’re Klime Kovaceski, that is. The chef-owner of Crystal Café is celebrating his ninth successful season this August. He’s also marking his nineteenth year of cooking on Miami Beach, which makes him just about a native at this point. But don’t…

I am sitting in the “relaxation lounge” at the Boutique Spa in the Ritz-Carlton Coconut Grove, quaffing iced, lime-infused spring water, staring at displays of heirloom zebra and brandywine tomatoes, and wondering just what the hell I’ve gotten myself into this time. Next door my new acquaintances, aesthetician Joana and…

For a long time while we were dating, my husband couldn’t understand why I was a successful, tip-earning waitress. He knew I could multitask like a CEO, describe food as lovingly as an Italian mama, and grab plates that had been under the heat lamp as long as some of…