In like a lion, out like a lion: Heralded in by the South Beach Wine & Food Fest, March looks to be a month of little respite for the gastronomically weary. The rash of restaurant openings is like poison ivy on the tender skin of a baby. We’ve got, first…
The quality of the culinary news this week amounts to a rhyme scheme in a children’s poem (or a Sheryl Crow song): sad, mad, and just plain bad. And not just because Mr. Rogers passed away after a bout with cancer. For starters there’s been a death in the gastronomic…
“Spin? There’s no spin. Things were not working out and it was a mutual, agreed-upon departure.” That’s the answer I got from China Grill Management reps when I asked about the replacement of Blue Door chef Elizabeth Barlow with chef Damon Gordon, who opened Saint Martins Lane in London for…
It’s tough giving birth to two babies at the same time, especially when they’re not twins. Just ask Andrea Curto-Randazzo and Frank Randazzo, who have been in precisely that uncomfortable position for the past eighteen months or so. The former executive chefs of Wish and the Gaucho Room, respectively, became…
Many moons ago (about 98, actually), I pulled a culinary prank for April Fool’s Day: I made up a restaurant called Tastes Like Chicken and wrote a review on it. In the text I tried to place as many weird and downright disgusting items as I could imagine — I…
So what exactly did the “First Annual Cheeca Lodge & Spa Food & Wine Festival February 2003,” held over the course of three evenings in the infamously laissez-faire Florida Keys community and attended by chefs from other resorts and spas around the country, offer the consumer? Aside from a wordy…
Most-asked question of the past two weeks: Why did Michael Schwartz leave the executive chef position at Atlantic in the Beach House Bal Harbour only four months into the job? Easiest answer: Personality conflict. “We just weren’t a match,” Schwartz says. “I went into it thinking about the future opportunities…
Just when we think it’s gone and done it — little Miami has finally grown up — we get whacked in the baby teeth by yet another example of just how unsophisticated and clueless we really are. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve been rallying for this town since I moved…
What I learned from attending the twentieth annual Food & Wine Magazine Classic at Aspen: Festivals can make for some terrific all-inclusive minivacations. Once you pay for your travel expenses, lodging, and tickets to the events, you’re pretty much guaranteed no additional costs, simply because you’ll be so well-sated by…
Here’s some advice for The Bachelor — and all those seeking to emulate him: Instead of pretending to be a millionaire, learn how to cook. The Ritz-Carlton in Coconut Grove is happy to assist. For $55 per person on Wednesday, February 5, dudes have the opportunity to learn the art…
For one thing I’ve never sampled one, so I didn’t know what it was supposed to look or taste like; baking blind can be as much of a gamble as an untried amusement park ride is for the motion-sick. More important I didn’t exactly want to be too closely involved…
Besides all the other benefits conferred — such as never having to serve as designated driver — the number-one advantage to being a car slob is that it could keep you alive. Take the case of Robert Ward. The West Virginia man was trapped in his vehicle, following a plunge…
Enter the Dragon — and I do mean that literally. China Grill has debuted its private seating area, called the Dragon Room, featuring traditional Japanese sushi spiked with local influences. In other words, we’re talking about the Havana Roll, yellowtail snapper with rum, coconut, avocado, and tobiko. Or crispy salt-and-pepper…
A four-letter word has been uttered in my home that I never want to hear again: diet. “What if,” my husband began recently, “we both followed different diets — like I could do Atkins and you could do The Zone or something — and then you compared them? Isn’t that…
Curse Continental Airlines for not telling the truth. The day my kids and I were supposed to fly home after spending Thanksgiving with my folks in New Jersey, the first snowstorm of the season delivered eight inches. But despite the still-falling snow and radio reports that delays were running from…
According to popular opinion, the wild goose is a modern nuisance. The U.S. is the current migratory destination for about half of the world’s twenty species, the most common of which is the Canadian goose or “honker” (also a derogatory nickname for Canadians themselves). But as natural predators and human…
It took a face-to-face meeting with R. Michael Mondavi, chairman of Robert Mondavi, A Family of Wines, to confirm a suspicion I’ve always had about myself — no matter how large, new, or luxurious the cruise ship, I will get seasick. It’s true that I operate under Kavetchnik’s Law: If…
Not the way I like to think about starting the new year: Marina Polvay, food writer, cookbook author, and PR rep for local restaurants, passed away on December 2. A colorful figure with strong, honest opinions, she claimed a background of Russian royalty and was known for her expertise on…
To my knowledge, I only cried twice on the job in the years I was a waitress. The first time occurred when my closest girlfriend, a fellow server at a certain deli in my hometown, informed me that she was sleeping with my then-boyfriend, who also worked there as a…
Like all good gourmands, I appreciate excess. And our friendly, neighborhood Disney World (oh, okay, so it’s four hours’ drive time) is the epitome — ironically in the land of “It’s a Small World,” everything is bigger, longer, brighter, hotter, and more expensive than its counterpart on the regular ol’…
Perhaps it’s the fact that Hanukkah happens so early this year. Or the amount of spare time I’ve suddenly had in the evenings after I canceled out on several events, the result of a terrible case of asthma-inducing bronchitis. (An illness that one deserves after a weekend skipping around Disney’s…
By definition, fine-dining chefs aren’t your average day-jobbers. Their hours are mostly converse to those experienced by the rest of the vocational world. Their kitchen society is a caste, made up of which group has the right to instruct another bunch on how to chop onions. Their duties can range…
