In the interest of full, name-dropping disclosure, I suppose it’s time I made a confession: Henri Krug is my closest companion. That’s right, the venerable head of the House of Krug (established 1843), the fifth-generation winemaker whose motto is “More than just good champagne, Krug is a lifestyle,” is my…

We’re always looking for the ideal restaurants to take our loved ones — naturally we want them to be impressed, feel cherished, and compliment our good taste. But what if we have to take someone we dislike out to dinner? Say, unwanted house guests? Meddling in-laws? Fussy colleagues? Where should…

•Kenny Rogers is indeed correct: You gotta know when to fold ’em. Jeffrey Chodorow and his China Grill Management team (which again includes director of business development and guest relations George Slover, who had decamped for Touch and Kiss about a year ago) decided not to gamble any longer on…

The waiter spilled an entire glass of ice water onto the lap of one of my guests and failed to apologize — or even provide a napkin so she could mop up. Another server, attempting to change the soaking wet tablecloth, sent another glass crashing to the floor. The wild…

Yup, it happened again: Miami was compared to New York unfavorably. This time, the comment was from a colleague’s wife, who noted while we were eating sushi at the newly revamped Doraku on Lincoln Road that New York had a much better weekend breakfast/brunch scene than Miami. Normally I’d argue…

•Blue Door’s looking pretty golden: The Delano hotel restaurant will soon be debuting a little sister in New York at the Royalton, where Blue Door will replace the current 44. Indeed 44 is already serving the Baby Blue prix-fixe menu, so change is not only imminent, it’s immediate, and The…

Have you heard of the newest dance craze taking Miami’s most popular restaurant/lounges like a riptide? It’s called the South Beach Shuffle. Oops, silly me. Of course you don’t know about this hot trend yet, only those of us in the know know. But I never could keep a secret,…

Steve Martorano, it’s fair to say, is not a patient man. If you call him during the day, the chef-owner of Café Martorano in Fort Lauderdale won’t even answer the phone, since he doesn’t take reservations. If by some miracle he does pick up, he’ll probably be curt, limiting your…

Diners, it appears, have too many choices these days. First we have to figure out what kind of cuisine we want. Then we have to decide where to get it. Once there we have to weigh options on just about every aspect of dining, from ordering wine to translating vegetable…

•It’s not exactly a mass exodus, but some of the Miami-Dade herd has certainly migrated. The Astor Place’s Johnny Vinczencz tells me he’s doing a “new project” in Delray Beach: DeBe is sort of the new SoBe, only classier. JoVi will be revamping the Sundy House, a restaurant located within…

Note to self: Stop attending charity food functions. The mortification factor is getting way out of control. For instance I’m awfully tired of being looked at funny when I give my name at the registration table. I know my last name’s a tiny bit of a doozy, so I make…

For the record, I wasn’t wrong last year when I predicted that South Beach and Miami-Dade would become, as more and more Americans stayed within country limits, a destination in a way that it hasn’t been since the mid-Nineties. But I have to admit it took a little longer than…

“It’s a “Max.'” These were the first words I heard regarding Perry’s, the new restaurant that opened in a former Koo Koo Roo space in Aventura’s Loehmann’s Plaza last week. The eatery is co-owned by Burt Rapoport, who rose to South Florida fame with erstwhile partner Dennis Max by way…

Congratulations to Claude Troisgros on his latest baby. “Baby Blue,” a prix-fixe bistro menu conceived as an alternative to the more illustrious Blue Door, is available in the “Brasserie” section of the Delano. Don’t know where that is? Well don’t look at me, I’m not too handy with directions either…

Attention New Yorkers: Never underestimate Miami. Don’t put down its people. Try not to sneer at what you don’t comprehend. Use the idea of superiority to describe our weather and our beaches; don’t apply it to your attitude. The only patronizing we want you to do is in our shops…

A couple of years ago, while pregnant with my son, I had the misfortune of reviewing a Hollywood restaurant called Estrella del Mar. The place was simply awful, serving such old, stale food that we were afraid to eat most of it. Of course the owners disagreed, writing a letter…

“Freedom of speech is a wonderful thing,” reads a blurb on the Website Restaurant Report On-Line. “This mighty democratic mainstay, however, gives restaurant critics the power to impact a restaurant’s future. Is this fair?” Of course the answer to such a black-and-white question is gray: maybe. On this particular Website,…

Here’s a puzzler: What was the only thing wetter than Christie Wolfe’s joyous tearstained face at the opening of her and husband Jeffrey’s boutique wine store, Wolfe’s Wine Shoppe on Miracle Mile? Why, the wine that was being poured, of course, including the Bott-Geyl Pinot D’Alsace 1999, the Adami Prosecco…

So have you heard the one about the Columbia University School of Business assistant professor who wrote to 240 New York City restaurants, claiming he’d contracted food poisoning at each establishment? He’s being sued for $100 million. Good for those restaurants, you might think. The professor, 29-year-old Frank Flynn, says…

Now here’s an unusual alliance: the Florida Restaurant Association (FRA) and Big Tobacco. Turns out the two groups are banding together in hopes of preventing a state referendum banning smoking in Florida restaurants from even appearing on the November ballot. Along with the Committee for Responsible Solutions, the FRA better…

When Philippe Lajaunie, proprietor of Brasserie Les Halles in Coral Gables, greeted us recently at his 2002 choucroute dinner, he made several expected opening remarks. He defined the dish itself: shredded cabbage cooked in wine and juniper berries (think French sauerkraut) and topped with a variety of sausage, meat, poultry,…

The other night I made pasta boobs for my husband’s dinner. I had to. I could see no other way to make up for the night before. See, we’d taken a room at Hotel Ocean, a boutique resort smack on Ocean Drive, to do some pretty hard, ahem, work: We…