The final two outdoor, organic, paradisiacal dinners of 2009 take place this month. The groovy gastronomic get-togethers down at Gabriele Marewski’s Paradise Farms always bring great food and wine (from Stacole Fine Wines). Fellow diners tend to be in amiable, festive spirits, and the setting is simply unbeatable. This Sunday…
Asia de Cuba Wows in South Beach
Kimberly Miller and Parisian-born Alain Pizzutti are the proud owners of the newly opened BOCCA Ristorante Italiano on Northeast 123rd Street, one block West of Biscayne Boulevard in North Miami (305-891-4899). The “classic Italian” cuisine includes pastas that range from $10 to $16, with most fish and meat entrees under…
WINNERS:P. Richard Brumm, executive sous chef at La Gorce Country Club in Miami Beach, won the American Culinary Federation’s Southeast Region Chef of the Year Award in Charlotte this past weekend. He will now represent the South at the ACF national competition in Orlando (July 11th to 14th).A team of…
Klime Kovaceski is from Macedonia, not Miami, but during his years as owner of Crystal Cafe (which was on 41st Street in Miami Beach), the personable chef was adopted as a native son by a large and fiercely loyal local clientele. These former patrons will knowingly smile when they hear…
Hakkasan, a Michelin-starred Chinese restaurant with locations in London and Istanbul, held quite an opening bash Saturday night at the Fontainebleau. Three quick impressions:1. The decor, much like the Hakkasan in London, is exotic, romantic, stunning — long, creatively lighted bar and a series of small dining sections illuminated by…
TONIGHT: And every Monday night, DeVito’s South Beach is offering 50 percent off all bottles of wine under $200. That’s a solid deal. 305-531-0911.Blue Door at Delano will host a Joseph Phelps wine dinner starting at 7 p.m. The five-course meal features entrees such as banana-roasted lobster and rack of…
Tonight, from 7 to 9:30 p.m., Angelo & Maxie’s Steakhouse in Coconut Grove will offer a winetasting accompanied by artisanal cheeses and snacks — just $15 per person. A post-tasting menu is offered for $30. 305-445-8177. This coming Monday, April 20, Blue Door at Delano will host a Joseph…
A cool new website launched this week helps readers identify local restaurants that operate with a BYOB policy, and also provides the establishments’ wine policy and corkage information. Southeast Florida is one of ten metropolitan areas covered by GoBYO.com. The free online service also provides direct links to restaurant websites,…
Let’s skip over the whole sweaty Top Chef thing and treat the new Bulldog Barbecue like any other barbecue joint. After all, chef/proprietor Howie Kleinberg is not doing spice rub demos in the dining room; his only competition, roughly speaking, is Beach Bar-B-Que, about 30 blocks south on Biscayne Boulevard;…
The Water Club (no relation to Tony Chan’s Water Club) is slated to open late May in the Intracoastal Mall at 3969 N.E. 163 St., North Miami Beach (the former locale of Shooters Waterfront Bar and Restaurant, which closed in 2001). The new indoor-outdoor venue will encompass 27,500-square-feet and seat…
The Thai new year, called Songkran, is celebrated today, April 13, through this Wednesday. The word means “move” or to “change place,” in regard to the sun’s changing its position in the zodiac. Songkran doesn’t boast any B-list celebrities reporting on a big ball dropping down a pole, but the…
Later this month, the first U.S. outpost of Paris’ popular Caviar Kaspia will open at the Webster in Miami Beach. The original Kaspia was established in 1927 and over the decades has become an institution in Parisian society. The Webster branch promises to have “the same menu as its Paris…
On a recent, unseasonably cool afternoon, I drifted away into one of those vivid naptime dreams, the ones where you wake up and think for a second that what you just went through was real. There was a knocking, no, a pounding at the door, as if Grendel were on…
The final two outdoor, organic, paradisiacal dinners of 2009 take place this month. The groovy gastronomic get-togethers down at Gabriele Marewski’s Paradise Farms always bring great food and wine (from Stacole Fine Wines). Fellow diners tend to be in amiable, festive spirits, and the setting is simply unbeatable.This Sunday evening,…
I invited Vinnie Sabellico to dinner at Prime Italian partly out of curiosity: How would an old-school New Yorker raised in Little Italy react to hoity-toity presentations of what he calls the “peasant food” of his youth? Vinnie, who worked as a butcher for 15 years, regaled me with a…
The final two outdoor, organic, paradisiacal dinners of 2009 take place this month. The groovy gastronomic get-togethers down at Gabriele Marewski’s Paradise Farms always bring great food and wine (from Stacole Fine Wines). Fellow diners tend to be in amiable, festive spirits, and the setting is simply unbeatable. This Sunday…
Giardino Gourmet Salads was conceptualized by husband and wife team Kenny and Ody Lugo, formally a firefighter and Miami-Dade school teacher. Starting today, South Beach sandwich shop — which also features salads and soups — is holding its first Wrappy Hour. This is a catchy way of saying Buy one…
The Grill on the Alley is known for prime steaks, chops, seafood, and cocktails, but on April 15, it’s going to be offering tax relief à la carte: The restaurant will pick up sales tax on all drinks, appetizers, entrées, and desserts sold that day (11 a.m. to 10 p.m.)…
Miami restaurants continue to hang tough. Excepting the closings we’ve already reported on, between January 1st and March 15th of this year mostly C-list places have thus far gone down. Such as:Deco Drive Cigars 414 Lincoln Rd., Miami BeachFritanga Los Robles 3622 W…
Pollo Tropical serves approximately 20 million customers annually. The weight of chicken that it sells each year equals 225 Boeing 737 jets, the weight of yuca is the same as that of 130 elephants. Which gets me to thinking: Maybe they should hire a cook with a lighter touch. But…
Giardino Gourmet Salads was conceptualized by husband and wife team Kenny and Ody Lugo, formally a firefighter and Miami-Dade school teacher. Starting today, South Beach sandwich shop — which also features salads and soups — is holding its first Wrappy Hour. This is a catchy way of saying Buy one…
