Small print at the bottom of Zuperpollo’s menu offers a free glass of wine to any diner who can spot seven “orthographic” errors contained within. “I didn’t even know words had bones,” I lamented, but my mood brightened considerably when my wife explained that orthography pertains to spelling. Finding typos…

Part of the joy derived from eating out are the conjured associations with comparable experiences indelibly cooked into one’s memories. While sampling a bran muffin at Morning Call, a homey bakery/café in South Miami, I found myself drifting back to Odessa, a 24-hour Polish-American restaurant in New York’s East Village…

Bangkok native Thanu Sinevang got his culinary feet wet in a little hometown joint called the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. That was in 1968. Four years later Thanu moved to America, whereby an apparently pronunciation-challenged chef dubbed him “Joe.” This has been his moniker ever since, though after a maturing tenure…

Chihuahua” is a tricky word. It defines both a teensy dog and the largest state in Mexico, and, depending upon which linguist you ask, translates to either “dry and sandy land” or “place where sacks are made.” The reason I bring up Chihuahua at all is because this is where…

I did not spend my childhood frolicking amid the fig trees of Calabria. I did, however, grow up on the sixth floor of a Brooklyn apartment building, where the aromas of meatballs and garlic and tomato sauce drifted upward from the Casciano household three stories below. While these olfactory memories…

Statistics tell us we’ve got ourselves a nation full of fat, dumb kids who apparently can only tear themselves from television sets long enough to stuff a couple of Big Macs down their chubby little throats. So now we have the new Miami Children’s Museum helping out by giving young,…

The Starbucksian transformation of SoBe’s west side is progressing along quite nicely these days. The developers are certainly thrilled — these people get the same sort of excitement from watching a row of historic houses being razed that a foodie does after stripping all meat from a rack of baby-back…

Impoverished Neapolitans originally made pizza as a means of using up their abundance of tomatoes in a filling, inexpensive manner — a drizzle of olive oil, a sprinkling of herbs, and they’d pop the tomato-topped bread into a searing wood or coal-fueled oven. Back then you could traipse the streets…

Houston’s, the Cheesecake Factory, and other popular dining chains manage to attract packs of hungry Aventura residents by offering comfortable settings and consistent fare that challenges neither palate nor pocketbook. So when Scott Fredel, former co-chef of Rumi, decided to enter this neighborhood with his own dining establishment, he charted…

My wife has long accused me of getting carried away with my work, her latest repetition of this charge brought on by my decision to attend our friends’ Halloween party dressed as an arepa con queso. She seemed skeptical of my claim that the masquerade had nothing to do with…

I have spoken with residents of the Miami Design District and can report that they are not high on Grass, the new restaurant/lounge on NE 40th Street. “We’re just starting to develop a nice, easygoing neighborhood vibe here,” said one disgruntled homeowner. “The last thing we need is this pretentious…

For the 43rd consecutive year, Arbetter’s Hot Dogs will not be serving free baked beans “the day after the Boston Red Sox win the World Series.” The Sox are an undeniably fine baseball team, and as of this writing have just steamrolled into the American League Championship Series, but anyone…

Since opening in Loehmann’s Plaza eighteen years ago, Chef Allen’s Restaurant has raked in prestigious dining awards the way most of us accumulate bills: rated “best restaurant in South Florida” by Gourmet magazine, voted “best food in Miami” in the 2003 Zagat, winner of Wine Spectator’s Award of Excellence, recipient…

Perhaps you’ve noticed the large murals and conspicuous neon lights of Taquerias El Mexicano while driving through Little Havana toward downtown. Located at Fifth Avenue and Calle Ocho, that neon conspires with a thickly gated exterior to give the place a forbidding, down-and-out appearance. Lurking behind those gates, however, is…

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, stumping in Philadelphia, stopped by the landmark Pat’s King of Steaks for a “common folk” photo-op, and proceeded to place an order for their famous Philly cheese steak sandwich — “with Swiss cheese.” Philadelphians cringed at the faux pas, as did, I’m sure, Kerry’s campaign…

I should start by stating my general disdain for fast-food chains, which I believe exist mainly to provide pseudonutrition for those who don’t like to put a lot of thought into what’s going into their stomach. Still it’s only proper that I keep abreast of national dining trends, and I…

Ago is no Spago, though it does serve thin-crust, wood-fired pizzas, and as the trendy California eatery relied in its heyday on the buzz of the Hollywood now crowd, so too does Ago draw social minglers from the current SoBe scene. Ago is also no Nobu, but shares the same…

While sitting at a table draped in a blue and white checkerboard cloth, in the Jerusalem Market & Deli (which is tucked into the same North Miami strip mall addendum as the Mexican restaurant Paquito’s), I came up with a “Road Map for Better Mideast Food.” What makes me so…

Some may say it’s only sixteen words, but exaggeration, deception, and dishonesty are just plain wrong regardless of how few syllables are used. What’s that? Oh, no no no — this has nothing to do with Bush’s State of the Union address. I’m speaking about the menu at Pescado, a…

There are few desserts easier to prepare than key lime pie, which necessitates only the pouring of egg yolks, key lime juice, and sweetened, condensed milk into a graham cracker crust that’s really just crumbs mixed with melted butter. You don’t even have to bake the darn thing, although nowadays…

Citronelle is the latest of a number of new restaurants cropping up along the corroded corridor of upper Biscayne Boulevard. Situated in a corner location, its large plate-glass windows look out upon a mostly infelicitous street scene. Peering inward: a modern, minimally decorated 40-seat room with sleek, dark wood tables,…

Einstein Bros bagels are round, chewy breads with holes in the center, and tasty in tandem with sandwich fillings, but have little in common with true bagels. Mostly they lack the proper color and texture — bagel crusts should have more golden brown crunch to them than these pale softies…