Miami’s Mexican restaurants are, for the most part, utterly predictable: margarita, chips, salsa, burrito-enchilada-fajitas, and the bill, por favor. Usually the only question is whether they’ll make you suffer through a mariachi band. I wasn’t expecting much different from Javier’s Cantina Mexicana and was perhaps even less encouraged than usual…

I returned home hounded by two nagging questions: What is Zür New World Cuisine restaurant really all about? And what, exactly, is a zür? The latter query was answered easily enough by asking over the phone. Turns out zür means “nothing in particular.” As for the first, more relevant question…

South Beach, Sunday, 10:30 a.m. I walk into Tropical on the Beach, on Washington Avenue between Fourteenth and Fifteenth streets. It’s a massive space, with some 200 seats and 50 silver Deco light fixtures hanging from the lofty ceiling. The bulbs are muted now, as more than enough natural rays…

The ability of a restaurant to surprise with hitherto unseen and unheard of concepts is becoming increasingly difficult these days, yet Jake’s Bar & Grill, a new eatery located across from the Shops at Sunset Place, recently succeeded in doing just that. While waiting for a table at a large…

A café, bistro, and brasserie are different from one another. In France that is. Here in the States we tend to blur any distinctions, choosing one term over another mostly by phonetics. An informal French restaurant opening in Okeechobee, for example, will likely go with Okeechobee Café rather than the…

Chien Chung Peng from Hong Kong opened the Chung Hing Oriental Mart on NE 163rd Street and Eighteenth Avenue ten years ago. I can’t imagine anything even vaguely Asian that isn’t on some shelf somewhere in the ten aisles of this sprawling, cluttered grocery. The diversity of foodstuffs displayed from…

Tony Chi’s interior design of Café Sambal is chic and sleek, with white walls, dark wood tables, and a black staircase in the center of the dining room leading up to the Mandarin Oriental hotel’s more haute Azul. Sounds coldly minimalist, but seashell-embedded terrazzo floors, woven off-white rawhide chairs, wooden…

Historical Miami, you might say, is a thing of the past. Sure, there are still rickety pockets of the original city to be found, but it’s not easy. Most old structures lay holed up in neighborhoods like bandits with high bounties on their heads. One of the best ways to…

Breez currently is blowing a breath of cool fresh sushi and seafood into the northern reaches of Ocean Drive, but as the base of the not-yet-completed, four-level, 40,000-square-foot Billboard Live, it will be hot soon enough with frenetic overflow from the club-and-bars scene of that megaentertainment complex. Ephraim Kadish of…

Just as any Turkish travel guide will remind tourists that when Turks shake their head from side to side as if saying “no” it means “yes,” I believe Miami guides should likewise inform visitors that the word “gourmet” on storefront signs signifies “not gourmet.” As with almost every such eatery…

A few years ago, while my wife and I were seated at an outdoor seafood restaurant on the island of Santorini, a seemingly frail and elderly lady astonished us by repeatedly rising from her chair and punting puddy cats further than one would have thought possible by someone even triple…

Casa Rolo’s Café has the distinction of being one of Thomas Kramer’s first victims. This was back in 1997, when the über-developer with a penchant for disorderly conduct was in the process of reconstructing the low-rise, low-rent tip of South Beach. Rolo’s had been around since 1986, and I had…

When I read that the Florida Marlins’ brain trust (okay, wrong word, but you know what I mean) had changed concessionaires during the off-season, I didn’t assume it was solely because of my blistering review last year of their ballpark food. “I’d like to think it was my description of…

Clarke’s is a new “diner” on South Beach, but there’s something not quite dinerish about the place. Part of the problem might be that it’s located in a historic coral house, which isn’t the sort of backdrop you expect for fare like “Frenchy toast,” “cheesey chicken,” and “I scream sundae.”…

Hold on to your hats, especially the flat ones — it’s time for the First Annual Flapjack Flip-Off. Our four contestants: the Original Pancake House and the International House of Pancakes, for obvious reasons; S&S Diner, because it’s the sort of landmark diner you’d expect to have great pancakes; and,…

An antique jukebox spins old-time country, rock, and blues at SoBe Bar-B-Q, a bare-bones 50-seat restaurant that opened a few months back on Washington Avenue. Proprietor Paul Orofino, who used to own Serendipity nightclub in Coconut Grove, tries to keep the party spirit going here not just by providing nifty…

Sometimes I imagine other restaurant reviewers sitting plushly in front of giant, high-resolution computer screens, scrolling long lists of dining recommendations e-mailed to them by their well-organized, rigorously maintained network of knowledgeable food contacts. My own method of choosing places to review is, contrary to what some might think, only…

If you live on South Beach, chances are you’ve walked down Washington Avenue and passed the tiny, triangular-shape La Molienda on many occasions, probably peeking in with piqued curiosity each and every time. It’s an unusual space in that it takes the notion of storefront restaurant to the extreme –…

Thai food originated in the mountainous valleys of southwestern China, then the homeland of tribes who, between the Sixth and Thirteenth centuries, would emigrate southward into what is now Thailand. Siam River Thai Cuisine originated in North Miami Beach in 1991 and nine months ago expanded southward with a sister…

Fresh is the word when it comes to fish, and it doesn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to deduce that the seafood shanties in Watson Island Marina, one of the first stops for local commercial fishing boats, would be an opportune place to purchase some of the very freshest. Two weathered…

Since opening on the southern tip of South Beach in 1995, Nemo has consistently been rated as one of Miami’s very best restaurants. Like the proprietors of many of the United States’ other highly touted contemporary dining establishments (The French Laundry, Chez Panisse, Spago, et cetera), co-owners Myles Chafetz and…

It was in 1899 that Italy’s Queen Margherita and King Umberto I, in a public-relations move calculated to foster an affinity with the common folk, took a royal traipse into Naples for some pizza. In their honor the pizzaiolo commissioned for the event what is believed to be the first…