The phrase novelty act usually is used as a diss, implying that the sole thing the entertainment entity in question has going is a gimmick rather than talent or any other kind of solid quality. But this show-biz term actually has respectable, or at least neutral, origins, as I discovered…

Although living on the Beach is fun, it’s a relief to get away occasionally during high season, especially the part of season that coincides with South Florida’s annual two weeks of cold weather. When we shivering goose-down-bundled Beach dwellers are even further chilled to the bone by the sight of…

Since I first moved to South Florida in 1993, Ocean Drive has had a reputation as a great place to party but not a great place to eat. Not that there haven’t been notable exceptions. One of the main reasons I originally decided to move from New York to South…

Nothing made me realize more dramatically just how different living and eating in Miami was going to be than a conversation I had with a new Cuban-American friend shortly after I moved here; we were chatting about the main reason she could never live anywhere else in the United States…

To judge by sheer number of outlets, sushi has long been South Beach’s favorite food (and I do mean outlets — one day on the beach, years ago, I encountered a guy selling maki rolls from a Jet Ski). And SoBe’s sushi has basically been darned good, too. But until…

It wasn’t long after chefs Jan Jorgensen and Soren Bredahl (from long-established Two Chefs restaurant) took over Scotty’s gourmet market a year ago August that they realized they had a problem: The addition of a top-end butcher operation was producing a lot of meat scraps. Fancy prime scraps to be…

Of the nine countries normally referred to as Southeast Asia (Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Malaysia, Singapore, Laos, Indonesia, and, stretching it a bit geographically but not culinarily, the Philippines), the cuisines of the first two are by far the most well-known over here. But despite far more American contact with…

With a name like Jacky Chan’s Superbowl, what diners would expect is ramen. And in fact Jacky turns out quite a super bowl of this soup; unlike the cheap, packaged, supermarket ramens that got most of us through our impoverished student days, the broth tastes like real stock instead of…

Since September 11 diners have been holing up at home instead of going out to eat. Not that this survivalist homing instinct has necessarily extended to doing our own home cooking. While formerly hot-ticket restaurants may be relatively empty, many shops selling ready-made gourmet food have found a new market…

Its proper name may be the 1909 Café but everybody calls it the 1909 Sandwich Shop, for good reason — several, actually. One is that “café” is an awfully optimistic description for a totally unatmospheric lunch-counter space in a downscale minimall, with only four or five tiny tables lining one…

If Nobuyuki Matsuhisa’s name is less known nationally than Wolfgang Puck’s, it is only because the latter is easier to spell. And also because Austrian-born/French-trained Puck’s rep-building restaurant Spago had already established itself as the spot for rich-and-famous Angelinos years before Japanese-born-and-trained Matsuhisa arrived in la-la land, after a culinary…

All over New Jersey this time of year, people brave parking-lot-type traffic jams to drive west to the Poconos to see the fall foliage. This is true even of those who live in tree-studded “garden” suburbs like Montclair, where there are plenty of leaves of all colors right at home…

Would you compare Norman’s to Piola Pizza? Well, neither would I. Each is great at what it is. In fact the only fair way to judge restaurants is not by one scale but by trying to evaluate how well any given restaurant succeeds according to its own individual definition, which…

There’s been much mention in recent weeks, by food writers, of comfort food. What there hasn’t been much of is scientific evidence that any such thing as edible anti-stress substances exist; even the New York Times could only come up with a few distinguished doctors pontificating that many people find…

It was mere weeks, not the usual months or years, after becoming Wish’s executive chef in 1999 that Andrea Curto began garnering national awards and great reviews as the hottest food thing in South Florida since Scotch bonnet peppers. And the very first national rave, a pick of Wish in…

“Astonish me!” the impresario Diaghilev commanded then-nobody writer Jean Paul Sartre on a Paris street corner back in the Thirties. And soon-to-be-somebody Sartre did just that. But according to my friend Robert, a lifelong Southern Florida native I originally met because he’s on the board of my life partner’s temple,…

From virtually my first stroll down Ocean Drive in the early Nineties, it was apparent that one of the main foreign languages being spoken was Italian, and the stroll back up Collins and Washington avenues, past designer emporiums, made it immediately clear where all the Italian visitors were outfitting themselves…

An authentic version of chau mien as they do it in Canton would be reason enough to patronize any Chinese restaurant. And Gourmet Gourmet’s double-yellow gourmet version does largely qualify as authentic. Traditionally chau mien simply was pan-fried fresh Chinese egg noodles topped with quickly stir-fried seasoned meat or seafood…

As someone who has earned a living in two pretty damned privileged fields — writing about food and playing rock music — I’ve always felt as if I was getting away with highway robbery, even in months when I can barely pay the rent. One of my grandmothers, after all,…

The version of Thai food one encounters at the King and I restaurant is about as real as the vision of Thai culture one encounters in the Rogers & Hammerstein musical of the same name — which is to say, not very. Not that this is necessarily bad; it just…

Before even a short vacation in any foreign country, I always try to learn about the food of the place, in the language of the place — nothing really daunting in terms of grammar or vocabulary but enough to cover the basic amenities and practicalities of negotiating a meal. This…

There is nothing like a week in London, home to more than 1500 Indian restaurants, most specializing in dishes never heard of in South Florida, to make a grown-up restaurant reviewer feel as if she’s back in kindergarten. Which is why Imlee sounded so intriguing. Only a year old, the…