When it comes to culinary firsts, Miami seldom beats Manhattan. So when an article in New York magazine virtually swooned itself silly last December about the opening of Pardo’s (a twenty-year-old Peruvian rotisserie chicken chain) in NYC, it was hard to believe. There’s been a Pardo’s Chicken in Miami for…

On its business card, this strip mall joint is actually called Michele European Bakery, Gelateria & Caffe, one of those names so long and unwieldly, you’d assume it says it all. It does not. In back of the cafe (named for owner Michele Pompei, who trained and worked as a…

In a neighborhood where signs in front of every other restaurant advertise traditional Haitian favorites like lambi (long-stewed conch) and soupe joumou (meat-packed pumpkin squash soup), the Lunch Room is more than just a little bit different. The soup at this pleasant, if eye-poppingly bright green, indoor/outdoor cafe in Little…

For Florida foodies, the South Beach Wine and Food Festival is the year’s monster event. But spring brings an entire season of food festivals — smaller, to be sure, but revelatory in their own locals-oriented way. For instance: At last month’s Miami Wine and Food Festival — a sort of…

Inside every food critic, it’s said, beats the trans fat-packed heart of a fast food junkie. Even serious foodies can consume only so much tomato confit before getting a yen for ketchup. This point was underscored just last month at the South Beach Wine & Food Festival’s first Burger Bash…

When you consider the career path of eight-time world freediving champion Yasemin Dalkilic, it’s not surprising that she and her trainer/husband, Rudi Castineyra, chose ungentrified downtown Miami as the appropriate neighborhood for their very gentrified wine bar. The pair is used to taking big risks and winning. Often referred to…

Since South Beach’s late-Eighties renaissance, when droves of fashion and film aficionados (plus other notably fitness-conscious people) descended, sushi has been one of Miami’s major food groups. By the mid-Nineties, Washington Avenue was lined with Japanese eateries comparable in quality to those in New York City. Unfortunately, like those in…

About three years ago, Miami’s midtown so-called “Arts District” was trumpeted, in a CNN real estate survey, as the most rapidly appreciating area in the country. National media hype that followed pictured Biscayne Boulevard as the gracious promenade it was to be, possibly within minutes — lined with cute cafes…

What’s the difference between a Valentine’s Day restaurant meal and the same dinner on a normal night? About $50 to $200. Something is clearly wrong with this discrepancy, yet the heart-shape box of Russell Stover candies doesn’t quite cut it as a romantic expression, either. Leave it to a French…

Considering Miami’s predominance of Cuban immigrants, it’s astonishing that truly wonderful, home-style, traditional Cuban meals are rare here. One theory as to why this is so: These days the chefs in the kitchens are mostly from other Latin American countries. To an experienced food professional, this statement is not objective…

When Deco Sandwiches, originally advertised as a 24-hour gourmet deli, opened just more than a year ago, the first thought that came to mind was the management must have a death wish. What other explanation could there be for opening another sandwich joint barely a block from La Sandwicherie? The…

When the clock strikes twelve on New Year’s Eve, the Cuban tradition is to eat twelve grapes to ensure good luck for each month of the new year. The custom evidently originated in Spain, around 1900, derived from the hope that one year’s good wine grape harvest might be repeated…

“Think about all the places we find propaganda right under our noses,” reads a coffee mug for sale in the Wolfsonian design museum’s Dynamo Café. “Like coffee cups.” It’s a reminder of the Wolf’s old days. Before heir Mitchell Wolfson Jr. gave his eccentric private collection to the State of…

Totally trashing an eatery is generally neither fun nor fair. But one thing that does justify joyful decimation is when a restaurant undeniably demonstrates deliberate disrespect for diners. And that’s a fair description of the experience two dining companions and I had recently at Cheli’s Café. After a brief initial…

Now that the performing arts center is finally operational, how soon will it be before the rest of the much-vaunted downtown Miami gentrification process happens? How soon until the area becomes a genuine 24/7 urban center with relatively sophisticated people walking the streets and enjoying nice restaurants and civilized amenities…

“Write what you know” is probably the most common advice given to would-be scribes. And despite the initial impressiveness of menus that rival War and Peace in size and scope, it’s darn good advice for chefs too. The temptation to try to be all things to all people invariably results…

Most locals know NE 167th/163rd Street as a shopping destination, not as a restaurant row. But the roughly three-mile strip between I-95 and Biscayne Boulevard is the closest thing our town has to a Chinatown — though it’s actually more of a Pan-Asiantown. On their way to Home Depot, Wal-mart,…

Ask any resident of a major city, from San Francisco to Lima, Peru — or even citizens of not-so-major cities like Portland, Oregon; or Richmond, British Columbia — where the local Chinatown is, and they’ll have no trouble directing you to some dense enclave of Asian culture and businesses, where…

Restaurant reviewers find our prey many ways, most of them as unexciting as the way African big-game “hunters” find theirs — by using savvy local guides rather than doing any real hunting themselves. But occasionally one does stumble out of some metaphorical mist and find oneself, accidentally, in Brigadoon. (For…

It’s a bit mind-blowing, when one is of an age that one rarely is offered anything but the least serious illegal drugs, to realize one’s place of employment is perceived as a citadel of crunchy-granola neo-hippies. But the proof is right there on the menu of the Daily Creative Food…

Northwest Seventeenth Avenue in Liberty City is not exactly a “restaurant row” tourist track. It’s not even a volatile developing destination-dining road (like Biscayne Boulevard in the past few years) for car-cruising foodies. It’s more of a reasonably speedy alternative to Biscayne, simply a way to zip north/south faster than…

WYSIWYG, in computer parlance, describes an interface that allows users to see an onscreen document as it will appear once it’s printed rather than having to guess at the end result: What You See Is What You Get. In the food world, menus listing daily specials are WYSIWYG — or…