It’s more than just a little bit unusual for a restaurant’s grand opening to be announced by a banner that trumpets not only the date it commences business — in the case of Le Marais Express, this year’s Jewish holiday Passover, several months ago — but also when it intends…

If I had to choose one nation as my favorite food source, it would be China. Over the years and around the world, I’ve found a reliable indicator of great Chinese restaurants is the presence of fish tanks. Not the decorative kind but the sort in which sea creatures are…

A house alone is not a home, according to the saying. For that transformation to happen, a building needs life. And for the same reason, neither is Miami’s “square mile of style” (a nickname from the Seventies) a neighborhood. Revival efforts over the last decade have made the Design District…

Our life is frittered away by detail … simplify, simplify,” wrote Henry David Thoreau in Walden. But that was more than 150 years ago, a time when life’s big basics could be altered by an individual, rather than being bureaucratically locked on a course way beyond our control. These days,…

Since biblical times, bread has been referred to as the staff of life. According to Psalm 104, bread “strengthens man’s heart.” Although my grandmother never went quite as far as King David, she always insisted the family eat the crust, claiming it promotes strong teeth. On a gut level these…

To someone accustomed to urban walking neighborhoods like Manhattan or South Beach, the prospect of living in Miami’s Upper Eastside has always seemed claustrophobic. Yes, there were beautiful homes and condos in the residential neighborhoods, but no pedestrian-friendly places to which residents could stroll for a cup of coffee in…

Among life’s eternal mysteries is this: Why are turkey dinners served only twice annually, at two holidays not even a month apart? Another is this: Where do clothes dryers hide all the missing socks? The latter mystery continues to puzzle, but I discovered the answer to the former the first…

Of all Asian cuisines, one of the most difficult to find well represented in the U.S. — to find at all, actually — is that of the Philippines. Odd, considering how relatively accessible, compared to Japanese or Thai food, most Filipino dishes would be to diners, especially here in Miami,…

No one should know more about preparing great seafood than people who live surrounded by the sea, on an island, like Cuba. And in fact I’ve had some fantastic Cuban fish dishes — pargo Alicante in wine-enriched brown sauce, garnished with crisp lemon-marinated shrimp; pescado de Obatala e Inle with…

It’s only a block west of Brickell Avenue’s glitzy skyscrapers, but the strip of old-fashioned storefronts that houses Indochine has, historically, managed to maintain a rather raffish, river-pirate air; it feels as if you’ve tumbled through time into a pioneer-era den of debauchery. And in a way, you have. For…

There are a few types of restaurants that are virtually impossible to find here in Miami-Dade County, including: (1) a Chinese restaurant featuring a tank filled with swimming seafood that diners can eat, not just watch; (2) any place with genuine Ipswich fried clams, whole specimens with that marvelous contrast…

The problem with Christmas, it has always seemed to me, is that once it’s over people seem compelled to take down the decorations. Is it some leftover Puritan influence or what? Here we have all these festive, twinkling, low-wattage lights that make our abodes feel like there’s a party going…

It was literally only days after Lime Fresh opened last spring that people began asking me what I knew about it. This was surprising for a number of reasons, not the least of which was its location in one of Miami Beach’s jinx spots. Several quite respectable little eateries (including…

For lovers of authentic Southeast Asian cooking, discovering that Vatcharin Bhumichtir is chef at a neighborhood Thai restaurant in North Beach is akin to learning that Emeril Lagasse just opened a gumbo shack in Overtown. It’s not the caliber of the food at relatively humble places that’s in question. It’s…

For people born toward the end of Twentieth Century, who are familiar with Lebanon mainly through horrific photographs of wartime Beirut’s bombed-out rubble, it’s difficult to imagine that not so much earlier (during a twenty-year French occupation between World War I and World War II) Beirut was known as “the…

Most restaurant reviews take no more than a couple of weeks to complete, even here at New Times, where the (responsible) policy is for critics to make at least two visits before making a judgment. This review has been in the works since last spring, about seven weeks after Harrison’s…

Pho! Phabulous pho! Phinally! Okay, apologies for being cute, but true phans of pho (pronounced like the French feu) will understand. Mediocre versions of this addictive Vietnamese beef-noodle concoction are so much the rule here in the Americas that when you come upon a worthy pho it seems to call…

Suggesting as it does that the place is a one-and-only sort of joint run by a guy named Joe, the name “Joey’s Only Seafood Restaurant” is a little questionable for a chain eatery. And Joey’s Only is indeed a chain. Unlike McD’s, however, Joey’s is a Canadian chain, and so…

There are strong similarities in many dishes originating in Latin America and the Caribbean, but there are also differences, however subtle. It is a source of frustration for people who like to taste-test food analytically that so many Miami ethnic eateries supposedly specializing in the food of one country also…

It’s traditional to eat certain foods at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve to ensure good luck in the coming year. This lucky food varies from country to country. Cubans eat twelve grapes. In Germany, Poland, and Scandinavia the first bite is supposed to be herring. For those…

Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring — except the delivery guy from the Chinese restaurant. Each country has its own age-old Xmas Eve culinary customs. In Italy it’s a multicourse seafood feast for the extended family. In France, a reveillon supper…

On the glam sports scale, bowling has always ranked right up there with croquet and badminton. That’s not to badmouth bowling. In fact, it’s probably bowling’s nonglamorousness that makes it nonintimidating as a participatory sport, even for a desk potato like me, whose lifetime average score, out of a possible…