For ethnic food enthusiasts, there’s no greater thrill than finding a very small, very hidden eatery — and no greater compliment than to call it a “hole in the wall.” Sushi Deli takes the compliment almost too far. Located on the bottom floor of a nondescript office building, this is…

Truly tasty kosher food is not easy to find in Miami, especially not at reasonable prices — that is, prices not inflated by all the necessary religious rituals and restrictions. So five-month-old Kemia is a rare treat, a place that serves kosher in the North African/Mediterranean style, and serves it…

He said: I hate little frou-frou plates of stuff, with a drizzle of this and a spit of that all around it. I like a big hunk of meat. With a bone! She said: B-o-r-i-n-g. Honestly I do not believe women are from Venus and men are from Mars. Yet…

Lila’s Bistro, though only a weekday lunch place, is a find. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to find. It’s not. Not even if some food-savvy friend has been kind enough to provide you with a copy of the menu, which includes these directions: “Inside pink courtyard across from Bank…

Every once in a while diners will come across a restaurant that makes them feel happy the minute they walk in the door. Crabby’s is such a place. A lot of the cheerfulness derives from the homey look: warm knotty-pine paneling reminiscent of a rec room from a more innocent,…

You can buy a Felix Perdomo painting for $5800. Or at Orange Café, a self-described art café that opened earlier this year in the Design District, you can get a Picasso for $6.45. And the latter comes with crinkle potato chips. Unlike the Perdomo, a large, olive-green canvas depicting a…

A chivito is an Uruguayan sandwich that could give a Philadelphia cheese steak a run for its money — that is, if you’re talking about potential to become a fast-food classic. And if you’re talking about size, a chivito could leave a Philly in the dust, along with the rest…

It’s similar to the regular chicken,” a server at Casa Toscana explained, describing a nightly special of sage-stuffed roast chicken breast with porcini cream sauce and gorgonzola. “But with more attitude.” Attitude, at least in a restaurant, is not usually a good thing. And did an already rich sauce flavored…

According to the late comedian Rodney Dangerfield, there was only one piece of advice his mother gave him as a kid: “Never eat a frankfurter from the man on the corner with the orange umbrella. Those hot dogs are made of snakes.” Many of us who grew up in the…

Coffee usually does the trick. But some days it takes a shot of Formosan Gunpowder to get a person going. Since last November it’s been possible to supply oneself even more easily than buying an AK-47 by visiting Lea’s — which is a tea shop, not a gun shop. The…

Just because something is fast food doesn’t mean it has to be bad food. What’s invariably bad is food that has no individuality, no regional identity, no pride behind it — in other words, when it’s safe, standardized food that aims for the bottom line. In fact even chain-restaurant food…

A truly authentic ethnic restaurant can be like an acid flashback — a good one, that is: A diluted but still evocative sensory return to a foreign country you once visited. When the visuals and sounds, as well as the smells and tastes, are vivid enough, it’s almost a mini…

Few things are scarier, early in the morning, than glancing blearily over one’s coffee cup and seeing a plate of big sunny-side-up fried eggs staring back at you, all bright-eyed and chipper. Somewhere between 11:00 p.m. and 4:00 a.m., though, such breakfast food somehow seems like a fabulously comforting idea…

While “appetizer” is generally used as a synonym for “hors d’oeuvres,” it really isn’t synonymous. The French term means “outside of the work;” originally it was an architectural term for outbuildings. So at a meal, it’s any other bit of food except the main dish, whether the hors d’oeuvre stimulates…

Just as herbs and spices season food, so does history. Thus “Caribbean cuisine” is a misnomer, more convenient as a sound bite than useful as truth. What the islands’ cuisines historically had in common was influence from their African slave populations, which was strong. It was also beneficial, especially in…

When Julia Child died last month, two days from her 92nd birthday, obituaries naturally focused on the great food writer’s professional contributions. Her two volumes of Mastering the Art of French Cooking and long-running TV show The French Chef had, after all, revolutionized American cuisine. Millions who learned to cook…

If life were fair and rational, every corner in Miami where a Dunkin’ Donuts now stands would instead house a churro shop. In a burg whose population is more than 50 percent Hispanic, there’s no excuse for eating fried sawdust. It was the Spaniards, after all, who invented the heavenly…

For those who have had it at its best, pho is more than mere food. It is a drug, and a very addictive one. No, no — don’t get all excited. The ingredients do not include any of the excellent if illegal substances carried into the USA with returning soldiers…

According to an old dining axiom, a restaurant’s bread basket is an indicator of the rest of the meal’s quality. At Duo the bread reached even beyond the heights of the restaurant’s ceiling, which is very high indeed. The ambiance is informal at this seven-month-old eatery, as is the place’s…

For twenty years the Sun Inn has been operating in Edgewater, north of downtown. And for the eleven years I’ve lived in Miami, I’ve been wondering about it — but only wondering. There was something scary about the place. Maybe it was the location on an evidently soon-to-be but definitely…

From the front the Charlotte Bakery doesn’t look much more encouraging than any of the many other sources, on this still relatively ungentrified stretch of Washington Avenue, for empanadas. But some of the fare inside is uncommonly tasty. This is especially true of savory pastries such as the $1.50 “mini-lunch”…

For as long as I’ve lived in Miami Beach, sushi bars have been more common than Madonna sightings — and back in ’93 that girl used to show up at local gas station openings. Near my condo were three sushi sources on one block alone, four if you count the…