It’s been somewhere between a few decades and a century since South Florida was considered part of the American South. Still it’s easy to find most Southern regional cuisines here. In fact, hearty Cajun cooking, originated by French Canadian “Acadians” who migrated to southern Louisiana’s bayou country, has been so…
At most restaurants it’s not a good sign when chefs come and go every few years. It’s often a sign of management instability, or that something other than inspired food is the place’s priority. Sometimes it’s followed by increasingly empty tables, which soon leads to shuttered doors. This is especially…
A time-honored theory among ethnic-restaurant mavens goes like this: The best Chinese food is to be found in the worst dumps. As a business acquaintance who’d grown up in China once told me: “If I walk in and there’s a tuxedoed guy behind a maitre d’ stand, I really start…
In discussions of innovative food trends, Miami generally gets the short end of the stick compared with New York, San Francisco, and other cities known for their eagerness to embrace the newest, the hottest, and the weirdest. But our town has never lagged behind the pack in one genre: global…
A mere half-dozen years or so after national publications began hyping the Design District as our town’s hottest new area, it seems like the “square mile of style” (a nickname from its Seventies heyday as the upscale design center) is finally turning into a real neighborhood. In just the past…
Sat 7/10 “They also serve who stand and wait,” said John Milton in Paradise Lost. But that was 350 years ago. At today’s 6th annual Waiters/Waitress Race, in downtown Coral Gables, they who serve will not be doing a whole lot of standing. Rather, local waiters and waitresses will be…
When summer comes to South Florida, the restaurant scene gears down so abruptly, and so dramatically, that its eerie. Personally I havent made a reservation since Memorial Day. Even at some of South Beachs most in-demand hot spots — places where it had previously been impossible to procure a dinner…
When the reality TV show The Restaurant started its second brief season in late April, it was immediately obvious that this year’s theme would be quite different. The inaugural season’s splash resulted from a fairly new phenomenon, Americans’ recent mass addiction to the Food Network. And the concept of following…
Miami Beach has been hot and hip for over a decade, and surrounded by the salt water since long before velvet was first made into ropes. But just try to find a stylish place to dine with a water view. Add to your wish list outdoor dining, courteous service, trendy…
Defining the word “bistro” is like trying to pin down the meaning of “carpaccio.” In recent years, both words have been used so liberally that few people likely know their origins. But once upon a time each had a specific meaning: Carpaccio, a dish of raw, thinly sliced beef striped…
By this time in a year of typical South Florida weather, locals would have retreated indoors weeks ago, not to emerge from our excellent air conditioning till October or so. This year’s unseasonably cool spring, however, has blessed us with some extra time to enjoy the beach — time that’s…
A few years ago I had a conversation with a Cuban-American friend about why, in her opinion, the Latin food in the rest of the United States was so unsatisfactory that she could not possibly live anywhere but Miami. Nuevo Latino cuisine wasn’t yet quite as hot as toaster waffles…
Journalists, just like other people, have what seems to be an almost genetically programmed weakness for “Best” lists, especially when it comes to restaurants. Here at New Times, we in the food department try to resist, at least to the extent of refusing to assign eateries a certain number of…
Like a great lover who is both thrilling and comforting, the food at Mosaico is a combination of care and passion. And it is excitingly accessible. Please repeat “accessible” 50 times. As you do that, I’ll tell you that Mosaico’s chef, Jordi Vallès, formerly cooked at the Spanish restaurant La…
Several national publications recently declared Miami’s 33137 zip code — the narrow rectangle north of downtown, between Biscayne Bay and North Miami Avenue — to be one of the hottest five locales in the U.S. based on rising real estate values. This zip code ends at 62nd Street. But residents…
Most yuppies who moved to South Beach in the early Nineties did so because of the buzz, the burgeoning reputation of the place (once known as God’s Waiting Room) as a 24/7 magnet for hip excitement. Nightlife, celebrities, and fashion shoots could be found on every other corner. My life…
It’s not so surprising that South Florida has few German restaurants. Despite a significant Jewish population with ancestral roots in northern Europe, nostalgia goes only so far. There’s little need down here, after all, for carb-heavy, hearty fare to fuel the peasant population through long, frigid winters. And it’s undeniable…
Around the year 1800, European immigrants who’d settled in the southern Brazilian grasslands of Rio Grande do Sul, bordering Argentina and Uruguay, developed a cooking style to match their lifestyle of herding cattle. First they would build a campfire and allow the fire to burn down to coals. Then they’d…
When a Chinese restaurant advertises “Hong Kong-style cuisine,” the main thing diners can count on is variety. Historically a sizable percentage of this southern territory’s inhabitants (now numbering approximately seven million) have been immigrants from all over China — a vast country with dramatically varied geography and climates, and correspondingly…
Back in 1915, the year Miami Beach became a city, Brown’s Hotel was the place to hang out. Actually it was the only place to hang if you insisted on amenities like a place to sit down or a roof over your head. Joe’s Stone Crab, predating the city’s founding…
There are some nice surprises about the Sonesta Beach Resort’s top-end Purple Dolphin restaurant, but getting there isn’t one of them. On a first visit, following directions I’d received from a hotel employee, I arrived half an hour late. On a second visit, a dining companion (who, being from out…
For more than a decade, as the rest of Miami’s “Mango Gang” of chefs (Douglas Rodriguez, Mark Militello, and Allen Susser) parlayed their Hispanic-influenced New World cuisine into restaurant empires and product marketing, Norman Van Aken resisted such expansion. While he did write several cookbooks in those years, Norman’s in…
