Little more than two months after starting at Michael Schwartz’s eponymous Design District restaurant, Saul Ramos has been named chef de cuisine, overseeing the kitchen as it enters its tenth year in business and prepares to launch a menu rife with new items.  Slated to roll out early next week,…

Michael Solomonov’s Dizengoff is as simple as an ashram. Step inside and to the left find two meager tables next to a towering wall lined with newspapers and magazines printed with blocky Hebrew.  It takes three, maybe four more steps to arrive at the cashier who stands below a white…

The 250-seat hybrid taqueria and market Tacology is slated to open in the sprawling Brickell City Centre as soon as November offering paletas, ceviches, and salads alongside traditional street-style tacos and more upscale creations. “It’s going to be like a mercado with four open kitchens and a terrace,” said executive…

As construction crews toiled away in the yawning, gilded space that houses Pao by Paul Qui, owners of the Faena Hotel Miami Beach were fixated on centerpiece art for the dining room. “One of the funniest conversations with them was about seriously asking Damien Hirst to create another mammoth, but…

Fernando Chang never planned to open a kosher restaurant. He just wanted to make sushi. The soft-spoken Chinese-Peruvian chef’s family moved to South America from Guangzhou near Hong Kong. He grew up in Chiclayo, a city in northwest Peru, where he ran a successful shoe store and ice-cream shop. Then,…

With only 30 restaurants participating in Miami Spice, Coral Gables seems to claim an outsized share of places doing the two month long special the right way. So maybe they don’t have the novelty or the glitz of South Beach or Brickell. But unlike those unknown quantities, the quality of…

Ahh South Beach. When’s the last time you were there? Probably some years ago, moving out of that dishwasherless, first-floor hovel of an apartment on the final day of your lease. Since then you’ve avoided the MacArthur Causeway like it was the plague, especially during the Venetian’s nearly yearlong closure. …

Sometimes Miami Spice is like being thrust into a glittering pinball machine that flashes and jitters. Bright, attractive signs grab your attention, but are they worth it? With so many restaurants participating, there are bound to be a few that slap together a lackluster offering. You can often tell because…

Miami Spice is A Christmas Story in summer. Each year as the heat and humidity grow we allow our minds to wander into the sea of possibilities filled with many of the city’s best restaurant tempting each precious table with affordable, creative meals. But we’ve been through this before, we…

To reach the best seats at Brickell’s Quinto La Huella, stride through the main dining room, a raw-wood-and-tanned-leather expanse accented by rough pottery and orange lamps. Continue to the patio, where bushy hanging foliage helps hide each table and turns the small opening ringed by skyscrapers into a secret garden…

The historic S&S Diner, a beloved all-too-rare vestige of Old Miami, could close as soon as tomorrow, according to manager Maria Linares. The forthcoming shuttering, which Linares said she learned of today through someone at the property management company, is yet another nail in the coffin for storied and historic…

If the men’s bathroom inside the Spillover doesn’t make you smile, you don’t have a soul. The walls are lined with grinning pictures of Roberto Gómez Bolaños, the beloved Mexican screenwriter, actor, and comedian who went by the nickname Chespirito (Little Shakespeare). A life-size cutout of Sábado Gigante’s Don Francisco…

The untimely closing of Michelle Bernstein’s Cena scattered one of Miami’s best kitchen crews to the wind.  Its primary prep cook, Augustine Gamboa, was devastated the day he learned the building was sold and the longstanding restaurant would soon shutter. “There’s no way that place could’ve run so smoothly without…

Michael Schwartz’s success nearly cost him his marriage. It was May 2010 when the bespectacled, increasingly gray-haired chef claimed a James Beard Award for Best Chef South. He was working more than ever, nearly abandoning all other aspects of his life. “I had my head down all the time,” the…

Depending on where you live, eating the region’s best Asian cuisine can require a pilgrimage. Some folks haul north for Korean barbecue at Lauderhill’s Gabose. Others head south for fragrant pho and cha gio at Pho Thang between Pinecrest and Cutler Bay. Many steal away from work for Japanese Market’s…

A coal-black plate is littered with a half-dozen buttery sweetbreads poached in court-bouillon and finished with a char. But it’s the study in celery that’s most alluring. Leaves and stalks are chopped into an herbaceous chimichurri. The plant’s bulbous root is roasted and pummeled into a velvety purée. More of…