Restaurants will save downtown Miami. Despite the efforts of the city, its boosters, and the unclear intentions of real-estate developers, whenever one talks about the blocks surrounding historic Flagler Street, it’s mostly the restaurants they speak of. Recent years have brought a flurry of talent to an area that to…
Nusret Gökçe didn’t want to see any female servers on the floor of his Brickell Avenue restaurant while he was in town to dramatically sprinkle salt onto high-priced steaks, according to a complaint recently filed with the U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment Commission (EEOC).
Nearly two years after announcing it would open on NE Second Avenue at 84th Street, the Citadel is scheduled to debut sometime in February. This past weekend, the food hall celebrated its imminent arrival with a block party that brought street closures, live music performances, some of the city’s best restaurants, and a group of protesters decrying the rebranding and gentrification of the area.
At first, Jeremy Sapienza’s café con leche especial seems like any other Cuban eye-opener. But something is different. A dash of espresso is whipped in a gleaming pitcher with not only sugar but also a pinch of salt and a lump of cultured vegan butter. Then it’s thinned with a…
It’s unclear when Jan. 18 was declared National Peking Duck day, or by who. Still, a day dedicated to a dish that’s been the delight of Beijing for eons is preferable to most food holidays.
Local universities’ efforts to bring full tuition-paying students from Asia to Miami has paid dividends to the city’s restaurant scene, adding a bevy of eateries serving previously unseen Chinese cuisine. Hi Pot is the latest to join the bunch with delicate chicken broths filled with wildly diverse toppings that arrive bubbling in a cauldron thanks to an underlying lump of Sterno.
Restaurants are fickle beasts. There are the ornery guests seated under or too far away from air conditioning vents, the table of five that fits nowhere, and the no-call no-show cooks who leave the kitchen short-handed on its busiest days. And the music that plays inside them…
Last month marked the 40th year that Allan “A.C.” Cohen — along with his frozen drinks, hot dogs, and wild white beard and hair — has been a fixture in Coconut Grove’s Kennedy Park. The city is set to lay down rubber turf under the picnic tables alongside his white-and-yellow food truck, A.C.’s Icees, and celebrate his latest milestone with a ribbon-cutting ceremony planned by Miami Commissioner Ken Russell for the end of January.
Even when it seems like things are going right, New Year’s Eve is there to remind you of its banality. Still, friends of every age insist on flying down from their Mid-Atlantic or Northeast shitholes to clog the roads, take all the Ubers, crowd the good restaurants, and leave…
Miami has a complex. Though the city boasts vasts stores of wealth, energy, and creativity, they are rarely reflected on the national stage. Just look at the recent lists that pass over the Magic City’s incredible eateries for places like diners and spots serving Puerto Rican country food.
Around 1 a.m. one night in November 2010, Roberto Gonzalez was on his way home from the Caracas restaurant where he worked when he noticed a truck’s headlights lingering too close for too long. He hit the gas and began rushing through the roller coaster of hilly roads surrounding the…
It’s hard to figure out exactly what some of the food world’s highest honors mean. When it comes to Michelin stars, the descriptions in the French tire company’s guide — which lest we forget was launched in 1900 to incentivize greater car use —are no exception. One star indicates “a…
An overwhelming joy hides in a wide bowl of crushed ice adorned with an ounce of caviar, three of the vivid red Spanish shrimp called carabineros, buttery slices of hamachi lounging in rosewater, and sweet, slightly briny sea scallops spritzed with lime and fresh coconut milk. Such delights don’t come…
Earlier this week Cake opened a stall inside of Wynwood’s 1-800-Lucky food hall dishing out southern Thai street food. The new stall replaces Coyo Taco co-owner and chef Scott Linquist’s Les Bahn Amis that specialized in Vietnamese sandwiches.
Over the last year José Ramírez-Ruiz, the chef-owner of Brooklyn’s now-closed, Michelin-starred vegetable-forward restaurant Semilla, quietly moved to Miami and worked a corporate consulting job as he conceptualized his next endeavor. Last week, he quit that job to throw himself headlong into his next project: a Miami-based evolution of Semilla using a palette of ingredients previously unseen in the tasting menus that regularly drew crowds to his 465-square-foot restaurant.
Will Thompson is part bartender and part psychologist. At Jaguar Sun (230 NE Fourth St., Miami; 786-860-2422; jaguarsunma.com), the slight 32-year-old in delicate copper-framed glasses and a floral-print buttonup uses a dozen cocktails to determine what kind of drinkers are at his bar. The place, which Thompson and chef/owner Carey Hynes…
Luciana Lamont was doing her best to make ends meet as a cook at North Miami’s King Jerk. Yet the Dixie Highway spot that boasts some of the city’s best jerk chicken wasn’t paying anywhere near enough and wasn’t giving Lamont, who is 41, the training she needed to move…
Latin Cafe 2000 has, in a way, seen it all. Two decades ago, the Edgewater neighborhood where it resides was a different place. Few ventured to Biscayne Boulevard at night. There were only a few residents and high-rises dotting a landscape that now sees developers buying land for tens of…
As the #MeToo movement’s momentum gives many at the heights of the restaurant world their long-delayed comeuppance, the industry continues to grapple with the unequal representation of women in the upper echelons of kitchens or the media.
In South Florida, hundreds of lawsuits have been filed on behalf of Andres Gomez who court documents say is visually impaired. The lawsuits demand eateries, hotels and municipalities enhance their websites with audiovisual plug-ins that give disabled users the same experiences as those without a handicap.
Late last month the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission approved changes to its shrimping rules allowing fisherman to keep crustaceans alive for sale to growing in lucrative markets in major American cities. Previously, shrimp caught around the peninsula had to be killed, iced or directly frozen before being sent…
When Steve Santana opened his taqueria dubbed Taquiza on Collins Avenue in 2014, he put Miami at the forefront of a new era of Mexican cuisine in the American mainstream. While those who hail from Central and South America had long known and enjoyed the delights of tortillas pressed from freshly made corn dough, Santana and a handful of chefs around the country introduced the ancient technique of nixtamalization, in which dried corn is turned into soft dough, to the greater public.
