Hell’s Kitchen 5 – Chef Paula DaSilva Interview

This season FOX’s smash reality hit Hell’s Kitchen 5 features 3 Florida Chef’s, Paula DaSilva is one of them. Paula works as Chef De Cuisine at 3030 Ocean at the Marriot’s Harbor Beach Resort in Ft. Lauderdale. I spoke to her via telephone and here’s what she had to say.”I…

Joey’s Restaurant Is a Wynwood Winner

Father/son developers Tony and Joey Goldman own more than 20 commercial properties near NW 28th Street and Second Avenue in the Wynwood Arts District. Until recently, their real estate portfolio was akin to a philatelist’s unfilled album — just so many pages of drawings and plans. But on December 1,…

Cafe Martorano Media Blitz

Ft. Lauderdale’s Cafe Martorano and its owner Steve Martorano exert the media-industry equivalent of gravitational pull. He and his restaurant attract attention. Da guy’s a star yaknowwhadamean? He’s got his landmark South Florida headquarters, a joint in Vegas, national tv spots cookin meatballs, Gail Shepherd’s writin about him, face on…

Michy’s Second Season

 Michelle Bernstein returns as host of WPBT-2’s popular television show Check, Please! South Florida, and Season 2, which premieres Monday, March 9th, promises to contain almost as many new twists as the latest episodes of Lost. On second thought, maybe I’m exaggerating a bit; there are really only two changes…

Wrapping Up the Jupiter Craft Brewers Festival

John LinnCheck out the full slideshow here. The Third Annual Jupiter Craft Brewers Festival took place on Saturday, and in case you missed out on what was a perfect day of beer sampling and cavorting, check out our slide show here. What made the fest so “gee, shucks” great? For…

Would You Like Pakora with That? Fast Food Outsourcing Orders.

Jack in the Box is apparently testing a program to outsource their drive-through orders, routing requests for burgers and shakes to call-takers outside the country. The program is getting its first test run in Charlotte, North Carolina, where folks innocently pulling up to the order box are being taken for…

The Inspector – 10 Miami-Dade Restaurants with ZERO Violations for 2009

Lest you think The Inspector is a hater, this week we won’t bring you the dirt on local routine-food-inspection-reports. Instead we’ll highlight the reports reporting that there is nothing to report. These restaurants were found to be totally violation-free on their most recent inspections.Pita Pit –  16323 SW 88 St,…

RACKS Is Whack

Another day, another European-style new age trattoria/old world Italian bar/outdoor marketplace/espresso bar/chic urban pizzeria getting set to open. Welcome to RACKS Italian Bistro And Market, owned by Gary Rack, who evidently didn’t like the sound of the name GARYS. Mr. Rack, founder of Boca Raton’s Coal Mine Pizza, sets out…

Lola’s Cupcakery Opens on Las Olas

Courtesy of Lola’s CupcakeryAs far as desserts go, what’s better than a cupcake? Think about it: these morsels of goodness are self-contained, portable, portion-controlled, and, when done right, can taste pretty swell. And now, they’re showing up on Las Olas. Lola’s Cupcakery is a new venture from Toronto restaurateur, Donald…

Cheech And Chong Eat Roaches and Drink Bong Water

Cheech And Chong Drink Bongwater from Miami New Times on Vimeo. Cheech and Chong are great Americans, even though they are Mexican and Canadian. They performed at the South Beach Comedy Festival 2009 and I caught up with them backstage to ask food questions for Short Order. They told me…

Shaka Can, And Does, Downtown

Admittedly this photo sent to us by the folks at  Shaka Jon’s isn’t going to draw any comparisons with the work of André Kertész, but luckily Shaka is about food and drink, not photography. The new downtown restaurant, located at 48 East Flagler Street, offers an informal, low-priced menu of…

The New Deal Is Old — And Kosher

There’s all sorts of talk about New Deal this and New Deal that these days, which is fine by Heshy Wilensky, proprietor of the New Deal Kosher Market. Located at 1362 NE 163rd Street in North Miami Beach, it is the only butcher shop in South Florida that has operated…

This is Your Brain. This is Your Brain on Truffles.

My favorite news item of the week: Swiss researches have discovered a new psychological disorder which they’ve called “Gourmand Syndrome.” Turns out that people who are passionately obsessed with food actually have lesions in their right anterior cerebral hemisphere — lesions which do not appear in people who are not food obsessed…

Soup is Good (and Warming) Food

You may have noticed that it’s colder than a witch’s teet outside. I mean, I really enjoy these few months where flip flops and Bermuda shorts aren’t required attire lest you suffer heat stroke, but come on… 40s? That’s not what I signed up for, folks. So last night, feeling…

A Liberty City Breakfast with Basic Training Deliverance Academy

Liberty City Breakfast from Miami New Times on Vimeo. Gus Garcia’s feature story this week explores the world of Basic Training Delivery Academy in Miami’s Liberty City. Here’s a video detailing the Sunday breakfast ritual they offer free to the community. Click here to read the full article…

A Room with a View

A burgundy stream of Cavia Malbec cascades into a short-stemmed snifter and stops abruptly as our waiter snaps the bottle upright. Lifting the glass to eye level and looking closely at the lower, liquid-filled half, I see a convex reflection of Buena Vista Bistro’s 24-seat room: black-topped tables lining the…

Palm Beach and Broward Restaurant Closings

Your intuition is correct: Restaurants dropped like tasered protesters at a Republican rally last year. The not-so-bad news is that new eateries opened in many of the vacated spaces, offsetting our net loss. Read on for a partial and unofficial Short Order list of closings in Broward and Palm Beach…

The Inspector: 5 Restaurants That Started 09′ In A Bad Way

After a short hiatus, The Inspector is back to keep you abreast of current developments in the routine-food-inspection-report scene. The following information may shock you, but understand we are only providing it because it is totally public information that we all have a right to see. Here are 5 restaurants…

Girl Scout Cookies Hit Streets, Scared of Salmonella?

Cookie junkies across the nation simultaneously erupted in joy and floundered in despair when ’09 Girl Scout cookie shipments hit the streets and salmonella peanut butter reports hit the airwaves. But don’t despair, according to MSN Health & Fitness:”The drum roll for recalls of peanut butter products continued without letup,…

Cuban-Style Pig Roast Using La Caja China

Ah, the Cuban Pig Roast. There’s no greater cooking method than the outdoor-food-to-fire-method. And with the holiday pig we ate, we gotta start looking ahead to the next one. This kind of cooking is so basic, yet so delicious, it brings out the inner cave person in all of us…

Chocolate-Dipped Fairchild

This Thursday evening, Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden will be hosting the Third Annual International Chocolate Festival Kickoff Party. No, I didn’t know about the first two either, but this year’s one-hour shindig (6 to 7 p.m.) features hors d’oeuvres from exceptional chef Edgar Leal of Cacao Restaurant — reason enough…