Founder of Benihana Japanese Steakhouse Dead at 69

Photo courtesy of Benihana. News broke this weekend that Rocky Aoki, founder of the Benihana chain of restaurants — headquartered in Miami — died Thursday night at the age of 69. According to a family spokesperson, the cause of death was pneumonia; but Aoki had also suffered from cirrhosis, diabetes,…

Palm Beach Bargain Basements

Summer Slumming On the Wrong Side of the Tracks Mummy and I got gussied up as Ladies Who Lunch last Friday and tripped over to the isle of Palm Beach, hoping to test the waters at Beach House Bistro, which opened last November. The restaurant scene in Palm Beach moves…

Cita Set To Groove In Grove

Used to be that you couldn’t name ten worthwhile restaurants at which to dine in Coconut Grove. Still can’t, but we’re getting closer. When Ideas Restaurant opened two years ago it gave the food-deprived neighborhood its’ first fine upscale establishment since the nineties. The recently opened George’s In The Grove…

Dean Max’s Heirloom Bloody Mary

[Ed. note 7/15/08. This recipe, I found, leaves you with a brew too thick to drink as a cocktail. But it makes a fabulous cold soup — a Bloody Mary inflected gazpacho, thanks to the horseradish and Worcestershire. Just add a shot of vodka to each bowl before you serve…

Weekly Purge: The Short Order Recap, Edition #1

Week two of Short Order is just about in the books, and what a week at that. We’ve been posting our arses off around New Times, probably because we’re just so pent up. This Short Order thing you see here was a long time coming, you see — an idea…

Burger King Pitches Penny To Tomato Pickers

You say tomato, I say “Show me the Money” From The Economist: “After one embarrassment on top of another”…. [ed note: like being caught SPYING on Florida Student/Farmworker activists in Fort Lauderdale] “Burger King backed down last month and reached a ground-breaking agreement with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, representing…

Philly Pretzel Factory Twists Its Way To Miami

The modern age of pretzel making began in 1935 when the Reading Pretzel Machinery Company invented an automatic pretzel-twisting machine. It was hailed as the greatest thing since sliced bread, and sliced bread hadn’t even been invented yet. The modern age of Miami pretzel-eating began just this month at the…

WTF Is It?!? Round 2

Evidently last week’s entry in Short Order’s weekly contest, WTF Is It?!?, — was child’s play for our MENSA-class readers. Half the world, it seems, knows what to do with a bitter gourd, while we’d been using them as foot massagers. This week we’ve got TWO summertime edibles and the…

Requiem for a Shrimp: The Bandit Escapes

Today, the saga of the Shrimp Bandit has come to a close. When we last left you, we were hot on the trail of the elusive thief, ready to snare him in our nets like so many fisherman before. But this morning, the trail went cold. Our contacts hit dead…

Gordon Ramsay to Chastise Video Gamers this September

As if it wasn’t enough that you couldn’t screw up soufflés in your own kitchen without the fear of celeb-chef Gordon Ramsay’s disembodied head floating in and calling you a f’in C, French video game publisher Ubisoft announced today that it plans to release Hell’s Kitchen™: The Video Game for…

Mango Festival and Brunch This Weekend

International Mango Festival Date: July 12 – 13, 2008 Location: Fairchild Tropical Garden 10901 Old Cutler Road Coral Gables Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden invites you its 16th annual International Mango Festival featuring the mangoes of Africa. The weekend features, among many other activities and mango tree sales, the celeb-studded Ninth…

David Katz of Zyr Vodka

David Katz looks more or less like your typical 35-year-old guy from East Brunswick, New Jersey (perhaps a bit grayer). But he’s really much more interesting than that. His passions in life are his wife (a Miami native he met at a South Beach club — they both live here…

Purdy Good

Bartolome Grill & Restaurant’s 54-seat dining room is handsomely attired in black (tables, chairs, linens, pillars, bar, lofty industrial ceiling, waiters’ outfits) and vivid red (seat cushions, bar backlighting, waiters’ ties). Two walls are predominantly glass, which lightens and expands the space considerably; the rest are painted a grayish white,…

Denny’s Rolls Out Late Night Menu

Thank god for PR companies, because I really would have been bummed to have missed the news about Denny’s new late-night menu, served only between the witching hours from 10 to 5 in the a.m. At first, I thought I’d post the photo above in our weekly WTF Is It…

“Guard Your Secrets Because They Are Eagerly Sought”

Listen up, mes amis. Before digging into your next filet de sole bonne femme, consider that you may be spilling more beans than a drunken chef cooking cassoulet. A friend tells me that at the venerable and hoity Palm Beach French restaurant Chez Jean Pierre, there’s a little glitch with…

Shrimpy Updates: On the trail of the office thief

We’ve made big gains today in the pursuit of justice in our office food theft scandal here at New Times. In case you missed it, a number of shrimp were stolen yesterday from New Times’ employee fridge, prompting an investigation that’s shook the office to its very core. This morning,…

Tuscan July

Miami Spice has proven such a successful promotion tool that each year we see more and more restaurants stretch it out by creating their own similarly priced specials for the month of July. Like Miami Spice, the deal’s worthiness is wholly dependent upon what kind of menu is being offered…

To Catch a Shrimp Thief

Life in the New Times’ offices is often exciting — but nothing could have prepared us for what unfolded today. A coworker who shall remain unnamed brought in a spiral party platter of cocktail shrimp for lunch; the kind where all the little buggers are arranged around the tray in…

Fourth of July Feast

Hope everyone had a safe and happy Fourth of July — I know I did. This year I threw a little shindig at my house to celebrate. So I invited the crew from work, friends, and family down to Casa de Linn with the intention of giving them something a…

Big Sexy’s Sinful Sweets

If you’d told me that these New Age drug stores were legally selling pot brownies, nut mixes infused with hashish, and tea-laced Rice Crispie treats, I would have died laughing.