Boutique Meat

Take your pick Next month Market Grill, an Argentine-style “boutique meat market” and food shop will open in the Blockbuster Plaza at 1539 Alton Road. The signature offering will be a “Pre-Selected Parrillada,” where you’ll be able to tell the butcher the amount of people expected at your BBQ, and…

The New Traditional Labor Day Menu

Welcome to Fall! What’s the difference between an Independence Day barbecue and a Labor Day barbecue? Around these parts, about five degrees. Seriously: Why are two distinct holidays held in different seasons celebrated via the same menu of hamburgers, hot dogs, and the like? Thanksgiving has its turkey, Easter its…

Smoke Powerhouses

Ten Misconceptions About Barbecue: 1. Grilled and barbecued foods are ideal for summertime. I don’t think so. I mean it sure doesn’t feel ideal standing over a hot outdoor grill in simmering midsummer Miami. In fact it feels pretty gritty and more than a little insane. And fatty, smoky, heavy…

Off the Beaten Boot

Oh, Lord, not another Italian restaurant!” “Yes, Bill, another Italian restaurant. But be of good faith and despair not, for verily and forsooth I say unto you that you will not have to consume one more crappy caesar salad — I can see Julius rotating in his grave already —…

Mile High Michy’s

Fans of Miami chef Michelle Bernstein’s culinary creations no longer have to journey to her famed Michy’s Mediterranean-style bistro to sample a taste of her talents. Beginning September 13, Delta Airlines will be serving up an exclusively crafted series of the celebrity chef’s meals to its passengers. Well, those in…

Interactive Vineyards

Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar, a national chain with a local branch in Coral Gables, has come up with an innovative idea: A Web site that takes viewers on a virtual tour of five esteemed vineyards that provide the restaurant with some of its exceptional wines. The voyage is…

Wishful Shrinking

If there could be such a thing as an upside to war, it would be the exchange of culinary ideas that takes place between clashing nations. Had our soldiers not developed a taste for pizza while they were stationed in Naples during World War II, who knows if those Italian…

Kanpai!

Cruising through the crowd at Doraku during a recent Friday happy hour, a diner who had not been to this SoBe sushi spot since it opened in 2000 wouldn’t have even a hint it was the same space. A room that began life as a pop-art hallucination — amoebalike primary-color…

Here’s the Beef

A gaping hole has appeared in the Miami dining scene, and it is being stuffed with meat. Norman’s, Pacific Time, Johnny V, and a host of other chef-driven establishments have closed during the past year. Filling in are DeVito chop house, Grimpa’s Steakhouse featuring rodizio from Brazil, Texas de Brazil…

Rock ‘n’ Troll

When you think of neighborhoods, the sprawling, traffic-gagged morass of Kendall doesn’t exactly leap to mind. Neighborhoods are bucolic little areas with quiet, tree-lined streets, full of quaint old buildings and cute new boutiques, where everyone knows everyone and says hi when they run into each other at the store…

ADM: Supermaggot To The World

Who ever heard of a vegetable oil-aholic? “We have a saying in our company: “Our competitors are our friends. Our customers are the enemy.” — A comment made in the early 1990s by Archer Daniels Midland (ADM)’s then-president James Randall, as quoted in Fast Food Nation The Archer Daniels Midland…

Côte of Charms

In just the past year, if the food media are to be believed, Miami’s dining scene has gone from being the very picture of promising adolescence — about to finally grow up — to going to Hell in a hand basket. Suddenly it’s a place that is, according to some…

Get Haughty

Everybody loves Danny DeVito. As Louie De Palma on Taxi, he was hairier, scarier, but just as cute as Knut the polar bear. In most of his films, too, DeVito comes across as a likable rascal, a diminutive Everyman with a conniving dark side — which we laugh at because…

Hot Scoops On The SoBe Wine & Food Festival

Perhaps you’ve read recent announcements concerning Paula Deen’s Poker Party, Emeril’s Sugar Shack Dessert Party, and other attractions that have been scheduled for this season’s Southern Wine and Spirits and FIU’s 2008 Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival. New Times has uncovered some other, as yet unconfirmed events…

So You Wanna be a Food Critic, Huh? Part 1: The Big Night

Let’s begin with an easy question: A triangular-shaped sheath of pink-tinted plexiglas arrives in the mail. It is an invitation bearing engraved party details that trumpet an extravagant opening night party honoring the arrival of the latest, greatest restaurant: Cocktail reception at 7:30 p.m. (spirits provided by the latest, greatest…

The Tides Has Turned

Since its extensive renovation in 1997, the Tides South Beach hotel has anchored the north end of Ocean Drive with a graceful and stately presence. A number of respectable chefs have ably steered the property’s signature restaurant, 1220 at the Tides, but they’ve come and gone like the ebb and…

The Young Man and the Seafood

You know what kind of guy Pilar is. Nice guy. Good-looking, quiet. Dresses well, not flashy. Solid, honest; no cheesy come-ons. Other guys might have more money, a fancier car, firmer pecs. But when it comes time to stand and deliver, well, let’s just say he stands up straight and…

Goodbye, Krispy Kreme, I Knew Ye All Too Well

Looks good. What are the other customers going to eat? Dear Krispy Kreme, When we first met, I was still so young. My metabolism posed no threat to our hot and steamy trysts. Everything was all so fresh and new. I admit, I got a little obsessed. Not in a…

A Season Preview for Dining

Who you callin’ Fatburger? A contemporary Asian fusion restaurant is going to debut down the street from Michael’s Genuine Food & Drink in the Design District. Chef will be Timon Balloo, who has worked locally at Chef Allen’s, Azul at the Mandarin Oriental, and La Broche (in fact he spent…

Indomania Takes a Vacation

Pieter and Ineke Both of Indomania, which only started up on the Beach a few months ago, will be closing shop and taking August off so they can return to Amsterdam — jeez, these Dutch people are lazier than the French! They say it’s to see family and look for…

Greek to Me

You won’t find people smashing plates and dancing on tabletops at Maria’s. It’s not that kind of place. Rather this snug, 52-seat family-run eatery dishes home-cooked Greek taverna fare free of contemporary tweaking. And that’s it. Maria Sotiriou’s recipes are not likely to inspire Homeric verse, but they aren’t meant…

Toque on the Water

Waterfront: Miami’s got a lot of it. Twenty percent of the county’s total area is water. Waterfront restaurants? Hmm. If you mean places diners can get up close and personal with nature — where they can virtually feed fish from their table, and the sound of salt water lapping is…