Brothers Gino and Fernando Masci come to Miami by way of their hometown of Abruzzi, Italy — with a 26-year stopover as owners of Greenwich Village’s renowned and star-studded Il Mulino. They had planned on retiring after they sold that venture five years ago (and before its new owners opened…
There is a certain Jorge Luis Borges twist to me, a restaurant critic, critiquing a show whereby average folks play restaurant critic. I’m talking of the first installment of Check, Please!, the PBS series that has met with great success in Chicago and Los Angeles, and hopes to do likewise…
Check, Please!, hosted by Miami’s favorite local chef, Michelle Bernstein, makes its debut on PBS (WPBT, Channel 2) tonight at 7:30 p.m. Every episode features three guests who pick their favorite restaurants, then visit the establishments anonymously and offer their critiques back in the studio. I spoke with Michelle over…
This past October, The New York Times purchased tuna sushi from 20 restaurants and markets in New York City and subjected the samples to laboratory tests. The startling results were reported yesterday: Mercury levels of tuna from Nobu Next Door, Sushi Seki, Sushi of Gari, Blue Ribbon Sushi, and Gourmet…
That the Miami Design District would soon be “the next big thing” was first suggested to me about two years into Bill Clinton’s presidency. I have heard the same refrain many times since, but whenever I’d venture into the neighborhood, it would display the sort of eerie quietude usually encountered…
No longer just a toll-free way to zip from Miami to Miami Beach, the 79th Street Causeway is becoming a surprisingly hip restaurant row — not a walkable one, but at least a strip with enough interesting eateries to justify the drive. Some of the road’s new charms, though (like…
My right leg is bouncing up and down rapidly, a nervous tick I’ve had since high school. The waiter at Social Miami can not bring my check soon enough, and I cannot run out of this den of condescension and superficiality they call a restaurant fast enough. Social’s website advertises…
The doors have swung open at Chef Jan Jorgensen and wife Leticia’s TWO CHEFS TOO, the new North Miami outpost of the popular Two Chefs in Pinecrest. Located in the space where Mark’s Place used to be, look for a similar menu as the original, but with the addition of…
Where: La Nonna Restaurant, 117 SW 107th Ave, Sweetwater. What $15 Gets You: Linguine with garlic, basil pesto sauce, salad, a glass of wine I needed to find a restaurant near school that didn’t serve hamburgers, subs, or anything that even remotely resembled a sandwich, so I asked around. A…
Not so long ago, the notion of putting a wine bar at the corner of Biscayne Boulevard and NE 69th Street — one that sold something other than Mad Dog and the kind of fortified brake fluid that has to be hidden inside a brown paper bag — would have…
Upscale-casual dining establishments compose the fastest growing sector of the restaurant industry. The best ones provide comfortable, attractively designed dining rooms; fresh, flavorful cuisine; cheery service; and family-friendly prices. That’s Bonefish Grill in a clam shell. Alas, there are no clam shells to be found at this new Coral Gables…
“I’ve taken it in steps,” says Giancarla Bodoni, chef and co-owner (with husband Pino) of Escopazzo Organic Italian Restaurant in South Beach. As I noted in my recent review, Escopazzo uses all organic produce and dairy, no farmed fish, and meats that come from animals that have been raised humanely…
“Celebrity chefs bring plane food to new heights” blared the business section headline in Saturday’s Miami Herald. Charlie Trotter, Todd English, and our own Michelle Bernstein are highlighted in the article as pioneers of haute in-flight cuisine — and also as harbingers of “the airline industry’s economic revival”. Indeed, the…
Where: Nice Mon. 19695 NW 2nd Ave, Miami. What $15 Gets You: Jerk chicken meal, Jamaican beef patty, a drink. As I was traveling down Northwest Second Avenue one day, I noticed this green roofed building with a big yellow sign in front that said Nice Mon: Jamaican Restaurant and…
Sushi Club is located in an area of Miami Beach often referred to as “Little Buenos Aires.” But don’t expect the cutting-edge black and orange décor, loungelike ambiance, valet parking, live DJ, Thai and Vietnamese dishes, or all-you-can-eat sushi offered by the famous Sushi Club chain in, um, Big Buenos…
Big fat Americans like big fat food. That’s why God gave us The Cheesecake Factory. Michael’s Kitchen, a hit in Hollywood before its relocation last month to the Newport Beachside Hotel & Resort in Sunny Isles Beach, is a step above that cheesy chain but shares the same cuisine-as-circus-act sensibility…
When Alice Waters recently appeared at Books & Books to tout her new book, The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution, she was asked if there were any restaurants in Miami that seemed to be following her organic canon. The prophetess of slow food…
One day the country’s learned gastronomes should study the gravitational pull of sushi in Thai restaurants. Is it some sort of sexy come-on? “Hey, big boy, wanna hand roll?” Savvy marketing ploy? “Buy two green papaya salads, get one California roll free! But wait, there’s more!” Out-and-out bribery? “Congressman, I’ll…
What are you gonna do to ring in the New Year? Get drunk? Spend a bunch of money at a club? Shoot a gun in the air? Well fuck you. My man Chris (in the black wife beater) and everybody down on SW 27th street got up at the crack…
In my review last week of S & S Diner at Allen’s Drugstore, I wrote that “way back when our grandparents were eating better/worse than we, it wasn’t unusual to have eateries located within pharmacies”. Tim Hogle, owner of Tantra Restaurant & Lounge, saw the article and forwarded me this…
New Year’s Eve, like Valentine’s Day, is what folks in the restaurant biz refer to as “Amateur Night” — meaning the patrons who frequent eateries on these occasions are not necessarily the most serious diners. That said, some of our local chefs have come up with seriously creative menus for…
Howie Kleinberg and Michael Jacobs have a lot in common. Both chefs are fairly big guys, and have been cooking locally for many a year (Jacobs was originally top toque at Tantra in 1997). Kleinberg started up the kitchen at The Food Gang in Surfside, which for all its glowing…
