Critics mowed down Grass when it opened in the Design District in 2003, if only for the velvet ropes and snobbery encountered at the door. Despite such grumblings, or perhaps because of them, Grass grew quickly as a club destination with a reputation for passable pan-Asian fare. Alas, the scene…
When the summer of ‘07 gets discussed years from now, it may very well be recalled as being the season that set the Miami dining scene back a decade. In January of 2003, the Spanish deconstructionist restaurant La Broche opened on Brickell Avenue, signaling that our town was ready to…
Question: There are 57 peaches hanging from a tree. Four of them are beautiful and ripe; 53 of them are rotten. True or false: All 57 of the peaches on this tree are rotten, so the tree is fruitless. If you answered “true”, a career in journalism may be awaiting…
At age twelve Adrianne Marie Calvo was pulling in $200 a week baking chocolate chip cookies and selling them at school. At sixteen she was voted one of the top ten up-and-coming chefs in Florida. At seventeen she captured the bronze in a national bake-off. Shortly thereafter, Calvo began training…
Are there any two cities more different than Key West and Coral Gables? The self-described “City Beautiful” is as anal-retentive as a bucketful of Imodium AD. There are regulations that tell you what color you can paint your house, what animals you can keep as pets. You have to get…
Santo Restaurant & Lounge has just appointed Cory Smith, former sous chef at Pacific Time, to be their executive chef. The new menu will debut this Saturday, July 7th. The Back Story (maybe):A couple of weeks ago I met John Mariani, longtime food editor for Esquire Magazine, at Santo Restaurant…
Pick a pair Gabriele Marewski’s Paradise Farms, a five-acre organic lot in Homestead, is rarely more paradisiacal than right about now, as summers’ bounty of nectar-laden fruit is coming into bloom. Marewski, who has a BS degree in agronomy from the University of Maryland, drives her farmed goods — which…
Michael McCrossen Saturday – June 23, 2007 2:07 PM To: Subject: Moving to Miami- Any recommendation Hi Lee- My girlfriend and I are relocating to Miami from Philadelphia in about a month. We eat out quite a bit up in Philly, and are completely unfamiliar with the Miami restaurant scene…
Natural disasters — tornadoes, tidal waves, whatever — are hardly unique to our little weather zone. Nor is thumbing one’s nose in the face of Madre Nature’s power-tripping. But hurricane parties are a form of gallows humor that distinguishes the Tropics from our left-coast and plains-states peers. The main reason:…
Take one part Stir Crazy, the choose-your-own-ingredients wok-fry chain located in Boca Raton (and elsewhere). Mix two parts Moon Thai & Japanese Restaurant in Coral Gables (and elsewhere). Stir together briskly and — voilà! — Stir Moon. (If you can properly visualize this, there is really no need to read…
“The One and Only! Nothing But the Best for Less.” What restaurant reviewer specializing in cheap eats could resist such a come-on? Especially when it’s plastered beneath the place’s name — Conch Town USA — even more of an enticement, because good conch is harder to find than a good…
Faced with a stressful week of work, my girlfriend and I decided it was time for a pleasant dinner in the Roads this past Saturday. We had passed Old Lisbon many times. After stepping into the cozy restaurant, the rich aromas of flaming Linguiça and stewing codfish grabbed hold of…
It is an astounding statistic: 99 percent of all new restaurants go out of business within the first six minutes. Or something like that. Still, this doesn’t deter one feckless restaurateur after another from trying their hands at the hazardous game. They all go in confident that they’ve got something…
Our waiter came to the table and began speaking in a foreign tongue. Granted, we were at La Dorada, a Spanish seafood establishment with a predominantly Hispanic clientele. But one would think that when management determines the language to be spoken by employees, a restaurant’s country of residence would take…
Ever walk down the street in some funky part of town and almost trip over a twenty-dollar bill, pick it up, and think, Hey, God likes me? Walk down Biscayne Boulevard around 72nd Street, definitely a still-funky part of town, where it looks like an army of giant gophers has…
Hi Lee, Hope you have been doing well. Memory jog – About a year ago, I read your “foie gras” story which changed my life. My husband Tony and I decided togo vegetarian. I wanted to update you on our progress: I have become quite the creative vegetarian cook, not…
The shocking news came late Tuesday afternoon, when the South Florida Concierge Association sent an email out to local hotels with the following message: We have received word from Pacific Time that they have closed their doors effective immediately. Chef/proprietor Jonathan Eismann helped pioneer the resurgence of Lincoln Road by…
Dads are like assholes. Or not. That’s the thing — they’re all so damn different! So before deciding on a father’s day destination, it helps to define what type of man he is. Here’s an easy-to-use guide (meaning short of length and no big words) of recommendations specific to your…
It is the loudest dining room I have ever witnessed. Not only is every one of the hundreds of patrons talking at full pitch, and incessantly, but also the ricocheting acoustics in the large, lofty space make it seem as if they are screeching at the top of their lungs…
Finding Zuperpollo Biztro the first time didn’t take quite as long as it took the starship Voyager, marooned in the Delta Quadrant, to locate Earth again. But it was close. Or at least it seemed that way. Nestled inside an office building — all the way through the long lobby,…
The Department of Business and Professional Regulation (DBPR) in Tallahasee has doubled the fine for any proven offense of food misrepresention in dining establishments (from $250 to $500, which still doesn’t seem like much punishment for deceiving the public — and increasing profits considerably while doing so). “Floridians ought to…
On May 7, I posted a blog entitled Ask the Food Critic, in which readers were encouraged to forward questions to me concerning the local food and dining scene. Sample queries were offered, such as: Is it true that Daniel Boulud will be opening a namesake establishment in downtown Miami?…
