“Freedom of speech is a wonderful thing,” reads a blurb on the Website Restaurant Report On-Line. “This mighty democratic mainstay, however, gives restaurant critics the power to impact a restaurant’s future. Is this fair?” Of course the answer to such a black-and-white question is gray: maybe. On this particular Website,…
When China Grill first opened its doors in the spanking new Thomas Kramer building in 1996, the resultant buzz was so loud it gave other restaurateurs headaches. But the explosively successful opening was not what made this the most influential restaurant in the short history of modern South Beach. Rather…
If I’d wondered why I was vacationing in Curaçao — and friends from northern climes certainly had wondered why someone who lives on one subtropical Atlantic Ocean resort island would leave it for another — the definitive answer came the first night, about one mouthful into my entrée of paneer…
So have you heard the one about the Columbia University School of Business assistant professor who wrote to 240 New York City restaurants, claiming he’d contracted food poisoning at each establishment? He’s being sued for $100 million. Good for those restaurants, you might think. The professor, 29-year-old Frank Flynn, says…
The lovely, ivy-covered Hotel Place St. Michel has graced the Coral Gables intersection of Ponce de Leon Boulevard and Alcazar Avenue since 1926. Back then it was the Sevilla Hotel. Inside this European-style inn is the Restaurant St. Michel, which likewise exudes a simple elegance by way of wooden floors,…
Now here’s an unusual alliance: the Florida Restaurant Association (FRA) and Big Tobacco. Turns out the two groups are banding together in hopes of preventing a state referendum banning smoking in Florida restaurants from even appearing on the November ballot. Along with the Committee for Responsible Solutions, the FRA better…
The outdoor lobby of Lincoln Road’s Sterling Building has proved to be a problematic location for restaurants. Pacific Time Café and South Beach Stone Crabs, the prior occupants, had to contend with moviegoers cutting through their dining room for entry into the Alliance Cinema, and the distraction of a large…
Of the many different styles of pizza available in Miami these days (Neapolitan, Roman, Sicilian, Chicago deep-dish, Cuban, and even in one Japanese joint, “Sushi Pizza”), the most difficult to define is New York pizza. The one constant is that, like native New Yorkers, every New York pizza lover has…
These bottom-of-the-page reviews tend to focus on informal, inexpensive dining options that aren’t even restaurants per se. Delicias de España certainly fits that description. Located just off the intersection of Red and Bird roads (next door to the nifty Fifties luncheonette Picnics at Allen’s), this Spanish bakery, café, take-out shop,…
Every cloud has a silver lining, they say … and say, and say. But just because something is a cliché doesn’t mean it isn’t true, as I recently discovered when a small culinary cloud, an embarrassing one-letter typo in a restaurant review, led to my discovering what is arguably the…
If my car hadn’t dramatically experienced two flat tires in front of the huge Tower apartment complex on Indian Creek, I’d never have known about Embassy Peking, even though it’s three blocks from my house. There certainly isn’t any kind of sign out front. When I walked up to the…
When Philippe Lajaunie, proprietor of Brasserie Les Halles in Coral Gables, greeted us recently at his 2002 choucroute dinner, he made several expected opening remarks. He defined the dish itself: shredded cabbage cooked in wine and juniper berries (think French sauerkraut) and topped with a variety of sausage, meat, poultry,…
One of the lectures I remember most from my days at the Culinary Institute of America dealt with defining a chef’s role with regard to the process of cooking. The instructor told us as chefs-to-be, we would be privy to the finest and freshest produce, meats, and seafood available. Our…
While some people hate eating out alone, I’ve always believed there are few more civilized solitary pleasures than reading over a satisfying meal cooked, served, and cleaned up by someone else. In this context, where one is wallowing in words as much as munchies, “satisfying” most often means simple food…
The other night I made pasta boobs for my husband’s dinner. I had to. I could see no other way to make up for the night before. See, we’d taken a room at Hotel Ocean, a boutique resort smack on Ocean Drive, to do some pretty hard, ahem, work: We…
Guadalajara Mexican Restaurant is an irrepressibly cheery place, the walls sunshine yellow, the rest of the room festively splashed with vibrant colors. The menu is bright and glossy as well, with the three dozen offerings constituting a sort of Mexican “happy meals” program for gringos: tacos, burritos, enchiladas, fajitas …..
Sometimes people do the right things for the wrong reasons. For instance it would have been nice if the owners of the new SoBe restaurant/lounge 6 Degrees had kept the locals of the community in mind when drawing up plans for their venture. They didn’t. Instead, like so many others,…
Imagine my surprise when I found out last week that I wasn’t in vogue. I mean there I was, reading fashion mags in Ego Trip Salon while getting trimmed and tinted in accordance with the latest trends, and I pretty much get slapped in the intellect with how out of…
When you play in bar bands, as I have my entire adult life, the possibility always exists that the club’s patrons will dislike your music so much they will throw tomatoes. But this is not an entirely unwelcome experience; at least it means we get something decent to eat for…
The phrase novelty act usually is used as a diss, implying that the sole thing the entertainment entity in question has going is a gimmick rather than talent or any other kind of solid quality. But this show-biz term actually has respectable, or at least neutral, origins, as I discovered…
When I told a colleague I was going to attend the Chefs Across America dinner at Norman’s some nights ago, she had two questions for me: Does anybody still care? And, how do you know the money’s getting to the right place? Although they might sound cynical to the unjaded…
