After we’d finished the dessert course at Grappa, gracious owner Claudio Nunes approached our table with a bottle of the restaurant’s namesake liquor (something he was offering all the patrons this evening), and some handblown glasses produced especially for this potent, woody alcohol. It occurred to me that I hadn’t…
Although food writing is a highly professional-type journalistic operation, with databases and secret information sources that put the CIA to shame, the best word to describe how I found Hiro’s Sushi Express would be roundabout. Well, dumb luck also comes to mind. I’d wandered for the first time into Hiro’s…
Most of us appreciate padding in one form or another. Hockey players like it in their shin guards. Flat-chested women who can’t afford surgery look for it in bras. Victims of carpal tunnel syndrome depend on it to cushion sore wrists and elbows. I find padding most important on my…
When a casual, reasonably priced, old-fashioned Florida fish house opens on South Beach’s Attitude Avenue (a.k.a. Washington Avenue) with no hype, hoopla, velvet ropes, door Nazis, or deafening disco music, it’s time for serious diners to grab the car keys. But be prepared to find your own meter, because New…
On this ratty but rallying stretch of Biscayne Boulevard, in a neighborhood where the most popular restaurants have long been referred to by acronym (KFC, IHOP, and so on), the log-cabin-like Canadian-outpost exterior of Pangea stands out like Dudley Do-Right at a gangsta convention. Gustavo and Laura Sanchez are co-owners…
The Japanese tend to take a less-is-more approach to eating. Americans prefer to think in terms of more is more (which probably is why our populace is among the most bloated in the world), though a growing health consciousness has had a moderating effect on our national per-meal consumption. Ocean…
I’ll admit it right from the start: New York is a great restaurant town. How could it not be? The place is huge, with zillions of eateries of every type. Out of the zillion, just by virtue of the odds, trillions are bound to be good. Billions are very good…
In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of … a small world: Although he’d initially been hired by Dennis Max as the executive chef of Max’s Place in Bal Harbour Shops, Mark’s Place and Mark’s in the Grove alumnus Doug Riess never made it as far…
Just as the lit-up-at-night, I.M. Pei-designed Bank of America tower stands apart from the rest of Miami’s skyline, its in-house restaurant, Skyline Cafe, makes other downtown lunch spots seem commonplace by comparison. It’s literally on another level — the eleventh-floor to be precise. To get there you’ll have to take…
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The Beef on Tainted Bovine – 3/15/01
In Texas 1222 cattle were quarantined this past January after accidentally being fed the puréed carcasses of other cattle. In Vermont the United States Department of Agriculture seized 355 sheep imported from Belgium that were suspected of carrying prion disease. In Queens, New York, assemblywoman Margaret M. Markey is proposing…
Bond St. Lounge is the South Beach outpost of Manhattan’s megasuccessful nouvelle Japanese sushi and sake restaurant. There are differences to be sure. Whereas the Big Apple Bond St. is an elegantly minimalist three-floor emporium, the one here is in a basement (of the Townhouse, a recently renovated hipster hotel…
If you’ve been wondering where the next “Lincoln Road” is going to develop, get your minds off the beaches (South and North) and head to the shores. Miami Shores, that is. Zoning has been approved and renovations scheduled for NE Second Avenue, the center of the village. New construction will…
In the Survivor II episode “Suspicion,” contestants were asked to eat all manner of unsavory (according to the Western palate, anyway) foodstuffs for the so-called immunity challenge. Most, amid a few grimaces, were successful at downing their portions of bugs, worms, or cow stomachs. Only Kimmi refused to eat what…
On the walls of the weathered office at Green Cay Produce, ecologist Barry Commoner’s “Informal Laws of Ecology” have been transcribed in calligraphy and framed. The document, the first line of which states in true Zen fashion, “Everything is connected to everything else,” is one of only a few elements…
The main wall is what grabs your attention as you enter Suva, adorned as it is by three looming, luminous ten-by-ten-foot panels colorfully depicting Polynesian tribal masks. In front of these are gauzy white curtains running from floor to high ceiling, and a shadowbox bar piled with sand and seashells…
The ghost of Mayya continues to haunt us: The defunct restaurant recently was touted in Nation’s Restaurant News’ special “50 Cities that Sizzle” issue as one of many in Miami that have celebrity owners (Billy Bean). The same paragraph included info about other star-crossed — er, star-owned — joints such…
The appointment had been arranged by the public-relations people, and my instructions were clear. I was to appear at JoAnna’s in the Grove, the three-month-old sister location of gourmet grocery and bakery JoAnna’s Marketplace in South Miami, at 6:00 a.m. The front door would be open, and somebody would be…
When we came upon Yambo, I yahooed with excitement. It’s a hopping, bopping, most colorful Nicaraguan joint that, despite the crowd lining up at an outdoor counter to get food, surely couldn’t be known by too many outside the periphery of this funky neighborhood (SW First Street between Sixteenth and…
I can’t think of anything less romantic than getting pregnant in a restaurant bathroom. So I suppose I can cross Boris Becker off my list of potential valentines, though the love child that resulted from his restroom tryst no doubt will be glad to thank Cupid’s, er, arrow in the…
Yeah, it’s nice to pay tribute to the ones you love. But instead of spending 25 bucks on some mediocre faux-French chocolates this Valentine’s Day, consider taking that cash and sending it to India. Not because there are children starving there (though there are), but because earthquake relief is going…
Azul is a two-month-old 120-seat restaurant in the $100-million Mandarin Oriental on Brickell Key, actually housed on the side of the hotel, along with another eatery, Café Sambal, in a patinaed structure. The restaurant’s interior , elegantly accented in rosewood, bamboo, white marble, stainless steel, and silk, impresses in an…
