Don’t believe Disney or the Internet — it’s really not such a small world after all. If it were, surely in my critical life I would have tasted bunya nuts, wattle seeds, bush tomatoes, and the like more recently than this past week. Of course I could have experienced these…
It was only 10:00 a.m., but at the Cuban eatery El Crucero on a recent Saturday, it seemed more like 10:00 p.m. That’s to say that it seemed more like dinner time than breakfast time, judging from the brimming plates of arroz frito con costillas (fried rice with spareribs) in…
The blare of horns cut like sunlight through smog into the conversation I was having via cell phone. “Where are you?” asked the chef at the other end of the line. “In New York, taking a cab from JFK to Manhattan,” I replied. “What are you doing there?” “Having lunch.”…
When people ask me about my approach to reviewing restaurants, a quizzical look of dismay inevitably crosses their faces as I offer my stock reply: “Everywhere is somewhere else, and you get there in a car.” They’d likely be even more disappointed if I told them E.B. White wrote that,…
A new year and it’s new times at New Times. If you skipped Lee Klein’s review this week, allow me to be the first to tell you: The esteemed Mr. Klein has left the building. But not the corporation — he’s taking on my erstwhile territory of Broward and Palm…
Here in our surreal hometown, foodies who follow local media reports might think the hottest restaurant trend is the sudden explosion of new eateries from national superstar chefs, who, mere centuries after Ponce de Leon, discovered Florida last year. Nope. Out there in the Real World, according to restaurant industry…
Of the many things for which the Forge restaurant has been noted — or notorious — since it was first converted from a real blacksmith’s to a chichi supper club, food has been perhaps the least notable element. First the establishment’s Thirties alter ego as a dance club and casino…
Arnold Pompos, physics researcher at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, has calculated that if Santa Claus were to travel at nearly the speed of light, he could drop presents off at more than 75 million homes in approximately 500 seconds. I wonder whether Emeril Lagasse might bend the time/space continuum…
Small print at the bottom of Zuperpollo’s menu offers a free glass of wine to any diner who can spot seven “orthographic” errors contained within. “I didn’t even know words had bones,” I lamented, but my mood brightened considerably when my wife explained that orthography pertains to spelling. Finding typos…
Not that Tutto’s toppings are anything to sneeze at. Ingredients are fresh and adhere to the crust well so there’s no embarrassing topping slippage — meaning that thing that always happens on first dates where you aim your slice down toward your mouth and all the cheese instantly slides off…
If you’ve been looking for latkes in all the wrong places, it’s too bad you didn’t visit my daughter’s classroom about a week ago. That’s when I was making some of the worst examples possible in the most unlikely venue imaginable. Trust me, I didn’t volunteer for the job. I’m…
Part of the joy derived from eating out are the conjured associations with comparable experiences indelibly cooked into one’s memories. While sampling a bran muffin at Morning Call, a homey bakery/café in South Miami, I found myself drifting back to Odessa, a 24-hour Polish-American restaurant in New York’s East Village…
In the restaurant reviewing game, food critics with souls sensitive to criticism from readers go work in more polite areas of the country, such as Hell’s Kitchen. Here at New Times, on the other hand, there is absolutely nothing we like better than a good crank letter, unless it’s three…
I can’t quite decide whether Broward and Palm Beach counties really have launched more exciting, dining-destination places over the last couple of years, or if the chefs and restaurateurs in the great white north of South Florida have finally become as publicity-wise as their more worldly Miami-Dade counterparts. After reviewing…
Certain foreign foods adapt better to Americanization than others, just as certain sit-down dishes adapt better as street eats than others. Pizza, for instance, adapts both ways excellently when the adapted version is at its best, like good New York-style pizza by the slice. Sure, a typical N.Y. “vegetarian” slice…
Bangkok native Thanu Sinevang got his culinary feet wet in a little hometown joint called the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. That was in 1968. Four years later Thanu moved to America, whereby an apparently pronunciation-challenged chef dubbed him “Joe.” This has been his moniker ever since, though after a maturing tenure…
Chihuahua” is a tricky word. It defines both a teensy dog and the largest state in Mexico, and, depending upon which linguist you ask, translates to either “dry and sandy land” or “place where sacks are made.” The reason I bring up Chihuahua at all is because this is where…
So you think you’re up on the scene. You’ve been around town for years now. You know how to work the velvet ropes, the back doors, the bouncers. You’ve got a head full of secret passwords from party promoters and an e-mail inbox crammed with invites from club impresarios. So…
At New Times we restaurant reviewers basically get to pick our own review victims. Oops, I meant subjects. Anyway, this is a good thing, because when editors get to think up the story ideas, one sometimes ends up writing stuff that is so weird it leaves one’s head reeling. Last…
Trivia Pursuit Take this easy quiz and get a grip on the gossip: 1. You know it’s starting to be a good season when: a) Carmen the Restaurant is forced to add 30 seats. b) License plates from Quebec are spotted in North Miami Beach. c) Pacific Time relaunches lunch…
In the Midwest, diners line up outside frozen custard joints. This may seem strange to East Coast gourmets, who are used to thinking of hot-ticket eats in terms of, say, Emeril’s, not Dairy Queen. This is likely because those of us who grew up along the Atlantic seaboard think of…
I did not spend my childhood frolicking amid the fig trees of Calabria. I did, however, grow up on the sixth floor of a Brooklyn apartment building, where the aromas of meatballs and garlic and tomato sauce drifted upward from the Casciano household three stories below. While these olfactory memories…
