If you’ve ever danced on a table at Mezzanotte, the Italian restaurant hailed for breathing new life into South Beach back in the late Eighties, consider it a treasured memory: The twelve-year-old Mezzanotte finally has closed up shop. But chair-jiggers shouldn’t despair. The new owner of the location is Tim…
Restaurateur Mark Soyka shocked just about everybody in the restaurant industry when he announced this past June that News Café, his inaugural eatery that helped revitalize Ocean Drive, would be moving from its location on Eighth Street and Ocean Drive. This fall the 400-seat News Café will be reinvented on…
Tom Tresh was a talented baseball player, but he was never able to live up to expectations that he could be the next Mickey Mantle. The same hopeful hype would haunt about as many other subsequent Yankees centerfield prospects as there are South Florida neighborhoods that have failed to become…
My most memorable dining experiences often have occurred outdoors, which doesn’t mean on the patio. There was that chardonnay and chilled oysters experience out in the Everglades one sunset; or the simple yet perfect taste of a sliced mango in a Puerto Rican rain forest following a light rain; or…
One of my editors recently wanted to celebrate a special occasion with his wife at a new, stylish restaurant. So he made a reservation at one of our celebrated chef’s outposts. But he was concerned about the noise level and the hustle and bustle. Perhaps, he asked me somewhat anxiously,…
My “Dish” column about why service is so bad in South Florida (“Shirt, Shoes, but No Service,” August 17) seems to have struck a nerve. Via e-mail I’ve received both complaints (think customers leaving restaurants with stains on their clothing) and compliments (try Basilico, and bring along those picky visitors)…
When I first moved to South Beach almost a decade ago, I was afraid to walk down Lincoln Road late at night. And by late I mean 10:00 p.m. Although the bohemian-style walking mall, with its cracked sidewalks and bizarre art galleries and fledgling cafés was full of character, it…
North Beach is hot. North Beach is happening. North Beach is the successor to South Beach. Since the late Eighties, when South Beach developers began to exploit the potential of the Art Deco district, the word on the street has been that North Beach, a section of Miami Beach that…
Restaurant service sucks in South Florida (see Opium review). It’s a given, almost part of the Miami mystique: Our restaurants are so hospitality-poor we’re darn near proud of it. At least some of us are — those who hate the tourists. Don’t like the way we treat you? Good. Don’t…
Looks as though the Denny’s at 19313 S. Dixie Hwy. in Miami lost something in lawyers’ fees but gained remuneration by way of reputation: A civil lawsuit filed last October by Ronald Flagler and Janet Jones alleging race discrimination has been dismissed by the U.S. District Court. The pair claimed…
The crowd that gathers at Opium is attractive and mostly dressed in black. Many talk on cell phones. Handsome bartenders and waiters also are clothed in black, while comely barmaids pretty much wear the same outfit that Gwen Verdon or Shirley MacLaine (take your pick) wore in My Sweet Charity…
Pulcinella’s Marketplace & Café is a large, bright, white gourmet marketplace, a “purveyor of fine foods,” as they put it. It also is a café, which, if you come in from the front as opposed to the side entrance, is what you’ll encounter first. The décor is casual: green marble…
Two women were seen at La Paloma last Saturday night. Both were so drunk they couldn’t utter a coherent sentence. Both clearly were in no condition to get behind a wheel, and both were headed for a doozy of a hangover the next morning. These two women, however, weren’t companions…
For the average food-oriented consumer, the Internet and Web-related technology have been a blessing for several years now. You can log on to read restaurant reviews, research recipes, order food, and even make reservations on countless sites: Food.com, Epicurious.com, Pheast.com, OpenTable.com, iSeatz.com, iDine.com, ireserve.com, Yougottaeat.com, ad nauseam. There’s so much…
He wasn’t a local but the South Florida food world will miss him all the same: William Garry, the editor in chief of Bon Appetít, died June 29 at age 56. The passage hasn’t yet been reported in the magazine; in fact the August issue features one of Garry’s tongue-in-cheek…
Alice Waters is the person most often credited with pioneering, in this nation, the notion of fine cuisine as fresh, high-quality, locally procured foods prepared as simply as possible. That’s just what she served at her Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, which opened April Fool’s Day 1980 and coincided with…
So how long does it really take a chef to open his own restaurant? According to fortysomething Pascal Oudin, who says he came to the United States from France when he was 24 years old to do just that, it takes two decades. And how much does it cost? “My…
You’ve just finished dining in a new restaurant, and your companion asks if you liked it. The food was good, but somehow you can’t respond that you really liked “it.” Perhaps that element you can’t stab your finger at was that the food arrived on blue plates. Or the restaurant…
He’s got the best rock-star name of any local chef: Johnny V. And the coolest dub: “Caribbean Cowboy.” Never mind that Mr. Vinczencz is from St. Louis, Missouri, the important thing is that he’s come back in the kitchen of Astor Place, where before leaving in early 1999 he had…
Years ago, before moving here, I found myself on Douglas Road in the Gables, half an hour early for some business meeting I had flown down to attend. With time to kill, and my knees practically buckling from the relentless intensity of the summer sun, I stumbled into an unassuming…
Two months ago my husband and I were madly in love. Eight weeks later we’ve lost the romance. The brief affair was with mangoes. Our new house used to be part of a mango plantation, and we have a veritable grove of the fruit trees. Eleven, to be exact. Not…
Generation Chef speaks up: Kris Wessel, chef-proprietor of Liaison in South Beach, objects to my use of the word “fusion” to describe his restaurant. “Liaison’s menu and my style of cooking stem from the strong French influence in New Orleans and a Southern freshness found both in Louisiana and Florida…
