Every morning John Rossetti braises a brisket. He roasts a pork loin, a chicken or two, mixes a meat loaf. He caramelizes onions and grills vegetables like zucchini and eggplant. Then he piles them all, in various combinations, on three different homemade bâtarde breads he bakes himself. What he doesn’t…
Mayya has made a lot of changes in its lineup recently, but the most startling is the release of executive chef Guillermo Tellez. Ever polite, the Charlie Trotter protégé says he was let go because of a “difference of opinion.” Word on the street is slightly grittier. Tellez, who apparently…
Fast food joints failed to deliver a knockout punch to diners, but they did have those American institutions on the ropes and looking hopeless for a while. That was back in the early Sixties, and one of the main attractions of the then-new national burger chains was their consistency of…
It was bound to happen. After nearly a decade of regional this and local that, restaurateurs and chefs have tired of self-imposed provincial restrictions. Suddenly it seems instead of promoting products from our back-yard growers and purveyors, some of our better area restaurants are featuring luxury foodstuffs that come from…
There are times when it’s awfully difficult to explain why one lives in Miami. Like now, during this period of embarrassing Elianmania, with the national media trumpeting the arrogant antics of one small but stupid-as-a-stump group of right-wing refugee residents as they loudly and proudly point out that our county…
When dining out we like to think of the fish on our plate as having arrived fresh from the market that very day, a harmless bit of self-delusion that somebody, in just about every city near water, inevitably capitalizes on by opening an eatery called “The Fish Market.” The Wyndham…
I confess I didn’t know I had done something immoral until my editor informed me. “You ate shark’s fin soup?” he cried over the phone. “Don’t you know what they do to those poor sharks?” “They,” as it turned out, meant fishermen, and what they “do” is relieve the sharks…
No longer coping: Seems Frank Copestick, executive chef of Red Square, has gone the way of perestroika and fizzled. There’s no official word on why he left his position, but he didn’t go directly to another job, and substance abuse is rumored. Frank, tell us you’re not just another executive-chef…
Maybe it was because I was alone, carrying a book, that the bartender at this joint in the Gables inquired if I was on my way to a lecture at Books & Books. It was strangely flattering to think someone thought I looked like the type who attended such events,…
This may come as a surprise, but it’s not all Elian all the time on the radio. Sometimes there’s even talk of food, for instance on Linda Gassenheimer’s WLRN-FM (91.3) show, Food News and Views, on which I was a guest the other day. That’s when a young woman called…
In the mid-1800s, a huge wave of Chinese immigrants, approximately 100,000, most from Guangdong province around Canton, came to Peru to work. They worked in virtual slave-labor jobs — mineral mining, migrant farm work, railroad construction, and shit shoveling (literally: bat guano was a major Peruvian industry 150 years ago)…
The first impression was the worst. I’m not talking about the creamy white interior of the refurbished Nash Hotel. That was the second impression. The third would be the restaurant itself, Mark’s South Beach, and how the walk downstairs to a sleek, contemporary dining room, with outdoor seating by a…
March is not Black History Month. March is not Women’s History Month, Breast Cancer Month, Secretaries’ Month, or Grandparents’ Month. It’s not even Spring Break Month, not really. It can’t be, because March is Miami Media Blitz Month. Take a look at March’s reading and viewing material: Travel & Leisure…
The Pelican Hotel on Ocean Drive has 25 uniquely themed rooms, from the safari-designed “Me Tarzan, You Vain,” to the sparser “Jesus Christ Megastar,” which, if nothing else, is the only hotel room to ever advertise with the slogan “A man’s life consist not in the abundance of the things…
If you’ve ever wondered what kosher really means, check out the following joke, in which Moses speaks to God from atop Mount Sinai: God: And remember, Moses, in the laws of keeping kosher, never cook a calf in its mother’s milk. It is cruel. Moses: Ohhhhhh! So you’re saying we…
When it comes to Oggi Caffe in North Bay Village, we just can’t get enough. Fortunately for us, proprietors Alex Portela and Eloy Roy, who also run Caffe Da Vinci in Bay Harbor Islands, agree. They’re currently in the process of opening a second Oggi, at 7921 NW Second St…
As a food writer, my best moment this millennium came during an interview with chef Andrea Curto last month, when I asked for the usual sound-bite definition of her dishes at SoBe’s Wish. “Fusion,” she declared immediately, “because that way I can cook whatever the heck I want to.” Honesty…
“Never give a sucker an even break” is, I believe, the philosophical impetus propelling the recent rash of “consulting chefs” that has been spreading rapidly in these parts. This public-relations ploy is akin to culinary karaoke, wherein one chef or another follows the bouncing boil and cooks along to a…
I was roaming through the open forum (a chat room) at Epicurious.com, a Website for foodies sponsored by Condé Nast publications, where the majority of messages were predictably upbeat and enthusiastic. Then I came across what I thought was a pretty valid question: “Doesn’t anyone here ever get a bad…
You’ve inquired about it. You’ve begged for it. You’ve demanded it. And now you’ve got it: our first-ever Ethiopian restaurant. A Taste of Ethiopia has opened at 1072 NE 167th St., in North Miami Beach, a culinary mecca that has become the most ethnically diverse in the area. Co-proprietors Celia…
In SoBe it’s easy to get spoiled when it comes to sushi. Great grub of most other Asian nations isn’t easy to find in Miami, but visiting know-it-alls from New York, or even Asian food mecca San Francisco, are unusually impressed by my Japanese-food tour de force — a strolling…
Well, you could have fooled me. In fact you did. I believed the recent countywide proliferation of parrilladas — Argentine steak houses — was a natural outgrowth owing to several factors. First, fresh, uncooked Argentine beef, which had been banned for import since 1930 because of an outbreak of hoof-and-mouth…
