Don’t try this with The Weakest Link: If you think executive chefs are too busy dreaming up new dishes to take notice of pop culture, treat yourself to dinner at Astor Place. Chef Johnny Vinczencz has found an innovative way to keep that irritating Survivor show in the spotlight. He’s…
Since opening on the southern tip of South Beach in 1995, Nemo has consistently been rated as one of Miami’s very best restaurants. Like the proprietors of many of the United States’ other highly touted contemporary dining establishments (The French Laundry, Chez Panisse, Spago, et cetera), co-owners Myles Chafetz and…
When dinner hour approaches at Captain Jim’s, a friendly fish market that’s also an informal (five Formica tables) restaurant, everybody eats in, even if they’ve just come for take-out. That’s because while the crowd waits for orders or service, the personnel behind the fish counter (who remain friendly even when…
So you’re a chef. You’ve trained at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island, one of the most respected culinary institutions in the United States. You have interned in a variety of foreign lands, including Israel, Hong Kong, China, Japan, France, and Italy. You’ve cooked your way up the…
It was in 1899 that Italy’s Queen Margherita and King Umberto I, in a public-relations move calculated to foster an affinity with the common folk, took a royal traipse into Naples for some pizza. In their honor the pizzaiolo commissioned for the event what is believed to be the first…
Even if the food at Red Fish Grill were only so-so, the restaurant’s spectacular setting alone would warrant many visits. Located at the furthest tip of wild Matheson Hammock Park, on the shores of a very nonwild saltwater lagoon (in fact you could call it downright gentrified; there’s an extensive…
At one time the Abbey Hotel’s lobby must have been a graceful space for guests to dawdle in, but not anymore. It’s stripped to bare essentials (desk, stairway, elevator), all relegated to the left side of the dapper, Deco, 52-seat Abbey Dining Room. The restaurant resembles a swank supper club:…
Hey, Nobu, listen up: The last thing South Beach needs is another sushi restaurant. I say this with all due respect for your unquestionably wonderful product. I say it with a firm nod toward your eye for location. I say it knowing full well that you have experienced some of…
It’s one of those days that feels, from the amount of work you’ve done, at least 40 hours long — but you need a few more hours to finish up the work that still needs doing. No time for food, for sure, unless it’s a bite between phone calls/appointments/important meetings…
I’d rather be a date than update: I can understand why some of you are e-mailing me saying I’ve ruined beef for you. I’m sympathetic to your plight, really. But I refuse to follow the mad cow and foot and mouth epidemics any longer, as I’d like to get on…
Several encouraging things were immediately apparent when Milkyway Café opened several months ago in my neighborhood, which is predominantly populated by people who walk to synagogue wearing fur hats and floor-length wool clothes in August. The most optimistic note was that the restaurant replaced Adam’s Ribs, a kosher joint serving…
My first inkling that Sandbar Grill didn’t take itself too seriously came when I called to find out the hours. A recorded message clicked off a lengthy recital of each day’s unique allure, as in Barefood Sundays (half-price drinks), Taco Mondays (half-price tacos), and Booby Wednesdays (half-price drinks for women,…
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
