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…
What do locals call a restaurant that has a floor composed of live grass, screens the movie Kama Sutra almost constantly, and labels its cuisine “aphrodisiac?” An eatery where prices for main courses hover around the $40 mark? Where patrons dance in the aisles and get jiggy with it atop…
Bissaleh Café is a kosher Israeli dairy restaurant/pizza place/ juice bar/coffee bar. Not, you might say, your typical, everyday dining establishment. The décor can best be described as a Yiddish Vacas Gordas, with more space between the tables. Like that Argentine parillada, it’s a small, informal room with 30 to…
This review will only be of interest to those who plan on heading out to catch a Marlins baseball game. All 60 of you. Of course the Fish, as the team is endearingly called, cannot hope to contend this year because their player payroll is only slightly higher than what…
South Beachites, don’t panic. Despite Chrysanthemum’s darkened quarters and restaurant-for-sale sign on the front door, the Beach’s finest flower has not dropped its petals. Rather the gourmet Chinese eatery has moved to Coconut Grove. Despite a very successful run on Washington Avenue, the owners chose not to renew their lease…
Here are the rumors: Bicoastal celebrity chef Nobu Matsuhisa may be bringing his pan-Asian talents to Miami — there’s talk of the Shore Club location. Top toque Jean-Georges Vongerichten could be doing the same. And the Big Apple’s Keith McNally, whose Balthazar, which publishes one phone number but keeps a…
I was watching The Newlywed Game. So sue me for bad taste. But to be honest, I wasn’t really paying attention until the bonus round, when after four questions that centered on sexual innuendo, host Bob Eubanks asked the wives: “Of the three traffic-light colors of bell peppers, which one…
The Palm Plaza Shopping Center is just another nondescript strip mall, one of hundreds, maybe thousands, marring Miami’s landscape. My feeling has always been that if you’re going to uglify a neighborhood, the least you can do is offer good food, and Palm Plaza does just that. It’s got Chinese,…
I was reading Italian Fever, author Valerie Martin’s delicious little ghost story of a novel set in Tuscany, and I was getting hungry. Perhaps this isn’t surprising, given that I’m starving all the time these days. But I was stirred by Martin’s exaltations over the fare her protagonist Lucy was…
Key Biscayne and Virginia Key boast breathtaking views of sunsets over the bay and of Miami’s skyline as it transforms first into dusky silhouette, then into glittering lights as night falls. Naturally there are seafood restaurants eager to take advantage of such snapshot vistas, the Rusty Pelican probably being the…
I’ve lately found myself insisting, to whomever will listen, that when it comes to dining in ethnic restaurants I’m no nitpicking stickler for authenticity; I simply wonder why those who serve watered-down, clownlike mockeries of such cuisines even bother at all. When those who will listen happen to be the…
At first glance it looks as though this year’s season claimed more than its share of restaurant victims. Of the places that went out of business in recent months, several of them appeared to be high-end, well-funded untouchables: Mayya, Thoa’s on Ponce, Petrossian, Jada. But out of all of them,…
In order to protect his/her anonymity, any ethical restaurant critic plays by the unwritten rules: Don’t make a reservation under your own name. Don’t scribble notes on top of the table. And never, ever allow your picture to be taken. Once your identity is blown, how can you have an…
You’ve just been served a glistening tray of sushi. The salmon practically quivers with freshness and vitality; the yellowtail snapper looks like velvet, laid out over the rice; and the tuna is the most tempting of all, the rich, ruby redness beckoning your first bite. You decide to eat the…
The Palm premiered in Bay Harbor Islands in 1986, but it has the Joe’s Stone Crab, old-timey feel of an institution that’s been around forever. The original Palm in New York does go back pretty far — to 1926, which is when John Ganzi and Pio Bozzi, two immigrants to…
Ah, the banana. If you’ve looked around our markets lately, you might have noticed the several varieties from which you can make your selection. You can choose the short and chunky dwarf, finger, or red banana. You can check out the bananas that taste like other fruit — the Manzano…
It was on the drive to Tequila Sunrise that one of my dinner guests inquired as to what sort of place we were headed. “Mexican,” I replied, though it turned out she had already surmised that. I really didn’t know any more, other than having been told by someone who…
The prodigal chef returns. Hang on to your Caribbean Cowboy hats, boys and girls — Johnny Vinczencz has reclaimed his place in the kitchen at Astor Place. The chef decided to sign on again when he and his investor couldn’t find an appropriate South Beach location for their dream eatery…
