When Beatlenut first opened last winter, neither I nor any of my foodie friends were tempted to try it, for one main reason: the nauseatingly cutesy misspelling of the name. The betel nut, the natural mood stimulant that Bloody Mary (the amply fed Hawaiian earth mama to all singing sailors)…
The stone crab “has a shell harder than a landlord’s heart,” wrote Damon Runyon, back in the days when Joe’s Stone Crabs was the only place on the Beach to get them. Many would say Joe’s is still the only place for stone crabs, but they’re speaking figuratively. Monty’s has…
The baguettes are painted like coral snakes. Bagels feature laminated pictures of toothily grinning children. A puffed-up pita bread poses as a comet, with pretzel sticks forming the tail. No this isn’t some psychedelic bakery courtesy of Lewis Carroll. It is the House of Bread, part of the newest temporary…
Trading one landmark for another, the Clevelander’s Kent Karpawich sold the hotel, built in 1938, to Herb Meistrich and his San Diego-based company, and bought into the 1800 Club a few months ago. Now called the 1800 Bar and Grill, the eatery has regained some of its supper-club glamour. Karpawich…
The fat cows have new neighbors: Tango Beef Café has settled in across the street from the popular Normandy Isles parillada, Las Vacas Gordas. Tango Café is a parillada as well. Loosely translated it means “place where meats are grilled” Argentine style, which refers not only to the side of…
Seven years ago, while reading Miami New Times for the first time, I spotted an advertisement seeking a restaurant critic. Aside from qualifications it asked, “Do you have the stomach for this job?” Ambitious, hungry, and more than a little naïve, I thought I surely had both the background and…
Franz & Josephs opened last December with little fanfare: no stars, no multimedia PR campaign, no famous chefs or fanciful themes. Seems they’re intent on succeeding with a comforting ambiance, reliable service, and good (though not exceptional), moderately priced food. Sounds a little far-fetched, I know, but supposedly millions of…
So have you caught the new Miami Herald “Weekend” section, er, Street? The debut issue of Street coincidentally features the same dining review as “Weekend,” titled “Nexxt has great atmosphere and, er, leisurely service,” and concludes that “The verdict in this court is that, hmm, maybe Nexxt drew some inspiration…
To label Barroco Restaurant simply Brazilian would be like calling Caffe Abbracci a pasta joint. Unlike the churrasco houses that are sprouting up from New York to Los Angeles, here you won’t find any strolling meat carvers wielding sharp knives and hunks of flesh. No skewers of chicken hearts. Not…
Friday, October 15, 12:01 a.m. Stone crab season officially begins. Crabbers are now allowed by law to pull up the traps they set days ago. But Hurricane Irene nibbles her lip in the Florida Straits — where to turn? Her storm-force winds exceed 50 miles per hour — too dangerous…
Miami chefs seem to have the trajectories of hurricanes these days. Take for example Guillermo Veloso, who earned his chops at Restaurant St. Michel before becoming executive chef at Yuca on South Beach several years ago. After leaving Yuca he bounced around among restaurants, including a couple of Italian joints…
Many pale people will soon flee their frigid habitats to visit friends and relatives here in the Sunshine State. That means they are coming to our houses. Now I don’t know about your out-of-town guests, but as soon as mine unpack their bags, they begin to pester me with predictable…
People come and go quickly in the food biz, so it’s no big deal that Pepe Freixas, Victor Passalacqua, and chef José Charles left La Dorada, the wonderful Spanish seafood house in the Gables, to try the same recipe again at a new Spanish restaurant called Navarra. Two things do…
Suddenly I seem to be in the gratis restaurant-consulting business. The only two messages on my voice mail this week were from folks who craved advice. And both centered around that evergreen puzzler: how to succeed on the Beach. The first plea I received was from Sonia Lyn, owner of…
The Albion Hotel, owned by the Rubell family, has finally taken the plywood off the windows of Mayya, the boutique hotel’s signature Mexican restaurant. TV talk show host Cristina Saralegui handled the ribbon-cutting duties during its recent opening. Fortunately, despite the heat of 400 bodies packed into the two-story eatery…
After closing for more than two months, the charming and cozy Escopazzo on South Beach has reopened with a brand-new dining room, doubling its capacity from about 35 to more than 70 seats. To introduce this new “wine room,” Escopazzo has announced it will host monthly winemaker dinners, beginning October…
While dining the other night at Toscana 2000, I couldn’t help but think of the Stanley Tucci film Big Night, a favorite on all foodies’ must-see lists. When it came out a few years ago I asked my friend, a local film critic, what he thought of it. He learned…
Although it has negative connotations, “petty” isn’t necessarily a bad adjective. (It’s derived from the French word petit, which means small.) There’s a petty officer, which is an officer appointed from enlisted personnel. Petty cash is kept on hand to pay for minor items. And petty larceny carries less of…
The House of Rémy Martin might want to stick this little skeleton in a closet: The Cognac King and the James Beard Foundation recently introduced the Louis XIII Ultimate Dinners, a program designed to benefit aspiring chefs. Twenty-eight of the nation’s “most acclaimed restaurants” were chosen to participate. Each restaurant…
As a rule I avoid any restaurant which has an appellation that ends with the word palace or hut: The former are never palatial, the latter usually just cramped snack-food places with graceless décor. Rather than shun the Original Pita Hut, though, I seek it out on Arthur Godfrey’s unofficial…
Steep steps in the kitchen of the French restaurant Prunelle led up to a plush plum-color dining room. Actually it was down those steps that Wolfgang Puck and Jeremiah Tower came to thank us, the chefs and culinary staff, for a job well done. It was in New York City,…
In finer restaurants the prevailing procedure for dining is this: You make a reservation, leave your phone number, and then it’s usually customary for the eatery to call back and confirm the date and time of your meal; sometimes they even reconfirm your intentions on the day of your visit…
