Have it Your Way … or Not

It is certainly good news that Miami-based Burger King announced this week that the company will begin buying eggs and pork from suppliers that don’t confine their animals in crates and pens. PETA has declared a victory, as has the Humane Society of the United States. According to the New…

“Driven to Dine ” Offers a Haute Luck Dinner

The evening begins with a cocktail reception, at a fabulous home in Indian Creek, with ten or twelve of your favorite friends. After the requisite mingling with other guests, including Dr. Arthur “South Beach Diet” Agatston, you will pick a number from a hat. This number dictates which of the…

Cuisine, Consummated

I want to slip French Kiss some tongue. I love this restaurant. The culinary ménage à trois of Marc-Antoine, Joanne Gimenez, and chef Keith Becton has created an absolutely ravishing little cafe in the nether regions of Coconut Grove, one that displays all the warmth and unpretentiousness of a neighborhood…

Catch of the Year

When Joe’s Stone Crab premiered on South Beach in 1913, it was the first classic American seafood house in the Miami area. Ninety-four years later, with the opening of the Oceanaire Seafood Room in Mary Brickell Village, we finally have our second. You are no doubt thinking that this can’t…

Food Fest by the Numbers

These figures were just released (only to Riptide) regarding the 2007 Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival: $2 MILLION (plus) — Record ticket revenue for this year’s festival. $1 MILLION — Amount raised to benefit the students of the Southern Wine & Spirits Beverage Management Center and Teaching…

Schnitzel and Quiche

The beverages are totally different: At Hofbräu Beerhall, nearly every table is topped with glasses or mugs filled with golden or amber-hued fluid. At Cafe Maurice, only slightly more delicate stemware is swirled with liquids tinted straw or dark maroon. There are plenty of other dissimilarities as well, so many…

Join the Club

When you consider the career path of eight-time world freediving champion Yasemin Dalkilic, it’s not surprising that she and her trainer/husband, Rudi Castineyra, chose ungentrified downtown Miami as the appropriate neighborhood for their very gentrified wine bar. The pair is used to taking big risks and winning. Often referred to…

Buy the Farm

Not a bad one in the bunch Local, organic, affordable, good. These adjectives rarely combine in Miami, despite our proximity to some of the most fertile farmland in the country. So rejoice, downtown office workers and anybody else who can find his way to Bayfront Park: An excellent farmers market…

Naked Chef to Headline 2008 Wine & Food Fest

Hot off the presses, a New Times exclusive: The Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival is set to announce that its 2008 honorees will be internationally renowned chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, and the buoyant British chef Jamie Oliver. The former will be feted at the Tribute Dinner on February…

Johnny-Come-Lamely

Chef Johnny Vinczencz made a name for himself during a star-making stint at the Hotel Astor from 1995 to 2000. He also made a nickname for himself, “the Caribbean Cowboy,” which he discarded after leaving town and riding off to other restaurants in Palm Beach (Sundy House) and Broward (Johnny…

Doing Right by Chicken

Is there any animal more abused than the chicken? Most begin and live their brief existence in mammoth farm-factories under conditions so dire they make the black hole of Calcutta appear merely gray. Then it’s off to the poultry processing plants, Dante’s seventh circle of finger-lickin’-good hell, where they’re killed…

Soup for You!

The most surprising thing about Martin Scorsese finally winning that long-elusive Oscar for best director is that he did it without the benefit of any soup scene in The Departed. What ignites the famously sensual eating orgy in Tom Jones (best picture, 1963)? Big, steaming pewter bowls of celery soup…

Sushi for a Song

Since South Beach’s late-Eighties renaissance, when droves of fashion and film aficionados (plus other notably fitness-conscious people) descended, sushi has been one of Miami’s major food groups. By the mid-Nineties, Washington Avenue was lined with Japanese eateries comparable in quality to those in New York City. Unfortunately, like those in…

Tasty ‘Cakes

Approximately two decades after it hit New York City, the great cupcake baking trend appears to have finally made its way to Miami, the bottom of America’s funnel. While the editorial staff at New Times are partial to the vegan creations of staff writer Tamara Lush (who modestly deflects credit…

Pastis Is Primo

If you want to know why San Francisco is a great restaurant town, go to South Miami. Bear with me; it’s not really that big a stretch. San Francisco is a great restaurant town not because of its handful of uber-luxe, four-star establishments, but because just about every neighborhood in…

Martha and the Mondavis

Chefs Clay Conley of Azul and Michael Bloise of Wish agree: Given the choice of being stuck on a desert island with either Martha Stewart or the Mondavi brothers, both would prefer Martha. Conley explains, “If anyone can make a deserted island feel like home, she could.” The same question…

School Board Bans Trans Fats

No trans-fatty fries allowed The Miami Dade School Board voted last night to become the first district in the nation to ban trans fats in food – not that you would know it by reading this morning’s Herald, which buried the news in the last graf of a story on…

Top Chef

David Bouley hails not from Paris or Provence, as his name, heritage, and repertoire of refined French cuisine might suggest. He grew up in Storrs, Connecticut. And while he trained under Michelin-starred chefs in France and Switzerland, and toiled away at landmark New York restaurants, he then served successfully as…

Devolution Revelation

About three years ago, Miami’s midtown so-called “Arts District” was trumpeted, in a CNN real estate survey, as the most rapidly appreciating area in the country. National media hype that followed pictured Biscayne Boulevard as the gracious promenade it was to be, possibly within minutes — lined with cute cafes…

Ghetto to Go

“We’re paying for their exorbitant rent!” my uncle Al bellows whenever I take him to dine in a pricey South Beach restaurant. Obnoxious, yes, but he’s got a point. The Ghetto Gourmet is a counterpoint. The Oakland-based group is, in essence, an underground supper club, meaning they find hip spaces…

Prime Candidate

Producers pf the uber-popular reality TV show Top Chef were in town recently looking for a few good cooks to compete for a $100,000 grand prize in their next season. And one local chef looks like he could be a prime candidate. Mike Sabin, 36, executive chef of South Beach’s…

Formula for Fine Food

It’s all Starbucks’ fault. Coffee used to be the equivalent of regular leaded. It was cheap, strong, and uncomplicated; you poured it in your tank, revved up your motor, and were good to go. Then some boy genius got his fancy knickers in a twist and all of a sudden…