I did not spend my childhood frolicking amid the fig trees of Calabria. I did, however, grow up on the sixth floor of a Brooklyn apartment building, where the aromas of meatballs and garlic and tomato sauce drifted upward from the Casciano household three stories below. While these olfactory memories…
In some countries the best typical food is generally found in restaurants; in others the best food is home cooking. But in general the trend in almost every country I know for nouvelle interpretations of traditional cuisine is certainly shifting the “where to find the best” toward where the pros…
I was attending an advisory board meeting for the newly launched Feeding the Mind project, whose mission statement is “to provide culinary education to women who are interested in the industry, but do not have the financial resources necessary to get formal education,” when founder Carmen Gonzalez looked to me…
Statistics tell us we’ve got ourselves a nation full of fat, dumb kids who apparently can only tear themselves from television sets long enough to stuff a couple of Big Macs down their chubby little throats. So now we have the new Miami Children’s Museum helping out by giving young,…
Why I originally went to La Fe turned out to be not the reason I ended up rather liking it after several visits. I went because I’d read an ad that claimed the place was an eat-in café as well as a bakery, with salads and sandwiches that sounded hipper…
Virtual shopping has its, well, virtues. For one thing, browsing Websites is a great way to procrastinate. You can source products you might have had no idea otherwise even existed — vanilla-scented aromatherapy slippers, anyone (www.CasualLivingUSA.com)? And for those transplants whose relatives have the bad luck not to have moved…
In town filming a promotional documentary about Miami at the Forge, a member of the Washington, D.C.-based West Beach Entertainment crew recently confessed she loves this city because “there’s ceviche on every menu.” Too true — in the last few weeks alone, I’ve had scintillating versions at Azul, Bizcaya Grill,…
The Starbucksian transformation of SoBe’s west side is progressing along quite nicely these days. The developers are certainly thrilled — these people get the same sort of excitement from watching a row of historic houses being razed that a foodie does after stripping all meat from a rack of baby-back…
After three summer shopping spree meals that would be described most kindly as disappointing (more accurately as hideous, and in one case hideously overpriced), my feelings about the food options in the otherwise super-snazzy new Village of Merrick Park mall had settled into Shopper Survivalism. Until the much-anticipated opening of…
I will always remember the outraged response I received from an acquaintance when I blithely confessed that my daughter won’t eat, among a shopping list of other items, anything green (unless it is a “wild watermelon” gelatin dessert or the squiggly neon noodles that Kraft has started to add to…
Impoverished Neapolitans originally made pizza as a means of using up their abundance of tomatoes in a filling, inexpensive manner — a drizzle of olive oil, a sprinkling of herbs, and they’d pop the tomato-topped bread into a searing wood or coal-fueled oven. Back then you could traipse the streets…
My neighbor Jerome was standing in my kitchen, a place he has been at least a couple of times a week for the past several years. But that night, apparently, he was looking with new eyes at the CapriSun® strawberry-banana easy-open pouches of juice; the Smucker’s Snackers®, no-refrigeration-needed packages that…
Houston’s, the Cheesecake Factory, and other popular dining chains manage to attract packs of hungry Aventura residents by offering comfortable settings and consistent fare that challenges neither palate nor pocketbook. So when Scott Fredel, former co-chef of Rumi, decided to enter this neighborhood with his own dining establishment, he charted…
Forget BAM — Emeril’s looks to be a veritable SLAM dunk. The buzz-driven gastrognoscenti are descending in droves, overwhelming the restaurant formerly known as the Gaucho Room. Indeed the polished dining room, dominated by wine refrigeration units that could make any half-knowledgeable enophile drool with envy, has completely evolved from…
It has always seemed to me, to paraphrase an old sentiment, that Kendall is a nice place to live but I wouldn’t want to visit there. Then I somehow find myself in one of the more terminally suburban parts, and realize I’m not so sure about living there, either. Whoa,…
In 1995 China Grill opened to both raves and rabidly raving rants, and it’s been that way ever since. It may take diners arriving after 8:30 to 9:00 p.m. half an hour to get seated (still), but once seated, they are never on the fence; no one, it seems, has…
I wish to retract the following statements: “Hardly anyone has come out of [Miami’s] noted kitchens and opened, to either local or nationwide acclaim, an innovative restaurant. Yes, many of the chef-proprietors have ‘placed’ their people in high-profile positions or been on the hiring end…. But it still appears that…
My wife has long accused me of getting carried away with my work, her latest repetition of this charge brought on by my decision to attend our friends’ Halloween party dressed as an arepa con queso. She seemed skeptical of my claim that the masquerade had nothing to do with…
I have spoken with residents of the Miami Design District and can report that they are not high on Grass, the new restaurant/lounge on NE 40th Street. “We’re just starting to develop a nice, easygoing neighborhood vibe here,” said one disgruntled homeowner. “The last thing we need is this pretentious…
Grinders are what I call ’em, due to many formative years living in New England, but elsewhere in the country monster meat/cheese/veg sandwiches go by other names, most easy to understand: submarine, torpedo, and zeppelin for the blimp-shaped roll; hero for the formidable size. Some, though, were more of a…
Our October is the rest of the nation’s March — a month of transition, a medium for change, and a means for projection. It may be less scientifically precise than the National Hurricane Center, but what happens in October is frequently a more fundamentally accurate reading of the culinary currents…
Consider the gift basket. Stuffed with incredibly edible comestibles ranging from fresh fruits straight out of boutique orchards to artisan cheeses cured at dairies that exist in determinedly rural communities, it serves a multitude of occasions. The basket celebrates births and other Hallmark holidays, commiserates deaths, brings in money for…
