When chef Fabio Rolandi first arrived in Coral Gables from northern Italy in 1989, Italian food still basically meant mushy spaghetti with meatballs, and similar stuff never seen in Italy. In Northern Italian restaurants, mushy rice was substituted for the mushy spaghetti. Rolandi’s Casa Rolandi restaurant reputedly introduced South Floridians…
Note to self: Stop attending charity food functions. The mortification factor is getting way out of control. For instance I’m awfully tired of being looked at funny when I give my name at the registration table. I know my last name’s a tiny bit of a doozy, so I make…
•It’s not exactly a mass exodus, but some of the Miami-Dade herd has certainly migrated. The Astor Place’s Johnny Vinczencz tells me he’s doing a “new project” in Delray Beach: DeBe is sort of the new SoBe, only classier. JoVi will be revamping the Sundy House, a restaurant located within…
There’s a certain kind of eatery that once could be found all over the nation, those places I think of as “hippie hangouts,” and that’s not intended as derogatory. Rather it’s recognition that these casually artsy and creative cafés were more multimedia community centers with food than gourmet palaces, more…
Richard Nixon and Sen. Joe McCarthy wear nervous smiles while seated at one of Christy’s tables, steaks in front of them, a flash of the bulb capturing the moment for black-and-white eternity. Peter Lawford and Sammy Davis, Jr., mug for the camera, each waving a lamb chop in the air;…
For the record, I wasn’t wrong last year when I predicted that South Beach and Miami-Dade would become, as more and more Americans stayed within country limits, a destination in a way that it hasn’t been since the mid-Nineties. But I have to admit it took a little longer than…
It’s an old but generally sound culinary adage that the quality of a restaurant meal can be predicted by the quality of its bread. That’s what was puzzling about my first dinner at Fairwind Seafood Bar & Grill. The bread was halfway decent. On a return visit, however, the bread…
“It’s a “Max.'” These were the first words I heard regarding Perry’s, the new restaurant that opened in a former Koo Koo Roo space in Aventura’s Loehmann’s Plaza last week. The eatery is co-owned by Burt Rapoport, who rose to South Florida fame with erstwhile partner Dennis Max by way…
Daily Bread, a Middle Eastern market and eatery that opened on the tip of South Beach just over two months ago, is a spinoff of Daily Bread in South Miami. These operations should not be confused, though both will be, with two other Daily Bread Middle Eastern markets, one on…
The Italian menu is likely to appeal to most everyone: pastas, panini, antipasti, salads, calzones, and thin-crust pizzas. The décor is cookie-cutter direct: clean brick columns, wooden floors, and tables covered with white or red-and-white checkered cloths; walls painted in warm colors, a few shelves upon them stocked with blue-and-yellow…
It’s BBQ! It’s cowboy-kitschy in décor (old Wild West murals from the eatery’s early days almost 40 years ago, when Hialeah did a darned good imitation of a frontier town itself)! And mainly it’s almost the only place in Hialeah I can get to without getting lost. Okay, that’s a…
This winter — for the umpteenth time since 1971, when Alice Waters and the “California Cuisine” gang at Chez Panisse first fired up their wood braziers and chefs all over America started throwing out their sauté pans — word from our country’s leading food gurus has been that grilling is…
Even if you don’t recognize Cane Á Sucre as being the French way of saying “cane sugar,” and don’t notice the sign outside and on the front of the menu that says “French bakery, café, gourmet sandwiches,” chances are you’ll still know you’re in a French-style lunch spot. For one…
Congratulations to Claude Troisgros on his latest baby. “Baby Blue,” a prix-fixe bistro menu conceived as an alternative to the more illustrious Blue Door, is available in the “Brasserie” section of the Delano. Don’t know where that is? Well don’t look at me, I’m not too handy with directions either…
Attention New Yorkers: Never underestimate Miami. Don’t put down its people. Try not to sneer at what you don’t comprehend. Use the idea of superiority to describe our weather and our beaches; don’t apply it to your attitude. The only patronizing we want you to do is in our shops…
Ma-roosh goes the fan as it sweeps across gray embers and revives their red glow, which is how this Mediterranean restaurant in Coral Gables gets its name. Although new to the neighborhood, owner Samir Al-Barq has been dishing Middle Eastern specialties at Maroosh’s former Kendall site for more than a…
Although I’ve always thought idiotic the theory that formal food schooling should be required of restaurant reviewers (if the same standard was applied to restaurant chefs, South Florida would be minus major self-taught talents like Norman Van Aken and Ortanique’s Cindy Hutson), an exchange at the recent overwhelmingly successful South…
Remember the way Miss Piggy spoke “French”? Sure vous do! Vous can’t tell me that even 50-year-old readers don’t still sometimes sneak a peek at Sesame Street and Mlle. P’s exuberantly pretentious ventures into zee vaireee heavily accented faique Franglais. Less funny was the sort of faique French food that…
A couple of years ago, while pregnant with my son, I had the misfortune of reviewing a Hollywood restaurant called Estrella del Mar. The place was simply awful, serving such old, stale food that we were afraid to eat most of it. Of course the owners disagreed, writing a letter…
The Miami Design District is a nice neighborhood for strolling. The various antique and design shops contain interesting merchandise to peruse and you don’t have to worry about getting pushed around by a crowd. There never is one. At least not the times I’ve found myself walking here, in what…
Here’s a puzzler: What was the only thing wetter than Christie Wolfe’s joyous tearstained face at the opening of her and husband Jeffrey’s boutique wine store, Wolfe’s Wine Shoppe on Miracle Mile? Why, the wine that was being poured, of course, including the Bott-Geyl Pinot D’Alsace 1999, the Adami Prosecco…
Décor dripping with dragons, eye-popping red/green/gold-leafed pagodas, Chinese coolie peasants pulling rickshaws — even the name itself does not exactly scream “21st-century cuisine!” or even whisper the suggestion to savvy diners that authenticity might be on the menu at 67-year-old Fu Manchu, Miami Beach’s oldest Chinese restaurant. One expects not…
