Among life’s eternal mysteries is this: Why are turkey dinners served only twice annually, at two holidays not even a month apart? Another is this: Where do clothes dryers hide all the missing socks? The latter mystery continues to puzzle, but I discovered the answer to the former the first…
Doesn’t it seem sometimes that half the restaurants in Miami are yelling at you? “We’ve got the wackiest-ass décor on the Beach!” “Our food is so cutting-edge it doesn’t have to taste good!” “Some dipstick movie star threw up in our bathroom!” The noise is endless. It’s enough to make…
Nestled within the cozy nautical confines of Haulover Marina, Solo on the Bay couldn’t have a lovelier setting. Almost all the 400 seats are located on a spacious outdoor deck boasting billowy white curtains and an aesthetically pleasing vista of the Intracoastal Waterway. It’s a serene spot for breakfast or…
Of all Asian cuisines, one of the most difficult to find well represented in the U.S. — to find at all, actually — is that of the Philippines. Odd, considering how relatively accessible, compared to Japanese or Thai food, most Filipino dishes would be to diners, especially here in Miami,…
The Forge is something of a time machine. The faded colonial-style gray-and-white facade is fronted by tall, black, nineteenth-century-inspired gas lamps. Inside the Miami Beach institution is a group of eclectically rococo dining rooms, though to call the décor eclectic is like saying Michael Jackson is a little odd. Still,…
No one should know more about preparing great seafood than people who live surrounded by the sea, on an island, like Cuba. And in fact I’ve had some fantastic Cuban fish dishes — pargo Alicante in wine-enriched brown sauce, garnished with crisp lemon-marinated shrimp; pescado de Obatala e Inle with…
Editor’s note: Periodically we will publish capsule reviews like those below in addition to our weekly full reviews. Contributors to this installment include Lee Klein, Pamela Robin Brandt, Bill Citara, Greg Baker, and Karen Figueiredo. More than 450 capsule reviews of local restaurants can be found at www.miaminewtimes.com. 13823 N…
Resplendent in polished wood, Italian marble floors, Biedermeier furnishings, and silk damask drapery, the 126-seat Bizcaya restaurant exudes the classic Ritz-Carlton refinement, comfort, and taste. The space is divided into two similarly decorated dining rooms, though the one closest to the entrance has prettier salt and pepper shakers, and votive…
The nice thing about reviewing chains, even small three-shop operations like Tarpon Bend Raw Bar & Grill, is that they come packaged with a mission statement that makes evaluation more facile. Tarpon Bend number three opened in January on Miracle Mile, following the splash of the first two fish-themed restaurants…
Island Delight is a delightful island. It’s not actually a patch of land but rather a small generic space in a huge generic shopping mall. To get there you brave not the sea but the sea of cars that rises up to swamp the streets of Kendall with teeth-grinding regularity…
Since its inception on Brickell Key in 2001, Azul has been a gastronomic gem glimmering alongside the exquisite Mandarin Oriental Hotel. Miami native Michelle Bernstein helmed the Mandarin’s signature dining establishment from the start (the underrated Café Sambal is located downstairs), and though she had held executive positions at Red…
The Henry Hotel is a seedy little South Beach venue on Washington Avenue just north of Fifth Street. Still, Sport Café did a brisk business while situated there between 1992 and 1999, which is when it moved to classier digs up the block on the corner of Sixth and Washington…
It’s only a block west of Brickell Avenue’s glitzy skyscrapers, but the strip of old-fashioned storefronts that houses Indochine has, historically, managed to maintain a rather raffish, river-pirate air; it feels as if you’ve tumbled through time into a pioneer-era den of debauchery. And in a way, you have. For…
Guinness introduced porter and stout beers to the world at the turn of the Nineteenth Century (the former named after porters from London’s fish and vegetable markets who preferred a potent brew). In the current century, ten million glasses of Guinness are consumed worldwide every day. On a recent afternoon…
There are a few types of restaurants that are virtually impossible to find here in Miami-Dade County, including: (1) a Chinese restaurant featuring a tank filled with swimming seafood that diners can eat, not just watch; (2) any place with genuine Ipswich fried clams, whole specimens with that marvelous contrast…
If an Israeli and a Honduran were to open a restaurant together, what kind of cuisine would they serve? If you answered hummus in coconut shells or gefilte fish ceviche, nice try. But the correct answer is Italian — or at least that’s the case with Moshe Petel and Spurgeon…
The problem with Christmas, it has always seemed to me, is that once it’s over people seem compelled to take down the decorations. Is it some leftover Puritan influence or what? Here we have all these festive, twinkling, low-wattage lights that make our abodes feel like there’s a party going…
In an old New Yorker cartoon, two men stand in front of a luncheonette with these words emblazoned upon the window: “COOKED FOOD.” One man turns to the other and says, “It was the first theme restaurant.” Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook: Strategies, Recipes, and Techniques of Classic Bistro Cooking,…
So I suppose I’ll see you at the South Beach Wine and Food Festival’s “Tribute Brunch” this Sunday at the Loews Hotel. It’ll be great — Francis Ford Coppola in the flesh to accept recognition for his esteemed Niebaum-Coppola Estate Winery, and we, sampling those luscious wines while enjoying Tuscan…
BY LEE KLEIN
Crystal Café,
Few restaurants are more associated with their chef/owner than Crystal Café was with Klime Kovaceski. The Macedonian-born charmer somehow managed to work the kitchen and dining room simultaneously — all night, every night, six days a week. For ten years. On Mondays, when Crystal was closed, he’d come in and…
It was literally only days after Lime Fresh opened last spring that people began asking me what I knew about it. This was surprising for a number of reasons, not the least of which was its location in one of Miami Beach’s jinx spots. Several quite respectable little eateries (including…
For lovers of authentic Southeast Asian cooking, discovering that Vatcharin Bhumichtir is chef at a neighborhood Thai restaurant in North Beach is akin to learning that Emeril Lagasse just opened a gumbo shack in Overtown. It’s not the caliber of the food at relatively humble places that’s in question. It’s…
