The prodigal chef returns. Hang on to your Caribbean Cowboy hats, boys and girls — Johnny Vinczencz has reclaimed his place in the kitchen at Astor Place. The chef decided to sign on again when he and his investor couldn’t find an appropriate South Beach location for their dream eatery…
Deborah Calderon is the “D” and Clare Kelley the “Clare” of I Do D’Clare, a cozy 65-seat breakfast and lunch spot on Ponce de Leon, just off South Dixie Highway in the Gables. The same location used to house another restaurant, Loffler’s, where Deborah cooked and Clare waited tables. Two…
Thus far in my lifetime, I’ve vowed never again to do three things: be pregnant, board a boat, or drink tequila. All three, you see, turn my rather weak stomach as easily as a hurricane upsets a kayak. So it was with no minor trepidation that I, four months in…
Like many curious New Yorkers whose acquaintance with Cuban food was largely limited to the tasty but pretty basic mom-and-pop Cuban/Chinese joints that once sprouted on every block of Manhattan’s Upper West Side, I devoured the New York Times piece that came out shortly after Douglas Rodriguez’s Yuca first opened…
A civilized Latin supper club seems out of place amid the raucous scene of South Beach’s Washington Avenue, but that’s exactly the point behind Bolero Bar & Grill — a place on kid row for adults to enjoy. Apparently the mature elements of Miami have gotten word, as this 72-seat…
Icebox Cafe. 1657 Michigan Ave, Miami Beach; 305-538-8448. Open every day except Monday, 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. (lunch/brunch) and 7:00 to 11:00 p.m. (dinner); on weekends open till 1:00 a.m. for pastries.
Rarely has a restaurant in South Florida been so anticipated as pan-Asian Bambú, largely because of its co-owner, Cameron Diaz, who hooked up with her restaurateur/hotelier partners Karim Masri and Hubert Baudoin while shooting There’s Something About Mary in Miami. For months preceding the opening this past February, strollers regularly…
Countless adjectives can be used to describe the multitudinous restaurants of Miami-Dade. “Adventurous” is not one of them. Our ethnic-dining establishments seem particularly snakebit when it comes to exploring the more intriguing realms of their native cuisines, and Spanish restaurants reach even lower than the rest. Phillipe Restaurant, a 40-seat…
Every morning John Rossetti braises a brisket. He roasts a pork loin, a chicken or two, mixes a meat loaf. He caramelizes onions and grills vegetables like zucchini and eggplant. Then he piles them all, in various combinations, on three different homemade bâtarde breads he bakes himself. What he doesn’t…
Mayya has made a lot of changes in its lineup recently, but the most startling is the release of executive chef Guillermo Tellez. Ever polite, the Charlie Trotter protégé says he was let go because of a “difference of opinion.” Word on the street is slightly grittier. Tellez, who apparently…
Fast food joints failed to deliver a knockout punch to diners, but they did have those American institutions on the ropes and looking hopeless for a while. That was back in the early Sixties, and one of the main attractions of the then-new national burger chains was their consistency of…
It was bound to happen. After nearly a decade of regional this and local that, restaurateurs and chefs have tired of self-imposed provincial restrictions. Suddenly it seems instead of promoting products from our back-yard growers and purveyors, some of our better area restaurants are featuring luxury foodstuffs that come from…
There are times when it’s awfully difficult to explain why one lives in Miami. Like now, during this period of embarrassing Elianmania, with the national media trumpeting the arrogant antics of one small but stupid-as-a-stump group of right-wing refugee residents as they loudly and proudly point out that our county…
When dining out we like to think of the fish on our plate as having arrived fresh from the market that very day, a harmless bit of self-delusion that somebody, in just about every city near water, inevitably capitalizes on by opening an eatery called “The Fish Market.” The Wyndham…
I confess I didn’t know I had done something immoral until my editor informed me. “You ate shark’s fin soup?” he cried over the phone. “Don’t you know what they do to those poor sharks?” “They,” as it turned out, meant fishermen, and what they “do” is relieve the sharks…
No longer coping: Seems Frank Copestick, executive chef of Red Square, has gone the way of perestroika and fizzled. There’s no official word on why he left his position, but he didn’t go directly to another job, and substance abuse is rumored. Frank, tell us you’re not just another executive-chef…
Maybe it was because I was alone, carrying a book, that the bartender at this joint in the Gables inquired if I was on my way to a lecture at Books & Books. It was strangely flattering to think someone thought I looked like the type who attended such events,…
This may come as a surprise, but it’s not all Elian all the time on the radio. Sometimes there’s even talk of food, for instance on Linda Gassenheimer’s WLRN-FM (91.3) show, Food News and Views, on which I was a guest the other day. That’s when a young woman called…
In the mid-1800s, a huge wave of Chinese immigrants, approximately 100,000, most from Guangdong province around Canton, came to Peru to work. They worked in virtual slave-labor jobs — mineral mining, migrant farm work, railroad construction, and shit shoveling (literally: bat guano was a major Peruvian industry 150 years ago)…
The first impression was the worst. I’m not talking about the creamy white interior of the refurbished Nash Hotel. That was the second impression. The third would be the restaurant itself, Mark’s South Beach, and how the walk downstairs to a sleek, contemporary dining room, with outdoor seating by a…
March is not Black History Month. March is not Women’s History Month, Breast Cancer Month, Secretaries’ Month, or Grandparents’ Month. It’s not even Spring Break Month, not really. It can’t be, because March is Miami Media Blitz Month. Take a look at March’s reading and viewing material: Travel & Leisure…
The Pelican Hotel on Ocean Drive has 25 uniquely themed rooms, from the safari-designed “Me Tarzan, You Vain,” to the sparser “Jesus Christ Megastar,” which, if nothing else, is the only hotel room to ever advertise with the slogan “A man’s life consist not in the abundance of the things…
