About a year and a half ago, Andrea Meza decided to turn her Meza Fine Art Gallery in Coral Gables into a gallery café that would feature fine art, fine music, and fine “global” food. A fine idea. The handsome gallery/dining room of Meza Fine Art gallerycafé, which seats about…
In Coconut Grove, where commerce and nature have wrestled over square footage for decades, The Last Carrot juice bar remains a tribute to hipper, or hippier, days. Those would be the Seventies, when “the Grove” implied folksingers, incense, McGovern bumper stickers, and pottery classes. When the Last Carrot opened in…
While we were dining at Fiedele’s Seafood Restaurant, a Haitian-Caribbean seafood restaurant on Biscayne Boulevard and 72nd Street, hundreds outside the INS building seven blocks north were protesting the U.S. government’s treatment of Haitian immigrants vis-à-vis people coming from that other island nation. I’d love to weigh in on the…
Years ago, on Ponce de Leon Boulevard in Coral Gables, I used to wander into an eclectic shop called the Culinary Bazaar. Located next to Caffe Baci, it was the ideal place to wile away a wait for your table (and there was always a wait at Baci). Culinary Bazaar…
Lincoln Road is a fertile ground for rumors, but I gotta tell you, few have panned out. First there was the story that Red Lobster was replacing South Beach Brasserie. Uh-uh. Then I heard Cheesecake Factory was coming to haunt the Road. Still no final word on that little tidbit…
Last Night at the S&S Diner, the 1987 Mel Kiser/Corky Irick flick about pretrendy Miami, brought national fame to this classic counterspace-only eatery, along with an unending rush of trendy directors seeking instant authenticity. Most recently scenes for The Versace Murder were shot there. But the S&S Diner had been…
Those who believe in unlucky restaurant locations would probably consider the National Hotel one such site. They could trace the origins of the curse to the Oval Room, which opened three years ago in the ravishingly renovated hotel. I still remember their “butternut squash risotto-style,” which I misread as being…
It’s high season, time once again for the ravenous hordes from the North to descend. Time again to schlep the ravenous hordes out to the Everglades, for the obligatory gator-gaping expedition. And time again — assuming they don’t get eaten trying to stump-jump their rental bikes over Shark Valley’s snoozing…
“Regardless of nationality or culture, everyone has an attachment to soup…. You rarely hear anyone emphatically say, ‘I don’t like soup,’ and the person who does cannot be trusted.” Indeed. Those are words from the recently published, wonderfully irreverent culinary bible called The Daily Soup Cookbook, stemming from a restaurant…
If there were any doubt basketball is a sport for the poor-born to play and the wealthy to watch, the AmericanAirlines Arena (AAA) will put it to rest. And if you didn’t know, the AAA is so new that if you wander by during daylight hours, you’ll see ongoing construction,…
Of all the significant trends in the food world over the last decade of the last century, the most exciting for travelers was the revolution in hotel cuisine. And encouragingly, it wasn’t just in sophisticated cities that hotel restaurants transformed from lowest-common-denominator food factories for tasteless (presumably) tourists into kitchens…
Fast food is, in essence, a less expensive mockery of real food. In the case of the Texas Taco Factory, the fare is twice removed from reality. It caricatures Tex-Mex, which is itself a bastardization of Mexican. In a way this extra degree of separation works to its advantage: The…
You know Lincoln Road has been given over to the tourists when the outdoor cafes like Pekko’s Steakhouse and South Beach Stone Crabs break out space heaters to warm the visitors’ precious buns. Only two years ago we locals would shiver our asses off during our “cold” snaps. Quite an…
The SouthSide Café is located across the street from the Shops at Sunset Place, which really is the restaurant’s raison d’être. The menu, modeled toward accommodating families accustomed to eating at chain restaurants like the Cheesecake Factory, is well balanced, with a wide selection of soups, salads, wood-oven pizzas, and…
Prepare yourself. The drama you are about to read is one of passion, and one of heartbreak. It is a tale of love, of betrayal, and loss. It is a story about pizza delivery. Long ago, lost in the liberal ideals of my youth, I boycotted Domino’s. I had heard…
When some old friends came to visit recently and wanted to know the scoop on the Beach’s hottest new restaurants, I immediately mentioned The Strand. “That’s been around forever,” said Jennifer, a former South Beach denizen. It’s true, having opened more than a dozen years ago, the old and beloved…
I’ve always wanted to write an article about a scandalous “gate.” I once was tempted to pen a “Tomatogate” piece after being subjected to one pale, plastic-tasting monstrosity after another, but the subject matter didn’t seem solemn enough. Then the incident at Thai Toni occurred. It reeked of gate-ness. As…
‘Tis the season for top-ten lists and I’m a sucker for compilations, so I’ll contribute to the masses of rated information. But I want you to know going in that this isn’t just a list of the year’s best whatever. It’s a record of my most memorable Miami food moments…
Now I know where humor columnist Dave Barry gets his zest for life: at my favorite Indian restaurant Anokha in Coconut Grove, where I dined at the table next to him last week. He’s as full of fun-‘n’-games in person as he is in print: When my daughter wandered over…
Picture this: You’re waiting at the bar in a hip, crowded restaurant. You’ve just left your car for the valet and have yet to be seated. Before the host can call your reservation, however, a valet (not the one who changed the driver’s seat setting in your late-model SUV but…
Imagine a restaurant with horrible food, lousy service, exorbitant prices, and an arrogant maitre d’ who just for the hell of it kicks you in the seat of the pants on your way out the door. The Miami Herald would give this place their lowest assessment: “Satisfactory.” Therein lies just…
Take a stroll down Lincoln Road, and though you might not think it’s exactly Anywhere, U.S.A. (Victoria’s Secret hasn’t moved into the Miami City Ballet’s former space yet), you could be justified in calling it Anywhere, Europe. That’s because the hosts of the various restaurants have begun doing what the…
