“Never trust a recommendation when it comes from someone who lives or works within five blocks of the restaurant,” former New York Times food critic Ruth Reichl wrote. Until now I had usually followed her advice. Until The Globe’s gravity finally pulled me in. The combination jazz club and cafe…
Several years ago a fellow writer approached me at a party and said, “I read your column, but I don’t go to any of the restaurants you recommend.” I’m used to backhanded compliments, even downright insults. So I just shrugged, “Why not?” “I’m lactose intolerant,” he admitted. When he and…
“I know what good home-style Mexican food is supposed to be about,” a friend of mine told me recently. “I’ve just never had it.” That’s understandable: She lives in Miami. Oh sure, we’ve got a couple of long-standing joints (Paquito’s in North Miami Beach and El Rancho Grande in South…
Here’s the way I imagine it went down: The two proprietors of Riviera Brasserie are sitting at a table discussing their prospective new restaurant with genuine enthusiasm. One says to the other, “We’ll become known far and wide for our fine and authentic French brasserie fare.” “Oui,” responds the other,…
It’s no secret the waiting room in the doctor’s office is the most aptly named space on Earth. But one experience there left a long-lasting scar. Over the course of several presurgery appointments to fix a broken knee, I checked my watch and clocked the waiting period at no less…
It’s difficult for me to justify a stop at McDonald’s or Taco Bell, no matter how hungry or rushed I get. As a food and travel writer I take every meal as an opportunity for research, every getaway, a working vacation. But I’m not exempt from normal human hankerings. I…
In the food of American folklore, the hamburger has gotten short shrift: It’s overshadowed by the ever-present hot dog. While the wiener has come to represent our nation as surely as baseball and apple pie, the burger stands for nothing more than greasy spoons. The exclamation “Hot dog!” has positive…
Part of the appeal of dining out on foods we grew up with comes from being able to proclaim, with head-shaking disapproval, “This isn’t the way my mother used to make it.” Gives us that exhilarating feeling of expertise. Unfortunately, for me anyway, there isn’t exactly a glut of Jewish…
For starters I was not looking forward to dining at Bice. The new Italian restaurant in the Grand Bay Hotel in Coconut Grove replaced one of my favorite eateries, the Grand Cafe, where I’d enjoyed chef Pascal Oudin’s Old World French technique practiced on New World ingredients. And in a…
It’s easy to criticize the service in South Beach restaurants. Too many waitstaffs are rude and clueless, too many managers uncaring, and too many restaurateurs oblivious to the way an eatery should be run. In short too few people seem dedicated to serving fine food and creating a fine-dining experience…
If I were to open a restaurant, I’d invite everyone I know to come and eat for free the first few weeks — their parents and their friends, too — just to ensure a full house. Maybe such a scheme would help stanch the relentless parade of restaurants that come…
Season has returned to South Beach. I know this not because Lincoln Road is so jammed with tourists that shopkeepers routinely ask, “Where are you from?” (God forbid you should have a semblance of a sunburn: Automatically you’re assumed to have fled the Midwest.) I know it not because jogging…
Traditionally spas have served as tranquil retreats where the well-to-do go to shed a few pounds while being pampered with facials and massages. The pampering part was, and is, pleasant, but the dieting used to be somewhat torturous, given that spas had a reputation for offering what was pejoratively termed…
Even if a character in the 1989 movie When Harry Met Sally hadn’t declared something about restaurants being akin to theaters, the analogy would have found its way into the dining public’s consciousness sooner or later. That’s largely because, as with most cliches, it’s rooted in truth. Judith Stocks, a…
Try convincing half a dozen confirmed South Beachers to venture to the mainland for dinner. Several of these friends don’t go anywhere they can’t get to on Rollerblades, and seldom find themselves heading over the causeway unless they’re heading to the airport or, perhaps, Home Depot. Still, somehow I managed…
Note: No animals were harmed in the writing of this article. But a helluva lot of plants went down screaming. You see, Wish, the new, high-end eatery located in the Tony Goldman-owned property known simply as the Hotel (the refurbished Tiffany Hotel) on Collins Avenue in South Beach, doesn’t serve…
Humor writer Dave Barry admits he loves sushi. But he can’t help making fun of it. In a recent Tropic magazine column he defined sushi as “a type of cuisine developed by the Japanese as part of an ancient tradition of seeing what is the scariest thing they can get…
As usual, when I’m writing about food I get hungry. So while I was working on this review, before making my second visit to NOA, a new noodle shop on South Beach, I was overcome with a desire for something Asian, something light and spicy. This craving was exacerbated by…
Diners are a hybrid of two distinct American eating concepts, one born in luxury, the other in relative poverty. The former notion was realized in the late 1860s when the Union Pacific Railroad premiered the Delmonico, the first dining car to feature fine linens, Turkish carpets, plush velvet chairs, and…
Up ahead we saw the revolving spotlights — the kind that cast wasted energy into the night sky in honor of a nightclub opening or a movie premiere — almost immediately after we turned left on Ponce de Leon Boulevard from Miracle Mile in Coral Gables. “Ohmygod,” my husband groaned…
The strangest item I ate in the Peruvian Amazon river basin, where I once spent a week, was not the piranha we’d caught in a tributary off the main river and then deep fried. It was not the capybara, a tailless rodent that can grow to four feet in length,…
The Purple Dolphin. The phrase brings to mind (1) a psychedelic Sixties rock band that once opened for Moby Grape, or (2) a seedy seaside disco lounge, or (3) Dan Marino after a bevy of hard sacks. In fact, the words are reminiscent of almost anything but a restaurant that…
