Gloria Estefan is a woman who needs no introduction in Miami. We know well her sultry voice — the embodiment of this seductive, subtropical city. We admire her showwomanship, her business acumen, her homegirl-made-good-ness. Her personal bravery (returning to performance after suffering a broken back in a 1990 bus accident)…
On Kendall’s portion of South Dixie Highway, a small, single-business building such as Thai Silk frequently escapes attention. Shopping centers, mini-malls, and massive outlet stores — most located on the eastern side of the road — dominate the view. In daylight, the endless array of retail shops reminds the driver…
Imagine spending every moment of your life with the person you love. In the morning, one alarm would wake you both. You’d drive to work together, labor side by side, break briefly for left-over sushi from dinner the night before. After work, you’d stop for a drink at the oceanfront…
The heat’s abating, the rain’s slackening. The daunting subtropical summer is undeniably drawing to a close. So why aren’t more South Beach natives relaxing on their front porches, enjoying the cooler night air? Why are so many people still partying desperately in bars and restaurants that are kept as cold…
These names still count: Mark Militello, Allen Susser, Norman Van Aken, Nino Pernetti. They’re the restaurateurs who, in the late 1980s, brought panache and creativity to Miami’s previously staid restaurant scene. The pioneers established a triangle of taste: Mark’s Place and Chef Allen’s to the north; Van Aken’s a Mano…
When a region such as the Southwest achieves national attention, a broad, enduring public interest often results. International galleries import achievements of local artists. Entrepreneurs bottle indigenous sauces and spices, supplying the gourmet sections of upscale department stores. Most important, restaurants serving regional cuisine open all over the country. The…
In the novel How to Make an American Quilt, Whitney Otto writes about a fabric pattern called the “Crazy Quilt” and the women who are involved in sewing it. The narrator says, “I am reminded of some sort of complicated dance of many partners, facing many different directions.” This “complicated…
Three years ago I flew 3000 miles on a redeye for a long weekend with my future husband. After living on the opposite coast for six months, I expected to fall truly, madly, deeply in love all over again, and I did. What I didn’t anticipate was the love affair…
As I noted a few weeks ago in a review of the Marlins Steakhouse and Sports Bar, I’m comfortable with spectator sports and some sports bars. But hardly all sports bars. Sometimes skillfully prepared food can be as rare as a grand-slam home run. Like a growing number of women,…
Hunger affects people differently. Some exhibit such physical symptoms as vertigo; for many, speech becomes an impossibility, the need to eat obliterating the desire to communicate — this accounts for the silence, as thick as glass, that often precedes the service of a meal. Others become mentally distressed, the fall…
Periodically, a friend reminds me that we belong to a disenfranchised generation. The baby boomers’ economic balloon — the one we also expected to rise on — busted along with the Eighties; the funds, cars, and technological goodies we looked to garner instantly after college never materialized. Rather than the…
Sometimes only Cuban food will do. Stress makes me long for it. Like chocolate, I believe, black beans must release endorphins — daily pills for daily ills. Bickering with my husband, the cat misbehaving, even the phone ringing too many times in an evening can launch me in search of…
For every neighborhood there should be a special restaurant to serve its dining needs. A place where locals can enjoy a pleasant ambiance, without attitude, and perhaps even engage in conversation. Where the menu stimulates without indulging in excess, particularly concerning price. Where the cuisine is so consistently and exquisitely…
In the early Eighties, when some bars began to concentrate on bringing sporting events to a cheering, tipsy public, they were obviously a man’s domain — a place to pound a beer, a buddy on the back, a fist on the table (or now and then in someone’s face). And…
Like most people, I schedule my social life according to my professional life. I (usually) stay out late or turn in early in direct relation to what I must achieve — or how I must act — at my job. It’s a simple truth to which I conform, digestible if…
The main reason I used to watch Three’s Company was the principal character and his occupation: Jack Tripper, chef. Okay. I’ll admit I also was a sucker for the show’s endless puns, the innuendo and double entendres. But for me Jack was the star. He brought to the job all…
In Anne Tyler’s The Accidental Tourist, Rose is a beautifully eccentric character who cannot exit the safe realm of her neighborhood without becoming hopelessly lost. Any destination other than the local market or drugstore fills her with unbounded terror. Maps, compasses, even detailed directions are useless. I identify with Rose,…
“On a bush they are beautiful, unless you are the gardener who planted the bush. They are beautiful on plates, too, each one in its own little dent, shell full of hot green butter like a magic cup.” Aside from M.F.K. Fisher, who wrote so lyrically in praise of snails,…
Some time ago, cocktailing at a pub called The Fox and Firkin, I was one of only two waitresses who laid no claim to being British. But customers often assumed I was and asked me my origins. When I replied “Jersey,” they thought I meant the green English meadows, not…
My husband remembers Bella Ravioli. He remembers the neighborhood A Italian, working-class, streets rimmed with naked oaks and snow-scarred cars A and the bakery next door, the cannolis, zeppoles like sweet miniature snowballs, breads stacked upon breads. He recalls the door, always a little stuck, always jarred open to the…
Nothing is more frustrating for a fledgling gourmand than to be cut down in his or her prime by food allergies. The other night I arranged to meet two companions, a man and a woman, both of whom adore dining. The difficulty lay in choosing a restaurant. The man is…
“Welcome to chaos,” the hostess said, though she grinned beautifully as if she had never experienced a day of it in her life, or as if she were accustomed to action whirling around her like the Tasmanian Devil. Our table was just then being clothed A cloaked in water glasses…
