Hone Your Culinary Skills with Chef Alan Hughes

Ready for culinary boot camp? Former One Ninety chef Alan Hughes will be teaching eight three-hour classes in his kitchen starting March 14. The classes, limited to five students, will cover a range of topics starting with the basics. In the first class, students will learn knife techniques, kitchen organization…

Rats and Roaches: Top 5 Restaurant Busts This Year

If you’ve eaten in the City of Miami in the past three months you may not want to read any farther.There’s a distinct possibility that ugly little roach legs, and furry little rat claws joined your romantic dinner, business lunch, or casual snack.The following list includes five restaurants who have…

Two New Chilorio’s Very Mexican Joints Now Very Open

Chilorio’s Very Mexican, “a fast-casual fresh Mexican restaurant,” has opened not one, but two new South Florida outposts: At 130 Miracle Mile in Coral Gables, and at 8211 South Dixie Highway in South Miami. Both spots offer what Chilorio bills as “dishes made from authentic Mexican recipes, many of which…

Guy Fieri Ties Up South Beach Wine & Food Festival 2010

The South Beach Wine & Food Festival wrapped up last night with a beach party hosted by Guy Fieri at the Gansevoort’s Beach Club, appropriately themed “Moon Over Miami,” since the full, orange moon began to dip just as the party began. At 6 p.m. a line had already started…

Exclusive: The Forge Announces Opening Date

Shareef Malnik, the charismatic owner of The Forge restaurant, was back in action at the BubbleQ on Friday during the Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival. It was Malnik’s return to the culinary arena, since he shuttered his iconic steakhouse last summer. He also introduced the food world…

SBWFF 2010: Dim Sum & Disco In Photos

Dim Sum & Disco was the best event I attended at this year’s Festival. It was loose, fun, funky, featured fantastic food by great chefs, amazing Ty Ku cocktails by famed mixologist Tony Abu-Ganim, and the gorgeous Setai outdoor area. Truth be told, for much of the night I was…

SBWFF 2010: Lidia & Joe Bastianich at the Barilla Interactive Dinner

Guests who bought $225 tickets to last night’s Barilla Interactive Dinner at the Biltmore hotel probably assumed the word “interactive” meant a chef would be cooking for them at each table. Not so. As hungry diners dressed in everything from jeans to suits entered the room, they found cloth toques…

SBWFF 2010: Scott Conant’s Barilla Interactive Lunch

Female fans rushed Scarpetta’s Scott Conant at yesterday’s South Beach Wine & Food Festival Barilla Interactive Lunch at the Biltmore Hotel. They wanted to snap his picture. “I haven’t gotten this much attention since my wedding,” he told an audience of about 200. Some jumped on stage as Conant prepared…

SBWFF 2010: The Best of Best of the Best

Best use of pork belly (and there was a lot of pork belly) was this satsuma glazed square with cilantro and marinated beets on the side from Susan Zemanick, chef of Gautreau’s in New Orleans:Best single bite of food at the affair was foie gras bon bons from Beast, in…

SBWFF 2010: Best of the Best Has Jumped the Shark

Even the best things in life come to an end, and so it goes with SBWFF’s Best of the Best. Oh sure, it still presents great national chefs putting out delicious tidbits and fantastic vintners pouring wonderful wines. We’re not suggesting it’s a bad time at all. In fact, we…

SBWFF 2010: First Taste of the Grand Tasting Village Tent

There’s something to be said of that old cliché, “The early bird gets the worm,” as was evidenced by the line stretching from the peach lifeguard stand to the red, white, and blue one even 20 minutes before the Wine Spectator Trade Tent/Grand Tasting Village officially opened Friday afternoon. Hundreds…

SBWFF 2010: FIU Student Workers Make It Happen

South Beach Wine and Food Festival is here, but it wouldn’t be without the FIU student volunteers who gain invaluable real world experience by creating the infrastructure, handling the logistics, cooking the food, dealing with sponsors, and a million other jobs that nobody thinks about while they’re drunk in a…