If you want to feel like a tourist in your own town, go to Balans. It’s on Lincoln Road, for god’s sake. When was the last time you hung out there, oozing along with the flow of bug-eyed Midwesterners in their neatly pressed shorts and Tommy Bahamas, elegantly dressed Latins,…
When it comes to culinary firsts, Miami seldom beats Manhattan. So when an article in New York magazine virtually swooned itself silly last December about the opening of Pardo’s (a twenty-year-old Peruvian rotisserie chicken chain) in NYC, it was hard to believe. There’s been a Pardo’s Chicken in Miami for…
There are seven days of the week, wonders of the world, colors in a rainbow, points on a sheriff’s star, digits in a phone number, dots on a common ladybug’s back. The Egyptians had seven gods, the Phoenicians seven kabiris, the Persians seven sacred horses, the Parsees seven angels opposed…
On its business card, this strip mall joint is actually called Michele European Bakery, Gelateria & Caffe, one of those names so long and unwieldly, you’d assume it says it all. It does not. In back of the cafe (named for owner Michele Pompei, who trained and worked as a…
Printed atop the old-timey logo of the new-timey Michael’s Genuine Food & Drink are the words “fresh simple pure.” Not very original. In fact so many chefs have been professing this same pledge, that “fresh simple pure” is to contemporary American cuisine what “snap crackle pop” is to Rice Krispies…
In a neighborhood where signs in front of every other restaurant advertise traditional Haitian favorites like lambi (long-stewed conch) and soupe joumou (meat-packed pumpkin squash soup), the Lunch Room is more than just a little bit different. The soup at this pleasant, if eye-poppingly bright green, indoor/outdoor cafe in Little…
Miami-Dade’s prime waterfront real estate seems marred by more mundane eateries than that of any other coastal resort in the world. And the bayside address that has housed the highest number of unfortunate dining establishments in the county’s history just may be 1601 79th St. Cswy. Remember the Russian Fairy…
Twenty seven million pigs get slaughtered, processed, and wrapped each year by Smithfield Hams. That’s roughly the equivalent of butchering and packaging the entire human populations of America’s largest 32 cities — New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas…. This grisly image, indelibly caged…
Telling your average Miami foodie to drive to Homestead for really good Cuban cuisine is like telling an Eskimo to fly to Miami for snow. But you better lose the mukluks and have your boarding pass in hand, because even if you live in Miami, it’s worth the journey to…
As far as fatuous falsehoods go, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s contention that “there are no second acts in American lives” ranks right up there with “Mission Accomplished.” Just wait and see: Britney Spears will be staging her comeback tour faster than you can say “Al Gore.” People reinvent themselves all the…
For Florida foodies, the South Beach Wine and Food Festival is the year’s monster event. But spring brings an entire season of food festivals — smaller, to be sure, but revelatory in their own locals-oriented way. For instance: At last month’s Miami Wine and Food Festival — a sort of…
The thing is, the more simple, the more difficult it is,” Italian cookbook author Marcella Hazan once said, in regards to preparing food. “When you do a dish and you do two things, and one of them is wrong….” She didn’t need to finish the sentence. Italian cooking is about…
You have to admire Yankee ingenuity. Take some chewing gum, tissue paper, and a ball of twine, and pretty soon you’ve got a sleek aluminum sausage capable of flinging hundreds of drunken customers and surly flight attendants across the continent at 35,000 feet. Take a nitwit collection of wannabe pop…
Willie Mays, Barry Bonds, and Andre “the Hawk” Dawson are the only baseball players in major league history to hit more than 400 home runs and steal more than 300 bases. Mays waltzed into the Hall of Fame, and if steroids don’t get in the way, Bonds will, too. But…
Inside every food critic, it’s said, beats the trans fat-packed heart of a fast food junkie. Even serious foodies can consume only so much tomato confit before getting a yen for ketchup. This point was underscored just last month at the South Beach Wine & Food Festival’s first Burger Bash…
The Food Gang isn’t what it thinks it is. It thinks it is an informal gathering spot for gastronomists to enjoy simple, unpretentious meals at affordable prices. Yet witness the Maine lobster paella: a succulent tail and claw draped atop a pan-fried, puck-shaped disc of saffron rice studded with chorizo…
I want to slip French Kiss some tongue. I love this restaurant. The culinary ménage à trois of Marc-Antoine, Joanne Gimenez, and chef Keith Becton has created an absolutely ravishing little cafe in the nether regions of Coconut Grove, one that displays all the warmth and unpretentiousness of a neighborhood…
When Joe’s Stone Crab premiered on South Beach in 1913, it was the first classic American seafood house in the Miami area. Ninety-four years later, with the opening of the Oceanaire Seafood Room in Mary Brickell Village, we finally have our second. You are no doubt thinking that this can’t…
The beverages are totally different: At Hofbräu Beerhall, nearly every table is topped with glasses or mugs filled with golden or amber-hued fluid. At Cafe Maurice, only slightly more delicate stemware is swirled with liquids tinted straw or dark maroon. There are plenty of other dissimilarities as well, so many…
When you consider the career path of eight-time world freediving champion Yasemin Dalkilic, it’s not surprising that she and her trainer/husband, Rudi Castineyra, chose ungentrified downtown Miami as the appropriate neighborhood for their very gentrified wine bar. The pair is used to taking big risks and winning. Often referred to…
Chef Johnny Vinczencz made a name for himself during a star-making stint at the Hotel Astor from 1995 to 2000. He also made a nickname for himself, “the Caribbean Cowboy,” which he discarded after leaving town and riding off to other restaurants in Palm Beach (Sundy House) and Broward (Johnny…
Is there any animal more abused than the chicken? Most begin and live their brief existence in mammoth farm-factories under conditions so dire they make the black hole of Calcutta appear merely gray. Then it’s off to the poultry processing plants, Dante’s seventh circle of finger-lickin’-good hell, where they’re killed…
