The Incan word tambo refers to small inns that once populated the mountainous terrain of pre-Columbian Peru. Tambo, the new Japanese-Peruvian restaurant in Miami Beach, resembles neither a small inn nor anything you’d ever stumble across in mountainous terrain. In fact with its mosaic tile floor, sand-color walls, white tablecloths,…
Of the nine countries normally referred to as Southeast Asia (Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Malaysia, Singapore, Laos, Indonesia, and, stretching it a bit geographically but not culinarily, the Philippines), the cuisines of the first two are by far the most well-known over here. But despite far more American contact with…
There’s been a lot of talk lately about airline security, but precious little about being able to secure a good airport meal while waiting through the delays that these defensive concerns necessitate. I wouldn’t mind having to bide my time at the Houston airport for an extra hour or two…
With a name like Jacky Chan’s Superbowl, what diners would expect is ramen. And in fact Jacky turns out quite a super bowl of this soup; unlike the cheap, packaged, supermarket ramens that got most of us through our impoverished student days, the broth tastes like real stock instead of…
A fresh piece of fish doesn’t require a lot of dressing up to be alluring. Salt, pepper, drizzle of olive oil, sprinkle of lemon juice, and smattering of chopped herbs are more than enough. For some people. Others like their seafood adorned with additional flavors and textures and sauces and…
Since September 11 diners have been holing up at home instead of going out to eat. Not that this survivalist homing instinct has necessarily extended to doing our own home cooking. While formerly hot-ticket restaurants may be relatively empty, many shops selling ready-made gourmet food have found a new market…
On the first day, Mark Soyka declared: “I am opening News Café on Ocean Drive, and a thriving beachside boulevard shall spring up around it.” And that came to pass. Soyka next declared: “I am opening Van Dyke Café on Lincoln Road, and a thriving pedestrian mall shall spring up…
South Florida tourist agencies are gauging where the local economy stands by reading lines on comparative graphs. I got to thinking that a more accurate way to assess the matter would be by studying a real line — like the one that forms at Joe’s Stone Crab. Or used to…
Its proper name may be the 1909 Café but everybody calls it the 1909 Sandwich Shop, for good reason — several, actually. One is that “café” is an awfully optimistic description for a totally unatmospheric lunch-counter space in a downscale minimall, with only four or five tiny tables lining one…
The sign on the door of the little storefront window reads, “A Couple of Basketcases.” That’s the name of Caron Coles’s gift-basket company on 151st Street in North Miami that shares space and uses the specialty food products of her larger enterprise, Foodalicious, to fill those baskets. Upon entering the…
If Nobuyuki Matsuhisa’s name is less known nationally than Wolfgang Puck’s, it is only because the latter is easier to spell. And also because Austrian-born/French-trained Puck’s rep-building restaurant Spago had already established itself as the spot for rich-and-famous Angelinos years before Japanese-born-and-trained Matsuhisa arrived in la-la land, after a culinary…
When we heard the first explosion through an open bedroom window, my wife and I thought it might be thunder. This occurred the day of our arrival. Soon afterward military helicopters buzzed precariously low overhead, and every now and then a jet fighter would crack the silence of the city…
All over New Jersey this time of year, people brave parking-lot-type traffic jams to drive west to the Poconos to see the fall foliage. This is true even of those who live in tree-studded “garden” suburbs like Montclair, where there are plenty of leaves of all colors right at home…
Home Depot and the Latin-flavored bakery chain Don Pan are inextricably linked in my mind, and not just because I am an unabashed fan of both places. Whenever I pull into the Depot parking lot, I salivate with Pavlovian anticipation, knowing from habit that after stocking up on house supplies…
Would you compare Norman’s to Piola Pizza? Well, neither would I. Each is great at what it is. In fact the only fair way to judge restaurants is not by one scale but by trying to evaluate how well any given restaurant succeeds according to its own individual definition, which…
On May 29, 1913, as a string orchestra performed in the restaurant of the Savoy hotel in London, two diners rose from their chairs and began dancing. As others followed suit, tables were pushed aside to clear space, and social tradition was overturned. Previous to this night, dining and dancing…
There’s been much mention in recent weeks, by food writers, of comfort food. What there hasn’t been much of is scientific evidence that any such thing as edible anti-stress substances exist; even the New York Times could only come up with a few distinguished doctors pontificating that many people find…
Miami’s Mexican restaurants are, for the most part, utterly predictable: margarita, chips, salsa, burrito-enchilada-fajitas, and the bill, por favor. Usually the only question is whether they’ll make you suffer through a mariachi band. I wasn’t expecting much different from Javier’s Cantina Mexicana and was perhaps even less encouraged than usual…
It was mere weeks, not the usual months or years, after becoming Wish’s executive chef in 1999 that Andrea Curto began garnering national awards and great reviews as the hottest food thing in South Florida since Scotch bonnet peppers. And the very first national rave, a pick of Wish in…
I returned home hounded by two nagging questions: What is Zür New World Cuisine restaurant really all about? And what, exactly, is a zür? The latter query was answered easily enough by asking over the phone. Turns out zür means “nothing in particular.” As for the first, more relevant question…
“Astonish me!” the impresario Diaghilev commanded then-nobody writer Jean Paul Sartre on a Paris street corner back in the Thirties. And soon-to-be-somebody Sartre did just that. But according to my friend Robert, a lifelong Southern Florida native I originally met because he’s on the board of my life partner’s temple,…
South Beach, Sunday, 10:30 a.m. I walk into Tropical on the Beach, on Washington Avenue between Fourteenth and Fifteenth streets. It’s a massive space, with some 200 seats and 50 silver Deco light fixtures hanging from the lofty ceiling. The bulbs are muted now, as more than enough natural rays…
