This is a warning: Don’t dine outside. Not this summer, anyway. Forget that an actual TV forecast the other night stated that the following day would feature “sweltering heat and miserable humidity.” Forget that the current weather patterns have spawned so many tornadoes we could be living in Kansas. Forget…
Imagine not appreciating food. Imagine not savoring the creamy delicacy of a room-temperature Brie. Not admiring the ruby redness of a perfectly ripe springtime strawberry. Not delighting in the aroma of a roasting turkey, or salivating over a crisp spear of asparagus smothered in silky Hollandaise sauce, or treasuring the…
When I was in college, one of my roommates wanted to throw a dinner party for some elite international friends, including her boyfriend, the son of a Saudi Arabian oil magnate, and a Jordanian prince. Only problem was, she couldn’t cook very well, and she didn’t trust herself not to…
“The past is like shelter,” Ricardo Pau-Llosa told me over a recent dinner at Doc Dammers Bar & Grill. “Everybody needs one.” We were discussing the “dramatic erosion of Latin culture” he has observed in the second generation of Cuban Americans. A poet, art critic, and professor of English at…
I subscribe to a variety of culinary publications not so much because I cook, but because I like to keep up with those professionals — you know, chefs and restaurateurs — who do. Since I can’t go to restaurants all over the world, I figure the least I can do…
Once upon a time, the kitchen was a great place to hide. Men and women could choose the cooking biz not only to showcase their talents in the culinary arts, but also for the privacy that was afforded them as they toiled in obscurity behind those swinging doors. Celebrity chefdom…
Every time I’ve gone to Little Havana for Cuban food lately, I’ve come home without having had any. It’s not that I can’t find a decent Cuban restaurant on Calle Ocho; some of the best cafeterias and bodegas line this strip. But in the past couple of years, rents on…
It’s that time again. Every year some local incident reignites the Great Language Debate. Who should speak English and risk miscommunicating? Who should speak Spanish and risk offending others? Clearly the issue will never be resolved. But it’s too juicy a piece of meat to leave uncut, so year after…
I often find myself wondering, as the millennium approaches, where this country’s cuisine goes from here. In the Seventies overseas chefs introduced us to nouvelle cuisine, with those perfect, tiny morsels set in the middle of huge plates and served in elaborately stuffy restaurants or beneath mirror balls in nightclubs…
Remember that old saw, “You can’t judge a book by its cover”? Sure, it’s a cliche, but like all cliches it has a basis in truth. We all make assumptions based on appearances, every day of our lives. Even in these politically proper Nineties, when everyone works so hard not…
Late in the afternoon, look at the sky: cerulean blue, marred like a bruise with the portent of thunderstorms. A sure sign of summer. But how can that be when the tourist season hasn’t ended yet? Daylight Savings Time, a marker that to most of the country signals spring but…
This past fall, when I took a job as an elementary school teacher, I didn’t give any thought to what havoc this career move would wreak on that most sacred hour of the day: lunchtime. In the grade-school biz we get half an hour, which is often chiseled to twenty…
As human beings, we’re all pretty much assured that whatever happens to us has, at some point, happened to somebody else. An experience can be wonderful or horrifying, but it’s almost certainly not unique. Simply by virtue of being able to use our thumbs, walk upright, and talk, we belong…
As I inched my way toward my master’s degree in poetry at the University of California in Irvine, I took solace in one thing: After every brutal workshop in which we deconstructed each other’s work until at least one of us cried in the bathroom and the rest vowed never…
I was strolling down the transformed Lincoln Road on a recent weekday evening, winding my way among the outdoor cafe tables and marveling at how much the artsy ol’ mall now looks like Boca Raton, when I got caught up in the crowd near South Beach Brasserie. Locals and tourists…
In an American Express TV commercial, a young man hosts his first business dinner in a posh restaurant. At the conclusion of the meal, which has been successful so far, he cavalierly hands a credit card to the waiter. Cut to the server, holding the card (another company’s, of course)…
Boy, am I sick of being a woman. Seems like everywhere I go in this macho town, someone’s got to do something or say something patronizing to remind me of my gender. I go jogging, I get kissing sounds and catcalls — even at five o’clock in the morning. I…
Chef-proprietors rise up in all manner of ways. Some go the academic route, attending culinary school and scoring internships under well-known chefs. Others work their way up the line, discovering a love for cooking accidentally, perhaps as an end product of part-time teenage jobs. A few (too many) jump headlong…
“Look at that!” my husband said in disgust, pointing to a boutique blazing light from a corner of South Atlantic Boulevard, the erstwhile Fort Lauderdale Strip. “Can you believe that?” I looked. The place was open and seemed to be attracting a steady business. “So?” “What do you mean so?…
I don’t know if it was a result of navigating through the closely packed tables or just innate clumsiness, but our server at Coco’s Sidewalk Cafe seemed born to bobble. He dribbled water on the floor, knocked over a glass of our wine on his tray, and tripped over the…
So you’re an inventive, creative chef, tops in your field. You finally run your own place, and you’re doing fusion things with regional ingredients no one in South Florida has ever seen before. You’re booked to the max every night with reservations. Your patrons adore you. The media, local and…
“You could really learn some food-avoidance behaviors in this place,” my friend Rick said when we walked into six-week-old Cafe Aqua, located between Euclid and Pennsylvania avenues on the newly revamped Lincoln Road. He peered at the moray eel, nurse shark, and spiny lobster that cohabit in one of the…
