If you’ve ever seen the amazing Brazilian movie City of God, you probably recall the chicken chase whenever you think of Rio de Janeiro. In the opening shots, a group of starving street kids takes off after a fowl that’s barely escaped the raised cleaver at a fried chicken stand;…
Come back, Jeffrey! “It was a small dog, a Japanese breed. His name was Lulu. He was allowed to sleep in the Emperor’s great bed. During various ceremonies, he would run away from the Emperor’s lap and pee on dignitaries’ shoes. The august gentlemen were not allowed to flinch or…
A tortilla at El Tamarindo, perfectly round, exuding a pleasant, grassy-floral scent, has the appealing softness and density of warm skin, like the dusky feel of a burro’s neck. The only relation it bears to a Frito’s chip or a boxed taco shell is that it’s made from corn. And…
That stuff will kill you If there is anything worse for a restaurant than having one of its customers contract food poisoning, it is having that stricken diner be in the process of reviewing the establishment. The good news for Rotelli Pizza Pasta Perfect, at 501 E. Atlantic Avenue in…
When I was a kid, my grandmother and grandfather fought their most vicious battles over scotch lowballs and plates of cannelloni at a Palm Beach Italian place called Maurice’s. He was an aging artist, she a lifelong floozy and tippler 25 years his junior, and their shrill skirmishes were part…
“You’ve reached what was previously known as Madiba Miami,” says the recorded voice on the telephone. “We are now open for private parties and catering only.” And so we bid farewell to this hip import from Brooklyn, which had seemingly settled in comfortably on the west side of South Beach…
Keep Out! Someone recently regaled me with too many details concerning a bout of food poisoning she suspected having caught at the raw bar of a waterfront seafood restaurant in Coconut Grove. I hear such tales quite often, and as one who dines out multiple times weekly, can sympathize with…
Downtown Hollywood makes me happy. I pretend I don’t have a clue about which developer is lining which politician’s pockets, what kind of crummy deals are being cut behind the scenes, who the corrupt lawmakers are. I see no evil. The cops who hover perpetually outside the doors of Spice…
For most of human history, meals have been shared. Today’s place-setting conventions — the individual serving plate, the personal spoon, the pristine wine glass meant for one’s lips alone — are pretty recent evolutions in finickiness. Time was, in just about every culture we scooped our meals with our fingers…
Lots of restaurant deaths to report in the Miami dining world these days. For those keeping score: SouthWest NY didn’t last a New York minute in the Dolphin Mall. Maybe it’s because the menu read like a fast food Tex-Mex joint (“with French and Latin influences”) — which is not…
I hear if you’re going to travel anywhere these days and you’re interested in food, you’d better go to Saigon. As George Bush would have us believe, the city is one great, big U.S. success story and a lesson in our famous American patience (the Communist government, which adopted an…
In his novel Ulysses, James Joyce introduces hero Leopold Bloom with a description of the man’s appetites: Mr. Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls… Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine…
Always hungry Barton G. Weiss of Barton G. The Restaurant is South Florida’s most ambitious restauranteur, constantly working with his chefs to develop outrageously clever menus and eye-popping presentations, only to revamp and start again the next season with newly brilliant concepts and concoctions. So it seemed like a perfect…
The P.R. was relentless. Paradiso, the Lake Worth restaurant owned by Chef Angelo Romano, was celebrating its tenth birthday all season long with a dish of $100 risotto. This was almost more outrageous than the $100 burger recently unveiled at the Old Homestead at Boca Raton Resort, a much-ballyhooed patty…
Where’s the beef going? “I didn’t want to change it,” Isaac Starkman told me a few years back when asked about his strategy for renovating Wolfie Cohen’s Rascal House. “I wanted to perpetuate it.” And for good reason, as during one thirteen-year period alone the landmark delicatessen in Sunny Isles…
When restaurants fail, they don’t always do it spectacularly. Sometimes it’s just a slow, gloomy slide into mediocrity, and if you happen to be sitting over dinner at one of these joints, the feeling is akin to the plummeting sensation you get at the track when your valiant steed not…
Table 8 Coming to a plate near you David Bouley Evolution, the South Beach outpost of one of New York’s finest chefs, and Table 8, the South Beach outpost of one of Los Angeles’ finest chefs, have opened their doors, almost simultaneously, less than two blocks apart from each other…
How you feel when you hear the words McCormick & Schmick’s depends a lot on context. If you’re engaged in a discussion with your broker about your stock portfolio, you’re probably going to feel pretty damned high, because the chain, which has opened more than 60 seafood restaurants since its…
You know the story. French author Marcel Proust is having tea one day. He dips a piece of cookie — a sugary, scalloped confection called a madeleine — into a spoonful of brew. The tea-cookie emanates molecules of scent. Proust tastes; he swallows. Suddenly, he’s there, a small child in…
News is trickling back from the Big Apple: The City That Never Sleeps has developed narcolepsy. Friends report emerging from an evening meeting in Manhattan with a powerful appetite for uni and rice wine only to find that all the joints have closed. And if Greenwich Village can’t satisfy our…
Please don’t try this at home. If your IQ rivals that of the season’s favorite feathered bird and you fear being able to fry one without inadvertently setting alight to your person, children, home, pet, and/ or relatives, listen up. Miami-Dade Fire Rescue staged a fiery little demo this past…
“Authentic Mexican? You’d be eating grubs rolled in a tortilla. Fried grasshoppers. Tripe.” Eduardo Pria didn’t think Norte Americanos were ready for that kind of “authentic” when he opened his Fort Lauderdale restaurant in 1993, even though some of the hoitier hotels back in Mexico City were already experimenting with…
