The woman making my sandwich is dark-haired, petite, and pretty, her hands deft, with a smile that comes easily while she works. She slices a roll, spreads it with sauce, lards it with cold cuts and vegetables — a sprig of this, a sprinkling of that. The sandwich is universal;…
Gary Stewart caught the bug in his early 20s. He was working in a hi-fi store, and a neighbor who owned the wine shop next door offered to trade a few cases of wine for a stereo. Stewart did the deal and ended up with several dozen bottles of Bordeaux,…
There may be 250 ways to make a lobster quesadilla, but the one sitting on the table in front of me is perfect. Maybe the transient quality of the dish lends it poignancy — Florida lobster season lasts only a few months, so these big, buttery chunks of meat nestled…
A deluge of rain cascaded over our car as we drove toward the Spanish restaurant Costa Mar (18250 Collins Ave., Sunny Isles Beach, 305-933-5900). We continued past the gigantic, glitzy condos that have effectively severed the beach from Sunny Isles Beach along this strip of Collins Avenue (suggested neighborhood motto:…
Maybe because one side of my family is made up of scrappy small-time entrepreneurs who founded shanty towns in the central Florida scrub, named those towns after themselves, manufactured fake money called scrip to pay their laborers, and eventually ruled the surrounding palmettos with cussed determination, I have a soft…
You’ve got to love Testa’s (221 Royal Poinciana Way, Palm Beach, 561-832-0992) the way you love some doddering aunt: The lady was born in 1921 and deserves a break. You’ve grown fond of her foibles. And like many old-school Palm Beach ladies, Testa’s is almost deliberately un-chic; that dowdiness is…
Someone’s in the kitchen with Michael Blum. Like 40 or 50 someones. You don’t have to go behind the scenes to find out what’s really going on at Michael’s Kitchen: Just take a front row seat at the bar, or sink into one of the nearby leather banquettes, and watch…
It’s been said that the three great cuisines of the world are French, Chinese, and Turkish. Well, quite a few of us can identify a plate of General Tso’s chicken or a filet of sole bonne femme when it’s plopped down in front of us, but how many Americans know…
We recently ventured over to the grand opening of Seasons 52 at the Galleria Mall (2428 E. Sunrise Blvd., Fort Lauderdale, 954-537-1052). It’s the second installment in what will undoubtedly become a gargantuan chain of restaurants courtesy of Darden Inc. Darden runs Olive Garden, Red Lobster, and Smokey Bones; the…
South Florida’s sushi-loving elite has struck gold at Sushi Jo (319 Belvedere Rd., Number 12, West Palm Beach, 561-868-7893): Witness the Jags, Mercedes, and Lexae cramming its strip-mall parking lot on any given Friday — you know these babies aren’t pulling up for the adjacent mini-mart or thrift store. That…
When Julio Iglesias wants to feed all the women he’s loved before, he calls on Rino Balzano. There are two reasons. First, he knows that Balzano will deliver quality Italian cooking that will have them begging for seconds. Second, as kind and talented as he may be, Balzano just isn’t…
If you’re a fan of Virginia Woolf, you’ll remember the scene in her novel To the Lighthouse, when Mrs. Ramsey serves a painstakingly prepared daube de boeuf to an honored dinner guest. “Everything depended upon things being served up to the precise moment they were ready. The beef, the bay…
Denizens of Lake Worth are divided into three camps: people who think La Bonne Bouche (516 Lucerne Ave., 561-533-0840) is the best French café downtown, those who favor L’Avenue (4 S. “O” St., 561-540-4166), and those who never set foot in either because the proprietors of both are so grumpy…
Leave it to Americans to make foreign foods the victims of our gluttony. Ever had a slice of pizza in Italy? In its natural habitat, it looks and tastes nothing like the greasy, flat, big-as-your-plate, cheese-blanketed versions found under heat lamps at the mall. The same goes for what we…
Think of Edward Hopper’s classic all-night diner painting, NightHawks. Add flat-screen TVs, a full liquor bar, stuffed Jackalope heads, and a digital jukebox. Then mentally fill all Hopper’s empty stools with happy customers. Residents of the neither-here-nor-there land on that stretch of Dixie Highway between West Palm Beach and Lake…
Some restaurants have it almost despite themselves. Others never get it, no matter how hard they try. Tramonti has it — the buzz, the zip, the electric surge of happy diners enjoying fine food and service in an atmosphere still informal enough to let people table-hop and howl through “Happy…
I’m not going to lie to you: The place is a few doors down from Hollywood Spice Adult Books and the Discount Trailer Warehouse, tucked away behind a blank storefront on a stretch of State Road 441 where you can shop till you drop for auto parts. If you’re looking…
Owners of Italian restaurants must be blessed with a fierce risk-taking gene. Not counting pizza parlors and factoring out Olive Garden and Carrabba’s, there must be 300 Italian places scattered around Broward and Palm Beach counties. The competition is so cut-throat that if you’re drawing up a menu featuring chicken…
Have a hankering for some strawberry Pocky? Trying to find boiled fern for your favorite recipe? Where can you go to find such unusual items, you ask? OK, well maybe you didn’t ask, but you should still check out your local Oriental market some day. There, minerals, vegetables, and animals…
Some things just don’t go together well. Take, for example, liquor and red wine. Ammonia and bleach. Or Jacko and Lisa Marie. However, some things, strange as they may seem, make sense together, like Bowie and Iman, Woody Allen and Soon-Yi… even Martha Stewart and her jail cell. When it…
“I want to be the next Emeril, the next Wolfgang Puck, the next Norman Van Aiken,” Michael Blum says. Judging from his plans for a 5,000-square-foot space at 2000 Harrison St. in Hollywood, it may be only a matter of time. “We’re about food that’s in-your-face, Cirque de Soleil dining…
Himalaya, the West Broward Indian restaurant that opened in the middle of 2001, presents a problem peculiar (and challenging) to food critics and their readers. Three years ago, the small (ten booths, six tables) establishment received the customary rush of reviewers eager to taste and tell. Their opinions, full of…
