Food & Drink

Here are some things I just don’t see in every restaurant: A new hire shadowing an experienced server in order to learn the velvet ropes. A waitress who doesn’t need for me to point out the wine I order from the list but rather nods in recognition at the name…

The alligator lay sprawled across the entranceway to the walking path at Shark Valley, as stopped and unmovable as a battery-dead wristwatch, absorbing the distant warmth of the winter sun. The only way around the six-foot creature, if we wanted to even start our stroll through this part of Everglades…

If I could sum up the newly opened Tarpon Bend in Weston with one onomatopoeic word, it would be a no-brainer: burp. And that’s not because the food at this month-old eatery is indigestion-inducing, though items like the Jamaican-style conch fritters, which were more like conch patties, needed a wrap…

The politicians and the service staff in South Florida seem to have one terrible habit in common: blind endorsement. In both cases, the perennial bluff has gotten so bad that it’s impossible to believe a recommendation that either makes. Local politicos no doubt can speak for themselves — or have…

The flamenco guitarist stands on a small podium between sidewalk tables at Café del Mar. The fingernails on his right hand resemble Lee Press-Ons, thanks to a talon-sharp file and a bottle of clear nail polish, and he uses them to pick complicated patterns while alternately holding the instrument over…

No doubt it was a fluke that during a random sampling, the Food and Drug Administration found salmonella bacteria in some cumin packaged by Miami-based American Spice Co. Probably it was coincidence I came down with a stomach malady the same evening a batch of the spice was recalled from…

“Jaboticaba.” Johnny Vinczencz says the word as if he’s chewing it, standing in what can only be described as Delray Beach’s singular tropical Eden. “Jaboticaba.” Or, perhaps he says it as if he’s getting used to uttering it. The latter’s probably the more apropos metaphor, since he’s now picking that…

At the risk of sounding like a food snob, I too often find German cuisine in South Florida to be akin to writer’s block: a big, empty space where creativity and inspiration should be. It’s as if our local German-American chefs and restaurateurs invest both hearts and stomachs in dour,…

Of all the species of restaurants in the world, the steak house is no doubt the most universal. Nearly every dominant culture that morphed from hunting to herding — Italian, Japanese, Brazilian — has a themed place for steak. And each gives a simple piece of meat its own distinctive…

The campaign in Portugal is on: convince the wine-drinking world that natural cork is the only renewable resource appropriate to stop up a bottle of vino. Portuguese cork harvesters (yes, it really does come from trees) and cork-stopper manufacturers have banded together to enforce industrywide standards that will ensure a…

Funny how many elephants were in the restaurant the night I dined at the six-week-old “Thai Kitchen & Sushi Bar” Galanga in Wilton Manors. You know the kind. They’re really obvious — trunks, tusks, and all — but no one seems to notice them. Either that or the pachyderms are…

Can the owner of TGI Fridays and Krispy Kreme franchises find happiness and truly Italian cuisine in a giant shopping mall in Boca Raton? In a word, yes. Hey, I didn’t believe it either. But in the case of Pranzo, a spacious, airy space in the sprawling shopalopolis of Mizner…