There’s only one country in the world that could take something so crude, a list of ingredients any bumpkin ought to have within reach — a bit of flour, egg, milk, and butter — and turn it into a foodstuff that encapsulates, at once, the historic marriage of Catherine de…
Del Vecchio’s Italian Fishery appears to be run by a mythic race of men who are just, well, larger than the rest of us. They’re the guys whose ancestors clambered up and down beanstalks reaching to the sky; who, like a certain Philistine felled by a sling shot, measured “six…
Hip, sexy, and sophisticated is how I would describe local restaurateurs Brandon Belluscio and Brian Albe… er, no, actually, I wouldn’t. I haven’t a clue how hip and sexy these two guys are; I’m just reading the news release. I do know the dudes are just a smidge past their…
Ask an American what he thinks of the Turkish people or Turkish food and, if all goes well, you’ll get a blank stare. What we don’t know about Turkey would fill the dome of the Hagia Sophia. Americans wishing to catch up could do worse than to begin with plates…
It’s a recent Monday night on Clematis Street, and the only restaurants doing much business after 9 are Cabana, Pizza Girls, and Pistache French Bistro. Not too long ago, West Palm downtowners liked to kvetch that the devil’s triangle around the library, at the eastern end of Clematis, had a…
There’s a little amusement you can indulge in at the Whale Raw Bar and Fish House in Parkland while you’re waiting for your basket o’ steamers. It’s like those snag-the-stuffed-toy things at bowling alleys. A tank filled with a half-dozen live lobsters is the kind of lure a gambler like…
We’ve evolved to protect ourselves from dangerous food. We have a genetic predisposition to find spoiled vittles repellent, and we must “acquire a taste” for bitter or stinky foodstuffs like coffee or Campari because weird-tasting food could be poisonous. On some level, perhaps the molecular one, we know that each…
Elvis Ramirez Where: Mi Peru, 1760 Miami Gardens Drive, Aventura, (305) 940 9404. What $15 Gets You: A big plate of chaufa with meat and a drink. For those who lump Latin cuisine into a category consisting of rice, beans and some sort of meat, Mi Peru in Aventura is…
Mark’s, which New Times cited as one of Miami’s few “solid, serious venues” for dining, is shutting its doors on South Beach and in West Palm Beach. “I’m sorry to inform you that we have closed this location,” says a recording at the former South Beach restauarant, located at the…
Another one, but not just any one. Mark’s South Beach, in the Hotel Nash, is no more. Perhaps not surprising, as The Nash was a curiously low-profile address for so high-profile a chef. It was out of sight from the street and, as far as locals were concerned, pretty much…
Coral Springs isn’t exactly inundated with ethnic dining options — if the suburban west Broward community of young families and Fort Lauderdale commuters had an official restaurant, it would be Olive Garden, with Taco Bell a strong second. But in the past two years the chain-plagued city has seen a…
If you’re like Amy Winehouse, Rod Stewart, and Tony Bennett, you got married for the first or third time in May or June. That means your anniversary will soon be upon you like an anvil dropped from a cliff. And I’ll bet you haven’t done a damn thing to save…
Here’s a restaurant with volume set to “max,” 14,000 square feet of surround-sound at the Fort Lauderdale Grande’s new China Grill. From design to dames it’s all spilling over the top: Take the flocks of unescorted single girls, their ruby slippers clackety-clacking on tile floors inlaid with quotes from Marco…
No details yet, other than that earlier this week Michael Bloise, one of Miami’s star chefs, left his position at Wish restaurant in The Hotel on South Beach. Bloise’ menus at Wish were as provocative, whimsical, and innovative — not to mention tasty — as any in town. Who else…
Read anything about Mexican mole (pronounced MOLE-ay), a sauce so contrarian few have been able to define it, and you’ll probably run across at least two origin stories. One involves a 17th-century nun named Sor Andrea de la Asunción. Panicked about how to feed a visiting archbishop, the good sister…
Where: Asaka, 20355 Biscayne Blvd., 33180, (305) 682-9331 What $15 Gets You: Miso soup, salad, several california rolls, chicken katsu, vanilla ice cream tempura (or wine). Sushi is one of those foreign dishes that have become as American as apple pie (apple fish pie). It’s not strange to ingest the…
What’s your favorite food? Whatever I’m eating at the moment. Whatever I just ate. Whatever I might eat tomorrow. Right now, faced with a cuisine you might call Austro-Mideast-global fusion (if that didn’t sound so ridiculous), with appetizers and entrées like conch schnitzel, escargots, fillet of kampachi with currants, Kurobuta…
The week they opened in downtown West Palm Beach, the staff at Forté di Asprinio (225 Clematis St., West Palm Beach; 561-833-3330) were happily startled when a small party spent $25,000 on food and drink and dropped a $5,000 tip. So too was it generally a relief for Clematis Street…
The affair between chef Jeffrey Brana and The Raleigh Hotel was short and quiet, if not particularly sweet. Mr. Brana, admired for his work for many years as head chef at Norman’s and then for a quick but spectacular stint at his own Restaurant Brana, was brought in to upgrade…
These days, it’s not just a question of where to find fresh produce, meat, and fish. It has to be organic. Local. Ethical. One market might have juicy, just-harvested sugar cane or a stock of lemons as large and supple as a woman’s fist, but were the laborers paid a…
I don’t want to go all maudlin here, but what the hell happened to diners? Maybe they do exist still, like endangered pachyderms retreating ever farther into inaccessible forest; you might catch a glimpse of some gleaming, bullet-shaped shadow on blue highways running through Church Hill or Greer’s Ferry or…
Spots like blissberry, a new highfalutin frozen yogurt place on Alton Road off Lincoln Road on South Beach, seem to be the dairy world’s stab at Starbucks formula. That is, overpricing products and trying to get customers not to care by making you feel trendy and special by merely ingesting…
