From plain chicken cutlets to your mama¹s homemade meatloaf, if there was any culinary staple that could rescue the bland and enhance the rich, it¹s a ladling of sauce. Sauce is what makes you savor every speck of food on your plate: scraping your fork against your dish to produce…
When One Ninety Restaurant premiered on 46th Street in Buena Vista East some four years ago, it was the first hip, bohemian-style restaurant in the area. Locals flocked to the place for the carefree environment, live music, and tasty, affordable fare. Enter greedy landlords. Exit One Ninety. Last month, after…
Sasha Issenberg is a younger guy than I had envisioned while reading his book, The Sushi Economy. I could see the youth in his face as he approached the podium at Books & Books in Coral Gables on Saturday afternoon. Then he started his talk by stating that he’s been…
Three major restaurant openings are pegged for the coming month. I am all too aware that reality rarely matches hype in the restaurant biz, but this trio truly appears to hold some promise. * On May 30th, the smartly re-designed Tides South Beach hotel will premiere its new dining establishment,…
Ouzo’s Greek Taverna & Bar has announced plans to open their second venue, to be located in the former Madiba space on South Beach’s west side — just down the block from another Mediterranean favorite, Sardinia. I’ve always enjoyed the North Miami Beach Ouzo’s, and explained why in my review…
The revolution in experimental, deconstructivist, “molecular” gastronomy was over before it began in South Florida. If we’d hoped the surreal culinary high-jinks of chefs like Ferran Adria — the half-mad Spanish genius of El Bulli, whose favorite ingredient is liquid nitrogen (he’s been known to serve parmesan-scented “frozen air” as…
Damn pizza thieves! In case you were wondering, the Midtown Miami welcome wagon is in business. And Pizzafiore, server of amazing Italian food and just one of many new fast-food joints that has popped up near the New Times offices, has received the first dose of reality that often comes…
Did you know that ninety percent of all allergic reactions in the U.S. are caused by just eight foods (milk, eggs, wheat, soy, fish, shellfish, peanuts, and tree nuts such as walnuts, almonds, cashews, pistachios, pecans, etc.)? Neither did I. Nor did I realize that twelve million Americans, or one…
LA Weekly If you see this guy, feed him well Restaurant critic Jonathan Gold (LA Weekly, a sister publication of Miami New Times) recently became the first restaurant critic to ever get honored with a Pulitzer Prize. His newspaper, in honor of the well-deserved feat (Gold is one of the…
Critical Miami Hello! Still here! With deadline for Flapjack Flip-Off VII:Bananarama (coming soon!) rapidly approaching, I found myself frantically researching the subject matter at hand: Banana pancakes. As in, who the hell in Miami serves them? As it turns out, just about nobody, which is disturbing enough. But then I…
Evidently, Starwood Hotel & Resorts is bullish on our little burg. Thumbing their noses at pesky, persistent rumors that the southern tip of Florida will eventually be as completely submerged as the Lost City of Atlantis, the optimists at Starwood have debuted two luxury resort/residences here in the past month…
Riptide is introducing a new feature that will allow readers to ask restaurant reviewer Lee Klein questions concerning the local dining scene. Is it true that Daniel Boulud will be opening a namesake establishment in downtown Miami? (Yes.) Can you get me chef Klime Kovaceski’s palacinka recipe from the now-shuttered…
You’ve really got to feel sorry for the wait staff at Latitudes Beach Café. They’re trying so hard to make the best of things — these adorable 20-somethings with their Eastern European accents and their cheery good looks. I wish I could wave my magic wand and transport them elsewhere…
When’s dinner? We didn’t give Johnny Vinczencz a very enthusiastic welcome back in our review of Johnny V South Beach, but that doesn’t mean we don’t appreciate his long-time, big-flavored contributions to our local dining scene. After all, since the mid-1990s the man has been boldly going where no chef…
It was Friday the 13th. What better night to plan a long drive out of town? I figured if I put some distance between myself and my usual haunts, I could foil the Gray Lady of Doom — she’d be shuffling through South Palm raw bars, fingering the Blue Point…
In my upcoming restaurant review of Acqua, in the Four Seasons Miami, I write of having ordered a main course of Szechuan-glazed “White Marble Farms pork shank,” and then go on to explain that this pastoral moniker is a brand name cooked up by Sysco marketers for industrial pork from…
The Biltmore Hotel’s Sunday brunch, generally acknowledged as among the very finest in town, is now, according to press materials, “expanded” and “enhanced.” As far as we can tell, the main difference is a finer fizz, as each week a different champagne from one of France’s top producers is poured…
If you catch Joseph Boueri on a slow night, say a rainy Tuesday when only a few regular customers are hunched over steamy bowls of Prince Edward Island mussels and buttery nests of shrimp parpardelle, you probably won’t need to exchange more than a couple of sentences before he beckons…
That’s a wrap! But how healthy is it? A few months back I was drawn in by the slick smoothie and sandwich-wrap marketing madness, and ditched my daily burger with fries and a Coke for a supposedly healthier alternative. I started frequenting places like Tropical Smoothie Cafe, Planet Smoothie and…
Repeat after me: oeufs, not flottante As a lifelong Luddite, when it comes to food research I prefer referencing my own collection of cookbooks to surfing the Web. This email I received (OK, I admit it, I do use a computer, too), and my response, only reinforces my distrust of…
What’s a hungry girl to do about her meat? Rich or poor, we’re getting kicked where it hurts — right in our growling stomachs. Every meal is an unhappy meal. First, it’s foie gras; now it’s KFC. I was on the verge of sending away to PETA for my “free…
Thunderstorms may have rocked much of Miami-Dade County last night, but the wet weather wasn’t enough to keep the winos from joining French-native Florent Blanchet in celebrating the two year anniversary of his W Wine Bistro . “Any excuse for a party,” grinned Blanchet between monster-size gulps of bubbles –…
