Green Papaya Vietnamese Cuisine in Coral Springs

For a fun, casual take on Vietnamese, Green Papaya Vietnamese Cuisine in Coral Springs is a great deal. The above dinner is called a Hau Giang “barbecue pork chop,” but is actually a breaded piece of pork loin that’s been seared on a flat top or griddle. The cutesy plate…

Doggie Bag: This Week in Charlie

This week on the program:What’s up there, Cupcake? A pretty good, cheap Riesling, that’s what.A nomadic, artisan barbecue cart out of Lake Worth is pulling pork at bar near you.Bad customers are just as awful as bad servers. Don’t be a bad customer.Downtown’s newest barbecue joint is pumping up the…

Weekend Blog Watch

Although Clean Plate Charlie is the only food blog you need to read every day, some people just can’t get enough. Here are some highlights of other local food blogs worth checking out.Fat Kids Club, aside from having an awesome name, also have a hell of a great idea for…

Chow 13 Profiles Food Movers and Shakers

Chow.com, that home for intrepid foodists popularly known as Chowhound, published the Chow 13 last week, its list of the 13 most influential food fighters of 2009. The article is essentially 13 mini profiles complete with a host of graphic novel-like illustrations. And it’s a really fun read. Among the…

Texas Hold ´Em BBQ Moves to Downtown Fort Lauderdale in Style

Over the years, the old Texas Hold ‘Em BBQ location on Sunrise Boulevard felt sadder with each visit. It was always empty, especially near the end of its tenure there earlier this year. The benches in front of the brown- and cream-colored building looked lost and lonely; the only activity…

Park Avenue BBQ and Grill in Boynton Beach Has Great Fritters

An order of corn fritters at any one of the eight Park Avenue BBQ and Grill locations costs just $3.49 and nets you six fried balls of dough along with three condiments to decorate them with. This two-to-one condiment-to-food ratio is a recipe for fun, and the way you play…

Nance Yellow Cherries Taste Like Disappointment

My editor found a Honduran Market in Fort Lauderdale and decided to go on a shopping spree. Thankfully, he didn’t return with a basket of pig brains or things that look like tapeworms. I’m still left with quite a few questionable-looking items sitting on my desk that I’m required to…

Breakfast at Dyan’s Country Kitchen – Updated

I’ve been on the lookout lately for good breakfast places for an upcoming column, but for some reason I had forgotten about Dyan’s Country Kitchen, a diner-style breakfast spot in northern Coral Springs. Now the place is firmly locked in my memory as a great neighborhood joint to nab the…

Hoagie Heaven Comes to Boca

The folks who have been dishing up huge and hugely delectable meat blankets to sammie-savvy Browardites for 36 years have brought their overstuffed hoagies across the border to Boca Raton.  The fourth LaSpada’s Original Hoagies is now slapping together their appetite-busting eight- and 12-inch subs in The Commons shopping center,…

Reviewing the Chains: The Cheeburger Cheeburger Classic

It’s about three hours into a four-hour road trip, so I’m finally hitting the home stretch, but I can’t wait another hour to get home and eat. So I pull off the Florida Turnpike into the Lake Worth Rest Stop (mile marker 94 for those deranged enough to follow along…

Order Up: Texas Hold ‘Em BBQ

This week in Dish, we take a look at Texas Hold ‘Em BBQ, that recently relocated Fort Lauderdale smoke shack. Now on Seventh Street downtown just a block from the Andrews Avenue Publix, Texas Hold ‘Em is enjoying a renaissance thanks to more foot traffic and an invigorated approach to…

Six Things the Customer Should Always Do

If you’ve ever wondered why restaurant workers sometimes want to gouge their own eyes out or shave off all their body hair and stow away on a tramp steamer bound for Guatamala, New York restaurateur Bruce Buschel’s pair of blog posts that ran recently in the New York Times (part…

Palm Beach Steakhouse Serves Five-Hour Happy Hour

If you’re not a subscriber to our weekly Café Bites dining newsletter for Broward and Palm Beach counties, here’s a taste of what you missed this week. Click here to subscribe. “Happy hour” is sooo pre-recession. If you really want to show cash-strapped gazillionaires a deal, you gotta go “happy…

Swanky’s Low and Slow Barbecue Serves Nomadic Artisan Street Food

Aside from the occasional hot dog, it’s difficult to find food served from street carts in Broward or Palm Beach these days. But the pulled pork sandwich from Swanky’s Low and Slow Barbecue out of Lake Worth is argument enough for a return to street cookery. The clean, shiny, silver…

Doggy Bag: This Week in Charlie

Charles in charge, of our days, and our……Cheap wine, this time a Cab from Beringer….Steak and egg burgers, as in how to make them….Prime, aged steaks and the acquisition thereof….Cheese-steak-laden hearts and which sandwich we hold dearest. …Local chefs, in this case Mark Militello, who moves to the Office in…

Weekend Blog Wrap

Although Clean Plate Charlie is the only blog you need to read on a daily basis, some people just can’t get enough. Here are some highlights of other food blogs.Culinerapy is currently following the joys and trials of a pregnant blogger’s journey through nine months of feeding two foodies at…

Lolapalooza, Low ‘n’ Slow Holiday Drive, Turkeys at the Biltmore

We’ve all got a lot to be thankful for: The recession is over (supposedly), the world is still spinning, and Glenn Beck’s communist appendix finally escaped its dank cell. Hollywood eatery Lola’s on Harrison has a pretty good list too: Michael Wagner and company are going into their third season…

Even Fast-Food Giants Know: It’s Not Hard to Make an Awesome Wing

I hate chain restaurants, and they seem to be multiplying. Every time I turn around, there’s another squatting smugly across the parking lot from Best Buy or snuggled into the corner of a mall, waiting for trans-fat-hungry customers to order some sort of deep-fried, oversauced platter of bulk-purchased protein, served…

LA Weekly Critic Jonathan Gold Profiled in The New Yorker

The latest issue of The New Yorker appeared this week with a profile of Jonathan Gold, the Pulitzer Prize-winning restaurant critic for our sister paper, LA Weekly.The piece called “The Scavenger” by Dana Goodyear follows Gold down a path paved with odd edibles and organ meats, L.A.’s divey-est taco stands…

Reviewing the Chains: The Bacon Melt at Checkers

It’s a classic example of the bait and switch. During one of my recent late night television binges, I found myself drawn to a commercial that seemed to repeat during every break. It was for some kind of cheesy, bacony, Texas toasty burger at Checkers. Despite seeing the commercial at…