When I was growing up, ham and I had a difference of opinion. Upon arriving at a holiday soiree at which the main course was ham, I’d fantasize about taking it outside, blindfolding it, stepping back 25 paces or so, and letting loose with an AR-15 rifle on the big…
I’m familiar with the Caribbean: Tropical islands, year ’round sun and humidity, and unique cuisine. I am not at all familiar with the Caribean. Shopping around my local farmer’s market, I find a clear plastic bag filled with four large, brown cakes labeled “Caribean Sizzles.” As has become my unfortunate…
Make no mistake; Tim Boyd is a lady’s man. There’s something about Boyd, the 42-year-old chef and owner of the Mustard Seed Bistro in Cooper City, that seems to attract women. Maybe it’s his amber brown hair and his deep, pronounced cheekbones or his lanky, boyish gait. Because when Boyd…
Haitian-born chef Ron Duprat lasted six episodes on Top Chef Las Vegas, eventually succumbing to some subpar paella. A jovial guy with a hearty laugh, Duprat is an easy person to like — if only the same could be said of the food at his restaurant in the Hollywood Beach…
In one of the most-talked-about moves in food journalism since… well, as long as I can remember, Frank Bruni hung up his silverware at the New York Times in August, leaving a gaping chasm for his successor, the Times’ own Sam Sifton, to wedge into. Sifton’s very first column –…
Here’s what New Times wrote about Gran Forno Bakery in our 2001 Best Of Issue:To find Gran Forno, you could look for the storefront window that displays bakers at work, or you could simply close your eyes (mind your step) and follow your nose. The smell of bread, savory with…
Jazziz Bistro, the swank supper club in the Seminole Hard Rock and sister “venue” to Jazziz magazine, closed in April of this year. Since then, the site has remained empty, with a lot of speculation as to what is going in there. Now the rumor mill is brewing, and some…
Last week I checked out Ron Duprat’s restaurant in the Hollywood Beach Marriott, Latitudes Beach Cafe. I high hopes for Duprat’s food after catching the Haitian-born chef on this season of the Bravo series Top Chef, even if longtime critic Gail Shepherd had once ravaged the place with such a…
If you’ve been making do with brown lettuce and rock-hard tomatoes from your local giant-mega-supermarket and counting the days until you could buy produce with real flavor from the people who actually grow it, you have only a few more days to check off. Most Palm Beach County greenmarkets will…
On deck this week: our review of Mustard Seed Bistro, a quaint French-inspired eatery in Cooper City. It’s the product of Tim and Lara Boyd, a pair of restaurateurs now in their second location since selling Plantation’s Upper Crust Cafe in 2004. Like their last effort, Milk and Honey, the…
For me, passing a barbecue stand on the side of the road is like seeing a leprechaun handing out gold bullion — I pull my car over as fast as possible and get in line. So when I came across Troy’s Bar-Be-Que this weekend, I had to check it out…
Although Clean Plate Charlie is the only food blog you need to read on a daily basis, some people just can’t get enough. Here are some highlights of other food blogs to keep you going.Chow and Chatter is a little cluttered with the banners and side bars, but the content…
This week on the blog:Top Chef contestant Ron Duprat does it for the kiddies, and serves some great sea bass at Whole Foods’ Lifestyle Center. Southern-fried Louisiana cookery lands out west with Creolina’s Dixie Takeout, and the staff is still just as sweet.In Love Bites, Riki finds true love, but…
Last week we suggested our top five Dine Out Lauderdale choices, a list punctuated by one Cafe Maxx. Based on our visit this week, we were right: Cafe Maxx has come up with a spectacular Dine Out menu that gives you more than just a little sample of the restaurant’s…
There’s an episode of Pee-wee’s Playhouse in which Pee-wee is talking about how much he loves fruit salad, and Miss Yvonne says that if he loves it so much, maybe he should marry it. So he does. Now, I like a guy with the courage of his convictions, but for…
It’s become a sad fact of reality in the restaurant scene: businesses are closing every day, and by the dour way in which the best and brightest restaurateurs are talking, there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight.That makes what happened last week at Tamarac’s Kuluck Persian Restaurant and…
Once again, I was wandering through my local grocery store when something caught my eye as being completely out of place. Here, in the cereal aisle is a whole shelf of Alpina Yogurt with Cereal. Just to be clear, the cereal aisle at Publix is completely void of refrigeration. As…
• If Clematis Street weren’t smokin’ already, it will be by year’s end with the debut of Off the Hookah, the second SoFla location for the Fort Lauderdale-based company. We’re not talking subtle here. Look for waterfalls, belly dancers and “flair” bartenders to go along with a Middle Eastern-Mediterranean menu…
The shrimp and grits in front of me at Creolina’s Dixie Takeout in Davie fill the entire white, oval plate. Almost two dozen plump shrimp are bathing in a pool of pink tasso cream sauce so abundant that it’s managed to spread underneath the dish of collard greens on the…
Mediterranean cuisine in South Florida has come to be synonymous with throwing around napkins and guzzling ouzo while dancing on top of the tables. But Taza makes a distinct break from that tradition. The swank, modern-fashioned restaurant located along 17th Street Causeway, home of the power lunch. Here, suits looking…
Check it out: The Sicilian Oven, one of the best pizza joints in Broward County, is planning to open its second location by early next year.Worstpizza.com is reporting that Andrew Garavuso and crew will move into the 3,100-square-foot storefront formerly occupied by DiSalvo’s at 10140 W. Sample Road in Coral…
Da Francesco’s, the group that for five months operated the organic Italian restaurant of the same name in Palm Beach, was denied an injunction last week against 251 Partners that would have seen them take back control of their restaurant. The order came down by way of Palm Beach Circuit…
