I would venture to say that Blue Anchor Pub has a more storied history than any other Delray Beach dining or drinking establishment. The first story begins in 1865, when the William Younger Brewery opened the Blue Anchor off London’s Chancery Lane. It is said that two of Jack the…
Wilton Drive, Wilton Manors’ main drag, is lined with gay-oriented restaurants, clubs, and businesses; it seems a short stretch of San Francisco has fallen from the sky and landed intact. Of course, in most ways, the city is just like any other — it simply has more men. Likewise, Costello’s…
South Florida and the Mediterranean region are separated by the vast Atlantic Ocean, yet on either side, one can observe the same ritual in approaching that body of water: People wearing bathing suits, timidly dipping their toes in, gauging the temperature, methodically working their way up to the ankles, then…
I once got Paul Prudhomme so upset that his large, round, bearded face turned as red as a kidney bean. It occurred while I was interviewing him, in his K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen in New Orleans, and mistakenly referred to a certain Cajun dish as Creole. Prudhomme chastised me with so…
Everything about Nikki Marina is pretty. For instance, the marina provides a lovely Intracoastal backdrop for al fresco dining or sitting with a drink at a tiki-ish gazebo bar in the tranquil courtyard. This outdoor lounge area boasts a gurgling fountain, carved wooden crocodile benches padded with plush white pillows,…
The first things you notice about Chitralada Thai Restaurant are the glowing reviews it has received from various Broward County publications. You can’t help it — they’re posted on the storefront windows, plastered on walls by the entrance, and slapped atop every tabletop, with sheet of glass above and wrinkled…
Gabose Restaurant
Sol Kitchen in Delray Beach is the sunny new sister of 32 East. Both are located on the same block of East Atlantic Avenue in Delray Beach, both are operated by the Straub restaurant team, and both offer menus orchestrated by Executive Chef Nick Morfogen, whose glowing résumé includes training…
One way to describe Luce, a recent arrival to downtown Hollywood, is to say that it is an attractive new bar that serves decent brick-oven pizza and better-than-average Italian-style bar food. Another description would be: a poorer-than-average Italian restaurant with a bar. In either case, Luce (pronounced “LOO-che”) serves as…
A new restaurant called Bong has opened on the site where Boca Raton’s popular Mezzanotte restaurant used to stand. The space has been totally revamped, allegedly at a cost of $2.7 million; after taking a good look around, I can only wonder where all that money went. It’s not that…
My theory that the upcoming presidential election may be determined by an incident involving Cheez Whiz is admittedly something of a long-shot. The scenario began in Philadelphia, early on in the Democratic primaries, when John Kerry sauntered into the landmark Pat’s King of Steaks and proceeded to place an order…
It was in 1925 that Addison Mizner’s land purchases, resort developments, and fanciful Spanish Revival architecture jump-started Boca Raton’s transformation from tiny, unincorporated town to sprawling land of luxury, retirees, and strip malls. The Banyan Bar & Grill at the Addison is a new moniker for the swank American restaurant…
Writer Calvin Trillin’s vision of purgatory is one in which he spends an eternity eating at the best Chinese restaurant that has ever existed, but his dining partners, “strictly meat-and-potatoes men,” do all the ordering for the table. “Maybe we should have some of that chop-suey stuff,” one of them…
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Belleme & Schwartz might sound like a law firm, but they are, respectively, the outgoing and incoming chefs at Boca Center’s highly regarded Zemi restaurant. Both men boast worthy credentials: John Belleme cut his chops at Max’s Grille before becoming chef/co-owner at Zemi when it opened four years ago in…
La Piazza Pasta Cafe doesn’t need this review. On a recent Saturday evening, there was a 30-minute wait to get into the Hollywood newcomer, followed by a harrowing, hostess-led trek through narrow aisles chaotically gridlocked with diners and waiters squeezing — and I mean squeezing — by. Our crowded push…
Johnny Vinczencz glides among venues like a cat burglar, stealing the hearts of diners from Miami-Dade to Palm Beach counties, leaving behind only discarded aliases and wistful memories of his bold kitchen antics. Vinczencz, a.k.a. “Johnny V,” was first noticed in the early ’90s as sous chef at Max’s South…
Chez Laurent
Location, location, location are indeed three big factors in determining the success of a restaurant — if, by success, you mean that the restaurateur makes a lot of money. When searching for an eatery that’s successful in putting out great food, however, location, location, location are three things you should…
A heralded, old-fashioned ice cream parlor, general store, and “country kitchen,” Jaxson’s opened in 1956 on South Federal Highway in Dania Beach. The specialty of the house can be taken quite literally. It is the “kitchen sink,” an actual basin complete with plumbing attachments and filled with dozens of scoops…
In early December, food writer Raymond Sokolov shocked the gastronomic world when he published his Wall Street Journal article titled “The Overrated Restaurant.” In it, he wrote, “We live in a world in which overrating restaurants is as rife as grade inflation in the Ivy League, thanks to what seems…
Nothing irks me more than a mishandled dining trend. Cuisine, it seems, tends to react like adults who were abused as children — it grows up, identifies with the attacker, and makes us diners feel like the victims. Red Coral is a case in point. The two-month-old Fort Lauderdale restaurant…
