Now that the scent of rotten mangoes has (mostly) ceased to waft across my yard, thanks to an early peak season, I have begun to detect other aromas in the air: The prix-fixe, all-you-can-eat, kids-eat-free, free-wine-with-entrée, early-birds-get-soup-or-salad, 20-percent-off-the-total-check,20-bucks-off-checks-over-50-bucks,buy-one-menu-item-get-one-at-equal-or-lesser-value-free special. Yup, I can sniff out just about any restaurant’s summer promotion…
We Americans are ridiculed the world over for our use of ketchup. We put it on everything, critics say, without discretion. Probably so, but in culinary reality, just about every culture has its singular condiment. The Brits love brown sauce. The French adore aioli. The Chinese couldn’t do without duck…
The scenario should be a familiar one — big-name New York City chef-proprietor decides to open South Florida outpost, wants ritzy hotel either to house it or something nearby for a given supply of upscale clientele, chooses South Beach as the likeliest location. Enough celeb chefs have followed this path…
We will start, you and I, at the top of this page and the top of Tsunami, a six-month-old Asian fusion restaurant at CityPlace in West Palm Beach. To our left, we see the gracefully curving stairway that took us up to this fifth tier, known as the “mezzanine bar,”…
It is advised to take the name Louie’s Tequila Cantina quite literally: The spacious and sprawling 160-seat restaurant is designed cantina-style (read: Mexican saloon), and tequila is its forté. The décor is dominated by promotional marketing for various brand-name alcohols — it’s on the walls, over the bar, and strung…
“My dick hurts.” As far as opening lines go, yup, that’s an attention-getter. But it’s hardly an auspicious beginning to a serious poem. When it’s being shouted in a sing-song rhythm that would translate to paper as something like, “Maaahh diiick HURTS!” that elicits more titters of derision than oohs…
Innate skepticism has always prevented me from relying on religious relics in my personal life, and a loathing of clichés has long stopped me from referring metaphorically to them in my writing. But in this case, I just can’t resist: I have found the Holy Grail of chain-restaurant dining. It…
The mangoes are falling, the temperature is rising, and the tourists are leaving. What does it all mean? The obvious and inevitable, of course — summer, with all its vacation implications, is upon us. The bad news is that this is going to be a very domestic summer. Wars and…
“First time here, huh?” remarked the bartender at Dinopete’s as he handed my kids a pair of Cokes. “You picked an interesting night to come in.” “How so?” we wanted to know. We’d sampled Dinopete’s signature chicken wings, bathed in a butter/whole-peppercorn sauce, at a child’s first birthday party the…
I should know this by now: Never trust a restaurant whose written history has more mythological quantity to it than the Greeks and Romans combined. Chances are the quality of food is similarly a figment of somebody’s overwrought imagination. I’m not exactly sure what led me to Iguana Mia in…
A reader recently wrote to me, disagreeing with my somewhat-critical review of Madras Café. If I’d eaten in other Indian restaurants around town, he wrote, then I’d know that Madras Café is much better than they are. My response? In short, I don’t grade on a curve. That said, of…
The liquor store in Naples was a pretty impressive comment on just how ignorantly the American public buys wine: One section was labeled “Chardonnay,” another was called “Merlot,” and then there was a sign pointing me in the direction of “Other Varietals.” A member of the ABC — Anything But…
As a poet, I’ve always believed there are as many ways to turn a phrase as there are waves in the ocean. As a critic, though, I’ve lived by limitations. After reviewing the 200th sushi bar of my career, I am the fish on the hook: In what new way…
Politically speaking, this may not be the best time to launch a restaurant called The Knife, where the spring break-influenced drink menu offers slogans like, “At the Knife We Shoot You Too;” shots called “Red Death” (vodka, Triple Sec, sloe gin, Southern Comfort, orange and cranberry juices); and cocktails named…
If what cookbook authors Carol Selva Rajah and Priya Wickramasinghe propose in The Food of India is true — that our Indian restaurants almost unilaterally offer a “very successful [Punjabi] menu formula” — then call Madras Café the exception that proves the rule. The approach is simple in this 40-seat,…
Unlike single-vocation restaurateurs, celebrities who open eating establishments have primary work schedules and commitments to which they must first attend. A restaurant bearing a celebrity’s name, then, must by necessity come second — or third or fourth — on said star’s things-to-do list. Purveyor didn’t show? OK, but I’m on…
Angelo of Mulberry Street
Forget cleanliness, and don’t even mention godliness — when it comes to restaurants, flexibility is the topmost virtue. Indeed, I know some colleagues who put such stock in a staff that is not just willing but delighted to accommodate last-minute reservation changes or a chef who will gladly leave out…
Like the attenuated Mexican cuisine in the magical realist novel Like Water for Chocolate, expertly handled Thai food seems to arouse certain predictable emotions to which no one is immune. I find, for example, that tangy, lemon grass-infused soup soothes away stress. A well-balanced curry, containing the precise amount of…
After calling the eight-month-old Cohiba Brasserie in Pembroke Pines, I wasn’t too jazzed about my forthcoming visit there. I’d phoned for two reasons — to find out if reservations were required, given that it was a Saturday evening, and what type of cuisine was served. You know, the normal questions…
A commercial on TV for an eyeglass boutique makes an interesting connection between authenticity and value. A female customer points out to the clerk that she just saw the same pair of frames in another store for less money. He replies that the frames aren’t exactly alike because his “speak…
Seems like just about everyone I know comes back from some leisure or mental-health days off saying the same thing: “I need a vacation from my vacation.” Yeah, poor you, so exhausted from doing all that fun stuff you don’t get to partake of at home, like sipping umbrella drinks…
