Stone-crab season in Florida opened to great hoopla three weeks ago. We have five months to chow down as many mustard-dipped forkfuls of claw meat as we can pay for. The game-over bell rings May 15: Then it’s a long, hot, stoneyless summer. Our native crab is one of the…
I must be the last soul in Fort Lauderdale to suck up a strand of spaghetti at Il Mulino. The joint has been around for two decades, providing heaps of homemade pasta as well as explaining why Tuscans and Milanese are getting as fat as New Brunswickians and Lauderdale Lakers…
Say goodbye to the hot dog cart, Fort Lauderdale. Five years ago, downtown was home to a handful of vendors who slung cased beef on the cheap. I remember one cart at Broward and Federal Highway where you could buy two dogs and a can of soda for $3. Now…
Something is definitely afoot here. We stuck our snout in the air, took a long whooof, and smelled a trend. I’d say this funky perfume resembled a glass of French Bordeaux and seared filet mignon laced with the odor of a corporate kitchen’s deep fryer at the end of a…
Sometimes I wonder if, back in the roaring 1990s, all those black families who lived in shanty shacks and cracker houses and cement block apartments just outside downtown West Palm Beach put a hex on the city when they moved out. They’d been relocated, evicted, or strongly encouraged to sell…
Two restaurants, two shrimp dishes. The first is a tiny, chic, chef-driven bistro in Plantation, effusively praised by local dailies and the Zagat guide, open for dinner only on Friday and Saturday nights. The menu changes weekly, and it can veer toward the unexpected: Caribbean jerk-rubbed thresher shark with coconut…
I’m sitting in Taste of Chicago (1406 N. State Rd. 7, Margate, 954-984-5858) trying to get a handle on my Italian beef sandwich. The staple of street carts and sporting events in the Windy City, this baby is as unwieldy as a squirming infant — and just as big. As…
You’d have to have steel cojones, or some mixture of naiveté and optimism, to name your first restaurant Nirvana. You’d be setting the bar in the stratosphere and opening yourself up to some expensive, cutting jokes if you failed to deliver. The word nirvana has a lot of meanings, including…
I’ve probably given about 30 seconds’ thought to Peruvian food in the past ten years. The culinary wonders of the Andes were totally off my radar. Yeah, I knew the little coastal country had thousands of genetically diverse varieties of ancient potatoes and corn. But spuds and maize do not…
To hear our waiter tell it, there’s no fish shortage in South Florida. You just drop your baited line or your net full of little pylon oysters off the nearest bridge, and before you can say “abracadabra, bring me some snappa,” you’re hauling in pounds and pounds of the hapless…
Watching Gordon Ramsey is making me violent. The three-Michelin-starred Scottish chef of the Fox reality show Hell’s Kitchen is the foulest-mouthed, most evil-tempered brute in a business with more monsters than a Ken Russell retrospective. Ramsey has the same effect on my testosterone as too many hours glued to the…
Ladies, watch your backs. Three-quarters of the single adult American male population is suddenly out there perfecting the magic art of seduction. They’ve learned their foolproof pickup techniques courtesy of a Boy George clone and erstwhile magician who calls himself “Mystery.” The guy, whose sartorial style runs to black fingernail…
You really have to wonder about Palm Beach Gardens — what the heck is going on up there? The city is attracting investment just as though South Florida’s economic bubble were made from bust-proof Dupont space fabric. Take Cantina Laredo. This “gourmet Mexican” restaurant, which opened a couple of weeks…
I knew there was something different about the jerk chicken served at Betty’s Place (5601 Pembroke Rd., Hollywood, 954-226-3340), but I wasn’t completely sure what. I was determined to find out. “I can’t tell you, man,” the guy behind the counter gasped with a wide smile. “She’ll kill me!” Come…
Most of us will put up with a lot so long as we’re well entertained. And reasonably fed. Just give us our bread and circuses — and “Mitt Romney” could be the name of an exotic entrée for all we care. It wasn’t only the Roman hoi polloi who were…
You think it’s all fun and games being a food critic, dontcha? “Oooooh, you’re so luuucky,” perfect strangers purr when they hear what I do. “I wish I had your job.” I have news: If you had my job, you’d be 15 pounds fatter and your cholesterol would be off…
Kevin McCarthy is sautéing chocolate-coated scallops. It sounds as if one of our favorite chefs has wandered into some gustatory la-la land, a Ferran Adrià/Wylie Dufresne-inspired nightmare territory where oyster sorbets topped with mudwort foams are already passé. Or maybe he’s working on something more sinister: a killer aphrodisiac? Not…
Looks like they had it right. The French. About Iraq, that is. Notwithstanding their new President Sarkozy, who seems to have all the rigorous intellectual sophistication of George Bush the Younger (Work harder! Think less! Speak English!), it appears that a culture built upon centuries of deep rumination and political-social-philosophical…
In every critic’s life a moment emerges when she realizes that her carefully refined opinions — judicious and elegant as they may be — aren’t worth doo-doo. The revelation hits with the force of a piano shoved off a third-floor balcony; you look down at those shiny, grand preconceptions in…
I’m not the kind of customer — being half-blind and chronically underdressed — that the St. Regis Resort would cultivate if it had a choice. The new Starwood Hotels enterprise has been open for business a couple of months now on Fort Lauderdale Beach Boulevard, a monument of swank that…
I grew up with a good friend, Frank, whose family was from Iran. We were inseparable. Whenever we had time off from school I´d spend entire days at his house listening to Cobain and Hendrix, playing Nintendo, and eating the incredible Persian food his mother prepared. When you´re young just…
Cast your mind back to the dim recesses of, oh, I don´t know, the mid-1970s in South Florida. What did you do when you were hungry? You opened your mouth and screamed until somebody shoved a nipple in your face, right? OK, let me rephrase. After your mum and dad…
