Fish balls. Fried crickets. Salted scorpions soaked in whiskey. Smoked catfish soup. Deep-fried beef gums. Snail curry. Hog plums. Bamboo grubs with green onions. Slivered pig´s ears. Gecko curry. Pickled mudfish. Barbecued pork salad. Red ant egg dip. Fried morning glory. Makes your mouth water, doesn´t it? They´re traditional dishes…
Palm Beach has always had a thing for Africa. In the several seasons that I temporarily trespassed in the hallways of the Dodges and Phippses and Pulitzers on my way into or out of some party, I often spied with my own little eye the smart set´s embrace of what…
Well, it´s all China all the time in the news these days, isn´t it? Between filthy tea, carcinogenic dried apples, and bacteria-laden swordfish imports turned back at our own squeaky-clean borders; the brouhaha over whether Americans should be eating (avian-flu-carrying?) Chinese chickens; the lethal pet-food scandal; and the no-quotas Climate…
I´ve had it with stratospheric restaurant tabs. Summer´s coming on, season of the dockside conch fritter, the chicken fajita, the mahi finger, the icy Corona with lime wedges. Grilled $3 burgers just taste better between June and September. Looking forward to hurricane season and calculating extra expenditures in canned beans…
Alegría Café, Empanaditas…………………..$6
Ensalada Alegria……………$10
Grouper criolla……………….$24
Arroz con pollo…………….. $17
Yuca frita………………………..$5
Pudin de pan………………$5.50
Jinja Bar and Bistro, 700 S. Rosemary Ave. Open for lunch and dinner Sunday through Thursday from 11 a.m. till 11 p.m., Friday Saturday till midnight. Call 561-296-7373
From plain chicken cutlets to your mama¹s homemade meatloaf, if there was any culinary staple that could rescue the bland and enhance the rich, it¹s a ladling of sauce. Sauce is what makes you savor every speck of food on your plate: scraping your fork against your dish to produce…
The revolution in experimental, deconstructivist, “molecular” gastronomy was over before it began in South Florida. If we’d hoped the surreal culinary high-jinks of chefs like Ferran Adria — the half-mad Spanish genius of El Bulli, whose favorite ingredient is liquid nitrogen (he’s been known to serve parmesan-scented “frozen air” as…
Evidently, Starwood Hotel & Resorts is bullish on our little burg. Thumbing their noses at pesky, persistent rumors that the southern tip of Florida will eventually be as completely submerged as the Lost City of Atlantis, the optimists at Starwood have debuted two luxury resort/residences here in the past month…
You’ve really got to feel sorry for the wait staff at Latitudes Beach Café. They’re trying so hard to make the best of things — these adorable 20-somethings with their Eastern European accents and their cheery good looks. I wish I could wave my magic wand and transport them elsewhere…
It was Friday the 13th. What better night to plan a long drive out of town? I figured if I put some distance between myself and my usual haunts, I could foil the Gray Lady of Doom — she’d be shuffling through South Palm raw bars, fingering the Blue Point…
If you catch Joseph Boueri on a slow night, say a rainy Tuesday when only a few regular customers are hunched over steamy bowls of Prince Edward Island mussels and buttery nests of shrimp parpardelle, you probably won’t need to exchange more than a couple of sentences before he beckons…
What’s a hungry girl to do about her meat? Rich or poor, we’re getting kicked where it hurts — right in our growling stomachs. Every meal is an unhappy meal. First, it’s foie gras; now it’s KFC. I was on the verge of sending away to PETA for my “free…
My “father-un-law” was in town, and I wanted to take him to dinner. Not that I needed to impress him. Here’s a guy who drove his battered 1978 Chevy Caprice Classic station wagon — the kind with faux wood-grain siding — until it finally coughed and ground to a permanent…
The margarita is a staple at every Mexican restaurant from here to Jalisco — but as I savored the version of the drink served at El Torito (1401 S. Federal Hwy., Pompano Beach, 954-725-3339), I wondered exactly what elevated it to such slow-sipped perfection. I called our waitress over and…
Have you heard this one? A rabbi and a psychologist walk into a sushi bar… Hell, I always screw this joke up. The rabbi and the psychologist own the sushi bar. Oh, crap, it’s not a sushi bar either. It’s a “kabbalistic lifestyle lounge and café.” Emunah Café: an organic-kosher…
He’s a star, Nick Morfogen. And I love him the way I love Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet: purely, deeply, from afar. I have Dennis Max and Burt Rapoport to thank for bringing Nick into my range; that Unique Restaurant Concepts power couple, throwing open contemporary California-style bistros with fanatical…
The Palm Beach Post critic was in here this week,” John Suley says. “Charles Passy. They ordered a lot of food and had us split up the plates in the kitchen, so everybody got to taste the same thing.” Suley, who has stopped at our table to introduce himself, is…
I have a problem. I should be teasing out the subtle distinctions between the Classic Boca Bitch and the Nouveau Gardens Gamine — there’s a shimmering, bodacious table of 16 of these ladies celebrating a raucous birthday party practically at my elbow — but I can’t focus. Maybe I need…
I ate my grilled marinated quail with long beans and a palm sugar-lime dressing sitting in a pool of ice water. I was in the ice water, not the quail. If you’ve never had freezing liquid poured into your lap while dining, I recommend it just for the frisson of…
Make a fist with your right hand. Then make a fist with your left and put that on top of the right. Now put your left foot on top of the two fists. Congratulations, you’re a yogi. You’ve also made a freeform shape roughly the size of the pile of…
“You’re sure you’re very hungry?” our waitress says. “Because the Lobster Monster is really big.” She eyes us with skepticism. Or it’s a look that mingles skepticism (“they’ll never eat all the food they’ve ordered”) with politely concealed disgust (“these horrible people might eat all the food they’ve ordered”). Our…
