• Belle & Maxwell’s, a casual European café on Dixie Highway in West Palm, reopens this week after several days of renovation to expand into the next-door space. Doubling the restaurant’s size isn’t the only addition. Along with serving its signature breakfast and lunch dishes, B&M will begin serving dinner…
If there’s a wine made for South Florida summers, it’s rosé. With a flavor profile that encompasses light strawberry-raspberry, subtle floral-violets, and tangy lemon-orange, it plays well with food ranging from burgers to grilled fish. And its light body, relatively low alcohol, and general absence of oak make it easy…
Learn how to prepare dishes ranging from sun-dried tomato bison burgers to vegan chocolate chip-walnut cake, plus what wines to drink with everything at July classes at the Fort Lauderdale and Plantation Whole Foods Markets. Among the courses offered in Fort Lauderdale are some in cooking and baking fundamentals, with…
• Come September-October, Boca Wings & Ribs (2257 N. Federal Highway; 561-391-9110) will morph into the Smokehouse, a purveyor of serious barbecue and the second barbecue joint to open on North Federal Highway in Boca Raton this year. New owners Mark Uffer and Erik Frasco have brought in a custom-made…
In the early 14th Century, the Italian writer Dante Alighieri penned an epic poem called The Divine Comedy. In it, he imagined himself on a journey through Hell, Purgatory and finally into Paradise (aka, heaven). Hell, he found, was composed of nine concentric circles, each representing a sin more grievous…
The Hahn family of Monterey, California, has quietly developed one of the more impressive small portfolios of wineries in the state. From the ubiquitous Cycles Gladiator brand (banned in Alabama because the label reproduces an 1895 poster of a naked woman) on the low end to Smith & Hook and…
• Delray’s Atlantic Avenue will finally get the Mexican restaurant so many people have been waiting for with the debut next week of Caliente Kitchen (8 E. Atlantic Ave., no phone yet), a stylish and stylized eatery that takes over the old Taverna Eros space. Proprietor Taylor Smith hopes to…
“Yankee Dogs” is not an insult to people of the Northern persuasion. It’s the new hot dog (and burger, hoagie, sausage, wings, salad, breakfast, and more) eatery that’s taken up residence on Clematis Street. Cabinet maker turned restaurateur John Drummer says he envisions Yankee Dogs (540 Clematis St., West Palm…
After some 30,000 submissions and more than 63,000 votes, the winning “Glamburger” hamburger in the Cheesecake Factory’s “Great Glamburger Challenge” not only doesn’t contain any ham; it isn’t even made of meat. Oh, the horror. Yes, the designer burger chosen from among five finalists in the 3-month-long contest is composed…
If you’re boning up on your ABCs–Anything But Chardonnay–you might want to add the letter “V” to your lesson plan. That would be “V” for “Viognier.” It’s a grape that offers a lot of what Chardonnay lovers love: ripe tropical and stone fruit, big and bold flavors, rich and creamy…
Everybody needs a “kitchen sink” recipe, a quick and easy dish that you can throw together from whatever you happen to have hanging around in the fridge–leftover meats, small chunks of cheese, the last salvageable vegetables. In addition to the time saved shopping and cleaning up refrigerator science projects, there’s…
Turnabout is a bitch. Or is it fair play?Whatever. In response to last week’s post about the various circles of restaurant critic hell inhabited by legions of Yelpers, Spooners, Chowhounders and other bloggy types, an astute reader pointed out that there are plenty of annoying, ignorant dickheads in the ranks…
• Here’s a shocker: a trendy, coal-fired pizzeria actually closed. That would be Anthony’s Coal-Fired Pizza in Boynton Beach, across Gateway Boulevard from the sprawling Renaissance Commons retail-residential complex. No word on what will take over the space but this Tony’s is gone, gone, gone. • Also gone to that…
Nostalgia can be a wonderful thing. For example, a million or so years ago, when I was living in the Sonoma wine country, my bimonthly trip along Westside Road in the Russian River Valley usually turned into the Zinfandel Tour. Davis Bynum, Hop Kiln, Mill Creek, Dry Creek, Lambert Bridge,…
In the bad old days, restaurant criticism was the province of professionals, learned men and women with highly evolved palates who got paid by (mostly) newspapers to evaluate the food of local eateries without fear or favor, neither seeking nor accepting freebies, relaying their sophisticated judgments to the masses by…
• Only weeks after closing his Bova Ristorante when partner and Ponzi schemer Scott Rothstein crashed and burned, Tony Bova is back in the dining game with Vivo Partenza (1450 N. Federal Highway; 561-750-2120) in the same Boca Raton space. The menu is a mix of traditional and more contemporary…
Unleash your inner Jeffrey Steingarden and decide whose hamburger, er… Glamburger will reign supreme (but you don’t have to be a dick about it) in the Cheesecake Factory’s “Great Glamburger Challenge.” For six weeks in April and May, the national chain known for its endless crowds and monstrous portions solicited…
Here’s a tip: The next big white wine thing will be. . . Torrontes. Oh, probably not. But it should be, because the Torrontes grape makes a quite lovely, easy to drink, affordable wine that’s particularly suited to the South Florida climate and palate. Think a less complex but still…
Man does not live by barbecue and beer alone, even in the summer. Sometimes he needs wine and cheese. Man — that would be you, bunky — is therefore in luck, as over the next several weeks, five local Whole Foods Markets will be pouring their top ten summer wines,…
• Looks like barbecue has gone viral in Palm Beach County, with the recent debuts of Rib Bizz and Sheila’s and the weekend smokefest at Harvest Time Market. Now Allen Susser’s Taste Gastropub has been bitten by the barbecue bug, launching Monday Night Backyard BBQ, an all-you-can-eat chowdown with a…
Every cook needs a few flavor bombs in his or her kitchen, ingredients that can take a dish from tasteless to tasty with minimal time and effort. Salt is the most basic flavor bomb, even more useful now with the availability of various flavored, smoked, and sea salts. Artisan olive…
Unless you’re a serious student of the business end of the wine business, you’ve probably never heard of Fred Franzia. You probably haven’t heard of Bronco Wine Co. either, even though it’s the fourth largest wine company in the country, producing some 20 million cases of wine annually and counting…
