It’s always more fun to root against the Big Guys, especially when it comes to wine. That sweet little boutique winery tucked away on some back-country road in Napa or Sonoma has a lot more cachet than a megagiant wine processing plant that looks like an oil refinery and is…
• A little recognition for the local folks comes from the James Beard House, where chef Adam Savage, top toque at Seacrest Grill in the Delray Beach Marriott, has been invited to strut his stuff on Dec. 3. On the menu, among other dishes, butter-poached Maine lobster with autumn cup…
Matteo’s is the kind of upscale Italian-American restaurant that’s as common as Botoxed foreheads and lipo-ed thighs in its tony Boca Raton neighborhood. The menu doesn’t plow any new culinary ground, but what it does it does pretty well, and one dish it does really well is the classic linguine…
As a philosophy, “Love often, laugh a lot” is not half-bad, certainly better than Jon Gosselin’s “Loser often a little shit” or David Carradine’s “Lonely onanist loves a knot.” As a name for a restaurant it’s not bad either; nobody gets into the business unless they love it, and if…
Three of the iconic white wine grapes in France’s Goats Do Roam region are Viognier, Grenache Blanc, and Roussanne. Uh, actually, that would be Cotes du Rhone, but to a South African vintner with a sense of humor (and an apparent affection for mondegreens), it would be a cool thing…
Now that stone crab season is upon us, you gotta see the Captain. It’s Florida lobster season too, so you gotta see the Captain. And if you want live softshell crabs, fresh Cape Canaveral shrimp, pumpkin swordfish, spear-caught hog snapper and more, you gotta see the Captain. “The Captain” would…
Can the folks behind Rocco’s Tacos do for seafood and rum what Rocco’s did for tacos and tequila? We’re about to find out with the debut of Reef Rd Rum Bar, which opened right across Clematis Street from the wildly popular nouveau taqueria. Local moguls Big Time Restaurant Group, Rocco…
• In our all Todd English, all the time news format, word comes that the Boston top toque’s latest foray into South Florida, originally said to be Figs and set to take over the CityPlace spot once held by Italian Oven Café, will now be called Wild Olives and is…
If you’re not a subscriber to our weekly Café Bites dining newsletter for Broward and Palm Beach counties, here’s a taste of what you missed this week. Click here to subscribe. Take one Bean, many boatloads of succulent Maine lobster, and a smart-looking little eatery on Delray Beach’s Restaurant Row…
Familiarity, sometimes, breeds content. Take Castello di Gabbiano. The wines of this 900-year-old Tuscan winery are as ubiquitous as bad drivers on I-95, stocking the shelves of just about every place from mass-market grocers to tiny neighborhood wine shops. So it’s easy to look down our long, snooty wine noses…
You don’t need a weatherman to know the wind is blowing the rich, beefy aromas of hamburgers sizzling on the grill all over the country. Upscaling the humble burger is more popular than straight white teeth and money in the bank nowadays, as even recession-shafted diners can pry a few…
If you’re not a subscriber to our weekly Café Bites dining newsletter for Broward and Palm Beach counties, here’s a taste of what you missed this week. Click here to subscribe.Organic. It’s not just for vegetables anymore. It’s for wine too, and put both of them together and they’re greener…
If you’ve been making do with brown lettuce and rock-hard tomatoes from your local giant-mega-supermarket and counting the days until you could buy produce with real flavor from the people who actually grow it, you have only a few more days to check off. Most Palm Beach County greenmarkets will…
If you’re not a subscriber to our weekly Café Bites dining newsletter for Broward and Palm Beach counties, here’s a taste of what you missed this week. Click here to subscribe. The second annual Rocktoberfest is a day-long celebration of the twin pillars of American civilization – as in, beer…
• The much-anticipated (and feared) Night of the Long Knives for local restaurants is here. Among the latest and most distressing is the closure of Italian Oven Café in CityPlace. The stylish “fast casual” café delivered easy-to-like pizzas, pastas and paninis of a quality that belied their reasonable prices but…
If you’re not a subscriber to our weekly Café Bites dining newsletter for Broward and Palm Beach counties, here’s a taste of what you missed this week. Click here to subscribe. You’ve probably heard about all hot stuff going on along Atlantic Avenue in Delray Beach. Linda Bean’s (as in…
No wine gets a blanc stare faster than Chenin Blanc. It may be the white wine grape of France’s Loire Valley, but in these parts, you see it about as often as snow drifts on Ocean Drive. It had a few minutes of fame in the 1960s and 1970s and…
Has one of the country’s most iconic foods become as American as. . . tacos al carbon? In a word, yes. Clean Plate Charlie was scanning the NY Times food section a couple weeks back and came across this piece by John T. Edge, a real scholar of American and…
• If Clematis Street weren’t smokin’ already, it will be by year’s end with the debut of Off the Hookah, the second SoFla location for the Fort Lauderdale-based company. We’re not talking subtle here. Look for waterfalls, belly dancers and “flair” bartenders to go along with a Middle Eastern-Mediterranean menu…
They’re doing it in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami. . . in Delray Beach, not so much. A new generation of–don’t call them “bartenders,” call them “mixologists”–is flavoring their own spirits, making their own infusions and syrups and garnishes, creating cocktails that go far beyond the usual “vodka-rocks”…
If you’re not a subscriber to our weekly Café Bites dining newsletter for Broward and Palm Beach counties, here’s a taste of what you missed this week. Click here to subscribe. If food is the new pornography, oysters are the new Viagra. So if you’re lusting for the sweet-salty caress…
If you’re not a subscriber to our weekly Café Bites dining newsletter for Broward and Palm Beach counties, here’s a taste of what you missed this week. Click here to subscribe. Why are this year’s Dolphins more chum than shark? Is the season dead in the water? Will the Tuna…
