I stopped by the Lake Worth farmers’ market recently and ran into Jodi Swank, whose (with husband Darrin) Swank Specialty Produce is to the trash at your local supermarket what a Bugatti Veyron is to skateboarding with square wheels. She’ll be at the market on J Street at Lucerne Avenue…
The world’s most omnivorous, omnipresent purveyor of junk food is now crashing the rather more upscale salons of junque cuisine. That would be McDonald’s, which last week spat up a trio of 100 percent Angus beef burgers. Launched to compete with the tonier patties of eateries like Five Guys, Fuddruckers,…
One of the world’s unique and most interesting wines has long been one of its most mysterious. The wine is Carmenere, today made almost exclusively in Chile, though until a dozen or so years ago, even the people who made it thought they were making Merlot. Carmenere was once one…
Tired of the rubber-ball tomatoes, wilted corporate greens and vegetables older than Michael Jackson’s last hit at your local giant-mega-supermarket? It’s not like you have many options, because most farmers’ markets close during South Florida summers, when the only thing that grows is mold. Well, on July 4 the Oceanside…
Is there any wine that goes better with barbecue than rosé? I think not. Barbecue is hot, rich, spicy, fatty. Rosé (that doesn’t suck) is chilled, lean, fruity, refreshing. It’s a marriage meant to be celebrated in backyards and consummated over a rack of baby backs smeared with tart-sweet-fiery barbecue…
The Food Network has a new show called The Best Thing I Ever Ate (9 and 9:30 p.m. tonight), and it features the usual roster of the network’s chefs and celebrity foodies running down the best things they’ve stuffed in their constantly yapping mouths. In the first show, “Totally Fried,”…
“You should sell that.” People always said that to Lori Saitz about the cookies she baked from an old family recipe. Unlike most of us, the 43-year-old former marketing and PR pro in West Palm Beach actually did. Six years ago she quit her day job at a local radio…
If you’ve made the rounds of all the local barbecue joints and decided you’d rather eat dirt than one more rack of dry, smokeless ribs, desiccated chicken or tough, taste-free brisket, well, for two days at least, you’re in luck. No, it’s not a dirt cook-off. It’s Grillin’ in the…
The latest episode of The Office doesn’t star Steve Carell but David Manero. Let me explain. There are actually two Offices: one a TV show that reveals Life In a Cubicle as the mind-numbing, soul-sucking vampire it really is. The other is a coming restaurant from one of South Florida’s…
Q: When is wine like good sex?A: When it’s PromisQous. Actually, you don’t have to be a grape slut to get the hots for this big, hardy, mouth-filling blend of Zinfandel, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and petite Syrah. All you need is 12 bucks and a thirst for a wine that’s…
If this is precisely the wrong moment in history to open a pricey, upscale gourmet grocery in a suburban shopping mall, you’d never know it from the debut of Joseph’s Classic Market in the swanky Shops of Boca.The noontime crush of pasteled, Polo-ed and executive-clad Boca-ites filled the aisles of…
Remember that kid in elementary school who was always the last one picked for any team sports? You know, the one everybody said was a spaz, who couldn’t hit a ball or catch a ball or tell first base from third base or a touchdown from a free throw? In…
OK, so if you tried out last week’s little lesson on pork-stuffed shrimp, you’ve got three-fourths of a pound of ground pork, rather assertively seasoned with black pepper, garlic, cilantro, and fish sauce. What do you do with all that pig? Well, you could freeze it for cramming into some…
We’ve all heard a lot lately about “change you can believe in,” but Max’s Grille is delivering spare change you can believe in.The longtime Mizner Park standby, which still dishes better food than 90 percent of its local competition, is offering a three-course meal for only $18 to $26 –…
Here’s a case where one plus one equals a wine too good to pass up. We’re talking the 2008 Pine Ridge Chenin Blanc-Viognier, a marriage of two under-appreciated grapes made in the Napa Valley and consummated in your mouth. Unlike most marriages, though, it will only set you back 12…
Think Portuguese wines and the first one that probably comes to mind is port. Sweet, syrupy, high alcohol. . . just what you want to drink in the South Florida summer blast furnace, when it’s hot enough to make your face melt and humid enough to grab a handful of…
With one season (tourist) gone and another season (hurricane) upon us, local restaurants are stepping up summer promotions to make sure this season (of the witch) isn’t their last.Latest is Boca’s ZED451, the foodie churrascaria, which recently cut the price of its prix fixe. The all-you-can-gobble-until-your-stomach-explodes dinner menu dropped from…
Ever get the urge to make like Gordon Ramsay or Tom Colicchio? You know, “This tastes like shit! Pack your knives and go!” Well, at Rustic Cellar in Boca you can feed your inner megalomaniac in a blind wine tasting and judging set for Thursday, May 28. Beginning at 7…
In the never-ending search for wines that ride the double-yellow between cork dorkery and suckitude, it’s always a good idea to begin in Spain.In the past dozen or so years, Spanish wines have gone from cheap Rioja and a bunch of other stuff to some of the finest wines in…
You gotta give it up for Grease Burger Bar. . . the name tells you everything you need to know about this Clematis Street newbie.There’s a bar, a big one, about half a city block long — all dark, hulking wood lit by bare bulbs hanging from meathooks suspended from…
A cheap buzz that will impress even cork dorks?Where do I sign up?At your local Total Wine & More, for one, where you can find a wine that, if it isn’t the best goddamned value on the market, I’ll put down my Cabernet and start drinking Bud. The wine is…
A sandwich is a sandwich is a sandwich. Unless it’s a chivito. The chivito, for those of you unlucky enough not to have wrapped your gums around one, is the national sandwich of Uruguay, a sort of Latin-esque breakfast-slash-lunch McManwich for the kind of guy or gal who’d jump Ronald…
