The Department of Business and Professional Regulation (DBPR) in Tallahasee has doubled the fine for any proven offense of food misrepresention in dining establishments (from $250 to $500, which still doesn’t seem like much punishment for deceiving the public — and increasing profits considerably while doing so). “Floridians ought to…
On May 7, I posted a blog entitled Ask the Food Critic, in which readers were encouraged to forward questions to me concerning the local food and dining scene. Sample queries were offered, such as: Is it true that Daniel Boulud will be opening a namesake establishment in downtown Miami?…
Photo by Jeffrey Delannoy Seal Since Seal had his couple of big stateside hits in the Nineties (the seemingly immortal “Kissed By a Rose” being the most recognizeable), lately he seems to have been relegated to the role of Mr. Heidi Klum. So who goes to a Seal concert in…
“We’re paying for their exorbitant rent!” my uncle Al bellows whenever I take him to dine in a pricey South Beach restaurant. Obnoxious, yes, but he’s got a point. The Ghetto Gourmet is a counterpoint. The Oakland-based group is, in essence, an underground supper club, meaning they find hip spaces…
Come back, Jeffrey! “It was a small dog, a Japanese breed. His name was Lulu. He was allowed to sleep in the Emperor’s great bed. During various ceremonies, he would run away from the Emperor’s lap and pee on dignitaries’ shoes. The august gentlemen were not allowed to flinch or…
First a rock smashed the front window. Then, after a metal shutter was slammed shut, a bottle exploded against it. Then another. And another. A thousand Haitians burst through a police barricade one steamy summer Saturday in 1990 and swarmed a storefront off Biscayne Boulevard in Miami. Inside, as muscular…
Five weeks after the Miami Herald canned columnist Jim DeFede, his spot in the newsroom appeared, well, rather strange. A crash dummy in a baseball cap, jeans, and Nikes sat in his chair. Its left hand rested on the desk next to a bottle of Australian Chardonnay. Nearby was a…
Nazish Ahmad seemed a journalism wünderkind. Two years ago, at the tender age of 16, the pretty, smart, South Plantation High School student wrote a front-page story for the Miami Herald. She won coveted internships at South Florida’s two largest newspapers, the Herald and the Sun-Sentinel. And she recently took…
Gail Bobb is a single mom. A pretty, prim 39-year-old native of Guyana, she moved to South Florida in 2001 with her two nearly grown kids, Frank and Theresa. “It was paradise,” she recalls with a Caribbean lilt. “At first.” Bobb padded the pavement for four months until, finally, she…
Imagine this: You’re an overworked waitress. You have your first night off in three weeks. You down a few drinks, end up a little tipsy, and next thing you know, you’re on the psych ward at county general hospital for 26 hours. An inmate threatens to kill you, a nurse…
Miami is the past. Overdeveloped. Underclothed. Full of itself. It doesn’t deserve baseball. Broward and Palm Beach counties are the future. Forward-looking. More cosmopolitan. Their bases are loaded with billionaires. Club President Dave Samson is oblivious. Rename ’em the “Miami Marlins,” he says. The “economics don’t work” in Broward even…
Heck with Arnold. We want Burt Reynolds. Or maybe Maggie. See, Margaret Richardson, a 61-year-old disabled seamstress from Pensacola, is planning a California-type insurgency in the Sunshine State. Last week, she started a petition to recall Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (at petitiononline.com/JebLies/ petition.html). “Our governor has gone from doublespeak to…
Mark Farson was asleep below deck when the gunshots thundered. His sailboat jerked to a halt. It was 11 p.m. on a steamy March night; a friend, German Copiano, was at the helm. They were drifting downwind off the Dominican Republic near a sandy stretch of beach called Playa de…
By now, most sports fans know that the Miami Herald on May 10 published an apparent blockbuster questioning the integrity of the nation’s premier equine event, the Kentucky Derby. And by now, almost everyone knows the Herald blew it. Commentators around the world have hit the paper for falsely insinuating…
It was 10 a.m. on a steamy, sunny morning just a few days after American soldiers began dying in Iraq. Zuhrah Abdu Ahmed opened the door of her tiny Miramar house. She squinted as the aroma of curry and eggs wafted into the yard and mixed with exhaust from nearby…
Same day. Same greed. Same cockeyed judgment. The only difference between two votes cast Wednesday, February 26, was the victim: City of Hollywood commissioners screwed taxpayers, while the Broward County School Board shortchanged the city’s kids. In the afternoon, commissioners agreed to offer developer Steve Berman $3 million in incentives…
Smack in the middle of Broward County’s construction megaboom, a red Porsche convertible pulls up to a ramshackle drive-in on a dazzlingly bright early morning. Blond, attractive, and obviously wealthy attorney Jill Friedman requests four pounds of freshly roasted coffee — crème brûlée, maple pecan, brownie crunch, and vanilla nut…
Kingsley Barham seems an unlikely candidate for king of crass. The once-handsome, now-haggard 56-year-old sleeps on a sofa bed in a ramshackle Delray Beach home from which he barely escaped eviction in 2001. The State of California is after him for more than $75,000 in back taxes. And creditors have…
It’s 11 a.m. in a dusty driveway called Domino Corner in northwest Hallandale Beach, and a crowd ranging in age from 16 to 70 lounges on folding chairs and garbage cans while pondering the recent conviction of a local man for rape, burglary, and stalking. Lenny Hope, a 34-year-old sometime-landscaper,…
The scapegoat of the great 2002 election debacle has been keeping a low profile lately. In fact, since Walter Foeman walked out on a $95,600-a-year job as Broward County’s deputy supervisor of elections September 20, he has been avoiding the media, his former boss, and at least some of his…
About 11 a.m. this past Saturday, just as Serena Williams was burying Venus at Wimbledon, another little sister faced a dire situation in a world championship in Fort Lauderdale. Tied at three games with a far more experienced player and down by three points in the rubber match, 13-year-old Ai…
Swedish businessman Peter Tsounis deals in yachts for a living. He wears expensive suits, flies first class, and carries hundreds of dollars in cash as well as 20 credit cards. So he was surprised March 16 when a cop slapped handcuffs on him and six more lawmen surrounded him as…
