Sour Pickles

Where’s the beef going? “I didn’t want to change it,” Isaac Starkman told me a few years back when asked about his strategy for renovating Wolfie Cohen’s Rascal House. “I wanted to perpetuate it.” And for good reason, as during one thirteen-year period alone the landmark delicatessen in Sunny Isles…

A Championship Season for Food?

Table 8 Coming to a plate near you David Bouley Evolution, the South Beach outpost of one of New York’s finest chefs, and Table 8, the South Beach outpost of one of Los Angeles’ finest chefs, have opened their doors, almost simultaneously, less than two blocks apart from each other…

Dinner for Dummies

Please don’t try this at home. If your IQ rivals that of the season’s favorite feathered bird and you fear being able to fry one without inadvertently setting alight to your person, children, home, pet, and/ or relatives, listen up. Miami-Dade Fire Rescue staged a fiery little demo this past…

Dirty Laundry

Side of infighting optional Brenda Khan, manager of Renaisa Indian Restaurant, was less than enthused over a recent review and hasn’t been shy about letting me, and my New Times editors, know about her displeasure. Her emails have objected to the way the write-up, a dual review of both Renaisa…

What’s for dinner?

The Sneaky Kitchen is a lot like your grandmother’s house: full of recipe cards, Tupperware, and old stories. Its founder, Bess Metcalf, has lived in Miami for over forty years, likes to cook, apparently sells Tupperware, Fuller brushes, and Avon products, and has a lot of stories to tell about…

Blog of the Day

wtf Dogma Grill? Critical Miami wants to know. The Miami eatery has successfully sued a hot dog establishment with a similarly punny name: Hot Dogma. The location of this weiner warehouse? Pittsburgh…

Texaco Transformation

The building at 9851 Kendall Drive used to be just another gas station, contending with the Shell station across the street and the Chevron on the corner. But intrepid entrepreneur Michael Touma saw opportunity when the skyrocketing gasoline prices and glut of competition overwhelmed the Texaco station. He removed the…

Blog of the Day

What is a real Grove restaurant?Coconut Grove Grapevine asks the question today: “If a tourist asked you which restaurant in the Grove actually says ‘Coconut Grove,’ which would it be?”…

Sushi to Your Door — Maybe

We received very exciting news yesterday and we just had to share it with you. Now, we know that you Beach dwellers loathe leaving the island. Heck, you don’t even want to leave your condo, since you paid so much money for it and you now realize that with an…

Waiter, There’s a Roach in My Eye

My husband and I had a long-overdue couples’ night with two of our best friends, Jeff and Jessica, one recent Sunday at Origin Asian Bistro, a South Miami restaurant that was Miami New Times’s 2006 choice for Best Restaurant in South Miami-Dade. We love the place: The Malaysian roti is…

5 Qs: Jeffrey Brana

After years of working at Norman’s Restaurant, Chef Jeffrey Brana and his wife Anna have opened a place of their own, Restaurant Brana, in Coral Gables (see this week’s Cafe review). Riptide spoke with Jeffrey by phone and asked him a few questions about subjects not covered in the review…

Some Sacrifice

A Fish Called Avalon, the long-running seafood restaurant on Ocean Drive, has issued a press release trumpeting its boycott of all Canadian seafood products to protest the clubbing of baby seals. “Canada’s fisheries sell lobster, snow crabs, cod, mackerel, scallops, shrimp, haddock, oysters, herring, perch, mussels, sole, yellow perch, sardines,…

Crystal Closes

The local media has been mourning the demise of Fu Manchu Chinese restaurant on 71st Street in Miami Beach, which shut its doors after a near record-setting 71 year run (only Joe’s Stone Crab has been going longer). Longevity aside, however, Fu Manchu was a pretty lousy restaurant over the…

Rebuilding Fiona

She’s been branded everything from tortured and bruised to moody and difficult, but right now, Fiona Apple just has a case of the sniffles. Talking on the phone from her Venice, California, home, the much-praised, much-embattled singer/songwriter/pianist is lying low, preparing to embark on the biggest concert tour of her…