I usually don’t pay much attention to anything at Publix. If there are two kinds of people in the world, the glassy-eyed ones that stumble about in grocery stores for hours, and the itchy ones who think five minutes is way too long to spend among shelves of Spaghetti-O’s, class…
I had to skip last week’s Cucina Verite because it took me a full 10 days to get through the entirety of Marco Ferreri’s La Grande Bouffe, and frankly, I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about it. When the film was first shown at Cannes in 1973, Catherine…
“Vegetables are not food. Vegetables are what food eats.” — ? (Not sure who said this)…
As you may have heard, Elwood’s Dixie Bar-B-Q in Delray Beach, the long-running biker-bar/barbecue joint, where Elvis sightings were about as common as the tramp stamps on the shapely behinds of the female patrons — is closing. There are a lot of heartbroken funkabilly and hot sauce lovers wandering around…
A recent NPR story on regional foods during the Great Depression and the uncompleted WPA “America Eats” project reference Mark Kurlansky’s recently published Food of a Younger Land (“a marvelous goulash of gastronomical oddities and antiques”). Kurlansky has cataloged food-related slang by region, one of which is “New York Soda…
Dear Exalted Know it All:A native Floridian told me once that most of the alligator tail sold in Florida restaurants is the throwaway meat from the outsides of the tail. It’s the center tenderloin that the natives eat, he said. So is there anywhere in South Florida that makes an…
I’m embarrassed to admit how much I love the silly Polynesian theme park known as Mai-Kai. Thank god they’re finally open again. Not that their oversized tiki cocktails and lobster pango-pango are anything to write home about (although the Mai-Kai’s daily happy hour in the bar, with half price food…
We’re all familiar with the four primary tastes we experience on our tongues: sweet, salty, bitter, and sour. Food scientists and restaurant critics desperate for novel terms have also added two more semi-tastes: astringent, and spicy. But a century ago the Japanese identified a fifth primary taste — “umami” –…
Two pretty, perky girls as cute as ’50s pinups, Michelle Parparian and Amanda Watkins, have transformed a 1920s Florida cottage into a vintage clothing store with a cupcakery in their tiny rear kitchen — a kitchen known to turn out a thousand cupcakes at a pop for local events. But…
Few things satisfy my soul like a crispy, deep-fried Florida rock shrimp. The Florida rock shrimp story is one of those happy dramas that typifies good old American ingenuity. Here was a delicious little deep-sea animal that for hundreds of years had almost completely confounded our desire to eat it…
“Whether the knife falls on the melon, or the melon on the knife, the melon suffers.” — African proverb…
In what is, as far as I know, the first chicken pilot program in South Florida, Lake Worth organizers are looking for people to participate in an effort to teach chickens to fly fighter jets. Or, er, I must’ve misread that. Actually what they want to do is create a…
“El Autentico Sabor de la Comida Dominicana,” reads the menu at this Pompano Beach hole-in-the-wall. And it’s authentic Dominican Republic fare, all right. Homemade specials at Latin Conga! change daily, but once they run out, forget your craving for fried chicken chunks or seafood soup. It pays to show up…
“In food, as in death, we feel the essential brotherhood of Man.” — Vietnamese proverb…
You can’t imagine how heartbroken I was this weekend when I drove up to my favorite Vietnamese restaurant, Sakyo, off of Okeechobee Boulevard and Haverhill Road in West Palm Beach, to find the parking lot empty and the windows darkened. Sakyo had closed for good. Finally this recession is really…
“Oh Lord please don’t burn usDon’t kill or toast your flock,Don’t put us on the barbecueOr simmer us in stock,Don’t bake or baste or boil usOr stir-fry us in a wok.”– Monty Python…
Next Friday we launch our weekly Friday Feature, “Ask The Critic,” invented for the sole purpose of allowing us to show off. Readers: Send us your easy questions, send us your torturous riddles. “Where can I find beignet in Lauderhill?”; “Who makes the tastiest shark n bake?”; “How many calories…
3-4-30, 2-4-1: You don’t have to be a mathematician to know those numbers add up to a pretty sweet deal. By popular demand, Christine’s in Fort Lauderdale keeps rolling out its delectable deals: three small plates for $30, add a bottle of wine at half price — to be nibbled…
I’ve been a wine drinker since grade school. I grew up with glasses of chilled Gallo Hearty Burgundy straight out of the fridge (we were each allowed a small glass with Sunday dinner), and by the time I had hit legal drinking age, I’d moved on to specialty California pinots…
