One thing you can say about Columbia Restaurant (651 Okeechobee Blvd. West Palm Beach, 561-820-9373): It’s freaking ancient. If this place were human, we’d be wheeling it out for Fourth of July parades and interviewing it on NPR. The original Columbia in Tampa is, in fact, among the oldest restaurants…
Thank God the Brazilians have finally arrived. You’ve gotta love a culture in which fat grannies toodle around the beaches in thongs; where their most famous cultural export sang “Chica Chica Boom Chic” wearing a bonnet full of bananas; where their deadliest martial art incorporates the cartwheel. Never has the…
Anybody who disses De La Tierra at Sundy House (106 S. Swinton Ave., Delray Beach, 561-272-5678) is likely to find a flaming chafing dish on her lawn some night, along with an ominous warning: Get out of town by sunup. This Delray Beach showcase is universally adored not just for…
The Victoria Park neighborhood is eerily serene by Fort Lauderdale standards. Maybe it’s all that tropical foliage, surreal as a rainforest painting by Rousseau. A family of peacocks roosts in the black olive trees; pristinely renovated bungalows retreat behind curtains of bromeliads and orchids. If the Park makes it into…
Episode Three: In which it is revealed that David has patented his secret formula for success. Meanwhile Bree, Gabrielle, and Susan put their heads together over martinis at Shore to discuss the attributes of the pool boy. Two years ago, every trendy watering hole had throngs of Sex and the…
If you were expecting a roomful of old hippies and prepubescent anarchists when you showed up for the organizational meeting of the Lake Worth Organic Food Co-op last week, you would have been about three-quarters disappointed. Of the 50-odd souls who gathered at Nathanson Chiropractic for an hourlong PowerPoint presentation,…
What would Madonna do? It’s 9 p.m., and the crowd has thinned out since we got here. We’re at a briskly starched table at Trina, the year-old restaurant in the Atlantic Hotel. There’s a bowl of chilled almond soup in front of me. It’s a dish I’ll never forget. But…
Margarita Morfidis gets up at the crack of dawn seven days a week so she’ll be in the kitchen at Thira by 8 a.m. She cranks up the radio, divvies the day’s work among her small kitchen staff, and within a few minutes, she’s up to her elbows in spinach…
Analogy quiz: Iran is to wine as (1) oil is to water, (2) Brad is to Jennifer, or (3) the Rubaiyat is to Omar. If you answered “all of the above,” you’ve put your finger on the complexity of this passionate, rocky, 7,000-year-old relationship. Javid Kosari, who opened Las Olas…
It’s 9:30 p.m., and the blonds have arrived. Up at the sushi bar, three of them are perched in a row like glossy swans, wearing identical halter-tops and white jeans, luxurious Breck-girl hair falling precisely to midshoulder. Framed in a pink arc of neon, against a backdrop of sake bottles…
There’s a cocktail revolution afoot. It’s not just that martinis are back. That wave has already crested. But tropical drink sales have increased. Wine and hard liquor — formerly like oil and water — are now mixed. And well-known chefs add spices like cardamom to alcohol for concoctions that have…
Things change so fast in South Florida. It’s like we’re living inside the head of some giant god with ADHD. Landmarks vanish overnight; restaurants flip three times before you make it back for your second plate of calamari fritti. So it’s comforting to drive down George Bush Boulevard in Delray…
Thirty-four-year-old Eric Guttmann figures he’s the dark horse in this year’s sweet-corn-eating championship, which takes place Sunday, April 24, at the South Florida Fairgrounds in West Palm Beach. The Lake Worth man was an explosives specialist during the Gulf War; he came home with a case of Gulf War Syndrome…
When you call Catalina Restaurant on Saturday afternoon to make a dinner reservation, Mario Flores might say something like, “Oh honey, you don’t need no reservation tonight. You come on down, Mario will find a table for you.” But I urge you, be as suspicious as a canary in a…
The card game Scopa goes back 400 years and requires luck, skill, and intuition in just about equal measure. The same thing’s true of the restaurant business, a contest in which the talented sometimes fold early and the second-rate often rake in the pot. When Daniel Gatto took over the…
Unless you have your own Stepford wife, there’s little chance you’re going to get home after another crummy day at the office to find a three-course French meal waiting for you. But Chef Paul Collange is trying to change that — at least for a select number of clients from…
It could be the setting for a great American novel of manners, a story in which sensitive, subtle women exchange remarks with intense suitors beside a current that runs dark and deep. Something by Henry James, say. Two mansions that were owned by brothers Reed and Tom Bryan 100 years…
If you’ve been wondering where all the 80-somethings party on a Sunday afternoon or you’re living on a fixed income ’cause Mr. Bossman won’t give you the raise you rightfully deserve, check out the early-bird special at Old Florida Seafood House (1414 NE 26th St., Wilton Manors, 954-566-1044). Show up…
Seminole Paradise has the look of Xanadu — a vast though not particularly stately pleasure dome rising above the desert sands of West Hollywood. You can see it from a distance even on a rainy night, throwing as much light as a small meteor, fantastical as the City of Oz…
A few things about city living make it all worthwhile. One of them is kicking back at a sunny outdoor table on a Sunday morning, sucking vodka and Tabasco-laced tomato juice through a straw, touching up your tan, and watching the gorgeous carousel of life spin by. The ritual called…
Next time you dine in Fort Lauderdale, think pink. Broward County is the new Provincetown — it’s outstripped even San Francisco as one of the great queer capitals of the United States. That’s a good thing when it comes to restaurants, no matter which team you’re pitching for. The little…
It’s a rainy night, but the windows running the length of the house at 9 SE Seventh Ave. are thrown wide open, and a couple of fine-looking men in black suits are standing on the veranda beneath the awning, smoking what smells like good Cuban cigars. The rocking rhythms of…
