I got my first bite of Kaiyo’s spicy Thai seafood salad — a bodacious concoction of tuna, salmon, whitefish, and avocado tossed in kimchee sauce with a little masago and cucumber — when somebody brought it to a birthday party. That salad opened a space of utter calm amid considerable…
The sidewalk entrance to Paradiso Ristorante, a set of gleaming wooden doors opening into a room with the subtle, violet-tinted glow of a saltwater aquarium, is an anomaly in downtown Lake Worth, where the reigning aesthetic is set by taverns called Dirty Dwarf and Lizard’s Den. So is the clear-eyed,…
Gary Stewart caught the bug in his early 20s. He was working in a hi-fi store, and a neighbor who owned the wine shop next door offered to trade a few cases of wine for a stereo. Stewart did the deal and ended up with several dozen bottles of Bordeaux,…
The woman making my sandwich is dark-haired, petite, and pretty, her hands deft, with a smile that comes easily while she works. She slices a roll, spreads it with sauce, lards it with cold cuts and vegetables — a sprig of this, a sprinkling of that. The sandwich is universal;…
There may be 250 ways to make a lobster quesadilla, but the one sitting on the table in front of me is perfect. Maybe the transient quality of the dish lends it poignancy — Florida lobster season lasts only a few months, so these big, buttery chunks of meat nestled…
You’ve got to love Testa’s (221 Royal Poinciana Way, Palm Beach, 561-832-0992) the way you love some doddering aunt: The lady was born in 1921 and deserves a break. You’ve grown fond of her foibles. And like many old-school Palm Beach ladies, Testa’s is almost deliberately un-chic; that dowdiness is…
Maybe because one side of my family is made up of scrappy small-time entrepreneurs who founded shanty towns in the central Florida scrub, named those towns after themselves, manufactured fake money called scrip to pay their laborers, and eventually ruled the surrounding palmettos with cussed determination, I have a soft…
Someone’s in the kitchen with Michael Blum. Like 40 or 50 someones. You don’t have to go behind the scenes to find out what’s really going on at Michael’s Kitchen: Just take a front row seat at the bar, or sink into one of the nearby leather banquettes, and watch…
We recently ventured over to the grand opening of Seasons 52 at the Galleria Mall (2428 E. Sunrise Blvd., Fort Lauderdale, 954-537-1052). It’s the second installment in what will undoubtedly become a gargantuan chain of restaurants courtesy of Darden Inc. Darden runs Olive Garden, Red Lobster, and Smokey Bones; the…
It’s been said that the three great cuisines of the world are French, Chinese, and Turkish. Well, quite a few of us can identify a plate of General Tso’s chicken or a filet of sole bonne femme when it’s plopped down in front of us, but how many Americans know…
South Florida’s sushi-loving elite has struck gold at Sushi Jo (319 Belvedere Rd., Number 12, West Palm Beach, 561-868-7893): Witness the Jags, Mercedes, and Lexae cramming its strip-mall parking lot on any given Friday — you know these babies aren’t pulling up for the adjacent mini-mart or thrift store. That…
Denizens of Lake Worth are divided into three camps: people who think La Bonne Bouche (516 Lucerne Ave., 561-533-0840) is the best French café downtown, those who favor L’Avenue (4 S. “O” St., 561-540-4166), and those who never set foot in either because the proprietors of both are so grumpy…
If you’re a fan of Virginia Woolf, you’ll remember the scene in her novel To the Lighthouse, when Mrs. Ramsey serves a painstakingly prepared daube de boeuf to an honored dinner guest. “Everything depended upon things being served up to the precise moment they were ready. The beef, the bay…
Think of Edward Hopper’s classic all-night diner painting, NightHawks. Add flat-screen TVs, a full liquor bar, stuffed Jackalope heads, and a digital jukebox. Then mentally fill all Hopper’s empty stools with happy customers. Residents of the neither-here-nor-there land on that stretch of Dixie Highway between West Palm Beach and Lake…
I’m not going to lie to you: The place is a few doors down from Hollywood Spice Adult Books and the Discount Trailer Warehouse, tucked away behind a blank storefront on a stretch of State Road 441 where you can shop till you drop for auto parts. If you’re looking…
Owners of Italian restaurants must be blessed with a fierce risk-taking gene. Not counting pizza parlors and factoring out Olive Garden and Carrabba’s, there must be 300 Italian places scattered around Broward and Palm Beach counties. The competition is so cut-throat that if you’re drawing up a menu featuring chicken…
“I want to be the next Emeril, the next Wolfgang Puck, the next Norman Van Aiken,” Michael Blum says. Judging from his plans for a 5,000-square-foot space at 2000 Harrison St. in Hollywood, it may be only a matter of time. “We’re about food that’s in-your-face, Cirque de Soleil dining…
Moby didn’t show. But a six-foot Dorothy in gingham dress and ruby slippers did. And then there was a shirtless hunk on a bicycle, an aging queen with a toupee and a walker, and Mayor Jim Naugle and his wife. There were also several hundred gay men in varying states…
Opening a Vietnamese restaurant in Boynton Beach is the second-hardest thing Tom Nguyen has ever done. The most difficult was exiting his homeland 24 years ago. Back in 1980, Nguyen was standing on a beach at Nha Trang in Central Vietnam, waiting to board a rickety fishing boat with 82…
Pissed off at Publix? Think you just can’t choke down one more slice of gummy, supermarket-nuked bread? Tired of settling for choice beef when your adventurous, poetic soul yearns for prime? Fed up with fish that smells like… well, you know what it smells like. A girl’s gotta take matters…
In West Palm’s posh Flamingo Park neighborhood, a young couple plants their backyard with rows of basil, rosemary, thyme, and Italian parsley. In Lake Worth, a Finnish grandfather bakes bread from old Scandinavian recipes — he’s been doing it every day in the same location for 50 years. Down the…
