The Subaru salesman who was in the process of selling me a car a couple months ago was nearly as excited about my impending road trip to Savannah, Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina, as I was. “I just got back from Savannah,” he said. “You’ve got to try this one…

I don’t usually mention chains in this space, but Cracker Barrel recently impressed me. It’s not the cuisine at this Southern-style restaurant and country store that’s such a treat, though the biscuits ain’t bad. It’s the audio library the chain offers as a service to travelers — and as an…

I’m always on the lookout for good restaurants in Weston. But my network out there (friends and relatives) usually answers my inquiries with the same response: “Well, we’ve got some Italian restaurants, and that’s about it. But we don’t mind, ’cause the kids really like pizza and pasta.” Even the…

I’ve got this thing about ordering Maine lobster in a steak house: Generally I think it’s a rip-off. In the high-end houses, lobsters run $16 to $18 per pound, usually at a two-and-a-half pound minimum. That’s one pricey crustacean. Not so at the Porterhouse Bar & Grill (7050 W. Palmetto…

Self-professed Caribbean food aficionados seem to operate under a misconception: The shabbier the shack, the tastier the cuisine. In a recent review of Calypso, a Pan-Caribbean restaurant in Pompano Beach, Sun-Sentinel critic M.L. Warren writes, “Anyone who has traveled much in the islands knows that most great island restaurants are…

Sometimes flowers just don’t cut it. So when an occasion warrants a more elaborate gift, consider Winners Circle Basket Case, Inc. (3341 NE 32nd St., Fort Lauderdale, 954-564-1093). Described in its brochure as a “gourmet product and fine wine emporium,” the store puts together and delivers beautiful baskets, more than…

You’ve got your Jewish delis, your Italian delis, even your German delis. But your Polish-Slovak deli? Well, yeah, you’ve got that, too, in Beachway Plaza (896 N. Federal Hwy., Pompano Beach, 954-784-5429). The spacious store stocks a bunch of imported products, including smoked sprats, mushrooms marinated in honey, and chocolate-covered…

A customer who doesn’t honor his or her reservation is a restaurateur’s biggest pet peeve. So I do my best to play by the rules, which vary from eatery to eatery. I provide a name (a pseudonym, of course) and a phone number (a real one). I call if I’m…

“So what do you think of the peace process in Northern Ireland?” I asked Mark Rohleder, co-owner of Waxy O’Connor’s, the five-month-old Irish pub located on Seventeenth Street Causeway in Fort Lauderdale. It seemed a reasonable question to ask. The news about a possible end to “the troubles” had just…

A heavyset man rudely pushed me through the doorway of the Old School Bread Company (105 E. Atlantic Ave., Delray Beach, 561-276-0013). A little pissed off, I followed him to the counter, where he bullied his way to the front of a throng of people, all clamoring for a free…

I’ve learned not to take too seriously anything that comes my way via the Internet. Petitions, virus hoaxes, chain letters — not only are they not worth reading, but I would never, as the tag lines suggest, mail the garbage to everyone I know. But then there’s the “Neiman-Marcus Cookie”…

I still remember the nightmare of my wedding cake. We searched unsuccessfully for a year for someone to make the layers from a white-chocolate batter. We had to settle, instead, for a white cake with white icing. When the big day finally came, the cake didn’t live up to it…

In March, Bon Appetit reported that 70 percent of the students at the French Culinary Institute in New York City are former professionals (lawyers and doctors) looking for a career change. I asked Doreen Nordstrom-Moore, executive chef-owner of the newly opened Palm Beach School of Cooking (25 N.E. 2nd Ave.,…

A good arm must be worth a thousand words, because American baseball teams are willing to recruit and train pitchers like Hideo Nomo (L.A. Dodgers), Hideki Irabu (New York Yankees), Livan Hernandez (Florida Marlins), and Hernandez’s brother Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez (New York Yankees) despite an obvious stumbling block: These…

Chef Tony Sindaco called me a couple of months ago to ask me what “peripatetic” means, which is how I’d described him in a review of the now-defunct Cafe Erte in Hollywood, where Sindaco cooked for a while. He thought I was insulting him. “It means you move around a…

As a little girl, I loved watching the artists who gave lessons on TV. One flick of a wrist and birds would be flying in a stark-white sky. A swoop here and there and pine trees would appear in the distance. A few more brush strokes and those same trees…

Dim sum, the Chinese dumplings and finger foods served from metal carts, has long been popular for brunch and lunch. But now you can inhale authentic goodies like beef ball with bean curd skin, sticky rice in lotus leaf, turnip pudding, and steamed chicken feet (along with the more familiar…

Mention feng shui to someone who’s never heard of it, and you’ll most likely get a “Gesundheit” in return. Discuss feng shui with an interior designer, and you’ll receive one of two responses: an enthusiastic nod of recognition or a sigh of exasperation. The ancient Chinese art of placement, feng…

It was an Alpine moment. Leggy in lederhosen, the Bavarian leather shorts worn with suspenders, about eighteen guys in their twenties trooped into Bistro Double U, joking with each other in German. Their lean torsos and muscular calves gave away what our server confirmed: that they were members of a…

I was attracted to Jean Claude Patisserie and Cafe (3320 NE 33rd St., Fort Lauderdale, 954-563-5406) by the lace curtains at the window. I stayed for the bargains — entrees, which hover around twelve dollars, are bookended by salad and dessert. But I returned for the sweets. This unassuming French…

The garlicky fragrance of home-cured kim chee wafts through the air at Han Yang Oriental Market (8033 W. Oakland Park Blvd., Sunrise, 954-746-0980), inexorably drawing patrons to the refrigerated cases that keep the spicy cabbage cool. And, once attracted, people find it hard to leave without a large jar of…

A funny thing happened on my way to becoming a restaurant critic — friends stopped inviting me over for dinner. It didn’t happen gradually or politely. One day I was a welcome guest who always brought a bottle of wine; the next day I was persona non grata at their…