This week in Dish we walk down memory lane and revisit the crazy year that was 2009. Our year-end wrap up answers the following: What notable newcomers made their way onto South Florida’s eager palates? What restaurants fell victim to the stagnant economy? In 2009, restaurateurs turned to trends to…
About 30 minutes into the challenge, my mouth simply refused to chew any more. The taste of ground beef had become nauseating; the smell of sulfurous eggs and fatty bacon debilitating. Trying to gnaw through the tough, crusty bread was like eating a mildewed sponge. Simply put, my mind –…
Now that we’re enjoying one of our rare cold fronts, you may as well make the most of it by making some wintry, homemade soup. This pumpkin spice soup takes canned pumpkin puree and turns it into an easy, cheap, and tasty meal that will warm you up in this…
What went down on the blog this week:This is what America is all about: Liberty and cheap wine for all.How to bake halibut so delicious and easy, a caveman could do it (damn you, Geico). Lindburger’s is like a family cookout in the backyard, without your dad yelling obscenities at…
UPDATE: These listings are for NYE 2009/2010. To see New Year’s events for NYE 2010/2011see here (Broward) and here (Palm Beach County) I don’t know about you, but I want to ring in the new year in style, guzzling champagne and slurping down caviar like a 19th-century robber baron. Preferably…
Scott Rothstein’s own restaurant ventures with the Bova Group — Bova Prime, the late Bova Ristorante, and what was to be Bova Smoke and Bova @ Casa Casuarina — have to be feeling the sting of the prominent attorney’s downfall. But other restaurants are being affected by the fallout as…
Walk into the men’s room at this South Florida restaurant, and you’ll find a cadre of scantily-dressed women hanging out by the urinals. Some will even by trying to sneak a peek at your naughty bits as you do your business. Talk about an invasion of privacy. This mural is…
Unrepentant beer drinkers, rejoice! Each week, Clean Plate Charlie will select one craft or import beer and give you the lowdown on it: How does it taste? What should you drink it with? Where can you find it? But mostly, it’s all about the love of the brew. If you…
This Italian coffee shop along Commercial Boulevard serves freshly made panini, tramezzini (tea sandwiches), and salads in addition to a host of daily-baked cookies and confections. The modern space, with white and orange walls and blue tiled countertop, is run by brother-and-sister team Anna and Leo DeVincentis and Anna’s husband,…
My friends Mike and Tara and I were parked in front of a big bowl of Beachside Grill’s Sunday gravy, each trying to determine how it stacked up against our own version. We worked small bites of the thickly coated rigatoni around our mouths with an almost scientific precision. The…
If I don’t show up for work on Monday, you’ll know what happened: I’ll have eaten myself to death, the victim of a five-pound in total beef burger smothered with enough bacon, cheese, and fried eggs to keep Denny’s running though a busy Sunday morning.This weekend, I’m going to attempt…
Coral Springs’ newest Rib joint, Rock ‘N’ Roll Ribs, finally debuted last Thursday night, and boy, was it ever rockin’. The place was packed on Friday night — the sizable party I was with had to wait for a table for nearly 45 minutes for the restaurant to clear out…
When it debuted late last year, Smith & Jones in Fort Lauderdale was Johnny V’s answer to the economy. We weren’t exactly kind to it back then. These days, the “creative American comfort food” is still sticking to the formula, but it’s also found its stride. Now you can take…
With the holidays right around the corner, it seems like an appropriate time to review Beachside Grill, a retro bar and restaurant in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea whose specialty is Sunday gravy. Beachside’s version is chock-full of tender pork and Italian sausage, and while it’s hard to take it over your mama’s version,…
“Tellric the Invoker here. Just the other day, my party and I were caught deep in the bowels of the Underdark facing a mob of rabid duergar, when an uncontrollable thirst struck me like a +3 Staff of Command. So, I did what any wise adventurer would do: I reached…
A burger at the Florida chain Lindburgers tastes just like what I remember from backyard barbecues growing up. The meat is charred all over, which, back then, was the result of wind and flare-ups and the amateur grill master pressing the patties down on the grill with aplomb. At Lindburgers,…
This delicate fish is so simple, even the most inexperienced cooks can make it. Start with inch-thick fillets of the fleshy white fish — fresh is best, though even the frozen packages available at Publix are of decent quality. Just be sure to defrost properly by placing the fillets in…
It’s been one helluva week on the blog:Fort Lauderdale’s own taste of Boston, Kelly’s Landing turns 23. Or is that two?New River Pizza makes its pie the new old-fashioned way, which is to say coal-free.Key to winning over an in-law’s heart? Brined pork.A sushi restaurant in Mizner Park serves bad…
Walking through Total Wine in Boca Raton last night, I felt like Homer Simpson in the Land of Chocolate. I simply didn’t have enough hands to grab everything I wanted. And then I came across this: Wine Spectator’s Top 100 Releases of 2009. For a reasonable $5.95 a copy, this…
At least, according to this article on livescience.com.It turns out, some scientists now believe potatoes may in fact be carnivorous plants. The tubers actually have sport sticky hairs that trap insects, a trait they share with petunias and campion flowers, often called catchflys. Well-known carnivorous plants like the venus fly…
Unrepentant beer drinkers, rejoice! Each week, Clean Plate Charlie will select one craft or import beer and give you the lowdown on it: How does it taste? What should you drink it with? Where can you find it? But mostly, it’s all about the love of the brew. If you…
About two years ago, I had a friend in town who wanted to go to lunch somewhere distinctly Fort Lauderdale. So I took him to Bimini Boatyard off 17th Street, a place that evokes the city in that there’s (A) water, (B) outdoor seating, and (C) simply cooked seafood. We…
