Palm Beach Food & Wine Festival Tomorrow

Reminder: the Fourth Annual Palm Beach Food and Wine Festival is tomorrow December 7th. Come out and get your taste on with some of the best and most exclusive restaurants in Palm Beach. There are both general admission tickets ($50; entry starts at 7 p.m.) and VIP ($100, starts at…

Mario Batali to Cook at Morikami Monday, December 13

The critically acclaimed, James Beard award-winning chef Mario Batali — known for his love of olive oil, Italian cooking and his animated TV personality — is scheduled to perform a cooking demonstration at the Morkiami Museum and Japanese Gardens on Monday, December 13. Batali long ago grew out of the kitchen…

Cafe Maxx Pairs Up Champagne and Sushi

Since sushi is traditionally served with but a few beverages — tea, beer and/or sake — this pairing is slightly unorthodox. But not really — white wine with sushi is increasingly popular, and what’s champagne but white wine with fizz? Also, it’s more common to see sushi prepared by non-Japanese folks, which…

Table 42 Adds Signature Burger, DIY Pasta

If Boca’s Table 42 Italian Kitchen + Wine Bar keeps adding new dishes, it may have to change its name to Table 43. Okay, not really, but Gary Rack’s stylish trattoria-enoteca in Royal Palm Place is bulking up its menu for the coming season, adding everything from new burgers to…

Holiday Drink @ Morton’s: The Sparkling Sleigh Ride

Now that we’re past Thanksgiving and you’re donning your reindeer sweater, putting up the twinkle lights, and jamming out with Bing Crosby, you might as well drink in the holiday spirit too. Put down that mojito and pick up a Sparkling Sleigh Ride at Morton’s Steak House. The cocktail is…

Drink Tea, Achieve Inner Peace at the Morikami Museum

Does the holiday crunch have you hankering for a bit of inner calm?  Head to The Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens tomorrow, December 4, for demonstrations of Sado: The Way of Tea. The mere act of drinking a cup of tea takes time and forces one to slow down and…

Florida Cheesemakers: Hani’s Organics and Winter Park Dairy

John Paul Kline is a local chef and proprietor of John Paul Custom Cuisine in Delray Beach. He also leads the monthly food and wine events at the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale. Here, he shares his thoughts about two Florida cheesemakers he recently discovered. It was probably around…

Beer and Cocktail Fest Tomorrow @ Exit 66: All You Can Drink for $20

Since this is the time of year when Christmas trees, twinkly lights and cherubs start making their annual appearances, you know there’s gotta be a party or three.Now, you’re certainly within your rights to question an all-you-can-drink bash that begins at noon. The surgeon general sure would. The mayor probably…

Wine Watch Breaks Out Secret Stash of Vintage Port

​December is usually a down month at Wine Watch. This December is different.In fact, it’ll be the best tasting yet. When delving into the flavorful nuances of a fermented beverage, why not just go all the way right off the bat?Port — especially vintage port — is all the way…

I’m Eating What?! Schav

​As promised in the last blog, we tackled schav, a sorrel soup popular with Eastern ​Europeans, in the interest of science. Plus we had heard the stuff is enjoyed by Jewish folks and, it being Hanukkah and all, we thought it was an appropriate choice. We weren’t sure what this stuff was…

Michelle Bernstein to Host Cooking Demo

You’ve seen her on the Food Network, between the covers of glossy food magazines, even hawking Crisco; now you can see Michelle Bernstein actually… cooking.  Yes, even celebrity chefs get behind the stove once in awhile, and come Saturday, December 11, SoFla’s biggest culinary star will take her turn around…

DNA Energy Drink Seeking Spokesmodel

I was stoked when my editor threw this little gem of an assignment into my lap: Boca Raton-based DNA Energy Drink is searching for Miss DNA 2011, which means that I get to thumb through multiple indexes of relatively attractive women as part of my research process. At least that’s…

Happy Hour: Blue Jean Blues in Fort Lauderdale

​The place: Blue Jean Blues, 3320 NE 33rd St., Fort Lauderdale. Call 954-306-6330. The hours: From open until 7 p.m every day. The deal: Two-for-one domestic beers, wells, and house wines; half-off appetizers 4 to 7 p.m. The digs: Filling the hole left by the closing of O’Hara’s on Las Olas,…

Six Ways to Cook Iguana

Now that the temperature has finally taken a dip, watch for dead iguanas falling out of trees!  (See photo, taken in Oakland Park last January.) South Florida’s plague of big green lawn lizards was culled somewhat last winter by a cold snap that killed legions of the critters. The canal…

City Link Beer Fest Brings the Suds This Friday

Zymurgists, clean off your beer goggles. It’s City Link Beer Fest time again. For five wonderful hours this Friday evening, you can drink as much ale, lager, and stout as your little belly can handle. This is the 15th year the publication has been throwing the big brew-filled bash, and…

The “Good Life” Gets Better in Lake Worth

Local oenophiles, grazers, and jazz lovers will all have a new headquarters come December 11, when Lake Worth’s Dolce Vita wine shop expects to move from its tiny downtown J Street location to larger, grander quarters around the block, taking over the building formerly home to yoga studio-veggie café Soma…

The Bitter End for Taste?

Taste Gastropub, star chef Allen Susser’s upscale-casual eatery in Delray Beach, has closed, at least temporarily, according to the message on the restaurant’s phone line.  Rumors of the closure have been swirling for several days, but Charlie has so far been unable to contact Susser for confirmation, though apparently there’s…

“Dinner With Benefits” at SoLita

First there were unemployment benefits when you lost your job. And then, hopefully, friends with benefits when your spouse left you after said unemployment. Well, the benefits keep coming at SoLita, the upscale, modern Italian eatery on Las Olas Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale, known to entice diners with its hearty…

Suite 100 in Fort Lauderdale Promotes Ted Inserra to Top Chef

When Smith & Jones closed in July, nobody was more in the middle of the fallout than Ted Inserra. In this blog item, Inserra blamed a slowdown in business, but many commenters blamed Inserra, despite the fact that he was just a sous chef at the Las Olas restaurant.Whatever caused…