Hells Kitchen 5 – Chef Giovanni

Alright culinary-reality-fanatics, meet Giovanni, one of three Hell’s Kitchen 5 contestants from Florida. Giovanni is the executive chef at Creehan’s Copper Grill in Destin, Florida. Destin is a Gulf Coast beach town close to Pensacola. Pensacola’s about as un-Miami as you can get in Florida, but it is in the…

Hell’s Kitchen 5 – Chef Danny

  This dude is appearing on Hell’s Kitchen 5 premiering tonight on Fox at 9pm. His name is Danny and he’s from Edgewater, Florida. There are three Florida contestants this year on Hell’s Kitchen 5. Danny is 23 years old and works as an executive chef. He’s a self proclaimed…

Food Media:From Chutzpah To Mein Kampf

*”One of the most accomplished, respected, and charismatic chefs in the world.” Of course you’ve probably guessed that we are speaking of Miami’s own Adrianne Calvo, 24-year old chef/owner of Adrianne’s Vineyard Restaurant & Wine Bar. What’s that? Never heard of her? Well if you’ve got $91.99 to shell out,…

Psst… Did You Hear?

Having dinner at By Word of Mouth is a bit like being invited to dine at the home of a fussy middle-aged matron, a person considered a very good cook in her day, someone who once published a newsletter widely admired by friends and neighbors (“Kathryn’s Kitchen”) and who occasionally…

PETA’s Super Bowl Advert is Banned, Legions of Sports Fans Indifferent

Just how irrelevant has PETA become? The one-time-animal-rights-organization-turned-ludicrous-marketing-machine long ago gave up trying to reach people with reasoned arguments about the sanctity of all life or the wastefulness of our meat-happy culture. Instead they’ve adopted a fairly standard marketing strategy with which to convert confused meaties: 1) Create supposedly offensive…

Cafe Martorano Media Blitz

Ft. Lauderdale’s Cafe Martorano and its owner Steve Martorano exert the media-industry equivalent of gravitational pull. He and his restaurant attract attention. Da guy’s a star yaknowwhadamean? He’s got his landmark South Florida headquarters, a joint in Vegas, national tv spots cookin meatballs, Gail Shepherd’s writin’ about him, face on…

Michy’s Second Season

Michelle Bernstein returns as host of WPBT’s popular television show Check, Please! South Florida, and Season 2 , which premieres Monday, March 9th, promises to contain almost as many new twists as the latest episodes of Lost. On second thought, maybe I’m exaggerating a bit; there are really only two…

Wrapping Up the Jupiter Craft Brewers Festival

The Third Annual Jupiter Craft Brewers Festival took place on Saturday, and in case you missed out on what was a perfect day of beer sampling and cavorting, check out our slide show here. What made the fest so “gee, shucks” great? For starters, the festival area – the amphitheater…

Would You Like Pakora With That? Fast Food Outsourcing Order

Jack in the Box is apparently testing a program to outsource their drive-through orders, routing requests for burgers and shakes to call-takers outside the country. The program is getting its first test run in Charlotte, North Carolina, where folks innocently pulling up to the order box are being taken for…

Cheech And Chong Drink Bongwater

I caught up with Cheech and Chong backstage at the South Beach Comedy Festival. I asked them questions about food and they told me about pussy, roaches, white people, and drinking bongwater. Cheech and Chong are great Americans, even for a Mexican and a Canadian…

The Inspector – 10 Miami-Dade Restaurants with ZERO Violations for 2009

Lest you think The Inspector is a hater, this week we won’t bring you the dirt on local routine-food-inspection-reports. Instead we’ll highlight the reports reporting that there is nothing to report. These restaurants were found to be totally violation free on their most recent inspections.Pita Pit –  16323 SW 88…

RACKS Is Whack

Another day, another European-style new age trattoria/old world Italian bar/outdoor marketplace/espresso bar/chic urban pizzeria getting set to open. Welcome to RACKS Italian Bistro And Market, owned by Gary Rack, who evidently didn’t like the sound of the name GARYS. Mr. Rack, founder of Boca Raton’s Coal Mine Pizza, sets out…

Lola’s Cupcakery Opens on Las Olas

As far as desserts go, what’s better than a cupcake? Think about it: these morsels of goodness are self-contained, portable, portion-controlled, and, when done right, can taste pretty swell. And now, they’re showing up on Las Olas. Lola’s Cupcakery is a new venture from Toronto restaurateur, Donald Kaplan, and his…

Shaka Can, And Does, Downtown

Admittedly this photo sent to us by the folks at  Shaka Jon’s isn’t going to draw any comparisons with the work of André Kertész, but luckily Shaka is about food and drink, not photography. The new downtown restaurant, located at 48 East Flagler Street, offers an informal, low-priced menu of…

The New Deal Is Old — And Kosher

There’s all sorts of talk about New Deal this and New Deal that these days, which is fine by Heshy Wilensky, proprietor of the New Deal Kosher Market. Located at 1362 NE 163rd Street in North Miami Beach, it is the only butcher shop in South Florida that has operated…

This is Your Brain. This is Your Brain on Truffles.

My favorite news item of the week: Swiss researches have discovered a new psychological disorder which they’ve called “Gourmand Syndrome.” Turns out that people who are passionately obsessed with food actually have lesions in their right anterior cerebral hemisphere — lesions which do not appear in people who are not…

Soup is Good (and Warming) Food

You may have noticed that it’s colder than a witch’s teet outside. I mean, I really enjoy these few months where flip flops and Bermuda shorts aren’t required attire lest you suffer heat stroke, but come on… 40s? That’s not what I signed up for, folks. So last night, feeling…

A Liberty City Breakfast with Basic Training Deliverance Academy

Liberty City Breakfast from Miami New Times on Vimeo. Gus Garcia’s feature story this week explores the world of Basic Training Delivery Academy in Miami’s Liberty City. Here’s a video detailing the Sunday breakfast ritual they offer free to the community. Click here to read the full article…

Big Cheese

You either love a guy like Steve Martorano or you don’t. But you’ve got to make up your mind, because Martorano is everywhere. There’s no escaping his pug-faced mug. It’s plastered on the jars of his signature spaghetti sauce. He’s all over YouTube, including a rap video extolling his eggplant…