In yesterday’s episode of The Next Food Network Star, the show played a trick on its unsuspecting contestants. The network brought four finalists to WSFL to tape segments with South Florida.com Live anchor Dave Aizer, who then punked them by doing stuff like removing all the utensils from the kitchen…
Cheap pinot noir is a moron. Cheap, good pinot noir is an oxymoron. Pinot noir, you see, is the Sarah Palin of grapes — flighty, erratic, unpredictable, hard to handle — though unlike the nitwit from Wasilla, the result can be anything but simple and stupid. It’s that ornery nature…
Who says your weekend needs to end on Sundays? On Monday, LaBORatory Nights will bring their monthly tradition to Sage Bistro and Oyster Bar in Hollywood for an evening of wine and conversation. LaBORatory Nights is an 18-year-old tradition started in Miami, meant to bring together both cultivated and aspiring…
Although I like cranky British Chef Gordon Ramsay, I’m not really a huge fan of his Fox show Kitchen Nightmares. It’s far too formulaic, for one — every episode shares the same story arc, with only the set pieces changing — and it’s 99 percent about drama and only 1…
I’d been asking Kris to take me to River House for most of the duration of our relationship. I’d had my sights on a visit there since I moved to Fort Lauderdale from Lakeland in 1999. But that kind of high-end dining isn’t likely as a broke college student. Finally,…
My mother’s storied Jeannie’s Weenie Supremies guaranteed the hot dog a permanent place of honor in our fridge when I was growing up. The Supremies consisted of a hot dog, split and stuffed with cheddar cheese and wrapped in bacon. My father also had an unnatural love affair with a…
Although Clean Plate Charlie is the only food blog you really need to read daily, some people just can’t get enough. Here are some highlights of other food blogs.Woman’s Day has a great article pointing out what we all already know: Food is always better when it’s stuffed with other…
For years we’ve praised the deli counter sandwiches made at Fort Lauderdale’s My Market, a convenience store/bodega with a thriving sub shop attached. And for good reason: each of the fifty-some varieties are made with bread baked fresh daily, quality deli meat (what’s not Boar’s Head is usually made in…
It’s harder than you might think to find a good cup of coffee. I mean, straight-up, regular old coffee-flavored coffee. There are plenty of places to get your coffee drowned in milk or laced with sugary syrups, but finding a decent cup of black coffee can seem impossible if you…
Leave it to your boss to inadvertently ruin your good mood. After last week’s grass jelly debacle, I decided to take fate back into my own hands and hand-select the food I’d be eating for this week’s post. At my last trip to Publix, I was waiting in the checkout…
It’s safe to say that every chef has dreamed of telling off a diner who sent back a meal. According to someone who overheard the exchange, this took place at Pilar in Aventura recently:A woman in the dining room sent back her pasta, telling the food runner it was “ice…
Here in South Florida, we’ve accepted the idea that good food can be found in a strip mall. People wait three hours for meatballs at Café Martorano, stand in line at Jaxson’s Ice Cream Parlor, and eat some of the best rolls around at Sushi Jo — all in shopping…
Twenty-year-old White Apron Catering has accumulated a pretty impressive list of clients: Chanel, Cartier, the Harvard Alumnae Club, Hermes, J.P. Morgan, and Yours Truly. And you can take it from the latter: The $6,000 we spent on a party for a couple of family newlyweds last weekend was worth every…
All hail the humble taco, a perfect marriage of starch, protein, fruit, vegetable, and appetite, a triumph of down-home Mexican gastronomy, a thing of rare culinary beauty. Of course, that’s a taco made with fresh, quality ingredients by someone who knows and loves authentic Mexican food. That’s where Mark Miller…
If you’re not a subscriber to our weekly Café Bites dining newsletter for Broward and Palm Beach counties, here’s a taste of what you missed this week. Click here to subscribe. Chef Johnny Vinczencz earned the nickname “Caribbean Cowboy” for his inspired take on Caribbean, Southwestern, and Florida flavors, and…
House of Sweets — the nostalgic cupcake bakery attached to Delray’s House of Vintage — opened its new Cupcake Cafe this Saturday with a host of free giveaways and a cupcake-eating contest that saw one dude devour a dozen of the personal-sized pastries in under six minutes. House proprietors Amanda…
There’s no getting around it: When you eat a Primanti-style sandwich at Primanti Brothers, you feel like a glutton of the highest degree. The Pittsburgh-based sandwich company (whose only locations outside of PA are in South Florida) is famous for jamming everything that would normally be in a lunch platter…
Making cheap Chardonnay is like playing rock guitar: Everybody does it; hardly anybody does it well. The folks at California’s Twisted Wine Cellars do it pretty well. Well enough, in fact, for their 2007 vintage to grab a gold medal at this year’s San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition, which just…
The server was explaining this and that about the dessert tray at Truluck’s in Fort Lauderdale when I made some comment about how perfect they all looked. “They’re not real,” he said. Then he slapped the chocolate cake. It made a sound like smacking a basketball. I swear, I had…
Although Clean Plate Charlie is the only food blog you really need to read daily, some people just can’t get enough. Here are some highlights of other food blogs, this time with a local focus.Dinner Reviews focuses on Broward, Palm Beach, and Dade counties and… well reviews restaurants. The best…
No self-respecting foodie should let Bastille Day go by without some kind of celebration. Say what you want about French culture (normally a bunch of overblown cliques anyway); there is simply no denying French influence on cuisine. Some of the finest breads, cheeses, and desserts in the world are distinctly…
I remember my time spent eating school lunch fondly. My favorite was Mexican pizza day, when the lunch ladies would roll out crumbly, cracker-crusted pizzas topped with hardened American cheese, sweet and spicy taco sauce, and delectable little pellets of “meat.” What’s even better was Mexican pizza day, part two,…
