What’s your favorite food? Whatever I’m eating at the moment. Whatever I just ate. Whatever I might eat tomorrow. Right now, faced with a cuisine you might call Austro-Mideast-global fusion (if that didn’t sound so ridiculous), with appetizers and entrées like conch schnitzel, escargots, fillet of kampachi with currants, Kurobuta…
The week they opened in downtown West Palm Beach, the staff at Forté di Asprinio (225 Clematis St., West Palm Beach; 561-833-3330) were happily startled when a small party spent $25,000 on food and drink and dropped a $5,000 tip. So too was it generally a relief for Clematis Street…
The affair between chef Jeffrey Brana and The Raleigh Hotel was short and quiet, if not particularly sweet. Mr. Brana, admired for his work for many years as head chef at Norman’s and then for a quick but spectacular stint at his own Restaurant Brana, was brought in to upgrade…
These days, it’s not just a question of where to find fresh produce, meat, and fish. It has to be organic. Local. Ethical. One market might have juicy, just-harvested sugar cane or a stock of lemons as large and supple as a woman’s fist, but were the laborers paid a…
I don’t want to go all maudlin here, but what the hell happened to diners? Maybe they do exist still, like endangered pachyderms retreating ever farther into inaccessible forest; you might catch a glimpse of some gleaming, bullet-shaped shadow on blue highways running through Church Hill or Greer’s Ferry or…
Spots like blissberry, a new highfalutin frozen yogurt place on Alton Road off Lincoln Road on South Beach, seem to be the dairy world’s stab at Starbucks formula. That is, overpricing products and trying to get customers not to care by making you feel trendy and special by merely ingesting…
One of the focal points of the elegant room at Ke’e Grill in Boca Raton is a pair of blue marlin mounted on a bamboo wall. The other is a sheet of floor-to-ceiling glass windows overlooking a tropical garden. But it’s the marlin, each the size of a Mini Cooper…
Where: Graziano’s Gourmet in the Gables 2301 Galiano St., Coral Gables, (305) 460-0001 What $15 Gets You: Parrillada with a side salad (or fries) and an Anchor Steam…
Castro resigns! I’m not old enough to remember a Cuba without El Caballo in the presidential compound, but in solidarity with those who are, we hied ourselves over to Little Havana in Deerfield Beach last week, wanting to absorb the flavor of the prelapsarian island metropolis. The closest I’ve ever…
Where: LC’s Roti Shop, 19505 NW 2nd Ave, Miami Gardens. What $15 Gets You: A chicken roti, a sugar cake, a doubles, and a Coke. Caribbean cuisine is hard to define because of the mixing of cultures that exist in the area generally referred to as the Caribbean. When a…
People don’t want to cross the bridge to get here,” says Peter Wong. He’s talking about the little concrete blip that arches over the Intercoastal on East Commercial Boulevard in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, a clackety span you could just about hop over with a running start. Wong opened Noodle Box on Ocean…
Where: Japanese Market Inc. 1412 79th Street Cswy North Bay Village, (305) 861-0143 What you get for $15: The Deluxe Sushi combination (8 pieces Nigiri) plus a fat beer. Sushi in this town sucks. It’s either prohibitively expensive or poorly done or some combination of the two. Fortunately for us…
Where: American Adobo, 633 NE 125th St., Miami What $15 Gets You: Teriyaki chicken, longaniza, rice, cabbage soup and a Coke Don’t let the name American Adobo fool you, the only thing American in this restaurant is the ketchup. The restaurant focuses on Filipino cuisine. As me and my friend…
It’s Friday night on Clematis Street, and the line for drinks at Rocco’s Tacos and Tequila Bar is four deep. I’m checking the wall of patrons for chinks so my buddies and I can nab a shot of El Jimador while we wait for a table. Suddenly, someone says, “I…
Where: DJ’s Diner (Best Western Windsor Inn), 12210 Biscayne Boulevard, Miami. What $15 Gets You: A Mexican-style burger, fries, mozzarella sticks, and a drink. DJ’s Diner at the Best Western Windsor Inn on 12210 Biscayne Boulevard is easy to overlook as most people are usually speeding by on that street…
I got to know Japanese food intimately at Yoko, a long, thin strip of a restaurant lined with pleather-covered booths, smoked mirrors, and a sushi bar backed by oversized photos of bamboo. The place, always filled with regulars, was situated between Babies R Us and the Spy Store off Okeechobee…
It must be a bit disconcerting for an American to enter Caribbean Delite. The Trinidadian eatery is nestled unassumingly in a generic, largely island-themed strip mall on SW 160th. Reggae blares from the record shop down the way, but the interior of the restaurant is silent, save for the sound…
Our lame nation spent Sunday coveting the pig skin. Brazil ate it and had a real party. Because a bawdy, sexual parade is about a million times more interesting than two squadrons of men running into each other between expensive tv ads. That said, I decided to celebrate the week…
Winston Churchill painted seascapes from his cabana here. In the 1950s, General Motors debuted their new car models in its grand ballrooms. The club has hosted parties for Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Douglas MacArthur, Elizabeth Taylor, and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Tony Bennett and Julio Iglesias have sung on…
Where: Sabores Chilenos, 10760 W Flagler St Suite 305, Sweetwater, (305) 554-4484 What $15 Gets You: Churrasco al Plato, Inka Cola, and a pastry or dessert When someone mentions Latin food in Miami, Cuban is the first word that comes to mind. In areas like Sweetwater and Hialeah, there are…
To celebrate his decade of success, owner Romeo Majano is offering complimentary champagne this Sunday, and each succeeding Sunday through April. Recently rated in the Zagat Guide as “Top Italian” restaurant in Miami, Romeo’s Café, on Coral Way, distinguishes itself via lack of a written menu. Chef Romeo visits each…
The last time I’d stepped through the door at 2671 E. Oakland Park Blvd., I’d skirted under a neon martini glass and around an ashen-haired biker hobbling gamely on metal crutches. The biker, not as tough as he looked, was one of the trio of big shots who owned Ruggero’s…
