There is a certain Jorge Luis Borges twist to me, a restaurant critic, critiquing a show whereby average folks play restaurant critic. I’m talking of the first installment of Check, Please!, the PBS series that has met with great success in Chicago and Los Angeles, and hopes to do likewise…
Check, Please!, hosted by Miami’s favorite local chef, Michelle Bernstein, makes its debut on PBS (WPBT, Channel 2) tonight at 7:30 p.m. Every episode features three guests who pick their favorite restaurants, then visit the establishments anonymously and offer their critiques back in the studio. I spoke with Michelle over…
This past October, The New York Times purchased tuna sushi from 20 restaurants and markets in New York City and subjected the samples to laboratory tests. The startling results were reported yesterday: Mercury levels of tuna from Nobu Next Door, Sushi Seki, Sushi of Gari, Blue Ribbon Sushi, and Gourmet…
They say we eventually come to look like what we truly are. Our inner selves transform the outer ones little by little, nudging our whole being into alignment, until we make a reflective house of our bodies the way a snail articulates its shell. Or maybe it’s the opposite: skin…
I’m waiting my turn in the assembly line-style queue at Sunrise Pita (2680 N. University Dr., Sunrise, 954-748-0090) when the line cook asks the woman in front of me what she’d like on her shawarma lafa. Her lips purse as she contemplates the options — tomato and cucumber salad, roasted…
My right leg is bouncing up and down rapidly, a nervous tick I’ve had since high school. The waiter at Social Miami can not bring my check soon enough, and I cannot run out of this den of condescension and superficiality they call a restaurant fast enough. Social’s website advertises…
The doors have swung open at Chef Jan Jorgensen and wife Leticia’s TWO CHEFS TOO, the new North Miami outpost of the popular Two Chefs in Pinecrest. Located in the space where Mark’s Place used to be, look for a similar menu as the original, but with the addition of…
Where: La Nonna Restaurant, 117 SW 107th Ave, Sweetwater. What $15 Gets You: Linguine with garlic, basil pesto sauce, salad, a glass of wine I needed to find a restaurant near school that didn’t serve hamburgers, subs, or anything that even remotely resembled a sandwich, so I asked around. A…
I met Mark Ortell, owner of Amazonia Brazilian Churrascaria, over a Cuban sandwich last year. We were sitting at the bar at Crazy Cuban in Boynton Beach drinking beer when Ortell mentioned he had two restaurants in Aruba. When he said he planned to open two more, Amazonia and Aquamarine,…
“I’ve taken it in steps,” says Giancarla Bodoni, chef and co-owner (with husband Pino) of Escopazzo Organic Italian Restaurant in South Beach. As I noted in my recent review, Escopazzo uses all organic produce and dairy, no farmed fish, and meats that come from animals that have been raised humanely…
“Celebrity chefs bring plane food to new heights” blared the business section headline in Saturday’s Miami Herald. Charlie Trotter, Todd English, and our own Michelle Bernstein are highlighted in the article as pioneers of haute in-flight cuisine — and also as harbingers of “the airline industry’s economic revival”. Indeed, the…
Where: Nice Mon. 19695 NW 2nd Ave, Miami. What $15 Gets You: Jerk chicken meal, Jamaican beef patty, a drink. As I was traveling down Northwest Second Avenue one day, I noticed this green roofed building with a big yellow sign in front that said Nice Mon: Jamaican Restaurant and…
Question, readers: How long are you willing to wait for your next glass of wine? In my family, it’s all about timing. If you’re a pro, you clamp your fist around the Rancho Zabaco bottle as you’re vacuuming the last whiff of Zin-infused air from your goblet. It takes planning…
When they wheeled the machine out on its cart, eight feet tall at least, an antique gewgaw of brass nozzles and gauges, pumps and spouts, like something you’d find in an 18th-century laboratory, she hardly knew what it was. She’d simply asked for a cup of coffee. Three liveried waiters…
What are you gonna do to ring in the New Year? Get drunk? Spend a bunch of money at a club? Shoot a gun in the air? Well fuck you. My man Chris (in the black wife beater) and everybody down on SW 27th street got up at the crack…
In my review last week of S & S Diner at Allen’s Drugstore, I wrote that “way back when our grandparents were eating better/worse than we, it wasn’t unusual to have eateries located within pharmacies”. Tim Hogle, owner of Tantra Restaurant & Lounge, saw the article and forwarded me this…
New Year’s Eve, like Valentine’s Day, is what folks in the restaurant biz refer to as “Amateur Night” — meaning the patrons who frequent eateries on these occasions are not necessarily the most serious diners. That said, some of our local chefs have come up with seriously creative menus for…
Howie Kleinberg and Michael Jacobs have a lot in common. Both chefs are fairly big guys, and have been cooking locally for many a year (Jacobs was originally top toque at Tantra in 1997). Kleinberg started up the kitchen at The Food Gang in Surfside, which for all its glowing…
What I didn’t know about chicken wings when I first set foot in Hurricane Grill and Wings would fill the corporate libraries of Tyson and Perdue. I didn’t know the things we eat today by the basket-load, a deep-fried finger-food that has conquered corner bars and corporate franchises, the dripping…
Where: Hops Grill and Brewery , 1155 Pines Blvd., Pembroke Pines, (954) 441-4599 What $15 Gets You: Smothered Chicken Marsala, side of vegetables, side of fries, and a drink of your choice. The food at Hops wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great either. It was standard. Keeping in mind that…
In my restaurant review this week (Two Americas), I wrote that “While a ‘food revolution’ has indeed taken place, only middle-class and wealthy people can afford to purchase the real quality goods (To wit: Last week I swooned at the check-out line upon realizing I’d just paid eight dollars for…
Last month we wrote about Dogma Grill (“Haute Dogs,” November 1), lamenting that Broward dog lovers can’t find a certain type of Los Angeles street-cart hot dog. The L.A. dog we were hankering for is wrapped in bacon and griddle-fried with onions, peppers, and whole jalapeños. Then reader Lety Lopez…
