Food & Drink

Where on earth has New World cuisine gone? A decade ago, it was the up-and-comer, the regional fusion fare set to kick Southwestern’s spicy, sassy ass. Diners could stuff themselves from Café Marquesa and Louie’s Backyard in Key West to Café Arugula and Darrel & Oliver’s Café Maxx in Pompano…

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from a decade on the culinary circuit, it is that restaurants named for and themed around an entirely fictitious-slash-lovable character, complete with fake bio written on the back of the menu, don’t generally offer much of value to anyone who enjoys a decent meal…

What’s the difference between intention and execution? At the six-month-old Harbor Grille, it’s a corkscrew. The 450-seat Harbor Grille, overlooking the water in a pleasant boating community of Dania Beach, is a remake of the former happy-hour staple and local, decades-old landmark Tugboat Annie’s. The eatery now has four bars…

Steve Martorano, it’s fair to say, is not a patient man. If you call him during the day, the chef-owner of Café Martorano in Fort Lauderdale won’t even answer the phone, since he doesn’t take reservations. If by some miracle he does pick up, he’ll probably be curt, limiting your…

Restaurant critics are often faced with a conflict of interest: We stumble on these great, unknown, hole-in-the-wall eateries that we’d like to keep for ourselves and the few loyal customers they’ve already won. But such finds are too good for anonymity, so we write sterling reviews about them and publicize…

At first glance, it might appear that aside from a fondness for serving beef, Angelo and Maxie’s Steakhouse in West Palm Beach and Tusk Steakhouse in Fort Lauderdale don’t have much in common. And why should they? After all, Angelo and Maxie’s is owned by Chart House Enterprises, which bought…

I’ll never forget the genuinely baffled look on my mother-in-law’s face when the proprietors of a northern Chinese restaurant in North Miami Beach handed her a rather large ceramic Buddha as a souvenir. Here she’d been busy complimenting the folks, as is her métier, but I doubt she was expecting…

My husband insists that, good or bad, I always get what I deserve. Which is why, when I got stopped at the metal detector before entering the courthouse for jury duty, he found it hysterical. Apparently, the security guards thought I had a pocketknife stashed in my purse, and I…

I suppose I should have expected the question sooner or later. This was the third time I’d taken out a certain couple for dinner and the third time we found ourselves to be the only party in a restaurant I was about to review. “Is it us?” they wanted to…

When you’re seated at the five-month-old French restaurant Le Rescatore, you’re handed a menu, a wine list, and a review from the Boca Point Viewpoint, a community newspaper, lovingly encased in plastic. Presumably, you’re supposed to read it and be impressed by its favorable content. But most likely, before you…

In the more remote corners of Peru, restaurateurs are going to great lengths to win regular customers: They’re requiring the female cooks to practice encantes — culinary spell-castings. These bewitchings aren’t the white-witch, nose-wrinkling sort Samantha Stevens made famous, either. In fact, they’re sort of stomach-turning, not to mention appallingly…

Take note: The Original Fat Cat’s Bar & Grill is actually a copycat. Of course, mimicry is the highest form of flattery, and that’s what Gen-X proprietors Scott Kurland (30 years old) and Dan Kurland (26 years old) intended — an homage to a popular sandwich shop near Rutgers University…