Nation’s Restaurant News, a restaurant-industry magazine, runs a whimsical bit every week: It features a “clever, funny or bizarre restaurant name” as “Name of the Week.” Winners have included operations the likes of the Barking Frog and Thai One On. The column is good for a chortle, and the eateries…
If you’ve never really known exactly what a knish is and been too afraid to ask, here’s a recent definition: Executive lunch. Now businessfolk on the go can grab an authentic Coney Island potato knish — meaning square in shape rather than a puffy blob — from Coney Island Joe’s…
Back when I worked in restaurant kitchens, my husband became an expert at guessing what the specials of the night had been. All he had to do was take a whiff of my clothes. “New England clam chowder,” he’d say, sniffing. “Grilled pork loin.” Sniff. “Filet mignon with,” sniff, “a…
It’s that old misnomer again: Mediterranean Food Corner (922 Sample Rd., Lighthouse Point, 954-786-9909) actually sells Middle Eastern specialties. You can find Israeli, Egyptian, and Lebanese treats at this little shop hidden in the elbow of a strip mall. In other words superior hummus, baba ghannouj, falafel, tabbouleh, and meat…
Whenever my family went to New York’s Chinatown for dinner or dim sum, my neat-freak mother would choose the restaurant with the dirtiest floor. When her astonished children would point out the grains of rice and chicken bones littering the peeling linoleum tiles, she would just smile, shrug, and let…
Brilliant e-commerce ideas begin in… Boca? Apparently so. Shore to Door Seafood (67 SW Tenth Ter., Boca Raton, 800-218-8147, Shore to Door Seafood), delivers fresh seafood anywhere via overnight FedEx packaging. Started by two long-time friends and fishermen, the company purchases its products directly from the local fishing fleet (especially…
Sushi bars in South Florida are almost interchangeable. Each offers a ton of selections, including a roster of inventive, multi-ingredient rolls with funny names. Each serves some other kind of Asian food (usually Thai) along with the Japanese stuff. And each carries some of the freshest fish around — as…
As a rule, a $5.99 price tag usually screams, “Stay away!” to any wine connoisseur; the celebrity-inspired reserve vintages available at 67 (5360 N. Federal Hwy., Lighthouse Point, 954-428-6255) should prove an exception. Included among this gourmet market and wine merchant’s more than 10,000 items are a series of reserve…
If you need tangible evidence of the plunging economy, take a drive along Pines Boulevard and stop where it intersects North University Drive. Of the four shopping centers that sentry the corners, at least three are half empty. I haven’t seen so many “available” signs since touring the red light…
So the holidays are over, and you’ve come to one conclusion about the parties your employers threw: They sucked. The most frequent complaints I’ve heard? (1) cheap booze, and (2) lousy food. I can’t do anything to make your bosses loosen the purse strings for top-shelf liquors, but I can…
If any decade of the last millennium should be written off for eternity, it’s the ’70s. The trends were horrific — feathered hair, tube tops, the Hustle. Not a saving grace among ’em. In fact, with the exception of the emergence of certain supergroups like Styx (hey, don’t begrudge me…
If a hot dog is this food critic’s forbidden fruit, then a fast-food hamburger is the apple that doesn’t fall far from the tree. And the joint that comes closest to Eden is Lil’ Ole Caboose (204 S. Powerline Rd., Deerfield Beach, 954-428-1597). “Home of the Boxcar Burger,” the Caboose…
Years ago, when I taught writing and composition to college students, I used a culinary term as an example of an oxymoron: jumbo shrimp. The kids seemed to grasp that example more quickly than any other. If I were teaching these days, I’d cite a different illustration: clean dive. A…
Apparently I’m not the only one who believes a glass of wine enhances every experience. Tout Sweet (1664 S. Federal Hwy., Delray Beach, 561-330-6464) — essentially an ice cream parlor that makes its own French custard ice cream — also has a beer-and-wine license. That’s so it can pour the…
Restaurant Report, an e-mail newsletter, invites readers to post their opinions and experiences. It includes some great nuggets of advice for restaurant professionals. The latest edition, for instance, gives waiters and waitresses several tips as sterling as Oneida, including: “Servers are there to enhance the guest’s experience, not intrude on…
When it comes to Hollywood, what could have been won’t be. And what was is again. Mark Soyka, who recently opened Brasserie Las Olas in Fort Lauderdale (and owns several restaurants in Miami-Dade), will not debut an eatery as scheduled in downtown Hollywood, despite incentives such as free rent and…
Ah, the hot dog. Robustly flavored and inherently bad for you, hot dogs have a unique and universal appeal. The other day I was at a birthday party for a one-year-old whose parents had hired a genuine hot dog vendor — ostensibly for the kids. For the grownups the hosts…
Miami-Dade County restaurants may get a lot of national media attention for food, but when it comes to wine, eateries in Broward and Palm Beach counties win corks down. Indeed, of the thirteen South Florida restaurants that won the Wine Spectator Award of Excellence for outstanding wine lists for 2000,…
In Kitchen Confidential, the gastronomic tell-all that convinced many folks to stop eating out, chef-author Anthony Bourdain lists a few hard-and-fast rules: Never order fish in a restaurant on a Sunday or Monday, because it was probably delivered the previous Thursday. Don’t chomp down on bacteria-friendly foodstuffs like hollandaise sauce…
To the uninitiated, Rochester Hots (1051 E. McNab Rd., Pompano Beach, 954-943-9393) might sound like the name of an adult entertainment club. But rather than scantily clad females from the frozen north, the “Rochester” refers to the origin of this supercasual eatery, which owner Nelson Liberti relocated from upstate New…
The creativity one can demonstrate with foodstuffs is astounding, and for once I’m not talking about cooking them. For instance, in his books Play With Your Food and How Are You Peeling?, photographer Joost Elffers exhibits the creatures he makes out of everyday fruits and vegetables. He turns okra into…
Only in South Florida would someone find a way to turn the election imbroglio into a sales pitch. Mike and Carol Enriquez, proprietors of Munchies (8943 Southern Blvd., West Palm Beach, 561-784-0038), a breakfast-and-lunch joint currently under renovation, plan to reopen this week with a political agenda. A new menu…
