If you thought the Federal ethics charges against Mary McCarty and her band of merry Palm Beach County and City Commissioners was scandalous enough, you haven’t heard what the California Avocado Commission has been up to in the past three years. McCarty, after all, only accepted a few free hotel…
Here’s a quote from chef Johnny Vinczencz in 1997, at the tender age of 32, when South Florida’s most adored young foodist was rising as brilliantly as a solid-gold moon over Miami: “There’s so much glamour in this business that it’s easy to get caught up with presentation and looks…
Here’s one for my “Oh for fuck’s sake!” files:Legislators in Utah are pushing to restrict restaurants that make mixed drinks in full view of minors, arguing that all those pretty, glittering bottles and delicious-looking garnishes behind the bar constitute a sore temptation, one that could lead youngsters to an unquenchable…
Just a reminder to mark your calendars: The Fellsmere Frog Legs Festival kicks off on January 15th and runs through the weekend to a grand finale at the Sunday Croaker Run. For my money Saturday the 17th looks like the best day to show if you’re feeling competitive: three contests…
Football and margaritas. There is less than one month left of football season; less than one month to transform your culturally bankrupt, Dorito- and Budweiser-filled Sundays on the couch into something genuinely awesome. And for that purpose, we suggest Moquila the classy nu-Mexican joint in Mizner Park, Boca Raton. An…
Evidently I’m not the only one fantasizing about Stone Crab claws the size of baseball mitts. Slow Food Miami, in conjunction with Friends of the Everglades, is planning an event Saturday January 31st that ought to help sate your desire, at least temporarily, for things that scuttle sideways: The Stone…
Here’s a bit of the ammunition you’ll need for a lively debate with slow food organizer Diane Campion at this Sunday’s panel discussion “Why Buy Local?” Campion, heirloom tomato farmer Walt Ross, Nancy Roe of Green Cay Farms (pictured left), nutritionist Larisa Alonso, and Cafe Boulud Chef Zach Bell are…
Linda Bean, granddaughter of Maine’s L. L. Bean, is bringing us lobster. Though new to the foodie business, she’s got her own warf, her own fishermen, and now her own concept: lobster rolls, each with a full ¼ of meat, fresh and perfect and dripping butter on your grateful lap,…
Wow, I am so ashamed of myself. I’ve lived in South Florida for 15 years, and until last weekend I’d never been to Everglades City, stone crab capital of the universe. This little one-horse town is a seafood-lover’s wet dream, and it’s barely two hours drive from the door of…
We already know what the biggest restaurant trend of 2008 was; let’s not draw out the agony — it was identical to the biggest banking trend, auto trend, friends-of-Bernard-Madoff trend, newspaper trend, and retail sales trend: If you didn’t lose money this year, there’s something wrong with you. Unless you’re…
If you’re like me after the holidays, a person who routinely has trouble pushing herself away from the table**, you’re feeling fat and broke. So I looked up some traditional Depression Era recipes, hearkening back to the days when everybody was skinny because they ate so much cabbage, noodles, beans,…
Coming to a beach near you.This is a weird time of the year for transplanted New Englanders. On the one hand, Florida’s balmy wintertime tropicality is the reason we came here. On the other, wintertime in Florida always feels like a bit of a gyp. We get a little home…
Pigging Out for the Holidays.Pictured above: The 35 pounds of pork I got in the mail from Heritage Foods USA this week, fully one quarter of a Six Spotted Berkshire hog. Price: $235. I’m determined to cook most of it to feed the extended family over the holidays, beginning of…
One of my favorite holiday breads comes from my friend Karen Horan in Key West — handed down from her grandmother. She finally took pity on me and gave me the recipe last year; I guess she got sick of having to bake me a loaf every time I came…
I Predict:You will recycle many BaggiesThis time of year we’re all clairvoyant: Everybody is summing up the past and predicting the foodie future, including moi (look for my column next Wednesday here). My inbox is full of this kind of hocus pocus and mumbo jumbo, most recently the Food Network’s…
If the prices of local slow food events has been a bit rich for you, or you haven’t quite had your fill of wacky holiday cocktails yet, hie yourself over to Forte di Asprinio in West Palm Beach this Sunday for “The Farmer and the Mixologist,” an event that promises…
Apparently, the Tijuana Flats Burrito Co. has finally opened up a location in South Florida. It’s about time. Tijuana Flats is a Floridian company, after all, straight out of Winter Haven, and they’ve got branches in four states already. We ordinarily wouldn’t get so excited about a chain restaurant, but…
Just to take myself as an example: We buy 17 kinds of heirloom tomato seeds on the Internet and plant them in pots. Great way to economize, right? Grow your own food! Because maybe like freelance writer Sheri Ann Richerson of Marion, Indiana, we “think there is going to be…
You don’t open a restaurant at 207 Royal Poinciana Way, Palm Beach, without some appreciation of history, of the turning wheel of fortune. And I can hardly eat there myself without nostalgia. I used to live upstairs in a beautiful, sunny room with a curved bay window overlooking the old…
They’ll have it their way.If you’ve somehow missed Burger King’s hilarious not funny at all new marketing campaign, where they bring Whoppers to Hmong villagers in remote Thailand, the Inuit of Greenland, and a Transylvanian town in Romania, you have to check this out. Although the campaign generates a seriously sinking feeling…
My steak is bigger than your steak.Super-corporate, super-expensive, super-good Morton’s Steakhouse cuts the ribbon on a brand new (and totally unnecessary) Fort Lauderdale branch on December 14. That’s at 500 E. Broward Blvd — which, we suppose, will be a convenient spot for the few local carnivores who always secretly…
You couldn’t pay me the $500 prix fixe to get me to eat “dinner in the sky” at the Seminole Casino Coconut Creek — apart from my terror of heights, I haven’t been strapped to a dining chair since I was 6 months old and I’m regressing fast enough as…
