The girl who serves us our sake is a Sexy Kitty. Her name is Tuesday, she weighs about 80 pounds, and she’s one of a stable of “burlesque” entertainers that West Palm clubtrepreneur Rodney Mayo and his right-hand man, Chris Johnson, have put together. The girls are called Sexy Kittys;…
50 lbs. cornmeal 10 lbs. bran (optional) 200 lbs. sugar 12 oz. yeast 200 gal. water In Eastern Tennessee, that recipe will mix you up 36 gallons of “artisanal” moonshine, a local, sustainable, slow-food beverage cooked exactly so for many generations. You can proof your liquor by adding a bit…
There’s something human beings really hate to do all by ourselves. We don’t like to dine alone. When we venture out to eat, let us have at least one other sentient being beside us at table even if, in a pinch, it turns out to be someone we don’t much…
TGIMS! Or Thank God It’s Mango Season. Some heavenly creature long ago peered down at us suffering fools as we slogged through the swamps, swatting at mosquitoes and no-see-ums, dodging man-eating alligators and man-frying spikes of lightning, and blessed us with the only thing that could possibly make summer in…
In case you’ve missed the saga of Lauderdale Chef Steven LaBiner’s odyssey from riches to rags to riches in the past couple of years (feel free to catch the heart-wrenching audio slide show on the Sun Sentinel’s website), I’ll summarize. Hobo’s Fish Joint, Coral Springs. Nice gig, open ten years…
What do Palm Beach, Abu Dhabi, Madrid, Monte Carlo, Singapore, Mexico City, Dubai, Houston, Amsterdam, and Jeddah have in common? They’re cities where, when you’re feeling lonely, lost, far from home, and hungry, you can hie yourself over to a certain megachain and know exactly what’s on the menu. We’re…
A perfect martini goes a long way toward softening me up. Here’s my totally unprofessional confession: I’m inclined to love the food that follows it in direct proportion to the mastery with which my drink has been mixed. Terrible, isn’t it? Worse and worse, many a food snob would crucify…
They’re from South Jersey. They’re from Queens. They’re from Bari, from Brindisi, they’re visiting relatives in Hollywood. They speak Brooklynese. They speak no English at all. Or only a leetle. They know enough to read this menu: Orecchiette means one thing in any tongue. Pasta e fagioli they know. Saltimbocca,…
“Little birds nest according to their size,” goes the Thai proverb. Or as King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand has repeatedly cautioned his people: Don’t live beyond your means. We Americans could take a page or two from the Thai book, eh? My own addendum to the famous proverb goes like…
I have a friend who’s known among her circle as “The Dream Crusher.” Confide your long-held desire to take singing lessons and she’ll warn you about throat polyps. Announce your pregnancy, she’ll calculate the cost of raising a child to maturity, wondering aloud how you might otherwise have spent that…
If an alien from the planet Persephone landed in Bordentown, New Jersey, and found herself hungry after her light-years’-long journey, she might wander into Mastori’s Diner for a little something to take the edge off. But she might not have the faintest idea what to order or how to eat…
At noon, if you happen to be sitting at the bar inside Capri Blu with owner Amadeo Tasca; his wife, Gracie; or their old friend maitre d’ Mauricio Berni; if you happen to be sipping coffee and watching Italian game shows on the little TV while you’re waiting for the…
There must be several hundred restaurants like La Cigale dotted around South Florida — elegant, upscale eateries that appeal to diners of a certain age and class — but few of them serve foie gras. Duck’s liver is under siege by animal rights activists at the moment (see last week’s…
I spent the day recently reading M.F.K Fisher’s 1942 book How to Cook a Wolf, a text devoted to the proposition that you can live and eat decently even under war-time rationing, without butter, sugar, or any cut of meat worth a damn. Fisher offers tips for stretching a couple…
They’re shaped like an awkward string of pale pearls. And they taste of mushrooms, a whiff of the faintest musk, a visceral, mysterious flavor like black magic — with a texture as soft as the inside of a lover’s mouth. They’re richer than butter, denser than cream, wrapped in a…
Maybe you agree with famed postmodern architect Robert Venturi that this kitschy pink wave of a building on Lauderdale Beach is “an architectural masterpiece.” Or, like owners Kathy and Andy Mitchell, you’ve got it in your head that Ireland’s Inn Beach Resort has outgrown itself and suffered millions in irreparable…
I’ve been on a mission lately to find out if waterfront restaurants are really as bad as South Florida urban mythology has it. The good news: They aren’t. I’ve finally given up trying to have anything like an edible meal at my local fish-camp-cum-sports-bar Intracoastal hangouts and ventured further afield,…
I’ve never forgotten hearing a radio interview with Patrick O’Connell, chef/owner of the Inn at Little Washington, one of the world’s great restaurants. He didn’t say much about his cooking. He wanted to talk about his philosophy of service. When a customer walks into his restaurant, he said, the staff…
In Billy Wilder’s saucy comedy, The Seven Year Itch, a gray-flanneled schlub who works for a Manhattan publisher kisses his wife and kids goodbye for the summer, promising he won’t smoke or drink, and silently abjures himself to keep his trousers zipped. But back in his empty apartment, he finds…
It has been many months, if not to say years, that we have been as agreeably impressed with a restaurant as we were this week with the Capriccio. There are few restaurants in New York that might surpass it, and it is probably the finest restaurant on Long Island… A…
When male chimpanzees in Gombe National Park want sex, one surefire method of having their amorous way is to offer their intended some freshly killed monkey meat. They’re no dummies either. The female has to put out first. Mr. Romance dangles the carcass, Ms. Withholding says OK, and once the…
Edna Lewis is dead and I am in need of comfort. She spent her life cooking and eating Southern pan-fried chicken and hominy with cream, biscuits made with pork fat in the form of pure lard, deep-fried corn pone, greens dotted with chunks of ham, and whiskey cakes laced with…
