Fort Lauderdale Restaurant Openings and Closings

• The former Dogma Grill spot on Federal (900 S. Federal Highway, Fort Lauderdale) has been boarded up and empty since the hot dog joint closed early last year. But the place seems to finally have new tenant: Domino’s Pizza. A trademark Domino’s sign was spotted in front of the…

Health Inspectors Shut Down 15 Fort Lauderdale/Miami Restaurants

How would you like to eat at a restaurant where the kitchen is crawling with rodents and bugs, where the walk-ins are filthy, and the line hasn’t been cleaned in months? Not to scare you, but it happens, and more often than you think. Florida inspectors have been hitting the…

Guess Where We’re Eating and Win Pairings Tickets

This week, I’m shying away from a picture of the layout and instead posting this bit of food porn from our restaurant in question.The catch is, not only do you have to tell me the restaurant we’re eating this tasty-looking morsel from but you also must name the dish. (Click…

Five Rules for Eating Crabs

This week’s column on crabbing around South Florida gave me a lot of ideas on what it takes to eat crab the right way. There’s proper technique, of course. You’ve got to know how to dismantle a whole steamer, what’s edible, and what’s not. But then there’s also a list…

Five Guys Snags Zagat Award for Best Burger

Zagat posted its annual survey results for fast food this week, rating national fast- and full-service chain eateries in categories like “Top Food for a Mega Chain” (Wendy’s) and “Top Healthy Options” (Subway, Jamba Juice). But every survey has its stud, and this year’s was Five Guys, who took the…

Beer of the Week: North Coast Scrimshaw Lager

Unrepentant beer drinkers, rejoice! Each week, Clean Plate Charlie will select one craft or import beer and give you the lowdown on it: How does it taste? What should you drink it with? Where can you find it? But mostly, it’s all about the love of the brew. If you…

Shell Games: The Ins and Outs of Eating Crab in South Florida

To view a slideshow from the Rustic Inn, click here. Fenton Stanley Ridgeway III hunches over a stack of Maryland-style blue crabs at Riggins Crabhouse in Lantana. He’s dismantling the crabs like a machine: His thick fingers look impossibly nimble as they dance across the shells, plucking out meat from…

Eating Around the Blog-o-Sphere

Got an interesting post or bit of news to share? Email it to Charlie and we’ll include it in Eating Around the Blog-o-Sphere.   All Purpose Dark raves about the best thing it’s eaten recently, a fried calamari and jicama salad from La Marea.Remember The Meatist? New Times’ old columnist has his own…

Samba Room Employees Say Restaurant Was Doomed to Fail

When Jose Martinez and his fellow chefs showed up for work on Friday morning at the Samba Room, they were shocked to find the doors closed.Instead of walking into the kitchen to prep for service, the employees were confronted by a representative from E-Brands, corporate owner of the Samba Room,…

Order Up: We’ve Got Crabs!

This week in Dish, it’s a crab adventure. But not just any crabs — blue crabs from Florida’s Gulf and East coasts, prepared Maryland-style or doused in garlic oil. To get this fix, we ate at two local institutions of crabbery — Riggins Crabhouse in Lantana and Rustic Inn in…

Samba Room Closes in Wake of E-Brands Bankruptcy

Samba Room, which for ten years brought Latin fusion to Las Olas Boulevard, closed its doors on Friday. The closure follows last week’s news that E-Brands, the parent company behind Samba Room as well as Timpano’s Italian Chophouse & Martini Bar (also on Las Olas), filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy…

Destination Dishes: Vegetarian Indian in West Broward

Navigating the sprawling expanse of South Florida can be difficult for even the most seasoned foodie. With Destination Dishes, we’re looking to make your food travels easier. Each week, we’ll highlight the most interesting food finds, broken down by region. Want to find great roti on 441? Or how about…

Over the Weekend: Checkers Old Munchen Beer Tasting

Quaint, German restaurant Checkers Old Munchen held a good, old-fashioned bier tasting this past Friday night that saw the joint packed. A sizable crowd turned up and shoehorned in to the August installment of the restaurant’s monthly beer pairing. There was barely any standing room to be had, but the…

Where Are We Eating? Find Out, and Win Pairings Tickets

It seems we can’t stump you folks. Every time we ask you to guess the restaurant we’re eating in based on a picture, you get it right in no time. Well, this week’s Where Are We Eating? should be a little bit harder.No hints here, other than to state the…

Doggy Bag: This Week in Charlie

South Florida’s hot chefs, including Talay Thai’s Charlie Soo, get the calendar treatment. Oysters that clock in at eight inches long? We’re gonna need a bigger boat.Food trucks are back. Here’s a comprehensive list of South Florida’s kitchens on wheels.Palm Beach has some great specialty markets. Here’s our Top Five.This…

El Yucateco EXXXtra Picante Hot Sauce Sure Ain’t Frontin’

“You call this spicy?” said Brad, a broad, bearded New Yorker with a penchant for heat. “I gotta tell you, sister, this ain’t hot at all.” Brad, a friend of my parents’, was talking about my mother’s homemade enchiladas. Since I was a kid, she would make the chicken- and…

Beer of the Week: Xingu Brazilian Black Beer

Unrepentant beer drinkers, rejoice! Each week, Clean Plate Charlie will select one craft or import beer and give you the lowdown on it: How does it taste? What should you drink it with? Where can you find it? But mostly, it’s all about the love of the brew. If you…

New Menu at Lips, Kosher Demos at Winn-Dixie

• Lips, Fort Lauderdale’s drag show dinner theater, deserves credit: It’s tough to continually pump out menu items that feature nearly as many witty double entandres as the riotous stage show. But somehow, the drag supper club continues to do it. The restaurant is rolling out a host of new…

Landmark Restaurant Testa’s in Palm Beach Closes for the Summer

We’ve seen plenty of restaurants close for summer vacation, but when a place shuts down for the entire summer, it’s usually bad news. That’s what’s happening at the 90-year-old Palm Beach institution Testa’s. The restaurant announced Wednesday that it would be stopping all operations for the rest of the summer…

Top Chef Kenny Gilbert Goes Packing

That’s all, folks. Top Chef and new Florida resident Kenny Gilbert was forced to “pack up [his] knives and go” on last night’s episode of Top Chef D.C.Gilbert was sent home following the show’s Restaurant Wars episode, which pits two teams of four cheftestants against each other. The chefs took…

Side Dish: Anny’s Thai and Sushi

There are so many Thai/Japanese restaurants around Broward and Palm Beach counties serving the same exact menu that they may as well all be photocopies. With nothing to differentiate them but their cutesy names (Too Too Thai or Bo Thai or Thai One On, etc.), there’s little to draw you…