DRINKING & DINING
Lucali
True to its roots, Lucali is D.U.M.B.O. hip: they didn’t even bother to put in floors over the concrete substructure
Versailles Cuban Restaurant
Every candidate for national election must pass through Iowa and New Hampshire. And every candidate must also pass through Versailles. To carry Versailles is metonymically to win the favor of the Cuban exiles, a group that still wields considerable power throughout Miami. Candidates as far removed as Mitt Romney and Bill Clinton have held court there. […]
Captain’s Tavern
A couple weeks back, I sat across the Tavern from a father and his boy. The boy was still in soccer clothes, a rash of dirt, and blood, and grass began halfway down his shin where his socks loosely lay and ran up to the break of his shorts. That was me once, sitting with […]
Biltmore Hotel, Coral Gables
She is the center of life for much of the neighborhood: residents eat at her restaurants (one of which contends each year for the title of Miami’s Best); they drink at her bars and swim in her pool; they exercise at her gym and play tennis on her courts; they spend mornings on her golf course and nights in her ballrooms and live theater.
Bulla Gastrobar
A couple years ago, Bulla was called Por Fin, which roughly translates to “at last”. Some say it was a reference to Pep Guardiola’s bringing Barcelona to the top of La Liga. Others say it referred to the Spanish National Soccer Team’s then-rising star. Still others, that it was a jab at the City of […]
Swine Table and Bar
In a part of town more renowned for Old World elegance, Swine brought a new, young feel. Gables residents immediately fell in love with the Memphis-inspired quasi-hipster, quasi-electric-blues feel of the place, one that served Southern-ish dishes in a high vaulted room of distressed wood and industrial accents. On some nights, the wait was several […]
Le Provencal
Miami has perhaps an exaggerated reputation as an international city; while we certainly have our share of visitors and émigrés from Latin America – indeed, in vast expanses of the county English is greeted with confusion if not scorn – you have to work a bit to overhear, say, Chinese, or Hindi, or… well, Continental […]
Matsuri
Until you’re running late and stuck behind an abuelita looking for parking at Gilbert’s, you have not yet tested the true limits of your patience. The parking lot on Red and Bird is one of the area’s worst, because something about Milam’s stores of Gilda cookies, Walgreens’s discounts on violet water, and the bottomless pastelitos […]
Strada
Anyone who has had the misfortune of calling himself my friend for any considerable length of time has heard my complaints about the Grove’s restaurants. Some spots, like Greenstreet and Lulu’s, aren’t really meant to be restaurants at all, and any attempt to criticize their food is about as naïf and beside-the-point as that curious […]