I hate being overheard in restaurants. One day at Sushi Hana, where the tables are ridiculously close together, I was telling my in-laws an anecdote I’d heard at the office. The man at the next table, a stranger, began glaring at me. “Where’d you get that information?” he demanded rudely…
One scene from the comedy film The In-Laws has etched itself firmly in my memory: An elderly gentleman is sitting in the dentist’s chair, arguing with the doctor about why he won’t allow his rotten tooth to be pulled. “This tooth has chewed the flesh of beautiful women,” he protests…
Over dinner one night, my husband and I talked about how we’d divide our possessions if we got divorced. (Nothing like a pessimist planning for the future.) I’d just read a little snippet about a restaurateur and his wife who split up: She kept the restaurant; he opened a new…
False expectations can ruin a perfectly good evening. Take for example a recent dinner my husband and I had in New York. My sister suggested we celebrate our arrival with a meal at Jean-Georges, the newest and hippest restaurant in the Trump Tower. Chef-proprietor Jean-Georges Vongerichten, who also owns the…
“If I don’t get proper Indian food for a week, I get right sick.” Demonstrating her point, Jaz, a friend from London whose parents emigrated from India, coughed and sniffled in my direction. “See what I mean?” Good thing, then, that she and her British boyfriend Nicky were here visiting…
I’m too spooked to jog around town any more, and it’s not because I ran past Versace’s house mere minutes before he was murdered. (By the time I reached the police station a few blocks away, the news cameras were already setting up.) I can accept the random Andrew Cunanan…
As his health failed, William S. Burroughs wrote solely in his journal, passages about how his life had been lived (with excess) and how it would end (the same way). Two weeks after he passed away, on August 2, The New Yorker published several of these entries. I found one…
I’m a notorious slob. Hand me the mail and I’ll drop it on the stairs; buy me an expensive evening gown and I’ll hang it on the StairMaster; dirty a dish in my house and I’ll let it sit in the sink until I have to sandblast it to get…
These days honest-to-goodness mom-and-pop restaurants seem about as endangered as family values. For one thing, there are fewer and fewer of them. Doubtless, people have concluded that to live, rear children, and run a business together isn’t a prescription for a fruitful long-term relationship: The 24-7 marriage can be downright…
“I read the review you got in New Times,” my husband said to the owner of Oasis Cafe a few months ago as he placed a take-out order. “You must be pretty happy.” “Yeah, we are. Surprised, though,” said the proprietor, who obviously had no clue he was talking to…
I have a recurring nightmare about an all-you-can-eat buffet. I enter a dark, two-story building, whereupon a grim hostess shoves a hotel-white china plate into my hands. Then I trudge after a line of people up a flight of musty stairs, through an endless series of dining rooms, and finally…
I got my first taste of caviar-and-champagne life on my honeymoon. The hubby and I flew to a gorgeous Puerto Rican luxury beach resort for ten days to recover from the trauma of the marriage ceremony. When we arrived, we went from the plane straight to the chaise longues arranged…
To say that Mark Militello’s closing of his landmark North Miami restaurant was a surprise would be fair. Though his publicist Barbara Raichlen told me he had been thinking for two years about giving up the place, his decision — announced to his employees on a Thursday last month, appearing…
Miami has plenty of pretty good international restaurants. (Some are even great.) What’s missing are authentic French bistros. Places like Le Bouchon du Grove and L’Entrecote de Paris come close, but the one’s atmosphere is a bit too trendy, the other’s menu a little too limited. Miami will never be…
FADE IN: INT. TOWNHOUSE LIVING ROOM — LATE AFTERNOON (JUNE) The sun streams through a west window, highlighting contemporary wicker furniture and walls that could use a paint job. Lounging on the couch and watching early Eighties classic The Breakfast Club, a RESTAURANT CRITIC reaches lazily for the phone. Without…
School’s out, and my husband is delighted. Not because his wife has stopped muttering about kids misbehaving in class. Not because she has a smile as permanent as ink on her face. But because of what she has found: Her cutting board. Her grill pan. Her coupons. That’s right: I’m…
This is a warning: Don’t dine outside. Not this summer, anyway. Forget that an actual TV forecast the other night stated that the following day would feature “sweltering heat and miserable humidity.” Forget that the current weather patterns have spawned so many tornadoes we could be living in Kansas. Forget…
Imagine not appreciating food. Imagine not savoring the creamy delicacy of a room-temperature Brie. Not admiring the ruby redness of a perfectly ripe springtime strawberry. Not delighting in the aroma of a roasting turkey, or salivating over a crisp spear of asparagus smothered in silky Hollandaise sauce, or treasuring the…
When I was in college, one of my roommates wanted to throw a dinner party for some elite international friends, including her boyfriend, the son of a Saudi Arabian oil magnate, and a Jordanian prince. Only problem was, she couldn’t cook very well, and she didn’t trust herself not to…
“The past is like shelter,” Ricardo Pau-Llosa told me over a recent dinner at Doc Dammers Bar & Grill. “Everybody needs one.” We were discussing the “dramatic erosion of Latin culture” he has observed in the second generation of Cuban Americans. A poet, art critic, and professor of English at…
I subscribe to a variety of culinary publications not so much because I cook, but because I like to keep up with those professionals — you know, chefs and restaurateurs — who do. Since I can’t go to restaurants all over the world, I figure the least I can do…
Once upon a time, the kitchen was a great place to hide. Men and women could choose the cooking biz not only to showcase their talents in the culinary arts, but also for the privacy that was afforded them as they toiled in obscurity behind those swinging doors. Celebrity chefdom…
