Broward Palm Beach Food Blog

Hair metal sure makes me hungry.

​Let's do the numbers:

• Regulate this: Antinori's Neprica is a blend for the ages.
• Vietnamese grub has arrived in Coral Springs
• Bash Wine Cafe gets the review treatment this week, and comes out strong with economical comfort food.
• Lots of new arrivals this season: Atlantique hits Delray and French Quarter opens in Pompano.
• Riki springs for brunch at Aruba Beach Cafe.
• This po-boy won't go down without a fight! And if he does, there's always these local joints to back him up.
• Looking for Thanksgiving recipes that are a little different? Check out this round-up.
• RA Sushi unveils its new menu, and our new blogger Dori takes a big ol' bite.
• A beer of the week you won't have to launch an expedition to get.
• Teewurst ist das Beste, ja? Yes!
• Not this Firehouse! This Firehouse!
• Better get your game plan ready for those Thanksgiving leftovers. Here's the Meatist to help.
• Food & Wine doesn't give SoFla dishes any props - but we do.
• Brett visits the Keys and manages to find a place even the seafood-phobic can dine at.

with the new Green Papaya.

via Blog.Craftzine.com

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If Wednesday's Thanksgiving Recipe Roundup wasn't enough for you, we're here to help. Here are some highlights of other Thanksgiving related blogs.

The Foodista Blog has some helpful pointers for you vegetarians and vegans planning on eating at normal people's houses for Thanksgiving. Plus, there are plenty of recipes at the bottom of the page if you want to bring some of your own food to the table.

Cook Turkey is a site dedicated to cooking turkey! All the tips and tricks you'd need no matter how you plan on eating that bird. But the best part is the collection of videos of what happens when things go horribly wrong.

Ichef has a collection of unique Thanksgiving recipes. Check out this one for Baked Pumpkin. It might not taste awesome, but it's unique!

Don't feel like sifting through hundreds of recipes to find a good one for, say, pumpkin pie with caramel pecan topping? Craftzine has this one that will certainly do the trick.

Finally, the one stop shop: Taste of Home has literally everything you'll need from choosing to stuffing to cooking and carving your turkey, plus recipes for all the sides.

​Confession: I write for a food blog, but I can't stand seafood. Like at all. I just about refuse to eat anything that swims: fish, shrimp, lobster, and scallops are all completely off my menu. So when my girlfriend (who thankfully has the same aversion to eating things that swim) and I decided to take a weekend trip to Key West, we were a little worried about being able to eat well on an island filled with seafood restaurants. After reading John's gastro-tour of Key West, we decided to try to find the best of Key West's landlocked food and share it with the three other people in Florida who also can't stand eating ocean-dwelling creatures. Here part one.

​Old Town Mexican Café (609 Duval Street, Key West): This charming little restaurant located on Duval Street is a half indoor, half outdoor restaurant. Everyone dining here tonight was sitting outside, as the temperature hovered in the mid 70s. We decided to start out with a pitcher of Key Lime Margaritas, some chips and salsa, and a bowl of queso. The chips and salsa came out immediately. We were positively shocked at the quality of the salsa: fresh tomatoes, onions, lots of cilantro, and a healthy heat makes this some of the best salsa either of us had tried at a restaurant in quite some time. As we polish off the rest of the salsa, our waiter drops off our bowl of queso. Unfortunately, it doesn't live up to the salsa. In fact, it seems like they've just melted some cheddar cheese in a bowl, sprinkled a little cilantro on top, and threw it on our table. Every time we dipped a tortilla chip in, it was like cutting into a chunk of warm Velveeta, then wrestling with the stringy hangers-on until the chip breaks. After a few attempts, we both give up and peer back at the menu to order our entrees.

Food & Wine showcased their 10 Best Restaurant Dishes under $12 in this issue, and -- wouldn't you know it -- none are from Florida. It's getting to be a pretty common occurrence when America's Dangling Unit gets left off any of these glossy mag "best" lists. But that doesn't mean we don't have dishes that can hang, too.

In fact, many of F&W's picks have strikingly similar South Florida equivalents. Maybe not identical doppelgangers, per se, but close enough -- and good enough -- to make a list of our own.So here they are, our SoFla version of Food & Wine's five best under $12.

​F&W Pick: Lamb-meatball sliders @ Locanda Verde, New York, NY
Our Pick: Meatball sliders @ YOLO Restaurant & O Lounge, Fort Lauderdale 

Verde's dish features lamb meatballs simmered in tomato sauce and plunked on Parmesan and onion buns with a slice of fresh pickle and a wad of what looks like ricotta cheese, a trio of which runs $12. Fort Lauderdale nightspot, YOLO Restaurant & O Lounge, make a similar version with beef and pork meatballs slathered in herbed ricotta and graced with peppery arugula. At $4 each, they command about the same price. The little sliders are also one of the best items YOLO's kitchen makes. They took second place in the local Moonlight, Meatballs, and Martinis competition in October, behind Noodles Panini.
 

Photo by Flickr user erincooks

Yes, put everything on it.

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Thanksgiving Day, 5 p.m.: Family members are sprawled on your furniture, belts off, pants unbuttoned, fancy holiday shirts marked by cranberry and gravy spills, making half-assed attempts to argue. Your father-in-law has been in the bathroom for 35 minutes and you're starting to worry: for him, for your bathroom. You're wondering if a SpongeBob and turkey buzz could possibly make your kids this catatonic or if they got into the bottle of Xanax in your mother's purse. And that scares you, because you were planning on gobbling some of that shit to help you cope with the stress of three outstanding tasks: evicting irritating guests, cleaning a kitchen that looks like your turkey was wearing a suicide vest, and figuring out how to deal with the leftovers.

But before you decide to torch the joint and head out to the patio to watch your drunk aunt try to to climb out of a deck chair without stepping on the cat or peeing herself, hear me out. I may not have a solution for the cleanup, and my

A face only a mom and pop could love.

​• The space that once housed Broward's Best New Restaurant is now a sports bar. Mugs Bar & Grill has taken over where Christine's used to operate on Oakland Park Boulevard. At one time, Christine's doled out contemporary American food to the sound of sultry jazz music. Now you can eat a "mound o' taters" and watch games on the tube in your old favorite seat. Mugs also serves burgers, pasta, and bar food, and has a sizable selection of draft beer. Maybe what the location needed was a place where everybody knows your name? Best of luck, Mugs.

• I've always wondered what strip steak and pizza would taste like together. Now we can find out, thanks to Toscany (sic) Steakhouse and Pizzeria, opening early in December on Sample Road in Coral Springs (9711 W. Sample Rd., to be exact). The menu will feature two of Argentina's specialties: rich, grilled meat and thin-crust pizza.

• Boca, this year you should be thankful for the gift of Rocco. As in Rocco Mangel, owner of Rocco's Taco's and Tequila Bar, the second location of which is finally opening the day before Thanksgiving in Town Center (5250 Town Center Circle). Rocco is all over the place these days -- even Kelly Ripa is getting a piece. What's the secret? "We're a new breed of mom and pop operation," says Mangel. Ah, yes, I always think about hard working small business when I hear the name Big Time Restaurant Group.

via Flickr user GrubGrade

​When you're out looking for a sub, and can't find a local sub or sandwich shop in your area, you've got a few chain choices. There's the company famous for only charging $5, the one that started the whole toasted subs craze, and the lesser known chain that is known for steaming their sub ingredients: Firehouse Subs. This week, I decided to check out the steamed variety of our favorite over sized sandwiches. It only took me a moment of looking at the menu before I found exactly what I wanted: the Club on a Sub.

I order the sub and agree to have it "fully involved" which I later find out means they'll be slapping mayonnaise, mustard, lettuce, tomato, and onions on the sub and tucking away a dill spear on the side. I watch the young lady behind the counter place a few pieces turkey, ham, Monterrey Jack cheese, and bacon between some wax paper and place it all into a large metal box. She pushes a lever and steam pours out from the sides for a few seconds before she opens the lid and takes out the wax paper.

John Linn

This wurst is the best.

​I'm a sucker for pate -- I'll eat any sort of meat blended into a paste and cured. It started when I was a maybe 10-years-old. My parents would buy Oscar Mayer Liverwurst (yes, there's such a thing) and spread it on butter crackers. I must've ate six tubes of the thick pink paste before finding out it was actually liver. (Was I a slow kid?) I was grossed out for a moment. But then I quickly decided I didn't care, and popped more of that wurst in my mouth with excitement.

I was shopping in Fresh Market the other day when I came across this tube of teawurst, a type of pate I've never had before. It was only four bucks, so I bought the little bundle and a loaf of bread and brought it home to taste.
 

John Linn

​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 have a beer you'd like featured in Beer of the Week, let us know via a comment.

I met Larry Bell at the Jupiter Craft Brewers Festival this past January. He was in the Bell's Brewery tent with two of his employees wearing a safari hat and thin, dark sunglasses, like he was about to embark on an expedition.

Bell started his Brewery in Kalamazoo, Michigan in 1985, long before the craft beer revolution had moved east. I imagine he might have taken to wearing the safari hat back then -- an explorer in a World of Beer largely yet to be discovered. Today, Bell's is the largest craft brewery in Michigan and one of the most significant in the northern U.S.

Jarret Streiner

RA's signature "RA"ckin' shimp, sweet onion salmon sashimi, RA chips and salsa, and kaisen ceviche in the center.

​By Dori Zinn

The Outback of maki rolls RA Sushi unveiled it's new menu this week. All three South Florida locations - Palm Beach Gardens, Pembroke Pines, and South Miami - will be slinging new dishes, which Charlie sampled at media dinner this Monday. The menu rollout - an annual fall occasion - brings some kinky new names, but not all of them are anything special.

New appetizers - the better part of the added items - included Sweet Onion Salmon Tapas, Ra Chips and Salsa, and Kaisen Ceviche. The sashimi tapas ($7.50) were pretty spectacular: salmon with marinated red onions and a sweet onion dressing. If I had only eaten this the entire night, I would have been perfectly happy.