Roberta's: On The Privilege of Eating Delicious Things

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​My favorite restaurant in the universe is Roberta's Pizza in Brooklyn. It has been my favorite since I began dividing my time between New York and South Florida in January 2011. I'd read about the place on Yelp, slobbered over its peerlessly intriguing menu -- the fascinations of which begin but in no way end with magnificent pies -- and hungered for the place for months, sight unseen. The day I arrived in the city, red-eyed and sleep-deprived, piloting a massive Penske truck through New York's post-blizzard highways, I took a nap, a shower, grabbed some fresh clothes from a box, and walked there. It was everything I'd hoped. 

Roberta's opened four years ago near the ugly, post-industrial border of Williamsburg and Bushwick. It was a warehouse, more or less. People sat communally at picnic tables and ate the products of a massive red wood-burning pizza oven that dominated the open kitchen near the front of the dining room. When the New York Times first visited the place, Roberta's was BYOB and hadn't yet turned on the gas: all non-pizza items were cooked on hot plates. By the time I arrived, the cooking had undergone a considerable evolution. As the front kitchen pumped out pies and calzones, a kitchen in back produced foie gras with caramel and black pepper; lamb cooked sous vide with transparent mint gelatin; sweetbreads with some kind of sweet and toothsome white sauce; agnolotti with black truffle and cheese; angel hair pasta with cockles; sea urchins with pairings undreamt of in Japan or anyplace at all beyond this once-desolate patch of Brooklyn.
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Miami-Based Norwegian Cruise Line Goes Gourmet

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Norwegian Cruise Line's Chef Table does not include Rockette's-style dancing.
Norwegian Cruise Line casts its line for foodies, beefing up offerings for those who prefer burrata to buffets. Moderno Churrascaria is the newest offering for frugal foodniks, a Brazilian steakhouse with passadors who serve an unlimited rounds of beef, chicken and pork tableside for $20 a person, including sides.

By the end of March, the company will have launched Chef's Table, a 12-person, nine-course,2.5 hour, $75 dinner offered once per cruise. As if that's not prescriptive enough,More >>

Eating Whales and Horses In Iceland

Bright green valley.
Two summers ago I accompanied my friend James "The Amazing" Randi on a speaking tour of northern Europe. We visited Scandinavia and the Baltics, and enjoyed a quick southerly jaunt to the Netherlands. Our final engagement was in Reykjavik, Iceland, in the middle of the Atlantic.

Reykjavik is a modest city, a little more populous than Fort Lauderdale. (Iceland is the size of Kentucky with roughly one tenth the population.) Its architecture is lovely but spare -- far sparer than that of any mainland European capitol. Iceland needn't rely on manmade monuments to impress, for the Icelandic landmass itself is more dramatic than anything made by human hands, and it monumentalizes concerns far grander and less temporal than our own. On the drive from the Keflavik airport to Reykjavik, you encounter a shallow but endlessly long ravine which is actually the point of departure for the Mid-Atlantic and Eurasian tectonic plates, which move apart at a rate of about a meter per year, pulling with them the two halves of the ocean as well as the continents of Europe and North America. Nearby, you find vast fields of rough volcanic rock, covered in low sulfuric mists ejected from boiling pools just below (and occasionally atop) the soil. Elsewhere, you drive over a ridge and come face-to-face with a bright green valley that seems all out of proportion to the ordinary rules of human sight-lines. Your eyes follow distant rivers for what seem like ten, twenty miles, until the rivers open up into far-distant marshlands and shallows. Never has your eye captured so much territory at a glance, and the astounding quantity of earth arrayed before you is made harder to contextualize because of the near total absence of trees, which would otherwise be a handy indicator of size. The soil of Iceland is too new to facilitate much vegetation, beyond the occasional shrub and the ubiquitous coating of pillowy moss.

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Domino's Wants to Sell Pizza... on the Moon

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Domino's Japan
Domino's Japan wants to put pizza on the moon.
Domino's Pizza Japan wants to open a branch on the moon.  We seriously think this is a great idea. First of all, there's the myth that the moon is made of cheese. Plus, think of all the space aliens that must get hungry from intergalactic flight.
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Food Truck Invasion Saturday at Miramar Town Center

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CheeseMe Food Truck
Tomorrow, Miramar is getting invaded -- by food trucks.

This weekend, be a part of one of the craziest noshing get-togethers in South Florida when more than 20 food trucks meet for the Miramar Food Truck Invasion Saturday.
 
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Eating Through Emeril's Empire in The Big Easy

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Laine Doss
Chicken and waffles at Emeril's
​There are few people in the world who are so famous that they don't need a last name - Cher, Madonna, Gaga and.....Emeril!  Known as much for his catch phrases "Bam" and "Kick it up a notch" as his food, Emeril is a television celebrity and a personality, but deep down, he's really a chef (and a great one at that).

Though Emeril and New Orleans are sometimes considered one and the same, Emeril Lagasse was born in Massachusetts and attended Johnson & Wales University in Providence.  1982 was when Emeril really took over New Orleans, when he replaced Chef Paul Prudhomme as Executive Chef of Commander's Palace.

On a recent trip to New Orleans, Clean Plate Charlie was invited to take a culinary tour of Emeril's world, visiting two of three of Emeril's New Orleans restaurants, as well as Commander's Palace, where the magic started.

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Truffles: They're in Everything Now (But Beware: Most Truffle Oil is Synthetic)


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John Linn
Deviled eggs, with paprika and chives, is one of a trio of truffle selections at The Office in Delray Beach.


Picture a breath-taking restaurant perched on the edge of a dramatic gorge in a tiny town in southwest France. The menu, posted beside the door, recently featured a four-course truffle tasting for $60, including fillet of beef and foie gras. Foodies have called truffles "diamonds of the table" and "jewels of haute cuisine."

Now think of french fries. Mac n' cheese. Popcorn. Deviled eggs. Dips.  They're a far cry from international haute cuisine served in four-star restaurants on white- linen tablecloths. But nowadays, you find truffles in these comfort foods, too. 

 

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All-You-Can-Eat Rock Shrimp at Bahama Mama's January 31

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​I'm often fascinated by people who can sit down to those all-you-can-eat buffets and pile on food, plate after plate. It's not that I don't approve. Believe me, I wish I could do it too. I just tend to fill up rather quickly, thus negating the fabulous price-to-pile ratio. 

But if you're one of those people who loves a good challenge of filling your belly for a fantastic fee, then you better scuttle on down to Bahama Mama's tomorrow. 

You'll be able to count yourself among the first patrons to sit down and dig into a plate of fresh Florida rock shrimp, one of the most recent additions to the menu at the 3-month-old Caribbean-style restaurant in downtown West Palm Beach.





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World's Highest Restaurant Opens in Dubai

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Flickr/Sarbeth 718
Atmosphere is the highest restaurant in the world.
Move over, Space Needle and Stratosphere restaurant! The world's tallest restaurant has just opened in Dubai, and the view and prices are as high as you can get without wings.

Atmosphere is located on the 122nd floor of Dubai's Burj Khalifa building. The Burj Khalifa is the world's tallest building and includes an Armani-designed hotel and observation deck. Patrons take an ear-popping 57-second ride up 1,350 feet on a private glass and chrome elevator to reach the restaurant and lounge.

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Paella Cooked Outdoors on the Dock at Coconuts in Fort Lauderdale

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Diluvi via Flickr
See what some people go through for this? You just have to sit on the dock and watch multimillion-dollar yachts.
Paella sure is delicious -- but it can be a pain in the hoo-ha to cook because it requires a lot of ingredients, fresh seafood, fairly long simmering time, and is traditionally made over an outdoor fire. So when someone mentions they're firing up the paella pan, take note! On Tuesdays and Fridays, the chefs at Coconuts gather out on the dock, where More >>
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