Broward Palm Beach Food Blog

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.

John Linn

Swanky's tops its pulled pork sandwiches with red cabbage and green apple slaw and smoky pork shoulder that's been cooked for 30 hours.

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​The best thing I ate at my recent visit to Satoro Restaurant and Lounge in Hollywood was dessert. Which is not to say the rest of the meal I enjoyed a few days back was a disappointment -- on the contrary, the meal whipped up by chef Alexander Dziurzynski formerly of Jackson's Steakhouse was exceptional. But I was blown away by the baklava cheese cake infused with goat cheese, a dessert so perfectly constructed it ranks among the finest I've ever tasted.

First, you'll have to excuse the sad press picture to the right -- in my haste, I devoured my own dessert before I had the chance to snap a shot. I instead lifted this pic from Satoro's menu. [See the whole menu here]
 

Photos by Eric Barton

Skip the marsala and go for the chicken saltado.

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Peruvian food isn't the standard beans-and-rice fare so common in South America. It has influences from the country's Asian, Italian, and Spanish immigrants, and that shows on the menu of the new Fusion & Flavors. The tiny storefront sits next to a Subway and between a couple strip clubs on Federal Highway in Oakland Park and boasts a menu of Italian and Peruvian staples, from chicken picatta to chaufa chicken fried rice.

The place was just about packed yesterday for lunch, but I didn't spot anyone

Photo by Bill Citara

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If you're not a subscriber to our weekly Café Bites dining newsletter for Broward and Palm Beach counties, here's a taste of what you missed this week. Click here to subscribe.

Take one Bean, many boatloads of succulent Maine lobster, and a smart-looking little eatery on Delray Beach's Restaurant Row and you've got Linda Bean's Perfect Maine Lobster Roll, which made its Atlantic Avenue debut a few days back after months of bloggy anticipation.

This first outlet in South Florida will be one of a reported hundred to be rolled out

​Last week we suggested our top five Dine Out Lauderdale choices, a list punctuated by one Cafe Maxx. Based on our visit this week, we were right: Cafe Maxx has come up with a spectacular Dine Out menu that gives you more than just a little sample of the restaurant's extensive bill of fare, it manages to be a rewarding meal worth making the special trip for.

Maxx has been around for a quarter century now, yet it still remains one of the more interesting restaurants in Broward. A big part of that is co-owners Oliver Saucy and Darrel Broek. By now, it would be expected in the restaurant world for Darrel and Oliver to have taken a back seat; if they had went the popular route, they might be far away, working on their seventh or eighth or twenty fifth restaurant by now. But when you first step into Cafe Maxx, you notice their presences are intact. Broek is there, manning the host stand and walking the tables, talking to guests. And of course, so is Saucy, whose large frame operates on a tilt behind the glass dessert cases in front of the open kitchen. When things slow down -- which they did not until 9 p.m. on this particular weeknight -- Saucy steps out from behind his enclosure and interacts as much as a head chef who just worked a jam-packed dinner shift is wont to do. What's more, the pair operate a successful restaurant full of successful people -- it would be easy to carry themselves with an air of pretension, yet these are two fine, personable hosts.

As for the Dine Out Lauderdale menu, Maxx doesn't hide it from customers, like some restaurants do. Those black-shirted waiters plop the Dine Out menu on your table as soon as you sit, a single page list of four-courses. With that many dishes, you'd expect the restaurant to skimp a little. But most of the offerings are generous and very solid. Such as
  

Bill Citara

Cut 432's Brian Albe mixes poetic.

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They're doing it in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami. . . in Delray Beach, not so much. A new generation of--don't call them "bartenders," call them "mixologists"--is flavoring their own spirits, making their own infusions and syrups and garnishes, creating cocktails that go far beyond the usual "vodka-rocks" and assorted abominations that have defiled the holy martini.  

Just as Brian Albe and Brandon Belluscio gave the old-fashioned steakhouse a kick in the ass with their chic Cut 432 on Delray's Atlantic Avenue, now they're applying swift, creative foot to dull, boring cocktail posterior with a whole new roster of hand-made spirits and mixers assembled into a slate of inventive new drinks. 

I hung out with Brian at the bar awhile back and tasted my way through his handiwork, and I gotta tell ya, if anything can make serial drunkenness a spiritually uplifting activity, it's the cool stuff he's pouring.  

​An economy that's gone from filet mignon to meat loaf faster than you can say "greedy Wall Street bastards" has got the attention of even high-flying steak houses. 

One of them, Ruth's Chris, last night unveiled a new "bistro menu" of apps, sushi, soups, salads and sammies priced from $9 to $19, not exactly McCheapskate but a lot less than that USDA Prime porterhouse for two. The lounge of the West Palm/CityPlace RC, one of only four in the country to get this test rollout, was packed with invitees sucking down free cosmos and chardonnay, while waiters bearing bistro tidbits passed them around the room and a guy on electric piano did creditable renditions of jazz standards. 

Michy B looking dead sexy in the kitchen.

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Last weekend, perhaps Miami's best-known restaurateur, Michelle Bernstein, made the trip up north to Palm Beach and debuted her new restaurant, MB at the Omphoy. From her days at Tantra and Azul to the opening of her flagship restaurant, Michy's, in 2005, Bernstein has long captivated Miami with simple, elegant dishes that draw from her Latino background. In 2007, Bernstein was awarded the coveted James Beard Award for Best New Chef South, only a year after Michy's was crowned Food & Wine's Best New Restaurant and was listed among Gourmet's Top 50 in the country. Last year, Bernstein followed up her successes at Michy's by launching Sra. Martinez, a tapas spot in the Miami Design District that's garnered a host of great reviews.

And now, it's our turn to get a share of the stunning Latino-Jewish chef -- well, not us, specifically, but the well-to-do enclave of Palm Beach Island. Her fourth restaurant is in the brand new Omphoy Resort, a sort of miniature hotel and spa shadowed between the Four Seasons and a private resort along the beach. There hasn't been much released in the way of a menu for MB's. A few news releases sent out have said it would feature largely seafood and Mediterranean-inspired dishes, but if that's not a vague description in South Florida, I don't know what is.

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I took a trip to the beach last night and sank into some Pho at Basilic, a Vietnamese restaurant that took over Tedesco's old spot on Commercial Blvd. The tiny bistro serves a mean bowl of the stuff, fragrant with anise and ginger and loaded with strips of thinly sliced steak that cooks inside of the steaming bowl. On the side was the traditional salvo of accoutrements: a frock of peppery basil, some crisp bean sprouts, slivers of jalapeno, a wedge of lime, and a dish filled with hoisin and sriracha. The broth was heady and fairly beefy, with grassy notes of scallion and onion mixing with the starch of the rice noodles. I stirred in a little bit of hoisin and a big scoop of sriracha, then squirted some lime and added the vegetables and herbs. It was some fantastic, head clearing pho, and everyone at the table who had some was emitting sniffling noises as their sinuses were vacated.

John Linn

Jerk chicken at Kelsie's Place is exceedingly tender and only slightly spicy.

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The drag along Sunrise Boulevard east of I-95 is really in a bad way these days. Almost everything is out of business or vacant, except a few automotive-related businesses and a handful of chain restaurants. It's also a rough area inhabited by many homeless. So it's inspiring to see people still trying to run local businesses there, like Kelsie's Place, a new soul food restaurant by way of Jamaica just three blocks east of I-95. Kelsie's is one of two open restaurants along that area of Sunrise all the way up to Andrews Ave. that are not fast food chains. And its take on typical Jamaican specialties like jerk chicken, curry chicken, oxtail stew, and rice and peas is worth checking out.

Last week I ordered a couple  of $4.29 lunch specials from the clean, bright white shop. The restaurant looks like a very typical lunch counter inside, with a rather Spartan decor and a small scattering of tables off to the left of the counter. A warming case next to the register contains most of the goods. I had ordered in advance, but the cheerful woman behind the counter held off on assembling my plastic to-go containers of jerk and curry chicken until I got there. (We also ordered hot chicken wings, which were done when I arrived.) I got a choice of white rice or rice and peas -- I got the latter, natch -- and since I ordered the sauceless jerk chicken, she let me choose from any sauce I wanted to top the starch with. She ladled a few thick spoonfuls of dark, rich oxtail gravy over my rice. The tab was less than $20 (and most of that was the wings). I grabbed my collection of bags and took everything to go.

The Lodge's draft beer board dominates a whole wall.

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My favorite thing about The Lodge, a bar that serves a wide selection of craft beer in Boca Raton, is watching people get converted. On a recent visit, a pack of college kids from up the block at FAU swarmed in and grabbed seats next to us at the bar. As they looked over the menu, one of the guys wearing a backwards baseball cap turned to his friend and asked, "What's an IPA?"

His curly-haired friend in a white T-shirt and shorts answered with a slight pause, "It's a beer with a lot of hops in it." I got the impression that he may not have known exactly what hops were, besides that they're good things to put in beer. (For the record, hops are a budded cousin to marijuana that gives beer its bitter, sometimes floral flavor.)

Artisanal pizza is no longer a moron of the oxy variety, with pizzerias like Una Pizza Napoletana in New York, Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix, Pizzeria Delfina in San Francisco, and Pizzavolante in Miami's Design District. 

Photo by Bill Citara

​And now you can add Dak Kerprich's Pizzeria Oceano (201 E. Ocean Ave., Lantana, 561-429-5550). The tiny (450 square foot, six seats indoors), newly opened eatery is turning out wood-oven-baked pizzas with the same focus on quality, simplicity, and locally sourced, organic ingredients once the exclusive province of restaurants that served only dishes you could neither pronounce nor afford.

What that means in your mouth is house-made mozzarella and sausage, the latter using the shoulders of naturally raised Berkshire pigs. It means organic produce from Swank Farms and other local growers, and a tomato sauce made from

Photos by Eric Barton

I'll take the key lime pie. Now go long.

The server was explaining this and that about the dessert tray at Truluck's in Fort Lauderdale when I made some comment about how perfect they all looked. "They're not real," he said. Then he slapped the chocolate cake. It made a sound like smacking a basketball.

I swear, I had no idea. My wife and I, dining there recently to write a review for Thursday's New Times, started poking the carrot cake and key lime pie. Sure enough, it had the feel of a Nerf football.

A couple of days later, I called back to Truluck's to see what's up with their dessert display. I've seen plastic desserts at places like cheap Chinese food joints, but they've always looked like something that might pop out of a Fisher Price oven.

Truluck's gave away its secret.

Photo by Flickr user mariannaF

Homemade labneh just can't top Al-Salam's.

Obama is speaking in Cairo, even quoting verses from the Qur'an, glad-handing Arab leaders, and no doubt settling down for intimate talks with King Abdullah II over a pot of Turkish coffee and some sticky pastries loaded with pistachios. And here's Hillary Clinton, touring the Middle East wearing a headscarf.

I suggest we follow our leaders and go respectfully mingle with our nearest Muslim neighbors, who tend to congregate in a Plantation strip mall on Friday nights for a bit of kibbeh and foul medames.

They'll take you there...

"El Autentico Sabor de la Comida Dominicana," reads the menu at this Pompano Beach hole-in-the-wall. And it's authentic Dominican Republic fare, all right. Homemade specials at Latin Conga!  change daily, but once they run out, forget your craving for fried chicken chunks or seafood soup. It pays to show up either for lunch or early in the evening if you want to be sure you'll be tucking into a bowl of oxtail stew (Wednesday though Saturday), stewed goat (Thursday and Friday), stewed cod fish (Tuesday) or Dominican soup (Friday and Sunday).

We'd gone specifically for the oxtail stew last Saturday (not surprisingly, they'd run out by 8 p.m.), but we settled for a grilled marinated skirt steak with sauteed purple onions, a big pile of spicy and satisfyingly oily roast pork, many cartons of rather dry plantains, excellent black beans and rice, hearty red bean soup, and what they were calling "fried salami,"  delicious, fiery slices of what looked like thick bologna -- totally satisfying in a very decadent way. Not a dish on this menu costs more than $15, and most of it costs considerably less.

Once you get hooked (and you will, the food's great) you'll find yourself spending a lot of time over at Latin Conga!. Brush up on your karaoke skills for Friday's beer specials and Rey Rumba Karaoke from 8 p.m. to 1 a.m., where if you pay attention, you may even learn some authentic Dominican tunes.

Latin Conga!
1280 S. Powerline Rd.
Pompano Beach
954-969-1646
Open for lunch and dinner

Unrepentant beer drinkers, rejoice! Each week, Short Order 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.

This week, I don't so much as have a review for you as a preview of sorts. See, every once in a while, I receive a package from some happy P.R. person looking to get me to write about their product. And usually I just skip over the stuff -- for example, no one wants to read about this grill brush that looks like an alien sex toy. (Or do they?) But someone got wise this time and sent me my favorite gift: beer. I opened this carefully packaged box last week and found a bottle of beautiful Rogue Double Dead Guy Ale inside -- a seasonal, specially packaged version of Rogue's ultrapopular Dead Guy Ale.

At first, I thought this limited-edition beer was much rarer than it actually is -- but in fact, you can grab a bottle of Double Dead Guy at Total Wine for around $15 a bottle. Still, I decided that instead of drinking my gifted bottle now, I would cellar it (as in age it) for a year before opening. Sure, I could buy another bottle to taste now, and maybe I will. But part of me wants to leave it a bit of a mystery and maybe just buy a bottle of the 2010 vintage when it comes out to compare my aged one to.

Anyhow, for now I'm pulling a few select reviews from BeerAdvocate to illustrate what the difference is between Rogue's regular Dead Guy, a malty German Maibock made with Pacman yeast, and the Double Dead Guy, a full-bodied amber full of fruit and chocolate notes.

"Nice. It smells like a butifarra," said our resident Peruvian, Miche. "Looks like the real thing too." I had brought him back said butifarra from Bravo -- a Peruvian sandwich shop in the north side of Wilton Manors -- partially because he couldn't get away from his desk for lunch. But mostly, I brought him back one because I wanted someone well-acquainted with the typical Peruvian sandwich of criolo-style country ham and red onions to test its authenticity.
 

When you think about it, Mizner Park is sort of like an overstuffed, smothered burrito. There are all the fancy Boca ladies sporting expensive jewelry - they're the cheese. There are the teenage children of wealth driving around in cars worth more than the valets who park them make in two years - they're the sour cream. There are the plastic surgery disasters, the retired trust funders, and the proletariat interlopers, who come only to get into heated class battles with the rest of the denizens of Mizner (I bore witness to a particularly ugly display in the main parking garage just the other day) - these people are the rice and beans. But then there are the restaurant workers, a largely ethnic bunch who pour themselves in to the inner workings of Mizner and upscale strip malls like it all over South Florida. They are the meat.

Mizner's latest addition, the "high-end casual" chain Mexican concept Uncle Julio's opening Tuesday afternoon, is, if anything, an worthy experiment to see if this sopping, bursting burrito is ready to eat itself.

Note to Plat Bleu: This is what bistro food looks like.

Hungering for some hearty bistro fare, I had a friend call (on behalf of my wife and I) to request reservations at Plat Bleu in the Delano Hotel. Word came back that reservations weren't taken, and that the restaurant was located on the right side of the indoor and outdoor sections of what was formerly part of the Blue Door restaurant. When we arrived at 8:30, which was early for a late night spot like this, there was nobody sitting on either side of the indoor room, so we requested an outdoor table. A hostess told us to head there and we'd be seated, but once outside a manager told us all outdoor tables were reserved for Blue Door. So we went back inside, this time being informed that Plat Bleu's outdoor tables were at the far end of the pool area. Off we wandered -- not an especially short stroll -- until reaching the dining area. There we stood for some time, trying in vain to get someone's attention; finally I approached a waitress to ask if the section was for Plat Bleu. No, she said, only the pool menu was served there. When we returned to the reception podium, a different manager  proved extremely gracious in seating us on the left side of the outdoor terrace and bringing us menus. But the bistro proved elusive in yet another way: While Plat Bleu's bill of fare contained a torchon of foie gras and a couple of other token French-inspired offerings, most items were variations on Blue Door's Mediterranean menu, including some of the very same dishes. I wasn't in the mood for this type of cuisine, so we got up to leave. On our way out, the manager came over to see what was up. We told her that, no hard feelings, but we'd been expecting escargot and onion soup and stuff like that; she explained that there was in fact onion soup, but it didn't get served until 2:00 a.m. As she related this to us, her facial expression let on that we were, perhaps, not the only customers thus far confused. We politely declined her proposal to have the kitchen prepare us onion soup, as well as a generous follow-up offer for drinks on the house, but she handled the situation as well as a manager possibly could. We managed to squeeze into a couple of seats at OLA's bar a few blocks away and shared a few small plates. It wasn't bistro food, but it was very tasty -- and more important, just what we expected. 

Daily Bread Pinecrest from MiamiNewTimesBlogs on Vimeo.

The Daily Bread Middle East Market has stood at the same location in Pinecrest since 1978. It was opened by husband and wife team Toufic and Rima Mazzawi and is now run by their sons Shaddy and Nicolas. The Daily Bread specializes in foods from the Middle East, Greece and India. They have a market featuring fine ingredients and freshly prepared cold foods, a deli for sandwiches, salads and platters, and even hookahs and tobacco "for those trendy kids that are into that." The Daily Bread Pinecrest also has

Psssst....Drink Me!

It isn't often that we New Timesers get a bottle of $200 whiskey in the mail. We did, not long ago, thanks to the folks at Canadian Club, which is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year with the release of a primo 30-year-old, 80-proof, white-oak-barrel-aged blended whiskey retailing for a cool two bills. That's priced well beyond the reach of even the most profligate New Times lushes; our admin assistant was obliged to hide the booze behind her desk, well beyond the reach of  sticky fingers, until we could get around to a proper tasting.

But at a recent staff meeting, we broke into the bottle, or at least Bob Norman did; Norman was so physically agitated by the sight of that black box with its fancy closure and the gold CC logo just sitting there that we had to wrestle it away from him just to snap the picture at left. In Norman's good opinion, whiskey is made to be drunk, not fondled and stared at. I guess old Hiram Walker would second that, and so would Don Draper, who drinks Canadian Club on the show Mad Men.

Hey Bob, over here!

Norman and the rest of our high-macho crew also pooh-poohed the notion that a splash of H20 added to this fine old brew would "open it up." They poured liberal shots and drank it straight. Over on the femme-gay side of the table, we added a little water and found the instruction sound: Give your whiskey a splash and it evens out the last edges, so your drink gives up its perfumes and complexities.

But both girls and boys agreed: This was the best whiskey we'd  tasted since that bottle of 30-year-old single-malt McCallam we drank back in '85. It's excessively smooth, sweet, and buttery, with a finish that lasts and lasts: a bit of oak (but not too much), a hint of butterscotch, something floral, like violets. And it leaves a serious afterglow: Once we'd polished off 3/4 of the bottle, you could say our staff meeting got right lively.

I conducted a blind tasting at home with the bit of drink I had left, lining up the 30-year-old CC against a 10-year-old Canadian Club reserve (retail around $30)  and a glass of Glenfiddich 12-year-old single malt (retail around $25). The 30-year-old cleaned their clocks in taste, fragrance, and finish -- it tasted almost like a good cognac. The CC 10 was close in color -- a rich, deep amber -- but was slightly more bitter and ragged when sipped. Both CCs are definitively better with about 3 tablespoons of water added. Glenfiddich doesn't improve at all with water, and it's really a different animal: lighter in color and fruitier.

Final report: Only 3,000 bottles of the 30-year CC were produced, and it's hard to find at this point (try ordering it here.) It would definitely be worth both the search and the price as a gift for a whiskey connoisseur, but I wouldn't waste it on anybody else: In their cups, most people wouldn't have the patience to dig for esoteric flavors or even care much about how smooth it is. And as a side note, I totally dig CC's new advertising campaign: "Your Mom Wasn't Your Dad's First," and would only like to add that he wasn't hers either, you chump.

But I actually prefer this slightly altered version of the ad:

You wonder how a tiny, nine-table, family run Armenian cafe could survive two years on the fringes of Boca Raton's ritzy Mizner Park: But order a plate of Boca Skewers' falafel, and you'll get the picture. These crunchy little balls of fried, spiced chickpeas may be served on a plastic plate with paper napkins, but there's no doubt they're made from scratch by a cook whose family has refined the recipe over generations. At Boca Skewers the falafel are served with a "secret sauce" made from yogurt, garlic, and spices. The small, reasonably priced Mediterranean menu ranges from grilled lamb kebabs ($16.99) crosshatched with char -- rich, tender, and long marinated -- to chicken soltani, smoky organic eggplant stew ($11.99), and kafte kebabs ($12.99) of ground beef pressed and grilled on a skewer, all accompanied by a side of lentil-flecked rice sweetened with a touch of sugar. You've seen these appetizers, pita sandwiches, and salads on other menus: stuffed grape leaves, baba ghannouj, kibbeh, spinach pie, salads flecked with mint and parsley, but rarely prepared with such care. There's lots to wow vegetarians. And the Armenian families you'll find eating here aren't complaining. Open for lunch and dinner. Boca Skewers 130 NE 2nd Street (in Mizner Plaza). Boca Raton 561-347-9961.

I decided to spend Valentine's Day - at least the day part of it - at the Delray Beach Garlic Festival, a weekend-long ode to the clove going down at Old School Square. The fest had a lot going on: there were vendors aplenty, hocking garlic-based sauces, dips, spreads, and salsas. There was a garlic-inspired food alley, where you could get yourself a mess foods drenched in the titular aromatic; everything from Argentine-style skirt steak with garlic chimichurri to garlic-marinated vegetable paninis grilled to a satisfying crunch. There was also two stages - one with a parade of festival-style rock and country bands, the other that held competitions a la the Garlic Chef Competition and the Delray Beach Pizza Wars.

If that sounds like a lot of stuff, well it was. Kinda. I want to give my impressions of the Fest, but I know if I talk non-stop about it I'm going to just go on for days. So, in the interest of clarity and brevity, here are my impressions of the 10th incarnation of the Garlic Fest -- given in pro and con form -- after the jump.   

John Linn

Fresh grilled Mahi Mahi finds a home in tacos and burritos at The Whole Enchilada in Fort Lauderdale.

According to Gail Shepherd's Dish column this week, Palm Beach County residents have at least one more joint where they can sate their cravings for authentic Mex (though Ameri-Mex fans should clearly look past Cottonwood). But Gail also mentioned a host of great Broward places to get either iteration of Mexican food in her column: Canyon is one place where you can enjoy a prickly pear martini along with some upscale Mex. Any serious fan of Baja-style cuisine should be well-acquainted with Zona Fresca by now -- if not for their fish tacos, then for the outrageous, grilled-fresh-daily salsa. And there's plenty to be said for Taqueria Doña Raquel, perhaps the best option in these parts for folks looking for Mexican food as eaten by actual Mexican people.

Now that's a wide enough list of bean-and-cheese covered eats to keep you happy for weeks on end. But in the interest of diversity, here's a few more Broward Mexican joints you may want to add to your repertoire:

East Coast Burrito Factory: This tiny dive on Commerical Boulevard near Andrews Avenue has been around for ages, and for good reason. They serve some amazingly overpacked "Floritos," a portmanteau of Florida and burrito as delicious as it is fun to say. The pack their burros with a mixture of rice and beans, lettuce, tomato, made-daily salsas, and a cornucopia of awesome proteins like chipotle pork, slow-roasted carnitas, grilled steak and chicken, shrimp, Caribbean-inspired jerk fish, and so much more. The burritos come in two sizes, both of which are gigantic for the price, and the staff couldn't be friendlier. If anything, East Coast is the one-and-only testament to Florida-style Mex.    

Lime Fresh Mex: This Miami-borne chain of fresh Mex restaurants just opened a new location in Coconut Creek at 4425 Lyons Road to go along with its Pembroke Pines outpost. The best reason to check out Lime is its salsa bar, with half-a-dozen fresh made salsas including a fabulous and original suave salsa made with sauteed corn chips and chipotle. Some menu options are better than others, but the prices are pretty good and the burritos are huge.

Finally the picture at the top: That's a "One Fish" Mahi Mahi taco courtesy of The Whole Enchilada, a little slice of Mexican heaven sitting on Federal Highway in Fort Lauderdale. Much, much more on TWE after the jump.

Courtesy of Lola's Cupcakery

As far as desserts go, what's better than a cupcake? Think about it: these morsels of goodness are self-contained, portable, portion-controlled, and, when done right, can taste pretty swell. And now, they're showing up on Las Olas. Lola's Cupcakery is a new venture from Toronto restaurateur, Donald Kaplan, and his wife Laura (she's the "Lola"). The pair wanted to bring high-end cupcakes to an area that really has none, and their new storefront at 1523 E. Las Olas Blvd. will do just that. The store opens this weekend, and, as of now, will be take-out only. (The Kaplans have already applied for a change of use permit to allow in-store cupcaking.) Lola's will also deliver for orders of two dozen or more to just about anywhere in Broward, to the tune of $82 (a single cupcake runs $3.25).

You may have noticed that it's colder than a witch's teet outside. I mean, I really enjoy these few months where flip flops and Bermuda shorts aren't required attire lest you suffer heat stroke, but come on... 40s? That's not what I signed up for, folks. So last night, feeling frosty and miserable on my way home from the office, I stopped into Gabose Korean & Japanese restaurant for some much needed warmth, and found it in a bowl of ultra-spicy blue crab soup, seen above. I knew I was on the right track when the waiter first brought out the hell broth, boiling away in a heated stone pot. It seemed downright angry, all red and flecked with throat-clinging shrapnel of chili peppers and dime-sized slivers of a jalapeno-like chili. But once that stuff hit my lips and seeped down into my coldest reaches, the anger transformed into something like a mellow embrace. It was at that point that I took off my jacket.

On January 3rd, Starbucks rolled out a quintet of new Tazo full leaf tea beverages that are now available in all stores nationwide. Yesterday the coffee chain hosted "TeaTime events", which is a civilized way of saying "free samples". I headed to the most scenic of our Starbucks, at 14th Street and Ocean Drive, where store manager Christian García graciously offered me tastes of all five.

Two of the new drinks, Berry Chai Infusion and Apple Chai Infusion, are made by steaming black tea with fruit juices (the former with aronia berry and black currant) and sweet chai spices such as cinnamon and cloves. These also come iced, which I found to be even more refreshing.

The other trio of offerings come as thick-foamed lattes, so tea-drinkers need no longer suffer the dreaded whipped milk envy as their cohorts quaff cappuccinos (lattes are made with choice of 2% or nonfat milk). Vanilla Rooibos Latte is the only caffeine-free infusion, a sweet and delicious -- if not very tea-like -- blend of botanicals, Tahitian vanilla, fruits, cinnamon and steamed milk. For a more serious sip, the London Fog and Black Tea lattes are ideally prepared takes on, respectively, Earl Grey and English Breakfast. The Fog is the more complex of the two, with hints of citrusy bergamot, lavender, and vanilla.

Teas come in same cups and sizes as the coffees (photo above is of tea). Lattes run $2.95/$3.60/$3.95; infusions are $2.45/$2.80/$3.15. No hype here: If you enjoy a cuppa tea, I think you will really like these.

Ever since Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto unveiled his latest restaurant, Morimoto, in Boca Raton Resort & Club, Short Order has been dying to go. I mean, the man is an Iron Chef, both on the original Japanese program and the new Food Network creation, Iron Chef America, and this restaurant, a simple sushi bar focusing on painstaking, time-honored Japanese preparation, is his first in South Florida. However, the only snag in our dinner plans was this: the Boca Resort, in which Morimoto is located, is exclusively private. Only guests of the hotel or members of the resort are invited to dine on Morimoto's infamous tuna pizza or his savory rock shrimp tempura or his line of specialty beers. And since -- despite my logical and passionate arguments otherwise -- my boss was not willing to put me up for a night in the resort, we, like many of South Florida's sushi lovers, were out of luck.

But maybe not. Last month we wrote a post about how, despite a few calls to the resort's PR staff, we were unable to requisition a table at Morimoto. Turns out, though, that someone else who handles PR for the resort externally caught wind of our post, and invited us to dinner at the Sushi Bar. So, two weeks ago, we hoofed it out to the beautiful and historical Boca Resort. We marveled at the European inspired cloister and newly-refurbished lobby. And we had a lovely -- absolutely lovely -- meal at Morimoto Sushi Bar.

Hit the jump for pictures and descriptions.