Heads up comes by way of a press release, so let’s head in: Proprietors Tim Petrillo and Peter Boulukos (also the chef) chose a 6,300 square feet space on Las Olas Boulevard to house the new YOLO Restaurant & O Lounge. YOLO is expected to open September 30 and will feature two bars, a garden patio, and a chic lounge. If Boulukos and Petrillo get their wish, this place just might turn into a Fort Lauderdale dining and nightlife hotspot.

One of the more interesting aspects of the restaurant is the contemporary design, which puts the kitchen at the heart of the dining room and sets some nifty “leather banquettes” around it. "Everyone knows that kitchens are the center of any great get together," says Petrillo. "We wanted our diners to be as comfortable as they'd be dining in a friend's home while capturing the energy and drama that could only come from a commercial kitchen."

Sounds like a good combo of class and comfort, but since we usually don’t pay for the food when we go to our friend’s homes, let’s check out the prices.

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If you weren't at Pink Ghost Saturday night you missed one hell of treat: Not only was it the premier of the Ghostie's Eight-by-Eight art show, but it was also the launch party for the Purple Pie Company, a very DIY-style operation run by Miami gal, Alex Van Clief. There was beautiful pop art from the likes of Helena Garcia (who showed up at the event), Anneli Olander, and John Lytle Wilson. And there was FREE pie. And pies for sale. And cheery people eating pies. And it was delicious!

In case you missed our preview of the event in this week's Night & Day section, Purple Pie arose from Van Clief's love of baking, something she cultivated while at Syracuse studying photography. (And you should really check out her photography too; she's multi-talented, this one!) SU being in prime apple country, Van Clief quickly learned how to turn ripe fruit into tasty treats. By the time she came back to Miami, she was getting bombarded with requests for pies. After tasting her signature ones, apple and blueberry, I can totally see why.

Hit the jump for more...

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Last week Victoria Fedden sent us this awesome memory of finding free food in Delaware:

"Each summer we were chicken-neckers. We stood on bridges in the dawn's mist, over nearly stagnant creeks or nearly up to our knees in eelgrass, dragging strings tied to raw chicken necks through the dark water waiting to feel the claws' pinch and the string go taut. Then we'd sweep our dip nets along the muddy bottom, tangling the blue crabs before we dropped them, shells clattering angrily, into a wooden bushel basket. The adults had to put a board over the basket because the crabs would escape and come scuttling sideways after us, furiously threatening us with their front claws, which terrified me. I was always relieved when we tossed them into the steamer because as a child it seemed to me that the crabs were hateful things when they were alive. Cooked, they were my favorite food.

They went into the speckled black and white pot like wet rocks, the color of water; grey-blue, muddy stone, and the green of marsh rushes. They came out orange-red like paprika, caked in Old Bay in an avalanche of shell and claw on top of old newspapers. Eating crabs was so messy that we only ate them outside on the picnic table over a bed of old Chronicles. We unraveled rolls of paper towels. The adults snapped open cans of beer and smashed into the crabs with wooden mallets. I learned young how to peel back the apron and scoop out the poisonous lungs which we called "devil's fingers" and since my hands were small I could easily pick out the lumps of backfin meat and the thin strips of sweet flesh hiding in the knuckles and legs. We ate with our hands, soaking the crabmeat in melted butter, licking the almost bitter spiciness from our fingers, repeating over and over how lucky we were that food this good lived practically in our backyard and that we could, for nothing but a couple hours and a few cents, dine like millionaires until autumn."

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You all know the Proustian tale: French guy, now pretty old and sad, bites into butter cookie and is suddenly and viscerally transported back to a childhood room at teatime. We all have our own madeleine.

Short Order wants to hear your earliest food memory. The gnosh that woke you up to the possibilities of total gluttony, the oral sensation that made you understand there's more to life than teething biscuits.

To honor gustatory revelations past, this week Short Order initiates an irregular series where we ask South Florida foodists -- celebrity chefs, bloggers, fruit stand operators, home gardeners, compulsive eaters, and various movers and shakers on our local dining scene -- about the first bites that made them the culinary obsessives they are today.

After the jump, Miami blogger Paula Niño.

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