LUNCH WITH ...

Lydia Martin
Lydia Martin, who grew up in Little Havana, has been with The Miami Herald since 1986. She covered all the hard stuff before moving to Features, where now her job is doing lunch.
She has done lunch with the president of PETA, who left the table in mid black beans and rice to chase after a limping pigeon; Tony Curtis, who arrived early and ordered without her; Jennifer Lopez, who didn't eat at all; Lil' Kim, who wore a bikini and drank a frozen strawberry daquiri in the back of her stretch limo. Lydia also covers the Latin entertainment industry, because you can't live by lunch alone.
lmartin@herald.com

When she was 17, Rita Moreno was asked to change her name from
Rosa Dolores Alverío.

JOHN VANBEEKUM/MIAMI HERALD STAFF

Rita Moreno overcame Hispanic stereotypes to achieve stardom

When Rosa Dolores Alverío was 5, she and her mother left Puerto Rico and moved to Spanish Harlem, where they shared a tenement apartment with an aunt and too many other relatives.

PROFILE

Now he really is Jahn the Man

Jahn Kirchoff calls to check in, and the voice on the phone is startling. It has dropped considerably in just a couple of weeks. No way it sounds like a woman's voice anymore.
FILMS

Filmmakers turn focus on Godmother

If you know hip-hop, you know how much the culture exalts its gangstas. It's all about the stacks of cash, the drugs, the gun-waving bravado and the shoutouts to Tony Montana.
LUNCH WITH LYDIA

With help of a little magic, former understudy morphs into Celia on the stage

Anyone lucky enough to have watched Celia Cruz perform live can attest to her magical, infectious force. There was no way to take your eyes off a woman with an energy that was almost supernatural and a voice that thundered with Afro-Cuban soul.
Cooking up a neighborhood: Can three food guys who helped ignite South Beach work the same magic in the Design District?

front A little more than a year ago, chef Michael Schwartz, smarting from some of the lows inherent in the roller-coaster restaurant business, took an all-or-nothing gamble on a sparsely populated Miami neighborhood where other restaurateurs had flopped, sparking a bigger fire than even he intended when he opened Michael's Genuine Food & Drink on Northeast 40th Street.
LUNCH WITH LYDIA

Who knew this homeboy was such a homebody?

Cuban-American rapper Pitbull, who moved around Miami so much when he was a kid that he can rattle off stories about stuff that went down on street corners from Culter Ridge to South Miami, Westchester, West Miami, Little Havana, Wynwood, Carol City and Opa-locka, likes to keep things real.
Hot and bothered: Hey, Garcia girls! ¿Que pasa?

Steven Bauer, the strapping and goofy Joe from that other 1970s show, ¿Qué Pasa, USA?, has just returned with a second plate of food -- pasta and roast beef -- from the buffet at the Doral Golf Resort, and Elizabeth Peña, his co-star in How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer, is rolling her eyes.
ARTISTS

She's taking cut and paste to new levels

In her junior year at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Miami artist Jen Stark set out for a semester abroad in Aix-en-Provence with two suitcases full of clothes and no art supplies.
Famed sculptor, designer still cherishes her Eden

Sitting here in the courtyard at Michael's Genuine Food & Drink in the Design District, the place she calls ''Miami's salon,'' artist Michele Oka Doner is giving high priestess.
LUNCH WITH LYDIA

On the tapas trail with a superstar chef of Spain

Elena Arzak has been called the most important female chef in the world. The Madonna of chefs, even. But she seems oblivious to all of her press as she leads you through the elegant streets of this seaside resort on your way to one of her favorite little pintxos, or tapas, bars.
LUNCH WITH LYDIA

A decade after 'Seinfeld,' the comedian's still creating buzz

You can't say Jerry Seinfeld isn't a sport. After all, in May, he donned a fuzzy bee suit and rode a cable off the roof of a hotel in Cannes for the sake of promoting Bee Movie, his first major project beyond stand-up comedy since his legendary sitcom signed off in 1998.
LUNCH WITH LYDIA

Still smokin' -- and not just the cigarette

Antonio Banderas, casual in a long-sleeve T and olive cargo pants, is being bad. He is in the middle of a long press day, talking to one reporter after another about his role as the suave (if hairball-hacking) Puss In Boots in Shrek the Third, which opened Friday.
Halle Berry: Fab, 40 -- and fidgety

Halle Berry looks flawless even with the harsh noon sun invading her hotel suite. At 40, she can play characters much younger. But genetic blessings and an Oscar in 2002 for Monster's Ball are not enough to help her feel secure in Hollywood.
Lunch with Lydia

Lunch With Lydia | She's, like, so not like that

Paris Hilton, willowy in a floor-length dress, speaks in a certain sing-song that comes and goes as she munches on fruit at the Shore Club's Ago. She can so speak in that little girl high-pitched thing where everything ends, like, in a question mark? And she can speak straight, punctuating thoughts with periods, her voice a normal grown-up pitch.