Write to her at lbladholm@miamiherald.com.
For months I saw the ''opening soon'' banner hanging in the window of Bengal Modern Indian Cuisine, and dreamed of tasting the pleasantly pungent flavors I had discovered on trips to East Bengal and Bangladesh.
I discovered the seductive flavors of Thai food in the 1980s when I lived in Singapore and often took the train through Malaysia to the teeming Thai capital of Bangkok. Red Thai & Sushi in Hollywood takes me back to those early culinary adventures.
Paris Gourmet is a true mom-and-pop spot. Pilar Guyot greets customers and helps serve the simple French dishes while her husband, Laurent, makes the pastries, petit fours, tarts and cookies that are displayed like jewels in glass cases.
Years ago, I spent El Dia de Muertos (The Day of the Dead), on the lake island of Janitzio in Patzcuaro, famed throughout Mexico for the exuberant fiesta with which it honors the dearly departed. I will never forget dancing in a cemetery lit by thousands of candles while people cooked at the graves and tipped back tequila after toasting their ancestors.
Lemoni Café is as effervescent as a fizzy drink, bubbling with friendliness and a cool vibe. Located in the Design District, it draws a lunch crowd of office workers and artists and has recently added dinner service.
SOUP MOROCCAN PUMPKIN SOUP Serve this lovely, delicate soup with a salad or sandwich for lunch or as a first course. 2 ½ pounds calabaza or butternut or acorn squash
Toa Toa means ''good dim sum,'' which is hard to find in South Florida. So it's worth a trip to Sunrise for the handmade pot stickers, buns and other morsels served all day at Toa Toa Chinese Restaurant and Authentic Dim Sum.
Nilus Delights is a welcoming little bakery and café in Hollywood run by a couple who care about their customers. Niranjan and Lus Maria ''Lucy'' Perera's menu includes sugar-free and low-carb pastries, cookies and cakes for those with special needs (Lucy is diabetic, so she understands).
It's hard to miss the big, black, industrial-looking barbecue grill in front of Piri Piri, a Surfside destination for grilled chicken, racks of meaty pork ribs and bakkies, a South African meal in a cup.
El Tamarindo Restaurant and Coal Fired Pizza is one of those great South Florida hybrids that serves not just pizza pies and chicken wings but casamiento, crema mariscos and other specialties of the owners' native El Salvador.
Richard and Phyllis Borenstein were newlyweds when they opened their gourmet pizza shop 14 years ago in Pinecrest. Today, their Original Big Tomato is a true mom and pop operation, with Phyllis working the front, Richard making the pizzas and 9-year-old daughter Taylor helping out when she can.
The deli counter at Morningside's Honey Tree health food store has a cult-like following. Fans begin rushing in around noon, making a beeline for the back, where big stainless-steel pans are loaded with about a dozen vegetarian dishes daily.
Vito Volpe is bringing fresh mozzarella to South Florida one cheese ball at a time under the Mozzarita label. The creamy dairy delight is handmade by master cheesemaker Mimmo Marchittla, a friend of Volpe's from Bari, a city in Puglia, the southern ''boot'' region of Italy.
Two Florentines who met in Miami 14 years ago and became best friends are now partners in a 2-month-old Miami Beach bakery café, a shoe-box-size space called Mattarello.
I plan to celebrate my Swedish heritage and the end of summer Thursday night at a crayfish party at Sunrise's IKEA store. I'll wear a silly hat and paper bib and sing songs about beer with about 250 other fans of the tiny red crustaceans.
The cuisine of Korea can be baffling to outsiders, but exploration is rewarding: The flavors are a wonderful balance of hot and cold, spicy and mild with sweet, salty and tangy notes.
Ana Rabel opened her first ''green'' restaurant 20 years ago, long before eco-friendliness was trendy. Her latest place, Green Gables Café in Coral Gables, serves mostly takeout to devoted, like-minded customers who even bring back the cardboard cup holders to be used again.
South Florida has no Chinatown, but 167th Street in North Miami Beach comes wonderfully close. Shing Wang Vegetarian, Icee & Tea House is the newest spot on the strip of Asian groceries and restaurants.
The Jam Café is a small, cool breakfast and lunch spot on West Avenue that is jamming although it has only been open a month. It's near the new Publix, and since it's never a good idea to grocery shop on an empty stomach, folks in the neighborhood stop in for a sandwich, smoothie or salad first. (The light bites are available until 8 p.m. every day but Sunday.)
You know you're in a New York-style deli when sour pickles and coleslaw arrive at your table in ''monkey plates'' -- named for the small dishes organ-grinders' monkeys once held out for tips. You catch a whiff of hot pastrami and immediately scrap your plan to order a salad or sliced peaches and cottage cheese.
Find the sweet life in a slice of Roman-style pizza or a plate of tiramisu at Teodora's Bakery & Café in Miami Beach. This family-run spot is the place to chow down on generous portions of Italian-American food, served with pizazz, on a happening strip of West Avenue.
One of the best places in Broward County to eat vegetarian Indian food is in a house of worship that welcomes all comers to a weekly feast. The Sikh Society of Florida has operated the gurdwara, or temple, in Davie with an open kitchen since 1989.
Regulars at Hollywood's cozy Coral Rose Café have seen it change hands three times in 20 years. That accounts for an eclectic breakfast and lunch menu that offers not only three-egg omelets and buttermilk pancakes but nachos and quesadillas plus gyros, falafel and Greek spinach pie.
Until two years ago, Charles ''Chuck'' Godel was a snowbird from Montreal with no plans to stay in South Florida full-time. Then the former wholesale jewelry salesman took a floundering Skylake Mall grilled-chicken franchise off friends' hands and found a new career.
Brie and walnut pizza drizzled in truffle oil, anyone? How about foie gras with duck and porcini mushrooms? Those are just two of the 50 gourmet combinations at La Bote à Pizza, a French franchise that opened its first U.S. outlet in Miami Beach.
From sweet yet sharp cinnamon to toasty but bittersweet cumin, spices have personalities. Just ask Jennifer Revello, who sells them each Sunday morning beneath a white tent across from the Lincoln Theater in Miami Beach.
Gourmet Handmade Biscotti with a Moroccan Touch Asma Samy Chabbi's mother had just visited from Morocco, bringing fresh-pressed olive oil and salty cured black olives from the family farm west of Marrakech. She also brought homemade preserved lemons in her luggage, which then goes back filled with her daughter's biscotti in a cross-cultural exchange.
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