Category: restaurants
Met Ellen, an ex-Sun-Sentinel reporter, at the new Bluejay's Cafe for lunch yesterday, and while we were catching up on news Liz, another former Sun-Sentinelian, walked in. Granted, there are a lot of ex-newspaper people walking around these days, but this was surprising because Liz lives in Memphis. Word of Bluejay's, open less than a month, had gotten around.
Which is not surprising. It's a beautiful space, spare and tasteful. Our waitress, tall and graceful, could not have been nicer. I ordered the fish tacos (this is the place owned by the guy from Taos I wrote about last month) and Ellen got the quesadilla. My three tacos arrived on warm corn tortillas, the fish nicely grilled instead of fried. I swapped one for a slice of Ellen's quesadilla, which looked less exciting but had more zip.
While we were eating, the owners of Gran Forno walked in. I walked over and learned that they were return customers. I almost wished I were back at the paper, going out for lunch every day.
Driving down for a belated birthday dinner, we parked in front of the Art Deco post office on Washington and walked across the street to a block of grocery stores and tattoo parlors. Opening the door of Escopazzo, we entered another world.
The narrow room featured a large mural on one wall containing most of Italy's architectural treasures. A chandelier hung from the ceiling, and heavy curtains shrouded the front window.
The waiter, on hearing that Hania was a celiac, recommended the tagliatelle made from gluten-free flour imported from Italy. I had the sea bream with eggplant puree; both were delicious. The chef came out, a woman with a warm smile, and told Hania which of the desserts she could eat.
I asked the maitre d' about the name of the restaurant. "It means 'I'm going crazy,'" he said. "When the owner opened it here, in 1993, all his friends told him he was going crazy."
We took a postprandial stroll up past more tattoo parlors to Espanola Way. Despite its name, the prettiest street in South Florida has gone Brazilian, with a Brazilian cafe next door to a Japanese-Brazilian restaurant. Across the street, a dress shop played lovely Brazilian music. Outside, a young Frenchman stood on the sidewalk with his 3-month-old German shepherd named Zach.
A half block to the west, Segafredo had enlivened the once dormant corner with its sidewalk armchairs and ultra-comfortable patrons. While, a few doors down, a family sat eating crepes outside a cafe with the name - nicely rounding out the evening - A La Folie.
On my bike ride Sunday I ran into Javier, the Peruvian writer who doubles as a waiter at Cafe Verdi, the lunch-time restaurant that overlooks the main library in downtown Fort Lauderdale. I hadn't seen Javier in a while, since I no longer go out to lunch. (Don't feel sorry for me; I also no longer go to meetings.)
He told me that he had started tapas evenings every Wednesday. His idea was that young professionals, rather than fighting rush hour traffic, would stop in after work for a glass of wine and a bite to eat. Instead, he said, he gets a group of hipsters, who come around 8 and stay rather late.
Yesterday evening I drove over to Cafe Verdi around six o'clock (well before the hipsters). A few patrons sat inside, while a man with a laptop occupied an outdoor table. The menu, which Javier said changed every week, included bruschetta, tortilla espagnole, antipasto, camarones al ajillo, all-beef meatballs, au gratin gnocchi, and chorizo with peppers. I ordered the chorizo and the tortilla espagnole.
I was about to ask for a glass of wine when Javier showed me the list of beers. These included, among others, Small Craft Uber Pils, American Amber Ale, Flying Dog Old Scratch, and Shipyard Prelude. Javier recommended the latter, which was, as advertised, "a rich, nutty, full-bodied English ale."
The food arrived, on plates more befitting entrees than tapas. The chorizo and peppers were delicious, and accompanied by three slices of toasted ciabatta, so that you could make - as I did - warm and meaty bruschettas. The lightly toasted bread was still soft enough for sopping up the wonderful sauce.
The tortilla espagnole was the best tortilla espagnole I have ever eaten. And I have eaten a lot of them. This took the cold, dry, solid omelet and turned it into a rich, moist, flaky feast. The spuds were sliced like scallop potatoes and shot through with egg and bits of bacon. Every bite was a revelation. Though I couldn't finish it all, and brought one slice home. I'm going to have it for lunch.
Breakfast yesterday with the boys. We used to go to lunch together, back when we had jobs. This earlier meal suggests a greater seniority than we possess. Except for Mark, we are part of the prematurely idle, laid off or bought out journalists. Though Terry and I still freelance, and Greg is raising a four-year-old son (who gets out of pre-school just around lunchtime).
Self-mockingly, we sat in the rocking chairs outside Cracker Barrel waiting for Greg. Our last breakfast, back in April, was at The Floridian, a Ft. Lauderdale institution where tasteless food (how do you ruin a biscuit?) was delivered by an unfriendly waitress. Colorfully surly we could have all appreciated (we're writers) but this woman was dull and brusque. Before that, also ironically, we had met at Grampa's in Dania Beach.
We used to change lunch spots, but not as regularly. We started at Sal's on Second Street - the man sometimes credited with initiating sidewalk dining in Ft. Lauderdale - then when he closed moved to Tina's Spaghetti House on Federal Highway. Our last place, Giorgio's - just so you don't think we were a jinx - is still in business.
I had never eaten at a Cracker Barrel when I wasn't traveling somewhere, and this put a little pressure on the breakfast. It wasn't part of something bigger, it was all I had. Not to worry. The conversation sparkled, helped by the arrival of Joe, the son of one of our old lunch regulars. I feared that we had become one of those tables I glare at in restaurants for disturbing the peace.
At a lull Terry, looking out the window, said: "I love a rocking chair just after somebody's left it."
I had lunch yesterday in a restaurant many Fort Lauderdalians don't know exists.
The 11th Street Annex is tucked away on - you guessed it - 11th Street - a few doors west of Andrews, across the street from Trinity Lutheran Church. It occupies a little cottage hidden in foliage.
Inside, two small rooms have been turned into one small room scattered with tables and chairs and, at lunchtime, lawyers, city officials, office workers, and other people in the know.
Jonny Altobell and Penny Sanfilippo make about three dishes each day. Yesterday the specials were: a chicken and Greek salad wrap; a ham, cheese and pineapple panini; and mom's macaroni and cheese. I got the wrap and it was remarkable: not just the generous filling but the wrap itself, which had more in common - in texture and taste - with a fresh tortilla than with the usual papery enclosure. It was accompanied by a side of unexpectedly delicious macaroni salad (definitely not my mom's) which seemed to be studded with feta crumbs. It's the kind of place that almost makes me wish I had a job with a lunch break.
Yesterday I wrote about my dining experience Monday night at the wonderful restaurant Cacao, which it was - up to a point.
That point came around 9 pm, just when the tables started to fill. Soft graceful Latin songs were replaced by techno music. It was not deafening, so we could still hold a conversation, but the repetitive pounding took its toll. One of the men at our table, who lives in Alaska, said it was starting to give him a headache.
The problem is not new. In his book Those United States, published in 1912, the English novelist Arnold Bennett wrote of dining on his ocean liner to the strains of an orchestra. "That ragtime, committed, I suppose, originally by some well-intentioned if banal composer in the privacy of his study one night, had spread over the whole universe of restaurants like a pest, to the exasperation of the sensitive but evidently to the joy of correct diners. ...And yet you never encountered a person who, questioned singly, did not agree and even assert of his own accord that music at meals is an outrageous nuisance!"
I think today few Americans would complain about soft music in restaurants, but the vast majority would veto techno. I suspect that it is played in an effort to get people to eat quickly and to increase turnaround. Noise in the service of the almighty dollar.