One evening last week Hania and I went to the MASS District for dinner, the name standing for Music & Arts South of Sunrise. MASS and nearby F.A.T Village are the two most interesting neighborhoods in the city, filled with the innovation and entrepreneurial spirit that high rents long ago banished from Las Olas.
We arrived early, so wandered over to Batch for cookies. As often, there was a line. We got talking to the couple behind us; they had driven up from Miami for some chocolate chips. We got one chocolate chip with walnuts and one gluten-free lemon blueberry cookie.
Then we walked a few steps to Heritage. Hania got the squash blossoms and calamari stuffed with sausage; I got a pizza. The man eating pasta at the table next to us told us he had driven down from Delray Beach. On a weeknight. For Italian food.
It was as incredible as it was heartening to think that Ft. Lauderdale – the MASS District in Ft. Lauderdale! – has become a South Florida foodie mecca.
Yesterday evening Hania and I went for dinner to Here and Now in FAT Village. It is not new – it’s having its one-year anniversary this coming Saturday – but we only recently heard about it. “This is what we get,” Hania said, “for not reading the Sun-Sentinel.” (I learned about it from a post by my successor at Fort Lauderdale Magazine.)
It sits tucked behind the Avenue Lofts on NW 1st Ave., which means it’s fronted by some of the Village’s rare trees. Inside, we found a deep dining room with well-spaced tables and comfortable chairs. A beautiful bar ran the length of the room – it’s famous for inventive cocktails – with two TVs showing NHL matches. Oldies, like “Good Vibrations,” played at a not overwhelming volume. It looked like the kind of fine neighborhood place every city should have, and FAT Village has long needed. In fact, it was like a more industrialized version of the old Joe Allen’s in Miami Beach’s Sunset Harbor.
Hania and I both got specials: duck for her, gumbo for me. Each was delicious, which was not surprising. A restaurant that opens at the start of a pandemic and is still in business one year later must be good. Hania walked to the open kitchen and complimented the chef.
A beautiful day yesterday so we headed out for an early supper along A1A. We sat watching people head home from the beach while others lingered on the sand. An extremely long freighter sailed out of Port Everglades and soon disappeared over the horizon.
About every five minutes a car came past, blasting music or revving its engine. And for a few seconds, it monopolized everyone’s attention. The occupants were always young men, not given to subtlety or bothered by cliches. They pleaded for the world to look at them, to admire their toys and their taste in music. They were so infatuated by their fineness they could not envision a future of deafness.
On the way home we stopped for dessert on Las Olas. Here the same phenomenon occurred, not as frequently – perhaps every 10 or 15 minutes – but at the same shattering volume, with the same brash intrusiveness. People turned their heads and stared, numbed by the contemporary male's mating call.
Why are the grapefruits at Whole Foods always inferior to those at Publix?
The full moon was hidden by clouds on Monday so yesterday evening we drove to the beach to watch its infinitesimally less well-rounded kin rise from the ocean. It appeared a little after 6:30, a slowly forming orange orb that, had it not been for the darkness, would have resembled a sunset in reverse.
The obituary for Colette Evert in today’s Miami Herald features comments from Chris about her mother’s innate kindness, which included cheering for Chris’s opponents when they were playing well against her.