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After receiving submissions from hundreds of young women from all over South Florida, the staff of Boca Raton narrowed the field to five deserving finalists. Meet the winners of our 2014 Cover Girl competition. photography by
norma lopez molina
100 Cooking the Southern Way
A full-blown Southern food revival is taking place in kitchens throughout the tri-county area. Here’s everything you need to know about our favorite downhome cuisine. by
jan norris
108 roCk on Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it’s also a way for tribute bands to honor their favorite musicians—and land gigs on stages throughout South Florida. by
john thomason
114 houSe of blueS
Interior designers have the blues these days—but that’s a good thing for homeowners looking to revamp their spaces with this year’s hottest color scheme. by brad
mee
John Carlazzo performs as Paul Stanley in the local tribute band KISS Alive (page 108).
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER
44 Mail
Readers comment on articles in recent issues of Boca Raton
46 Editor’s lEttEr
The return of a popular feature prompts the editor to celebrate his own Cover Girl. by kevin kaminski
49 HoME town
Celebrate the people, places and events that give our community its identity—a dating guru with advice for widowers, a nutritionist with back-to-school suggestions, a teacher making a difference in Africa and a legendary developer with a new project. by kevin kaminski, marie speed and john thomason
59 sHop talk
Find out why pattern play brings sizzle to any wardrobe, learn about the hottest trends in nail polish and design, and make sure time is on your side with the season’s most stylish watches for men and women. by stefanie cainto
67 FEEl Good
Meet a local workout enthusiast who discovered the benefits of body sculpting, and learn about the latest preventive measures from a top breast cancer specialist. by lisette hilton
77
Florida tablE
Yogurt has do-it-yourself potential beyond the self-serve frozen varieties around town—and here are the recipes to prove it. by mary brown malouf
80 FacE tiME
Meet a local philanthropist with a message to share, a woman who gives no quarter in the fight against hatemongering, and one of the most inspirational stories ever to emerge from Boca’s Ballroom Battle. by marie speed and john thomason
86
tHE Boca intErviEw
After a tumultuous stretch for Florida Atlantic University, new president John Kelly looks to chart a positive course and retool the college’s reputation. by kevin kaminski
127 backstaGE pass
Take the stage with one of the area’s most renowned karaoke hosts, check out the top events for September and October, and meet Boca’s king of improv. by john thomason
141
dininG GuidE
Don’t leave home without it—our comprehensive guide to the best restaurants in South Florida, including new reviews of Farmer’s Table in Boca and The Porch in Delray Beach. reviews by bill citara
177 out and about
You might just see some familiar faces in our snapshots from talked-about social events in and around Boca Raton. by stefanie cainto
191
spEEd buMps
In looking back over the summer, two hours in London was the highlight. by marie speed
192
My turn
The author honors the mentors in his life who continue to influence and inspire. by john shuff
On the cOver
pHotoGrapHEr: Norma Lopez Molina
ModEl: Taylor Marten
stylist: Jenna DeBrino, Hot Pink Style
Hair/MakEup: Joy Beth Ryan, Jordan Calloway and Marissa Trentacosta, Cloud 10, Boca Raton
FasHion: Peter Cohen dress, $750, from Deborah James, Royal Palm Place; Dareen Hakim bag, $385, from Rhythm of Grace, Mizner Park; bangles, $48 each, from Barbara Katz, Boca Raton
Casey Casperson leads a rehearsal of the Sick Puppies.
bocamag. com
WE b Ex TRAS
Check out these bonus items unique to bocamag.com, related to stories in the September/October issue of Boca Raton or pertaining to events in our area:
CANDID CAMERA: Our award-winning video team spent the afternoon with the 2014 Cover Girl winners as they played dress-up for the fashion shoot that appears on page 92. Visit BocaMagTV for behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with the models.
MR. PRESIDENT: John Kelly has plenty to say about the present and future of Florida Atlantic University (page 86). Check out the bonus excerpts from our interview with the college’s new president.
SOUTHERN COMFORT: Visit bocamag.com for more dishes and resources connected to our feature on Southern cuisine (page 100)—including a list of classic recipe books, as well as foods making a Southern comeback.
NAME THAT TUNE: Ready to take the stage with your rendition of “Don’t Stop Believin’” or “Livin’ on a Prayer?” Click on the Web Extras link and find out which venues in and around Boca are offering karaoke (page 130).
ULTIMATE DINING RESOURCE: Food editor Bill Citara keeps readers in the know on restaurant news from Palm Beach Gardens to Miami with his weekly blogs under the “Dining” link. In addition, the online version of Boca Raton’s dining guide—the only one in South Florida compiled using original reviews—breaks down the tricounty restaurant scene.
bEST OF bOCA
If you missed the return of our popular “Best of Boca” story this summer, fear not. We’re posting the 22-page feature in its entirety under the “In the Mag” link at bocamag.com. Refer to it throughout the year as a resource guide for some of the area’s top dining, nightlife and shopping options.
FIND US ON SO cI al me DI a
Don’t miss Boca Raton on everything from Facebook (facebook. com/bocamag) to Google+ (google.com/+bocamag.com) and Pinterest (pinterest.com/bocamag) for community news, insider tips, beauty trends, fashion inspiration—and even chances to win prizes. Follow us on Twitter (@bocamag) for restaurant and retail updates, as well as fashion events.
JIMMY CHOO
bocamag. com
In Case You Missed It
No one covers the community more thoroughly than Boca Raton and bocamag.com, the only South Florida magazine website with unique daily content and a dedicated team of reporters. Here are just a few recent highlights from our award-winning blog coverage.
shoe Business
“If Chelsea Kaplan has it her way … she’ll ‘take over the world one shoe at a time.’ For now, the graduate of Florida Atlantic University is busy reviving a lost art that has customers taking a shine to her entrepreneurial efforts.” —Kelsey howard, Community link
Blog
Morrissey at the arsht Center
“When I walked out of the auditorium, I didn’t feel the accompanying surge of adrenaline and excitement that lingers … after most great concerts; I mostly felt shame and depression.”
—John thomason, a&e link
aladdin’s MagiC
“It’s going to take me most of the summer to taste my way through [the] large menu [at Aladdin’s Eatery in Boca], but I am not daunted. It’s tough to find a place that tastes good and is good for you, as the man used to say—and this is a keeper.”
—Marie speed, dining link
stiCKs and stones
“[delray Beach] commissioner Adam Frankel complained that a member of a city board had called him a word that ‘begins with ‘a’ and ends with ‘hole.’
Since commissioners appoint members of the city’s roughly two dozen citizen boards, Frankel wanted to know if the commission could remove the board member … for using the, um, description.” —randy schultz, “City Watch”
loCal Chefs at the Beard house “new yorkers got a taste of Florida in their own backyard as a quartet of chefs from Burt rapoport’s restaurant group knocked out four courses and a host of hors d’oeuvres at the James Beard house in greenwich Village.” —Bill Citara, dining link
let Pinterest Be your guide
“Are you looking for something to do in and around delray or Boca? We’ve got you covered when it comes to shopping, dining and nightlife. let our Pinterest mapping feature help you navigate all of the restaurants, bars and retail in the area.” —taryn tacher, Community link
Central: StAy ConnECtEd to thE CommUnIty WIth oUr tEAm oF BloggErS
A&E: John Thomason
takes readers inside the arts with concert, exhibition and movie reviews, cultural news and special profiles every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Shop: Discover upcom-
ing trunk shows, store openings, money-saving tips and fashion trends Tuesday through Thursday with Stefanie Cainto.
hEAlth & BEAuty: Lisette Hilton delivers local news from the worlds
of exercise and medicine every Wednesday in her “Fit Life” blog.
Dining: Bill Citara breaks down the tricounty restaurant scene— from new reviews and dining news to kitchen
gossip—every Monday, Tuesday and Friday. Also, on Wednesdays, our “Boca After Dark” blogger checks out the local nightlife scene and “The Green Goddess” dishes on healthy eating.
Community: Randy Schultz brings a reporter’s eye to Boca and beyond every Tuesday and Thursday with his “City Watch” blog; our in-house team keeps you on top of local events and happenings throughout the week.
&
MICHAEL
MICHAEL KORS
the [only] boca raton magazine
group editor-in-chief
marie “the queen” speed editor kevin “long live rock” kaminski
assistant editor
john “triple-word score” thomason web editor stefanie “too tall” cainto
senior art director
lori “shut the front door” pierino
assistant art director nancy “kale rules” kumpulainen photographers aaron bristol, eduardo schneider
production manager adrienne “my way” mayer
contributing writers lisette hilton, mary brown malouf, jan norris, john shuff
contributing photographers adam finkle, norma lopez molina, chris salata, scot zimmerman
editorial/video interns gabrielle doraisamy michelle ferrand kelsey howard taryn tacher
video production david “that’s a wrap” shuff
food editor
bill “chew on this” citara home editor brad “barefoot elegance” mee
group editor-in-chief marie speed controller jeanne “enforcer” greenberg circulation director david “not my job” brooks customer service david shuff
JES Publishing produces the following magazines: Boca Raton • Delray Beach • Mizner’s Dream • Worth Avenue • Boca Raton Chamber Annual • Salt Lake • Utah Bride and Groom • Utah Style & Design • The Canyons • Salt Lake Visitors’ Guide
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2013 charlie awards
charlie award (first place) best overall online presence (Boca Raton) best department (Boca Raton)
silver award best overall magazine (Boca Raton) best column (Boca Raton)
bronze award best online video (Boca Raton)
2012 charlie awards
charlie award (first place) best overall magazine (Boca Raton) best feature (Delray Beach) best photographic essay (Boca Raton) silver award best overall online presence (Boca Raton) best use of photography (Boca Raton)
bronze award best in-depth reporting (Boca Raton)
2011 charlie awards
charlie award (first place) best new magazine (Delray Beach) best custom publication (Worth Avenue) bronze award best overall magazine (Boca Raton)
2010 charlie awards
charlie award (first place) best overall magazine (Boca Raton) best overall design (Boca Raton)
2009 charlie awards
charlie award (first place) best overall magazine (Boca Raton) best overall design (Boca Raton) best feature (Boca Raton)
2008 charlie awards
charlie award (first place) best overall magazine (Boca Raton) best feature (Boca Raton) best single, original B&W photo (Boca Raton)
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[ directory ]
Boca Raton magazine is published seven times a year, with February, March/April, May/June, July/August, September/October, November and December/January issues. If you have any questions or comments regarding our magazine, call us at 561/997-8683. We’d love to hear from you.
[ subscription, copy purchasing and distribution ]
For any changes or questions regarding your subscription or to purchase back issues, call subscription services at 855/276-4395. To inquire about distribution points, ask for circulation director David Brooks at 877/553-5363.
[ advertising resources ]
Take advantage of Boca Raton magazine’s prime advertising space—put your ad dollars to work in the premier publication of South Florida. For more information, contact group advertising director Tim Schwab (tim@ bocamag.com).
[ custom publishing ]
Create a magazine tailored to fit the needs and character of your business/organization. Ideal for promotions, special events, introduction of new services, etc. Contact Marie Speed (editor@bocamag.com).
magazine values the concerns and interests of our readers. Please submit story queries by e-mail to Kevin Kaminski (kevin@bocamag.com). Due to the large volume of pitches, the editor may not respond to all queries.
Submit information regarding our website and online calendar to Stefanie Cainto (stefanie@bocamag.com).
Your thoughts and comments are important to us. All letters to the editor may be edited for style, grammar and length. Send letters to the address listed below, or to
Where to go, what to do and see throughout South Florida. Please submit information regarding galas, art openings, plays, readings, concerts, dance or other performances to A&E editor John Thomason (john.thomason@bocamag. com). Deadline for entries in an upcoming A&E section is
Our independent reviews of restaurants in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties. A fine, reliable resource for residents and tourists. For more information,
A photo collage of social gatherings and events in Boca Raton and South Florida. All photos submitted should be identified and accompanied by a brief description of the event (who, what, where, when). E-mail images to
rick owens
[ directory ]
tHANK yoU For SUBScriBiNG to BOCA RATON MAGAZiNe!
We appreciate your business, and we want you to get the most from your subscription. This customer guide will help you contact us for all your subscription needs.
[ first issue ]
Your first issue will be mailed four-to-six weeks after receipt of your order. Subsequent issues will arrive every other month and monthly in November and February.
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Car Enthusiast
Marie, your expressed romance and love for your Jeep Sahara was wonderful [Speed Bumps, July/August 2014]. I have read many of your columns and have always enjoyed your offbeat take. “Jeep Dreams” just about brought tears to my eyes. If I had adhered to the way of the Dalai Lama, I would not still be in possession of my 1983 RX-7.
I received my car in December 1982, a gift from my parents during my senior year of college at the University of Rhode Island. In October 1985, I drove it from Long Island to Boca Raton and never looked back. She was my full-time car for 18 years, before I [bought] a second car. Although she [still] runs fine, she mostly rests in the garage. I have sympathy for your loss. May your memories remain vivid for years to come.
If you’re ever jonesing for irrational fun, I will take you for a spin in the RX-7. Thanks for sharing your story.
—Elyse Arnel E-mail
BEst in show
Just wanted to share that your July/August “Best of Boca” issue is fantastic! You guys presented the facts and figures in a fun, colorful and interesting way. You did a great job with the overall editorial.
—Marielle Sologuren Fort Lauderdale
MorE Kudos
The magazine is amazing; you cover [a great range of] topics, all the way to new age/taboo subjects [like the statewide marijuana debate in the May/June issue]. The photography is on a whole new level. Stunning photos and actually interesting topics. It’s a gorgeous reminder of what this county has to offer. Love it!
—Signed, a Boca Raton reader E-mail
City watCh
Randy Schultz’s “City Watch” coverage at bocamag.com continues to generate record amounts of reader feedback. Here is a sam-
pling of some of the comments Schultz has received for his blogs about local and statewide issues:
On the Delray Beach city manager situatiOn: “It is horrifying that [city commissioners Adam] Frankel and [Al] Jacquet continue to use their votes for dubious outcomes. It makes me ashamed to be a resident of downtown Delray Beach. What will they bring to downtown next after pushing Atlantic Downtown Crossing on us? [Railroad] trains running through the middle of town nonstop. There should be a recall process for people like that.”
—nycflorida gal
On mizner trail: “I happened to come across Randy’s comments this morning. Thanks for his attention. I’d like to add to your knowledge as I live on the golf course and have been fighting this for nine years. The “public” interest is not the blight. You just mow in a timely manner. The public interest is the Boca
Del Mar Master Plan created in 1971 and a subsequent lawsuit supporting it. There are no “development rights” attached to this golf course. The only way that the Commission can approve development is to take rights and benefits from the homeowners and transfer them to the developers. Every property owner in Palm Beach County should be highly alarmed and follow this case doggedly.”
—Mike
Kaplan
On Auburn TrAce: “We just had the opportunity to read your post dated July 10. It is concerning that you state that the March 18 Auburn Trace item was illegally scheduled. This is incorrect information. As per city rules of procedure, a majority of commission members may request that the city manager’s office place an item on an agenda. … You have continually displayed a distortion of the events regarding Auburn Trace. … If you have any interest in learning about pertinent facts, we are available for discussion.”
—Jessica
Hinners
CorreCtion
The Style pages in the July/August issue of Boca Raton featured an incorrect price for the Emmie natural cork wedge from Stepping Out in Plaza Del Mar at Manalapan. The price should have been $179.99.
eVentS
TAsTemAkers Of mizner PArk
When: Sept. 17, 6 to 9:30 p.m.
Where: Mizner Park, Boca Raton
What: With the purchase of a VIP Passport, guests will have access to food tastings and cocktails from 11 different restaurants. Enjoy free music at the Gazebo and at the Amphitheater—which also will host beer samplings. Contact: miznerpark.com or bocamag.com for more information
celebrATiOn by The seA
When: Oct. 11
Where: Delray Beach Club
What: This annual fundraiser supports pro-
grams for Hospice by the Sea and Hospice of Palm Beach County. Tickets are $150. Expect a progressive cocktail party approach this year with multiple staging areas, live music and a silent auction.
Contact: 561/494-6889
editor’s
letter [ by kevin kaminski ]
My Cover Girl
It hit me at Carolines comedy club on Broadway, about eight hours after chatting up Uma Thurman in Central Park—and one night after taking selfies outside the Longacre Theatre with James Franco.
Until then, I’d been firmly in the moment, enjoying every second of a three-day, early summer romp through Manhattan with my daughter, Jackie, and my new bride, Jennifer. This was Jackie’s first trip to the Big Apple—a high school graduation present from Jennifer and I—so we packed the surprise itinerary with as many quintessential NYC experiences as my credit-card limit would allow.
Jackie sampled double-chocolate cupcakes during a foodie tour of Greenwich Village, tried to avoid accidental contact with the Naked Cowboy in Times Square, took King Kong pictures of me on the observation deck of the Empire State Building, played sing-a-long with lip-synching drag queens at Lucky Cheng’s and, much to the giddy delight of her Facebook friends, posed with Franco on the street after seeing him in “Of Mice and Men.” We even counseled “Kill Bill” Thurman, who, with her 2-year-old daughter perched on her shoulders and no Hattori Hanzo sword in sight, hit us up for directions to a café in the middle of Central Park.
It was one of those weekends that held you in its grip—and vice versa. You understood, as it was happening, how special it was, and you didn’t want to let go.
So now we’re front and center at Carolines, watching comedian Jeff Ross—the “Roastmaster General”—shred one audience member after another. And my 18-year-old daughter is doubled-over in hysterics. If James Lipton ever asks me what sound I most love, that’s the one. Jackie doesn’t deal in polite chuckles; her laughter comes from a place of unfiltered joy. It’s rich and genuine and high in decibels—and it never fails to light up the room.
I’d spent that weekend trying so hard to keep my mind from wandering. Jackie would be starting college in a few months. As a graduate of the University of Florida, I’d needed time to heal after her decision to attend Florida State. But in the bigger picture, I knew that this New York trip would bridge chapters in both our lives. She was about to take on the world; my world was about to send one of its brightest stars into orbit.
Until that night, I’d held it together. But that particular burst of laughter transported me. As Jeff Ross was on stage speed-roasting 10 audience volunteers, my mind raced back 15 years.
When Jackie was 3, she and I had this nightly routine. After driving home from work, I’d open the front door and drop to my knees.
Jackie would scream “Daddy’s home!” and motor down the hall as fast as her little legs could carry her—until she barreled face-first into my chest. Kind of like Dino did to Fred on “The Flintstones.” We’d spill onto the carpet, and she would start giggling uncontrollably.
And then she’d ask to do it all over again.
My kids (my son, Jake, is 16) have a running joke in our house because they know I can’t stand cheese. So they play this game—what would it take to get Dad to eat cheese—that typically involves them about to be devoured by wild animals … unless I save them by ingesting a slice of Brie or a small tub of cottage cheese.
I’ll never admit this to Jackie, but I’d eat cottage cheese if it meant hearing her laugh every day.
Clearly, I’m not the only proud father in and around Boca. I had the pleasure of exchanging e-mails with the dads of a few of this year’s “Cover Girl” winners (page 92)—and they couldn’t be more excited that their daughters were chosen from several hundred participants to appear in a Boca Raton fashion shoot. It had been years since we last staged a Cover Girl competition—but based on the community response, expect to see another edition in 2015.
In the meantime, I’ll be reluctantly wearing the “I’m an FSU Dad” T-shirt that Jackie bought me—and anxiously awaiting her return for Christmas break.
Enjoy the issue.
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home town
Seeing is Believing
A Boca teacher brings technology—and hope—to South African students.
As any teacher might do on the first day of class, Lisa GustineLLi asked for a show of hands. How many students had ever seen or used a computer before? Out of the 320 middle-school-aged children she would meet, only four raised their hands.
In another era—say, during the advent of the PC in the early 1980s—such a ratio might be easily explained. But this was May 2014 at a school north of Johannesburg, South Africa, where the introduction of a simple laptop was generating genuine wonder and life-altering enthusiasm.
For Gustinelli, a mother of five who spent the past 14 years teaching at Saint Andrew’s School in Boca, any opportunity to bring technology to impoverished children is a blessing. In May, she traveled with hundreds of participants— including five students from Saint Andrew’s—to Saint Camillus Primary School in Mandela Village for this year’s Young Round Square Conference.
Over the course of one week, Gustinelli and other instructors taught students who didn’t know the difference between a keyboard and a mouse how to operate programs on the 20 computers that were donated to Saint Camillus.
“By day three, we were working on Power Points,” says Gustinelli, who recently accepted a post at St. Thomas Aquinas in Fort Lauderdale as the high school’s director of instructional technology. “They were just as smart as the kids I’ve been teaching—and perhaps even more motivated.”
The Young Round Square contingent, which included representatives of some 40 schools from around the world, adopted Gustinelli’s personal passion project—Madagascar in My Heart (madagascarinmyheart.org)—as its conference focus in South Africa. Since 2011, Gustinelli has visited five locations in the island country off the coast of Southeast Africa, giving students ages 5 to 21 their first glimpse into the world of computers.
When asked why youngsters living in third-world conditions react so strongly to the introduction of technology, Gustinelli begins to tear up.
“As [one of the families told her], we’re giving them hope,” she says. “If they learn how to use a computer, they know there’s a whole world out there. [Maybe,] they can get out of this poverty.”
—Kevin KaminsKi
Students in Mandela Village react to seeing a computer in action.
Inset: Lisa Gustinelli
home town
[ Boca By the NumBers ]
What’s the buzz around town? These numbers tell part of the story for September and October.
20th
6-6
After a tumultuous 2013 season, FAU begins a new football era with first-time head coach Charlie Partridge at the helm. The Owls, who won their last four games in 2013 to finish at .500, make their home debut Sept. 13 against Tulsa.
10th
The annual shriek Week at suGar sanD Park (300 S. Military Trail) celebrates a decade of fright nights this year with a full schedule of haunted festivities set for Oct. 17–18 and Oct. 23–25.
Congratulations to rOse GlamOclija, fOunDer Of BOca nursinG services, which is celebrating two decades of providing concierge-level private home care to its clients. Visit bocanursing.com for information about Glamoclija and her team of compassionate caregivers.
1,000
Don’t be surprised to see this many candlelit displays floating in the pond at the mOrikami museum anD jaPanese GarDens’ annual lantern festival, slated for Oct. 18. Visit morikami.org for more information on the event that honors ancestors in the spirit of Obon.
17
Expect talented artists from all over the country to set up shop on Atlantic Avenue Oct. 18–19 for the 20th annual Delray Beach craft festival. Admission is free.
11th annual
stacy London, co-host of TLCs “What Not to Wear,” will take the stage oct. 24 at Boca Raton Regional Hospital Foundation’s annual Go Pink Luncheon at the Boca Raton Resort & Club.
Male and female contestants in this many different classes—from men’s novice to women’s pro bikini—will participate in the american natural BODyBuilDinG feDeratiOn’s event sept. 13 at The Boca Brickhouse gym (2880 N.W. Second Ave., #2). For more on the art of body sculpting, turn to page 67.
The CUSP evenT
Thursday--sunday, sepTember 18--21
home town [ meet the expert ]
Starting Over
A locAl Author offers A roAd mAp for widowers And lAte-life divorced men.
Hal Spielman knew he was in trouble when he couldn’t find the checkbook. That was just one of the everyday obstacles he was facing in the wake of his wife’s death. “I started to realize there was an enormous gap in my operational base,” he says, thinking of that time six years ago when he was suddenly charged with doing the things that his wife used to do for him.
Now 86, Spielman has managed to navigate those uncharted waters, and he’s been generous enough to help others do the same through Suddenly Solo: A Lifestyle Road Map For the Mature, Widowed or Divorced Man, a book he co-authored with Marc Silbert.
“I thought there are people out there who are coping with this issue, so I turned to what I did for a living [he co-founded McCollum Spielman Worldwide, a marketing and communication research company], and we interviewed over 100 men and over 600 women who were widowed or divorced, mostly in their 60s and 70s, to find out how they were coping and what were the issues,” he says. “Out of that came the book.”
Rather than a nurturing guide to the twilight years, Speilman’s book offers far more practical advice based on real numbers, not revelation. His impressive market research and sociology background gave him the chops to find out what was going on in a population of men who found themselves alone—after a lifetime as half of a couple.
Retired since 2008 and a part-time Lake Worth resident, Spielman says the book took on a life of its own. He’s been featured on “The Today Show” and talks of a possible radio show.
Here are a few things he’s discovered about how to get living again.
Marie Speed
■ We separate being alone from being lonely; there is a very marked difference. About 80 percent of men and women say that the main reason they want to be a couple again is to have shared experiences.
■ Being alone [is] different for men and for women. Men were raising issues about where they lived, about their health and their finances. Women were raising issues about relationships, dating, sexual activity.
■ One of the things we [had] heard was that mature men only wanted to date young women. This is absolutely wrong. The data says they prefer overwhelmingly to date women in their own age range.
■ The most important thing is to get prepared to get out there, look for things you are interested in doing that will put you into social situations. Know that you are going to meet people who can help make your life more joyful.
■ Twenty-nine percent of people we talked to who were in a relationship were with someone they had known in the past. What that said to us was: “Go to your class reunion.” The second largest category of people in a relationship—22 percent—met their partner online.
■ In Florida, happy hour is a big thing.
home town [ what’s
Kids Menu
MoNdAY*
Greek yogurt, whole-grain/low-sugar granola, salad, grapes, water
Ellen Briggs thinks children generally do the right thing—at least when it comes to food.
“Kids love to eat healthy foods,” she says. “In fact, they will choose healthier foods over other [options].” Briggs is a Boca Raton food consultant, radio show personality and co-founder of Kids Kritics Approved, a local company that recommends healthy foods for families based on nutritional criteria and an all-important blind tasting by real youngsters. Foods to be “tested” for the tasting are screened for all manner of nasty additives—things like hydrogenated oils, MSG, corn syrups and caffeine. The amount of food processing also is determined, including how it has affected the original nutrients. Then a group of kids between the ages of 5 and 13 have at it, answering the following four questions along the way: 1) Does it look good? 2) Does it smell good? 3) Does it taste good? and 4) Should your family buy, serve or make it? The results must be at least 70 percent positive before they are given the Kid Kritics’ seal of approval, which is at the center of Briggs’ business.
Why the fuss? Because packing that healthy lunch is more important than ever. “Kids need protein and complex carbs and water to finish the day on a high note,” she says. “They need to be refueled, so you want to give them those foods.”
FridAY
S&J (sunflower seed butter and jelly) roll-up, cucumber sticks, blueberry yogurt, trail mix, water * quantities vary per child
Briggs says children respond most to “finger foods,” and she likes the idea of lunches filled with cut-up fruit, cut-up veggies, cherry tomatoes, celery, cucumbers and dips—especially bean dips and hummus. What she doesn’t like in a lunchbox is candy, soda, sports drinks or any foods with artificial flavors or ingredients.
Just in time for the start of school, Briggs offers a weekly lunch box menu (above), which she says meets “mid-day nutritional needs of protein, complex carbohydrates, good fats, dairy, whole grains and water.”
—marie speed
Ellen Briggs and some of her expert panelists sample test foods.
home town [ behind the biz ]
Richard Siemens
PresidenT/Ceo, siemens GrouP
Known for its brilliant luster and rich color, the Akoya is a rare and treasured kind of Japanese pearl—a coup for any diver who happens upon one. Richard Siemens, the pioneering Florida developer behind such iconic properties as the Polo Club, Gleneagles and Delray Medical Center, is expecting his Akoya to have an equivalent cachet in the luxury housing market.
Breaking ground in Boca this fall, the nine-story, $185 million Akoya will feature 120 private residences ranging up to 4,780 square feet. Like its namesake, the edifice will gleam; projected renderings of Akoya showcase a sleek, modern building in which 85 percent of its surface is glass. What’s proven equally intriguing to buyers is the “oyster” housing this architectural pearl: Boca West Country Club, often cited as the No. 1 private residential country club in the nation, which allowed an outside developer to work within its grounds for the first time.
Siemens is a young 79—sharp and well dressed, with a broad thinker’s forehead and a passing resemblance to former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke. He speaks softly and chooses his words carefully, beginning nearly every interview response with the authoritative flourish, “The thing is this …” before presenting his thoughts.
The man who launched Siemens Group in 1964 refers to Akoya as something of a career culmination, but this indefatigable developer surely has a few more pearls to uncover, including new projects north of here, in places like Fort Pierce and Ocala. As Akoya begins its ambitious construction, the longtime Boca resident—whose charitable and civic contributions include the Palm Beach County Drug Abuse Foundation and the Jewish Federation of South Palm Beach County—discusses his career with Boca Raton
On financial risks: “You always take on financial risk when you embark on a project, because until you get it designed—until you actually begin the marketing process—you haven’t proven very much. The only real proof is when you get going, and people find it acceptable and are willing to go with you.”
On building delray beach’s first hOspital: “The only hospital in the area was Boca Community Hospital, and you had Bethesda in Boynton Beach.
There were no facilities in Delray Beach at all, and we felt there was a need for a hospital. It took us about five years to get the certificate of need, because Boca Community Hospital and Bethesda opposed our application. It was a big struggle to get that done.”
On his rOle in widening glades rOad: “Many years ago, we were processing a 1,600-unit property in west Boca, on Lyons Road. Another company was processing a property on Glades, and Arvida was doing a property across the street from Boca West. We were all stuck because Glades Road west of the turnpike was only two lanes, so there [weren’t enough lanes] to accommodate the traffic.
“I proposed to them that we take down one of the embankments on the turnpike bridge and put two more lanes under the turnpike and extend two more lanes straight out to Lyons Road. But at that time, nobody had done that yet. What you had to do is take it down and build a wall. I worked with our engineers; we designed this thing and sent it down to the regional office in Pompano for approval. They wouldn’t approve it, because they said that we needed to have a divergence of traffic. I had to go to Tallahassee to the state engineers, and they approved it.
“So we went ahead, and the guys said, ‘OK, well, who’s going to build it?’ Nobody wanted to do it, because of the liability associated with it. So I took out a $5 million policy, which wasn’t enough, and I said, ‘I’ll do it.’ Siemens Construction got the thing built, and we all got approved.”
On upping standards: “We were building Gleneagles when the Polo Club property became available, so we decided to do that project. We designed it with the two golf courses and 30 tennis courts and a 90,000-foot clubhouse. At the time, Broken Sound was being developed by Arvida, and they had basically designed a 25,000-square-foot clubhouse. So when people would go to Broken Sound, they would tell them, ‘Don’t buy at the Polo Club, because they’ll go broke. They’re building a 90,000-square-foot clubhouse, 30 tennis courts, that’s crazy.’ We outsold them about three or four to one. So we weren’t so crazy.”
Join Saturday Night Live and Saks Fifth Avenue in the fight against women’s cancers. Get the shirt, designed by rag & bone, available exclusively at Saks this October. Then shop October 16 to 19, when Saks will donate 2% of sales to local and national women’s cancer charities.*
Special thanks to SNL’s current and former castmembers, the 2014 Ambassadors for EIF’s Women’s Cancer Research Fund and Saks Fifth Avenue’s Key To The Cure.
fit to Print
Summer may be over, but playful prints—like this flirty sequin dress from nicole Miller—translate to all seasons. Turn the page for mixedprint advice from the senior fashion director at Saks Fifth Avenue.
Pattern Play
Major designers—from Cavalli to von Furstenberg—turn to prints and patterns for fashion inspiration.
1. Leave it to Roberto Cavalli to make animal prints look classic. The designer nails it with this fit-and-flare dress, made even more flattering with a plunging V-neckline. (Check Saks Fifth Avenue for price and availability, Town Center at Boca Raton)
2. This silk foulard inspired by the Italian island of Vivara boasts an eclectic mix of lines and shapes subdued by the neutral shades of black and taupe. ($375, Emilio Pucci, Worth Avenue, Palm Beach)
3. Flats don’t have to be frumpy, especially when they are these pointytoed Jimmy Choos
The angular toe line and floral fabric can make just as much of a statement as your favorite pair of
pumps. ($625, Jimmy Choo, The Gardens Mall, Palm Beach Gardens)
4. Pair this thin-striped knit skirt with a top boasting bigger, bolder lines. Check out the sidebar (right) for tips on mixing prints. ($59.50, Banana Republic, Town Center at Boca Raton)
5. Straight from Diane von Furstenberg’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” collection comes the 440 Runaway Tote, a bold accessory featuring leather side panels and a gold love-knot pattern on corduroy. The adjustable cross-body strap allows an easy transition from business chic to womanon-the-go. ($548, Diane von Furstenberg, The Village of Merrick Park, Coral Gables)
Risky Business
Patterns and prints always have found a natural complement in solid colors, but mixing them can work—as we’ve seen this year on the runway.
Colleen Sherin, senior fashion director for Saks Fifth Avenue corporate, explains how to pull off this trendy look.
1 Find a Common Color or tonality: Choose pieces that have a color that ties the prints together. “Let’s just say there’s a winter floral that’s on a black [background]. That [black] could be the common denominator.”
2 Same pattern on diFFerent SCaleS: “It may be a plaid pattern, yet overblown, enlarged on one of the pieces—and then the same plaid in a smaller scale on the other piece. ... What makes it interesting and unique to the eye is that the scale of the print is different on each of the pieces.”
3 limit mixing to two or three printS: While you could certainly mix more, two or three would be a comfortable number to start with for most women.
Designer picks for fall prints: Peter Pilotto, Burberry Prorsum, Roberto Cavalli, Emilio Pucci, Marni, and Etro
safety first
You’ve heard the stories: An unknowing customer walks into a nail salon for a day of pampering—and leaves with a case of nail fungus. Don’t leave your nails in the wrong hands. Take preventive measures with help from Pri Desrosiers, a licensed nail tech at Boca-based Salon Sora (1675 S. Military Trail, 561/338-7597).
Nail It
Stay on trend this season, and color your autumn nails with an array of darker and deeper shades.
Broadway Beauty
Go uptown with deborah Lippmann’s New York Marquee collection. The set, released in August, features luxurious colors inspired by the city’s sights and sounds. For a statement maker, try the indigocolored “Harlem Nocturne.” (right) Go more neutral with the dazzling gold and seasonally appropriate “Autumn In New York.” ($18, GBS The Beauty Store, Boca Raton)
SuLtry ShadeS
“A Novel Romance” by MaC proves that even the darkest shades can shine. From the deep blue “Midnight Sky” (right) to the moss green “Before Dawn,” each shimmery lacquer offers a hint of mystery—and endless allure. ($16, MAC, Town Center at Boca Raton)
1. Look for a license. Every nail tech’s license should be visibly displayed. “If you have to ask to see a license, that might be a problem.”
2. Ask about sanitation procedures. At Salon Sora, bleach and a strong disinfectant are applied to stations every night and cycled through the pedicure tub jets. The concoction sits until the next morning, when the stations are scrubbed and prepped for that day’s customers.
Go GLaM
Inspired by the idea that nail colors should match a woman’s mood, Michael Kors has crafted a set of lacquers in 18 different shades. Each color falls into one of three categories: sporty, sexy and—our pick for the fall season— glam. That set features six rich, dark colors that are as chic as the gold-capped bottle. ($18, Macy’s, Town Center at Boca Raton) earth FriendLy Bid chemicals goodbye with Pacifica’s 7 Free polish, a formula free of toxic ingredients usually associated with nail color. It comes with a 100-percent vegan brush. ($9, Target, Boca Raton)
3. Count the sets of instruments. Every nail tech should have two or three implements. “There’s no way you get a set properly cleaned if you’re using it on client after client all day.”
4. Look at the water. If it’s clear and has no smell, there’s no disinfectant in the water. Whether it’s alcohol or Barbicide, something should be added to make sure the pedicure tub and tools are properly cleaned.
before Dawn by MaC
autumn In New york by Deborah Lippmann
Impulse by Michael Kors
Rendezvous
amethyst Castle by Pacifica
Red Red Wine
GET THE LOOK: Timepieces
As boutique manager for Les Bijoux’s Jaeger-LeCoultre (Mizner Park, 561/361-2311), Ivan Narvaez delivers a level of expertise that belies his relative youth. Though only 26, he has nearly a decade of industry experience, including three years in his current role. Here, Narvaez explains how to make every second count when purchasing a luxury watch.
Q&A with Ivan
What are the key terms that every buyer should know?
Dial: What people generally refer to as the “face” of the watch
Chronograph: The timer, which is functional and visually appealing
MoveMent: The mechanism of the watch that makes the timepiece work
What should someone look for in a watch based on the event?
For gala events, we go through very thin watches. We prefer something that’s very discreet. For everyday wear, we mostly go with the larger style watches, very sporty. For the office, something that’s very discreet that shows a lot of elegance as well. For those who are active, a sporty look with a comfortable feel. Quality is another big thing when it comes to these watches. … If a customer is a skier or a tennis player, we know that the watch can take high abuse.
How often should you get your watch tuned up?
Every five years is the [suggested] time. Most watches will need lubrication and basic cleaning. Living in such a hot and humid place takes more toll on the watch itself, particularly the gaskets. These are the rubber seals that protect water or condensation from getting inside of the watch. Living in Florida, it’s always recommended to test the watch for at least water resistance every two years.
TAG Heuer Aquaracer ($1,900, Bloomingdale’s, Town Center at Boca Raton)
Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Ultra Thin Tourbillon ($73,500, Les Bijoux, Mizner Park)
Piaget Limelight Gala Watch ($35,000, Les Bijoux, Mizner Park)
aTHLETic
GaLa
Rolex Yacht Master II in Yellow Gold (price upon request, Jewels in Time)
Jaeger-LeCoultre RendezVous ($10,300, Les Bijoux, Mizner Park)
PERSONAL ATTENTION AND SUPERIOR RESULTS
Our mission is you.
Dr. William Leone
Dr. Leone has helped thousands of people by using a gentle, minimally invasive approach to deliver an exceptional patient experience, faster recovery times and excellent results.
Specializing in Hip and Knee Problems
•Total and revision hip replacement
•Revision hip surgery for metal toxicity
•Minimally invasive computer navigated total knee replacement
Experience the Difference
•Robotic assisted partial knee replacement
•Revision knee replacement
•Knee arthroscopy
Dr. Leone’s practice combines specialized surgical interventions while emphasizing personalized care.
The Leone Center for Orthopedic Care
We combine leading-edge technology with good old-fashioned care where the doctor-patient relationship is as important as the treatment.
To learn more, call 954-489-4575 or visit HolyCrossLeoneCenter.com.
Medicare patients welcome
feelgood
Body Sculpting
Gaining muscle. Losing fat. Toning. Feeling fit. Looking fabulous. For women who commit to the training necessary to participate in fitness competitions, these are just some of the benefits. Better still, according to a local trainer and contestant, this kind of transformation is possible in just 12 weeks. But it isn’t easy. Turn the page for a behind-the-scenes look at body sculpting.
Getting Ripped
Some local women are balking at surgery and turning to a strict training regimen to transform their bodies.
Fitness and healthy eating always have been staples of Kim Turner’s lifestyle. But when the mother of two children (ages 10 and 13) decided to compete at a recent national fitness event, everything she knew about training was turned on its head.
To become “stage ready” for last April’s National Physique Committee bikini competition in Boca, Turner joined a group of women training at Synergy Fitness Boca (221 E. Palmetto Park Road, 561/289-3383). Her workout schedule included an hour and a half of intense training (primarily with weights), five days a week. She ate at specific times, according to her workouts and recoveries—and she only ate the clean foods and supplements on her plan. In the weeks leading to the competition, there was no cheating. No wine, chocolate or processed food—just plainly prepared or raw foods, drinks and carefully chosen (legal, healthy) supplements.
“You’re eating every two hours, so you’re eating a lot of food, but it’s very limited,” Turner says. “You have to get creative. I was sick of eating oatmeal and egg whites, so I started making a pancake out of oatmeal and egg whites. For me, the diet part wasn’t that hard. But you’re exhausted from all the training. By the end of the day, you want to go to bed.
“You have to know that it’s hard on your family, because you’re doing it all for you. You’re having separate meals, you can’t go out all the time, your social life suffers. So, it’s hard to find a balance. But if you set a goal … you definitely can get there.”
Unlike the bodybuilding contests that put Arnold Schwarzenegger on the map, fitness competitions for women focus more on sculpting and less on bulk. Women can compete in different categories—not all of which require contestants to wear bikinis. Generally speaking, competitors perform a series of poses and walk on stage for a panel of judges. Depending on the event, judges
might score based on body balance and shape, as well as overall physical appearance (including complexion), poise and presentation.
But it’s the training as much as the competition that is piquing the interest of women in and around Boca. It involves a strict nutritional plan, scientifically orchestrated to strip the body of fat while building muscle. It also involves lifting heavier weights than most women ever thought they could, according to Mark VanBourgondien, owner and trainer at Synergy Fitness Boca. Synergy offers a 12-week body transformation program.
VanBourgondien and Turner offer some insights into the process.
Weighty
issues:
VanBourgondien says the weight training involved requires super sets with more weight instead of low weight-high repetition workouts. While many women think heavy lifting will make them bulky, VanBourgondien says that’s not the case. Women should come out of the program looking “cut,” he says, but not unnaturally muscle-bound. Cardio training is involved, but it has a minor role in helping contestants to shed body weight. the expense: Hiring personal trainers and nutritional guidance for the 12-week program at Synergy costs from $450 to $600, according to VanBourgondien. Nutritional supplements cost about $240. The competition and training, combined, according to Turner, can run $1,700. That includes tanning, professional hair and
makeup, hair extensions, jewelry (stage bling), manicure and pedicure, bodybuilding association membership, show entry fee, a bikini, shoes and more.
Find a partner: Don’t do this alone, Turner says. Having someone in the mix who has done a competition helps. One of the girls in Turner’s group taught the others how to pose. Contestants also should get professional advice about nutrition and weight training to avoid health problems or injury.
Food For thought: The nutrition part of this is tricky. For example, contestants have to eat differently, depending on where they are in the training. There’s an eating plan for building muscle. There’s another a week before the competition, when the goal is to dehydrate and lean out completely. Consult an expert before starting a program.
Kim Turner
GetS neW iPluS laSeR!
After having used Biolase laser technology since she opened her office in Boca Raton, Dr. Saadia has invested in the latest technology for her patients. The iPlus laser allows her to treat most of her little patients who have cavities with no shots. The laser also allows her to help gently “wiggle” teeth out rather than the old fashioned pulling.
What are the benefits of iPlus laser dentistry?
• Since, in most cases, there are no needles or any numbness, kids will not chew their lips or tongue upon leaving the office and can eat right away.
• The laser’s pinpoint accuracy allows the dentist to leave as much healthy tooth as possible, when removing tooth decay.
• The laser performs numerous soft tissue (gum) procedures with little or no bleeding and no need for sutures.
• Soft tissue healing after laser surgery is faster than surgery done with traditional scalpel blades or elector surgery. iPlus laser uses only light and water to cut, so surgical sites heal very quickly and with minimal or no bleeding.
What can be done in the dental office with iPlus laser?
• iPlus Laser results in the very conservative removal of decay resulting minimally invasive cavity preparations.
• iPlus Laser is very efficient at gum re-contouring (gingivectomy) procedures, especially during and after orthodontics (braces).
• iPlus Laser is ideal for relieving a child who is tongue-tied. Where the tongue cannot move normally because it is held by too short of a fibrous cord of a tissue in the floor of the mouth.
• iPlus Laser can relieve painful canker sores with guaranteed accelerated healing.
Saadia I. Mohamed, D.D.S.
First female Board Certified Pediatric Dentist in Boca Raton
Diplomate of the American Board of Pediatric Dentistry
Member of the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry
Member of College of Diplomate of the American Board of Pediatric Dentistry
9250 Glades Rd., Suite 212 Boca Raton
561-477-3535 • pbpdcares.com
feel good [ fitness ]
Breast Cancer Exposed
Advances in detection technology give Boca women more resources than ever when it comes to screening for breast cancer.
Some things about the ongoing battle against breast cancer never change. First and foremost is early detection, which the medical director of Boca Raton Regional Hospital’s Christine E. Lynn Women’s Health and Wellness Institute describes as critical.
“The smaller you find things, the better chance you have of treating them—and the less extensive the treatment is,” Kathy Schilling says.
Fortunately, Boca is rich with an array of cutting-edge technology to detect breast cancer, thanks in large part to the generosity of the community. In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month (October), Schilling touches on some of the avenues available to local women.
MaMMography: This remains the mainstay and the only test that has been proven to significantly reduce breast cancer death rates, according to Schilling.
“In the last 10 years or so, we’ve transitioned from analog mammography to digital, which is pretty much the state of the art today,” she says. What does this mean to local patients? Radiologists no longer have to rely on film. Using digital mammography, they can access images quickly and manipulate them for better views. The result: Fewer re-examinations and less time waiting for results.
Seeing through denSe tiSSue: Women who have dense breasts have more glandular tissue and less fatty tissue than women whose breasts aren’t dense.
“Breast density has become a hot topic over the last several years,” Schilling says. “The only way to tell your breast density is through mammography. You can’t tell by feeling your breasts.”
Why be concerned? Mammography isn’t good at distinguishing dense breast tissue from cancer. Both show up as white on a mammogram. And breast density is a risk factor for developing breast cancer.
“We often recommend complementing the surveillance with a screening bilateral breast ultrasound. We’re actually able to double the number of cancers that we find when we use both tests together,” Schilling says.
dealing with iMplantS: Breast implants (even those positioned behind muscles) make it harder for radiologists to review the entirety of a patient’s breast tissue via a mammography. Women
by the numbers
50/50: It’s estimated that 50 percent of women younger than 50 (and a third of women older than 50) have dense breasts.
with breast implants also should consider additional screenings, Schilling says. Among those: ultrasound, breast MRI or a newer technology called molecular breast imaging.
Molecular imaging finds three times as many cancers as mammography. The procedure involves an injection of radioactive dye into a patient’s vein before imaging the breasts. Any cells that are undergoing cancerous changes light up, allowing radiologists to detect cancers before those cells become visible breast masses.
With more testing can come additional costs and risks from added radiation exposure, so the more sensitive imaging is reserved for women at higher risk for breast cancer, as well as those with dense
6: Depending the level of breast density, dense breasts can be up to six times more likely to develop cancer than non-dense breasts.
take the test
An eight-question test, called the GAIl MoDel, can give women a better idea of what their breast cancer risk may be. Take it for free at the government’s National Cancer Institute website: cancer.gov/bcrisktool.
Kathy Schilling
Focused On Your Well-being
Lymphatic Decongestive Therapy
Our Certi ed Lymphatic Therapist, with advanced level training, uses leading-edge technology–the electro-lymphatic drainage XP-2 machine–to open the lymphatic pathways throughout the body to ensure all toxins are readily expedited out of your system. The XP-2 therapy supports post-mastectomy health by helping to alleviate swelling and the need for compression garments. In addition, this therapy:
• Breaks down scar tissue from surgeries or burns
• Stimulates your immune system
• Reduces inflammation
• Helps relieve many symptoms from various illnesses and conditions.
Hoshino® Therapy
Resolves issues that lie below the surface and deep within muscles, tendons, ligaments and tissue. If you su er from back or neck pain, arthritis, golfer's or tennis elbow, carpal tunnel syndrome, musculoskeletal disorders, or TMJ, you will bene t from Hoshino Therapy.
Voted best massage by Boca Raton Magazine!
At HoriZen Therapies, we are focused on your well being! Our goal is to provide the latest, most e ective and valued healing therapies to our clients, and assist them in their quest for optimum health and wellness.
Susan Allen - Owner
drainage with
Clients appreciate the comfortable environment.
Gift Certificates Available 561-395-1926
Electro-lymphatic
XP-2 machine.
Faces. It’s what we do ... naturally.
- Rafael C. Cabrera, MD, FACS
Bring a friend and join us as Dr. Rafael Cabrera, Board Certified Plastic Surgeon, discusses his new quick recovery facelift procedure, TheSmarterLift™. Minimal downtime, affordability and the use of local anesthesia (or light sedation) are just a few of the perks of this procedure. Find out what makes this procedure different from other “quick recovery” procedures and what makes it “smarter” than the rest! In addition, Dr. Cabrera will discuss non-surgical options that can take years off your face in just minutes!
March 6th 5PM - 7PM
TICKETS
Yogurt: quite a complement
Americans are accustomed to pairing yogurt with sweet flavors like fresh fruit and honey, but Greek yogurt, with its more intense tang and lower sugar, also goes beautifully with savory foods, making it a favorite of chefs and foodies alike. Why not mix up a few hits of your own? Turn the page for four easy-tomake recipes.
It’s all Greek
Creamier, denser, and richer-tasting, Greek yogurt has won over American palates with its flavor and versatility.
WHaT’s THE DiFFErEnCE?
Greek yogurt is strained more than basic yogurt. Basically, that’s it. Sounds simple, but in fact straining means much of the whey is removed, much of the milk sugar, or lactose, leeches out and all the protein remains. So, serving for serving, Greek yogurt has fewer carbs and more protein than regular yogurt. However, it does have more fat, so if that bothers you, choose low- or fat-free types.
CHOCOLATE YOGURT
1 cup plain Greek yogurt
1 envelope instant hot cocoa mix
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
Mix ingredients together thoroughly, spoon into dessert dishes and chill. Serve topped with raspberries, flaked coconut, sliced bananas, crumbled nut brittle, whipped cream or other favorite toppings.
HONEY YOGURT
1
OnIOn dIp
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
4 cups onions, chopped
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 14-ounce can reduced-sodium beef broth or 1 3/4 cups mushroom broth
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1 1/3 cup nonfat plain Greek yogurt
Sauté chopped onions in olive oil until soft, then add broth and cook until broth evaporates and onions caramelize. Cool, then stir onions, salt and vinegar into yogurt. Use this as crouton or vegetable chip-dip or as a spread on roast beef sandwiches.
VEGETABLE RAITA
2 cups plain Greek yogurt
1 teaspoon ground cumin, or to taste
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes, or to taste
Salt and ground black pepper
1 large cucumber, peeled, seeded and diced
1 cup fresh mint, chopped
1/2 red onion, peeled and diced
1 tomato, cored, seeded and diced
1 rib celery, chopped
1/2 bell pepper, chopped
Mix together. Season with cilantro or chopped fresh jalapeño if desired. Use this as a dip, or pack it with vegetables and serve it as a slaw-like salad.
with soda to make baked goods rise.
Greek yogurt simply mixed with chopped fresh basil makes a great sauce for grilled fish or chicken.
Chris Holcomb
A quAdriplegiC Comes bACk from tHe brink reAdy to AttACk life—And bAttle for tHe bAllroom title.
The last thing Chris Holcomb remembers from that early August evening drive on A1A near Vero Beach was blinding light. Fortyeight days later he awoke from an induced coma in the hospital a C-7 quadriplegic.
That was in 2004. A self-described “average guy” and divorced father of a 10-year old daughter, Holcomb, then 33, had just closed a big deal for Boca’s Global Telecom, where he worked. He’d been at it pretty hard, and the stress was taking its toll. He had decided, on doctor’s orders, to go to Vero to unwind for a long weekend. Unplug the phone, catch his breath.
He had just hit the road, en route to a hotel,
someplace he can’t—or will not—describe now. He allows only that it was very dark, and all he wanted was for it to be over.
But then there was that Sunday when his sister and her boyfriend showed up and trundled him out of bed and into their car.
“They got me dressed and took me for a ride,” he says. “Little did I know they were taking me to Lake Worth High School to participate in a wheelchair rugby practice, which is known as Murderball. I didn’t know anything about the disabled population; I didn’t know anything abut adaptive sports.”
All Holcomb knew, he says, is that he had no life and he wanted to die.
“But everything changed that day,” he says. “I saw all of these guys having a great time; they
“I wake up every day with the opportunity to change somebody’s life. ...[which] saves mine.”
when he saw the light—followed by compete and total darkness.
“Nobody hit me,” he says. “I don’t have any memory of the impact or the actual accident, but I went off the road, hit a palm tree and I was ejected through the windshield. The car flipped over the palm tree and then landed on top of me. They had to Traumahawk me from the site; I don’t even know how long I was there. Somebody saw some smoke and some lights in the bushes from the car, and that’s how they found me.”
When Holcomb came to in a hospital room, he couldn’t move or speak or breathe on his own.
“Immediately upon coming to the realization where I was and what was happening, I wanted to die,” he says. “I thought this isn’t fair to my family, this isn’t fair to me. When I was in ICU and finally coming around, I asked my dad to just get this over with.”
For two-and-a-half years, Holcomb hovered
were working. And it wasn’t just the game—I realized that these people had driven there; they had gotten themselves in and out of their cars. Some of those guys had children they had [fathered] post-injury—through marriage. At that very moment I had an epiphany; I held it together, but I had a breakdown when I got home. I felt so selfish, and I realized that, wow, I was getting ready to cause a life sentence for my family. That it wasn’t just all about me. The damage, the fallout [had I killed myself] would have been incredible.”
Holcomb traded in the motorized wheelchair for a manual one; he started therapy and exercise, and he went back to work. He discovered Achilles International, an organization dedicated to getting people with physical challenges back in the game—literally.
“I now saw that there was life,” he says. “From that moment forward, I never used a transfer board, I went into a manual chair. I was 200 pounds, I am now 150.”
This summer, Holcomb, now 43, competed in the Boca Ballroom Battle; since 2008, he has completed 30 marathons and a triathlon.
The transformation of a bedridden quadriplegic to a man doing wheelies in a dance competition did not come easily. We asked Holcomb how he did it, and how he sees life these days.
What he does: “Achilles International (which encouraged him to do his first marathon in 2008) provides inclusion opportunities for all types of people with physical challenges. My job as regional director for the state of Florida is to oversee a pretty active seasonal race calendar. I try to recruit people with physical disabilities to give them an experience they would never even think possible: to complete a marathon.”
on paying it forWard: “The rugby team saved my life, and I had an opportunity to do a marathon—and inspire others by my willingness to take it on. I wake up every day with the opportunity to change somebody else’s life. When I do so, it saves mine.”
ongoing challenges: “Companionship, love, finding a partner. Humans are visual creatures; they don’t accept what they don’t understand. As an individual with a disability, I just hope and pray that my time will come.”
advice to others Who find their lives changed by a disability: “Get connected. Get involved. Pay special attention to your family because they are there to support you and to see you through your darkest hour. And get into the pipeline of recovery immediately.”
biggest joys: “Helping others. I picture my life like Forrest Gump. I had this previous life, and now I am on a new journey. God gave me another chance at life. And now I’m taking on every challenge that I think I am capable of completing.”
Inside the Ballroom Decision
“It’s not about me. It’s about lowering the barriers of misconception of disabilities here in Boca Raton. Being able to represent the disabled community may give some opportunities to other young folks through the George Snow Foundation. All the successes I’ve had since this injury have been a result of my willingness to step outside my comfort zone. It’s blind courage. This was probably the biggest challenge for me since being injured.”
Chris Holcomb with his Ballroom Battle partner sayra Vazquez
Barb Schmidt
Author, philAnthropiSt
Barb Schmidt did not know you were supposed to be happy. The oldest child in a large Catholic family in Chicago Heights, Ill., she had no friends, had never had a sleepover, and was alone most of the time. She believed she was fat and ugly and stupid, “because I had no people around me to tell me I was not.”
With two alcoholic parents and four younger siblings to shield, she remembers watching Marlo Thomas in “That Girl” on the small TV in the family’s home. “I wanted to be her,” she recalls. “I wanted the hair, I wanted to be in New York City. I wanted to be rich and famous.”
As soon as Schmidt turned 16, she left home to be a manager at McDonald’s, where she had worked since she was 14. She got her own apartment and bought a small car from her savings. She was making $165 a week.
That was the start of what would become a success story by American standards, and a personal transformation that is still unfolding.
Today, Schmidt is an attractive 50-something philanthropist and teacher married to one of Boca’s wealthier scions, Dick Schmidt. She started a program at Florida Atlantic University in 2003 as a platform for her growing interest in mindfulness and peace, bringing in speakers like the Dalai Lama and Jane Goodall. That has morphed into her international nonprofit, Peaceful Life, Peaceful World, and a recently published book, The Practice, which provides, as the jacket description reads, “simple tools for managing stress, finding inner peace and uncovering happiness.”
But it was not always thus.
Looking back, Schmidt says she no longer blames her parents for the abuse she suffered. “They did the best they could,” she says simply. Nor does she blame them for the bulimia that came later, after she was married to her first husband and highly successful (they owned several McDonald’s franchises). She was a beautiful woman who had it all—and who threw up every meal she ate for almost six years.
“I was terribly, terribly unhappy. Bulimia is a deeply internal, depressing disorder,” she says. “It’s partly the disease of addiction, and growing up in a house where you were not able to develop properly as a real human being. I never got positive feedback. I didn’t like myself. I didn’t know myself. I thought there was something wrong with me, that I was a bad person.”
In 1984, Schmidt entered a treatment center, and the story began to change.
“I had friends,” she says, which was a first. “I had a room-
mate. I could speak. I could be exactly who I was. I had great therapists. I felt like I left the world, and I never wanted to go back. … It was certainly coming out of the addiction, but it was also coming into myself.”
That transition sparked a sea change in Schmidt that continues today. The 12 steps led to readings and retreats with teachers like Deepak Chopra and Thich Nhat Hanh. Schmidt was on her way to developing her life’s work, and The Practice is now her way of sharing it.
“I was happy for once in my life, and I know I got there by having this deep rich inner life,” she says. “It was knowing that I was valuable, loving, compassionate. If you rely on the external world to know all those things, it will never happen.”
Schmidt met and married Dick Schmidt a few years after divorcing her first husband in 1989. Since moving to Boca in 1992, the couple’s Schmidt Family Foundation has supported a long list of community entities and nonprofits, from the Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine at FAU and the George Snow Scholarship Fund to Boca Raton Regional Hospital and Centre for the Arts at Mizner Park.
Short Takes
Which makes sense for Schmidt; giving back is how she maintains her balance in the world, and it is why she wrote her book.
“My greatest desire is for everyone to understand how loving, beautiful and peaceful we are. When I say peace, I mean strong. It makes me sad when I see people who don’t feel good about themselves, because I was that. This work I am doing is one person at a time.”
weekend diverSion: “Walking my dog Ellie on Saturdays in Mizner Park” GuilTy pleaSure: “People magazine and chocolate. And Dick and I live at the movies.” why Boca: “It epitomizes great philanthropy, great strength, great presence in the world. When you scratch beneath the surface of the people who are living here in Boca Raton, they are incredibly generous, loving and fun to be around. We just need to get it out.”
Hava HolzhauerLeipzig
FLorida’s regionaL director For tHe anti-deFamation League envisions a worLd witHout Hate.
For approximately one day, this past March, it was a top story across our local media: a west Boca Raton man was causing a disturbance in his neighborhood by hanging a KKK flag and a noose, daily, in his front yard. By the next day, the flag and the noose had been removed, thanks in large part to the tireless efforts of the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) Florida office, which received a confidential tip about the hateful iconography, alerted the media and rallied the community.
The ADL won this battle against bigotry, but Hava Leipzig Holzhauer, the organization’s di-
grandparents lost their family in Auschwitz. “On the other hand, hate is here. That’s why our office has bulletproof glass, and why you have to ring the bell and wait, and walk in one door, and then walk in another door. That is a reality of the fact that every day we have to walk through those doors and think about what we’re fighting and what we’re protecting people from.”
The ADL, which commemorated its centennial last year, released some positive news in its annual audit this past spring. The 68 anti-Semitic incidents documented in Florida in 2013 constituted a 23 percent decrease from 88 incidents captured in 2012, marking the fourth consecutive year the statistics
“That’s what we do every day—have hope and change hearts and minds.”
rector for the state of Florida, anticipates a time when there are no battles to fight. Working from a discreet location in a Boca office building, Holzhauer and her 20-person staff handle incidents of discrimination across the entire state. ADL is the largest non-governmental agency to work with law enforcement, and it calls itself the 911 for discriminatory speech, writings and actions—anti-Semitic or otherwise.
It’s not a job for everyone. Holzhauer, a former Florida congressional nominee and Palm Beach County litigator who specialized in juvenile and hate-crime cases, is aware that the extremist groups her nonprofit catalogs may not care much for her, either. One such organization, the West Palm Beach-based white nationalist group Storm Front, called her “the ADL’s new face of hatred” when she was appointed to the state director’s post in 2013.
“We’re taking positive steps in the direction of imagining what a world without hate would be like,” says Holzhauer, 41, whose maternal
dropped statewide. But there is still plenty to keep Holzhauer occupied, from anti-bullying initiatives to the training of law enforcement officers in Holocaust sensitivity—part of a new Florida program called Law Enforcement and Society (LEAS).
The mother of four took time to discuss her position as Florida’s top hate-crime fighter— and how the nature of discrimination has changed in the past half-century.
n Nobody is born hating. It’s learned from somewhere. It’s learned from the home you grow up in. It might be learned from a club you’re a part of. It might be learned from the other children you find yourself hanging out with. And that’s where the ADL comes in. We believe strongly in education, and unfortunately it’s a lot harder to undo something that’s already learned than it is to learn it in the first place, but that’s what we do every day—have hope and change hearts and minds.
n One of the things ADL did during the time of Klan robes and burning crosses was we were very involved in the anti-masking laws—removing the hood of the KKK. Our opinion was you have a right to be a bigot, but if you’re going to be a bigot, then own your bigotry. I want to see who you are. I want to make sure you’re not the person sitting next to me in church. I want to make sure you’re not the person I’m voting for. That law really broke down the Klan.
n Today, the Internet has become a superhighway for hate. It put the mask back on the bigot, because it allows you to have anonymity. It allows you to have a network of people who are like-minded, when before you might have just been a person alone with your thoughts, and there was no one else to communicate with and give you energy. That’s a whole new area of concern; we’re working with Internet providers, and with the different social media services, on ways for corporations to put some kind of a balance of responsibility with their algorithms—what they decide to take down and leave up.
n It’s important when you sense something’s wrong, when you feel something’s wrong, when someone’s being mistreated. … I never sit back, and my parents taught me this. There is some kind of innate nature in me to jump in and speak out.
n I think security is very important. It is hard to know how to strike the perfect balance between going overboard and being safe. ADL takes precautions in how we set up our office, where we do our events, things like this. As an individual, as a human being, it’s uncomfortable, I know it’s out there, and my family certainly doesn’t like it. On the other hand, I’m fighting for something very important every day, and I can’t let fear or paralyzation stop me from doing the important work.
Hate by tHe numbers
Although the number of anti-Semitic incidents reported to the ADL—which includes assault, vandalism, and harassment targeting Jews and Jewish property and institutions—continued to decline in 2013, Palm Beach County led the state in the number of cases, with 19 (it also led in 2012, with 22).
Respectively, Broward and Miami-Dade also finished second and third in both years; last year, 40 of the 68 statewide incidents took place in South Florida.
“South Florida always trends a little bit higher than some of the other major cities, and I think that is in part because people know to call us, because there’s a higher Jewish population,” Holzhauer says. “I think it’s also because we have a dense, populated area with lots of different types of people.”
interview
Big Man on Campus
After A string of Pr chAllenges thAt dAmAged the school’s brAnd, floridA AtlAntic UniVersitY cAlls on new President John Kelly to reVerse its fortUnes.
When Florida Atlantic University hired John W. Kelly in January to be the seventh president in its 50-year history, one of the college’s board of trustees was quoted as saying that the former vice president of economic development at Clemson University was the “safer” choice, compared to the two politicians also in the running.
On the one hand, you couldn’t fault FAU for wanting to avoid even a hint of controversy. During a two-year stretch of embarrassments under former president Mary Jane Saunders, the main campus in Boca had become the collegiate embodiment of Murphy’s Law.
One minute the school was naming its football stadium after a for-profit prison, the next its head football coach was being accused of drug use. Two professors made national headlines—one for asking students to stomp on the word “Jesus” during a classroom exercise, another for personal blogs that questioned both the Sandy Hook shooting and the Boston Marathon bombing.
Despite the game-changing addition of a college of medicine, as well as ongoing connections to world-renowned research institutes Scripps and Max Planck, FAU’s reputation was taking a piñata-like beating.
But lest anyone think that Kelly, 60, has come to Boca to play it safe, think again. After nearly three decades at Clemson, 17 of them in various vice presidential roles, the man with a Ph.D. in horticulture is intent on cultivating what he sees as the school’s untapped potential.
As evidenced by his thoughtful 90-minute conversation with Boca Raton, the South Carolina native brings the necessary ingredients to his new post—moxie, vision, decisiveness and a heaping helping of Southern charm. It’s a recipe that FAU is counting on to keep the past out of its present.
You’ve talked to state lawmakers, local businesses, supporters of the universitY—has there been one consistent concern about fau moving forward?
The biggest concern of the state legislature, board of governors and [the university] is our graduation rates. [Editor’s note: Only 40 percent of FAU’s freshmen are earning their bachelor’s degree within six years, one of the lower rates among state universities.] We’ve accepted a student, overall, who is not your traditional ready-to-go-straight-to-college 18-year-old. In doing so, we have students in difficult situations who are trying to go to college at the same time.
Do you ask them to give up family? Give up work? Ignore a child they have at home? Or do you give them a slow progress rate? Right now, slow progress rates are penalty [flags]. So we have to do a better job of helping our students figure out from the day they enter college when their completion date is. …
If you have the right advice coming in, then you don’t have as many students changing majors after two or three years. Maybe we need to have a point where we don’t allow a change in majors after this many hours. This idea that you’re going to take class after class … eventually, we need you to finish your degree.
That’s a strategy we’re going to implement; we’re going to find a way to get our graduation rates fixed. Student success is priority number one. …
Here’s the thing: For every person that currently has an FAU degree, getting better and better [as a university] does nothing but elevate the quality of that degree. I have a Clemson degree from an era where Clemson was not the university it is now. But the value of the degree has risen, even though my era had a different experience.
What we can’t have are things that diminish the brand. You can’t have things that you know you should fix and you choose not to.
Look who’s reading
Brittany: Nightcap dress, $398, from Rhythm of Grace, Mizner Park, Boca Raton. ashLey: Blazer, $440, from Barbara Katz, Boca Raton; Nightcap pants, $218, from Rhythm of Grace. yvonne: Rina Zin top, $340, from Filly & Colt, Boca Raton; Paige pants, $285, from Rhythm of Grace; Manolo Blahnik
$955, from Footcandy. tayLor: Dress, $1,870, from Barbara Katz; Kate Spade
From leFt Lyuda: Robert Rodriguez dress, $495, Style & Wine, Delray Beach; Rick Owens jacket, $2,025, from Deborah James, Royal Palm Place, Boca Raton; Stuart Weitzman shoes, $385, from Footcandy, Delray Beach.
shoes,
shoes, $575, from Footcandy
Brittany Wayne (left)
age: 20
College: Palm Beach State
PeoPle desCriBe me as: Creative, quiet and shy did you knoW? Brittany started sewing clothes for her dolls when she was 7, thus launching an interest in design that never has waned. As a sophomore at Olympic Heights, she won a fashion competition for her original designs—and, as the top prize, created a collection for a local fashion show. Quote: “I’m starting to learn more about pattern making; hopefully, my friends will wear my [pieces]. … I really want to get into beachwear and swimwear one day.”
Brittany: Dress, $680, from Barbara Katz; belt, $75, from Filly & Colt; Loeffler Randall shoes, $450, from Footcandy; Gabriele Frantzen necklace, $978, from Deborah James. yvonne: Peter Cohen dress, $1,326, from Deborah James; Jimmy Choo shoes, $950, from Footcandy
Yvonne Houston
Age: 24
occupAtion: Wilhelmina fitness model people describe me As: Sweet, kind and quiet did You know? Though Yvonne started modeling at age 14, it was her prowess on the basketball court that led to her 2009 turn on the cover of Italian Vogue Sport, part of a “young athletes” shoot with renowned fashion photographer Bruce Weber. Yvonne earned a full basketball scholarship to Barry University in Miami—and even played semi-pro hoops for a spell—before returning to the runway. Quote: “I’m [most proud of] getting that scholarship to go to college. But I hope to [one day] be on the cover of [U.S.] Vogue.”
Nicole Miller dress, $1,200, from Lucx Boutique, Royal Palm Place, Boca Raton; Keepsake top, $275, from Rhythm of Grace
Lyuda BouzinoBa
age: 27
occupation: Founder, digitaldashboard.me
peopLe descriBe me as: Happy, friendly, outgoing and adventurous did you know? The self-described outdoor enthusiast was born in Russia but moved to the U.S. with her family at age 8. She earned a degree in finance from Boston University and, one year later, completed her master’s in economics at Fordham University.
Quote: “I live in Boca, so I can’t imagine anything better than being [in] Boca Raton magazine. I always read it for places to go out to eat and things to do.”
Alexis top, $228, from Style & Wine; Torn by Ronny Kobo dress, $288, from Rhythm of Grace. Mannequins: Haha necklace, $215, Smile necklace, $250, both from Barbara Katz
Finders Keepers top, $175, and Amanda Uprichard skirt, $180, from Rhythm of Grace
tAylor MArten
Age: 18
college: University of Tampa people deScribe Me AS: Caring and responsible did you know? As part of the International Baccalaureate program at Atlantic Community High School, Taylor completed community service hours as a volunteer at Delray Medical Center. That’s what sparked her interest in becoming a doctor.
Quote: “People don’t take me very seriously because of my hair color. But I’m extremely academic, I’m going into medicine, and I hope to one day be a pediatric surgeon.”
Art direction: Lori Pierino and Nancy Kumpulainen
StyliSt: Jenna DeBrino, Hot Pink Style
ASSiStAnt StyliSt: Amanda Miller, Hot Pink Style
ASSiStAnt photogrApher: Raul Gonzalez
SpeciAl thAnkS to: Joy Beth Ryan, Jordan
Calloway and Marissa Trentacosta of Cloud 10 in Boca Raton (289 E. Palmetto Park Road, 561/4653900) for providing hair and makeup services.
Cooking SoutherntheWay
America’s down-home cuisine enjoys a delicious resurgence— including right here in South Florida.
By Jan Norris
es, it’s fried chicken—glistening golden, crispy and juicy at first bite—lifted just before plating from a black-iron skillet. Served with hot buttermilk biscuits and bowls of black-eyed peas with snaps, butter beans and sliced ripe tomatoes.
This is quintessential Southern food.
But what makes it so? It’s not really any one ingredient or dish or technique, although fried green tomatoes, okra and pork in all forms also are staples of the genre. It’s something else, though, a unique emotional connection to a sense of place, of fast-held tradition.
“Southern food is nostalgia. It’s food that tells a story,” says Lindsay Autry, a North Carolina chef transplanted to South Florida. She distinctly remembers the brown paper sack that her grandmother used to shake chicken in before frying.
The cuisine appears, at first, tough to find in South Florida, where the joke has been that you must go north to go South in this state.
“It’s an evolving, dynamic cuisine,” says John T. Edge, director of the Southern Foodways Alliance, a group that studies Southern food culture. It’s changing, he says, with new and old practitioners coming together. In South Florida, those would be native Crackers, along with the West Africans, Cubans and Haitian Creoles. In fact, a new generation of chefs from all corners is taking up the mantle with modern techniques and their interpretations of the South’s traditional foods.
The result? We are undergoing a full-blown Southern food revival.
Somebody say Amen!
The Blue Plate Special at Yardbird in Miami
Chef in the Spotlight: Lindsay Autry
When Lindsay Autry first started cooking, Southern food was anything but trendy.
“It wasn’t something that I embraced as a chef,” she says.
But Autry admits that more and more kitchen experts are warming to the charms of Southern cooking.
“They’ve studied barbecue and all the regional differences,” she says. “[Now], it’s time that fried chicken got its due. … There’s so much more to Southern cuisine to explore.”
The Fayetteville, N.C.-born chef made her mark as a contestant on TV’s “Top Chef: Texas” in 2012, reaching the final three. At the time of the filming, Autry was executive chef at Michelle Bernstein’s Omphoy in Palm Beach. After more than a decade with Bernstein, Autry struck out on her own, most recently as chef at the Sundy House in Delray Beach (she left this spring).
Autry recalls Bernstein telling her to put some “Southern stuff” on the Omphoy menu. “I said ‘You can’t. People won’t understand; they’ll think we’re trying to do things on the cheap,’” she says.
That stigma is fading fast.
At last year’s Swank Farm Dinner, part of the Palm Beach Wine and Food Festival, Autry served a grilled collard green and celery salad, with pickled mustard seeds, fried chicken and cracklings to appreciative diners who “got it.”
Pimento cheese, a staple sandwich spread in the South, is unknown in most other regions. She put it on a restaurant menu. “I made it my own as a dip,” she says. “A lot of people didn’t know what it was, but it sold—it was delicious.”
Autry worries that interest in Southern style may result in too many chefs in the kitchen. “With any cooking, but particularly Southern cooking, you have to have a (personal) reference—a connection to it—to do it right,” she says. “As chefs, we get disconnected, but we have to remember: We’re making memories.”
LILA Photo
Autry's grilled collard green and celery salad with pickled mustard seeds, fried chicken and cracklings
Regional Distinctions
You can tell what part of the South you’re in by the kind of barbecue you’re eating—as well as other signature Southern dishes.
BarBecue
Pulled pork and thin mustard sauce......................................................South Carolina
Sliced pork and a sweet tomato-based sauce ........................................Tennessee
Chicken with a clear vinegar sauce ........................................................Eastern North Carolina
Sweet tea ...............................................................................................Throughout the South
The Origins Of sOuThern COOking
Southern food owes its origins to the West Africans brought in as slaves, but John T. Edge also points to Cuba and the Caribbean as contributors. “These are the small sea islands where West Africans stopped on their way to the U.S.,” says the director of the Southern Foodways Alliance. They would bring with them techniques and food combinations—rice and peas, yams and fritters, fried meat and stewed greens—that morphed into the traditions associated with the South. Pit barbecue, another Southern icon, may have come to the U.S. with them from Hispaniola. Native Americans and immigrants from Eastern Europe added flavors to the collective pot, Edge says, along with French Acadians in Louisiana. Traditional foods such as dried corn, squash, chilies and herbs, as well as the all-important pig, were added to those the Africans brought from their homeland (rice, sorghum, black-eyed peas, watermelon, okra and sesame seeds) and from their stops in South America (yams and peanuts).
After the Civil Rights movement, “soul food” became a popular moniker for Southern food. Still considered home cooking, it would be a century after slavery ended until celebrity chefs like Paul Prudhomme and Emeril Lagasse elevated its status.
Pop culture flings—movies like “Steel Magnolias” and “Fried Green Tomatoes”— bring attention, but inspired work from chefs in Atlanta, Charleston, Birmingham and Nashville are still refining the cuisine today.
Jambalaya
Restaurants in the Spotlight:Yardbird and Swine
John Kunkel’s mouth was homesick. The restaurateur, who grew up in Georgia and South Carolina, searched the South Florida culinary scene for kitchens that specialized in the Southern cooking on which he was raised.
But like many transplanted Southerners, he says, “We had no place to go, really, for our food.”
The timing was right; the trend for all things South had been growing since Katrina focused the world’s attention on the region. Still, there was resistance.
“I told investors and food purveyors, ‘I’m going to sell bourbon and fried chicken on South Beach’ … It was a tough conversation,” Kunkel says. “We’re in a town where they drink Red Bull and vodka and eat salads—and we’re going to convert them to fried chicken and bourbon. Everyone laughed.”
Kunkel would have the last laugh after opening Yardbird Southern Table & Bar (1600 Lenox Ave., Miami Beach, 305/5385220) in 2011—but not before an early miscalculation. The venture that he calls “a labor of love” debuted with an initial emphasis on garden and fish; 50 to 60 percent of the menu was light vegetables.
“But [then] we had tables of women coming in and ordering piles of fried chicken, biscuits and homemade bacon,” Kunkel says. “We thought it would be well received, but not to the level it has been.”
Accolades came from not just diners, but critics; Bon Apetit named it one of the Best New Restaurants of 2012. Last year, Kunkel and his 50 Eggs Group added Swine Southern Table & Bar (2415 Ponce de Leon Blvd., Coral Gables, 786/360-6433) to their roster—with more concepts in the works.
The success for Kunkel is in “taking those ingredients we know and love and using them in more modern culinary ways.”
And, along the way, quickly converting doubting diners to Southern food.
Brisket sandwich from Swine Bottom: Shrimp and grits from Yardbird
Recipe
Fried ChiCken
Here’s a recipe for Michelle Bernstein’s brined fried chicken, taken from Lee Schrager’s new book, Fried and True:
50 Recipes for America’s Best Fried Chicken and Sides.
1 whole chicken, cut into 8 pieces
For the brine:
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup kosher salt
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
1 dried bay leaf
1 teaspoon celery seeds
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
For dredging and Frying:
Safflower, peanut, or grapeseed oil, for frying
2 cups buttermilk
3 tablespoons hot sauce, preferably Cholula brand
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons Old Bay seasoning
1 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt
1 tablespoon cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon paprika Honey, for serving
brining: Place chicken in large nonreactive container or dish. In another bowl, stir 8 cups water with sugar, salt, peppercorns, bay leaf, celery seeds and fennel seeds. Pour brine over chicken, cover and refrigerate for 24 hours. Drain brine from chicken; rinse and dry meat with paper towels. dredging: Fill large (12-inch) skillet just under halfway with oil and heat to 275 degrees. Set wire rack on top of rimmed baking sheet and set aside. In baking dish or bowl, combine buttermilk and hot sauce. In another dish, combine flour, Old Bay, salt, cayenne pepper and paprika. Dredge chicken pieces in flour mixture, shaking off excess. Dip into buttermilk mixture, then back into flour mixture, shaking dish to coat chicken evenly. Frying: Working 4 pieces at a time, fry chicken in batches until golden and fully cooked—8 to 9 minutes per side. Remove chicken from oil and drain on rack; cool for 10 minutes. Heat oil back up to 350 degrees. Fry chicken again in batches until it darkens and crisps—an additional 5 minutes. Remove from oil and drain on wire rack. Drizzle with honey. Makes 4 servings.
Where to Dine
Boca residents don’t have to drive to Miami to find quality Southern cuisine. The following four spots in Palm Beach and Broward counties serve dishes with Southern leanings.
R Southern Swank Kitchen (4196 S. University Drive, Davie, 954/727-5497; swanksouthern. com): Breaded chicken thighs with waffles and marshmallow sage sauce, country fried steak, beer-can chicken, black-eyed peas, collard greens
RRebel House (297 E. Palmetto Park Road, Boca Raton, 561/353-5888): Shrimp and grits, pork belly “bad buns,” fried chicken and biscuits with candied bacon syrup and more
RFran’s Chicken Haven (1925 N. Federal Highway, Boca, 561/395-0781): Highlights include fried chicken, Buffalo-style wings, gizzards and livers and corn muffins.
RBay Bay’s Chicken & Waffles (2400 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach, 561/429-3796): Buttermilk marinated fried chicken, specialty waffles, collard greens, grits and more
Pork belly tater tots (above) and pork belly with charred pineapple, lime and poblano, both from Rebel House
cristina Morgado
About those vegetables:
Vegetables are as important as meats for farm communities where everybody grows a “garden.” You order up a “meat and three (vegetables)” plate in restaurants that serve Southern cuisine. Choose from “fried” (really, creamed) corn, squash casserole, pole beans, fried okra, lady peas and butterbeans shelled that day.
Cooking Healthy
The big complainT about Southern food is its unhealthy profile. Touting “pork fat rules!” and “more butter!” by TV chefs hasn’t helped. pork fat has died down, even with bacon still selling. Today, there’s new focus on fresh garden vegetables, beans and fruits that have provided a balanced diet for Southerners who value home gardens and fields. Farm-to-table cooking is nothing new to them.
“Fried foods as representing Southern food is five years ago,” says historian John T. edge. “cutting-edge Southern today is vegetable plates. You sit at a linen-draped table and are served a four-vegetable plate.”
Steven Satterfield at the miller Union in atlanta gained notoriety for his inventive plates with such twists as honey-roasted turnips and fennel; succotash with sweet corn, field peas and country ham; pickled beets with ginger; and pan-fried zucchini with garlic, honey and mint. Slow-roasted meats like pork shoulder are replacing pork belly, ribs and fattier cuts; braised, almost german-style, it’s a platform for more vegetables: braised bitter greens and baked root vegetables.
grits are still a go-to starch. but these are chewy stone-ground, cooked in flavorful stocks, vegetable creams and baked with aromatic herbs and smoked cheeses—or chilled and fried into grit cakes as a bottom for foods like shrimp étouffée. other grains, like farro, also are showing up on Southern plates. most Southerners would laugh to see chicken and dumplings put on a fine menu, but the reinvented dumplings like the ones at Swine in coral gables, something more akin to a giant gnocchi, redefine this po’ folks meal.
The CasTIron skIlleT
If there’s one emblematIc kItchen item that signifies the South, it’s an iron skillet. There are very few true Southern cooks who don’t own at least one. And there are very few things that you can’t make in them.
From bacon and eggs to cornbread and chicken-fried steak, and finally, pineapple-upsidedown cake for dessert, the cast-iron skillet does it all. It can withstand the highest heat from a stove, oven and campfire without warping—its best feature. Properly “seasoned,” it’s also beautifully nonstick.
The skillets often are handed down through the family, but if you aren’t lucky enough to be an heir to one, here’s how to season and use one.
[1] Buy a 10-inch or 12-inch skillet from the U.S. Imports are inferior. Lodge is a popular brand.
[2] To season: Wash it well with hot water and soap, and scrub any “finish” or coating off. This is the last time your skillet should see a scrub pad or dish soap. Rinse well and dry completely.
[3] Coat the inside thoroughly with cooking oil, lard or shortening, wiping out any excess with a paper towel. Put the skillet upside-down on a sheet of foil in the center of a 350-degree oven for one hour.
[4] Remove and wipe with a paper towel. Cool completely, and repeat the coating-baking instructions two more times.
[5] Wipe the skillet with a paper towel and cool, and now it’s ready to use.
[6] After cooking with it, let cool and wipe with a paper towel. If there are stuck-on bits of food,
rock on
ImITATIon IS The SIncereST form of fLATTery for TheSe South Florida tribute bandS And A bLAST from The pAST for AUdIenceS.
by john ThomASon
Call it the result of a foundering economy, or a desire to return to rock-n-roll roots in an era of electronically manufactured music. Whatever the reason, the 2000s have seen an explosion of tribute bands: groups that play the music of renowned bands at a drastically reduced ticket price compared to the real deal—and that often sound just as good if not better than the originals do in their latecareer, hip-replaced incarnations.
But what differentiates a high-minded tribute act from its semantically lower cousin, the cover band? That old Supreme Court definition of pornography comes to mind: I know a tribute band when I see it. Some focus solely on playing the music of their icons as note-perfectly as possible; others exhibit their tribute-band bona fides by becoming their heroes from headgear to footwear. But the best of them make you remember why you fell in love with the original artists in the first place.
Here’s a look at four of South Florida’s finest tributantes.
Clockwise from opposite page: KISS Alive, Turnstiles, Across the Universe and Smells Like Grunge
Across the Universe
In honor of: The Beatles
The band: Go ahead: Google the phrase “Beatles tribute band.” You may spend the rest of the day rifling through the 3 million-plus hits. Few regions of this planet exist without a band playing the music of the Fab Four. Omaha’s The Buggs, arguably the first tribute band, formed in the mid-1960s to pay homage to John, George, Ringo and Paul with its lone album “The Beetle Beat.”
Call it naivety, but Greg Steiner, one of the founders of South Florida’s Across the Universe, wasn’t aware of this in 2009, when he decided to form his own Beatles tribute act. At the time, the sound engineer and music producer had been tinkering with original music that left him feeling unsatisfied. “I grew up listening to the Beatles, and it seemed like: A, that would be a fun thing to play, and B, if I’m going to do this, I want to make some money,” he recalls. “I thought, this should be an easy sell—Who doesn’t like the Beatles?—not realizing that there are probably thousands of bands doing Beatles shows.”
Despite the presence of, at the time, four or five Beatles tributes operating in South Florida, Steiner corralled three other Beatlemaniacs and formed the group, whose star has been rising ever since. The group has played to audiences of 10,000, including a crowd-busting gig last year at Center for the Arts at Old School Square in Delray.
The show:
Across the Universe’s performances are characterized by both a serious, polished fidelity to the Beatles’ music and an easygoing sense of humor and camaraderie. Beatles trivia and inside jokes pepper the band’s shows; on more than one occasion, Steiner says that he couldn’t play his guitar because he was laughing so hard at an onstage exchange.
But the group, which is based out of Fort Lauderdale, is more distinctive for what it isn’t than what it is: Across the Universe does not try to imitate the Beatles. There are no ’60s costumes and bowl wigs, and no ersatz Liverpudlian accents.
“It seems like a lot of the bands that do Beatles music are impersonators,” Steiner says. “And one of the first things I said is that I don’t want to be that. We thought, why don’t we take our skills as professional studio musicians and recapture the sounds of the records as closely as possible in a live setting. We figured, by avoiding the costumes and wigs, that we’d focus more on the music and capture a wider catalog of their material.”
That isn’t to say they don’t wear uniforms. The band members don matching dress shirts, black vests and black ties when performing, which has led, occasionally, to some confusion: According to drummer Peter Maerz, “the only issue we run into now and then is somebody will hand us the keys to their car.”
Next show: Sept. 20 at Brogue’s Down Under, 621 Lake Ave., Lake Worth; free; 561/585-1885, acrosstheuniverseband.com
Left, from top: Rick Rossano and Peter Maerz
KISS Alive
In honor of: KISS
the band: The difference between a cover band and a tribute band is at its most pronounced when replicating a group like KISS. A KISS cover band might need to master its double-kick drums, thunderous guitar chords and anthemic vocals, but its members could presumably wear T-shirts and jeans onstage. But approaching the legendary rock group as a full-scale tribute band? That’s another ball of wax. And leather. And studs. And blood.
Circa 2006, it was up to Grant Aldrich and a group of fellow KISS enthusiasts to make that distinction. A rock fan hooked on KISS since he saw the group’s legendary Hotter than Hell tour in 1974, Aldrich was toying with a couple of original music projects that weren’t going anywhere. He derived the most pleasure from playing KISS songs; taking on the bass parts of Gene Simmons, he soon enlisted a drummer and two guitarists.
They started out as a KISS cover band but, as Aldrich recalls, “I was not apprehensive about heading in the direction [of a tribute band]. Everybody was nervous about whether we could pull it off. What we’re doing is so specialized because of the choreography—being able to sing, play and move, with all the facial
expressions, the little things. It’s like rubbing your head and patting your stomach.”
the show:
The multitasking has worked for KISS Alive, whose large-scale productions—which fill amphitheaters in cities like Wellington, Sunrise and Port St. Lucie on an average monthly basis—also honor the bells and whistles of a 1975 KISS concert. Smoke emanates from the guitar of James Cullen, the group’s Ace Frehley. Aldrich spits fake blood (a la Gene Simmons) and blows fire out of a decorative sword attached with a Kevlar wick.
The band’s painstaking prep begins about six hours before show time, with 90 minutes required to set up the equipment and a few hours for makeup and costuming, which includes lipstick, leotards, wigs and studded codpieces, all tailored to the specifications of the original musicians. It’s one of the reasons KISS Alive has earned its reputation as one of the premier KISS tribute acts in the Southeastern United States—but don’t expect its members to let this go to their heads.
“I wear it on the outside, all the time, that we need to get better and better,” says Aldrich, a resident of Fort Lauderdale. “The [other members] think that, look how much money we’ve made, look at the fan base we have, etc. And they equate that with, we’re already there, we’re acceptable. I don’t believe in just sitting still and being acceptable.”
Next show: TBA, kissalivethetribute.com
From top: John Ladislaw as Peter Criss, Grant Aldrich as Gene Simmons, John Carlazzo as Paul Stanley, and James Cullen as Ace Frehley. Left: KISS Alive at its July 4 gig in Lake Worth
Smells Like Grunge
In honor of: Nirvana
The band: It was easy to spot Jay Scott and Justin Hucker inside Subculture Coffee on Clematis Street, where they’d agreed to be interviewed about their Nirvana tribute act, Smells Like Grunge: They resembled timetravelers from the mid-’90s, looking the part even when ordering java.
Scott, who plays Dave Grohl in the band, could be the famous Foo Fighter’s doppelganger, with long, dark rocker hair that swishes into the air when he thwacks his drums. Hucker was dressed in a self-referential Nirvana T-shirt and has short-cropped blonde hair, skin that is fair and bordering on pale, and stylish stubble: He’s the Kurt Cobain, naturally. Hucker says that unlike forming a Beatles tribute and deciding on which of many looks to adopt, “Nirvana had one solid look, which was just, ‘no showers.’”
Smells Like Grunge formed in April 2013 from the ashes of Walk of Shame, a cover band that played ’90s songs with Scott, Hector Diaz (who performs as Nirvana’s bassist, Krist Novoselic, in Smells Like Grunge) and Nick Rotondi. But when other bands started to play the same covers, Walk of Shame struggled to land gigs—and the ones they did snag didn’t pay much.
“I’m sitting at home one night going, ‘This
isn’t working,’” Scott recalls. “People have told me I look like Dave Grohl, we play a lot of Nirvana songs, I’m a hard drum player like [Grohl]. … One thing led to another; we had a few practices, and it just took off.”
The show:
Smells Like Grunge’s concerts aim to replicate Nirvana’s live shows as precisely as possible, with the members donning wigs when necessary to supplement their already accurate resemblances. “I look at a tribute band where you’re not only a band; you’re almost putting on a play,” Scott says. “You’re a musician and an actor at the same time.”
“When I got into the band and started studying my Nirvana, I noticed Kurt sang from the sides of his mouth,” Hucker adds. “And he picks his guitar like a punk rocker; it’s not smooth. … Every good habit I’ve ever had, I have to break now.”
With a repertoire of more than 40 tunes from which to choose, Smells Like Grunge has taken to replicating exact Nirvana set lists from some of its classic shows. The band’s debut CD, released this year to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s death, showcases the West Palm Beach-based group’s reverent fidelity to Nirvana across 10 of the group’s lesser-known songs.
“Kurt wouldn’t want what everyone else had done, covering ‘Teen Spirit,’ ‘All Apologies,’ all the standards,” Scott says. “Kurt prided himself on the songs people didn’t know. So we thought there was nothing more fitting than a 10-song B-side album.”
Next show: TBA, smellslikegrunge.com
South Florida iS chockablock with tribute bandS For virtually any taSte. check out theSe other groupS Standing on the ShoulderS oF muSical giantS.
big braSS bed (bob dylan): rodmacdonald.net/big_brass_bed the long run (eagleS): thelongrun.info
crazy FingerS (grateFul dead): crazyfingers.net
rocket man (elton John): rocketmanshow.com
odySSey (Journey): odysseyroadband.com
time with tom (tom petty): timewithtom.us
rockit to ruSSia (ramoneS): facebook.com/rockittorussia the u.S. StoneS (rolling StoneS): theusstones.com
Simply tina (tina turner): simplytinatributeband.com
u2 by uv (u2): u2byuv.com
eduardo schneider
From left: Hector Diaz, Justin Hucker and Jay Scott
Turnstiles In honor of: Billy Joel
The band: If Tony Monaco wasn’t born with 88 keys on his mind, they certainly inhabited it by the age of 8. But growing up in a middleclass family in Pittsburgh, Monaco had to cut his teeth on a more financially feasible instrument: the guitar.
After mastering that, he dove into his early love, the piano, as a teenager; by his mid-20s, he was studying jazz music under renowned pianist Dave Frank. “But at the end of the day, because I was striving to be my own singersongwriter, I gravitated toward Billy [Joel],” Monaco recalls. “I heard him and dug into it; the more I dug into it, the more I appreciated what he was doing. I became a student of Billy’s.”
In the early 1990s, Monaco performed in Storm Front, a Billy Joel tribute band in New York, until his day job, which involves auto
body repair, brought him to Florida in 1995. The dissolution of Storm Front eventually led to the 2011 launch of Turnstiles, a tight, seven-piece band of consummate professionals and Billy Joel devotees.
“When we first started Turnstiles, there was another [Joel] tribute in the state of Florida, and they used backing tracks,” says the Boynton Beach resident. “In my opinion, they were jumping on the tribute bandwagon. I knew that if we built it right and lived up to the vision, then sooner or later we would be the preeminent Billy Joel tribute in this part of the country. And that is happening. It’s wonderful, and I thank God every day that the phone rings.”
The show:
Like Across the Universe, Monaco doesn’t hide the fact that he’s not the musician he’s honoring. The focus of Turnstiles shows is squarely on the music, not the costuming. “I’ve even made jokes that I was going to do an Elton John tribute, but when I saw the price of feathers and jumpsuits,
[Joel’s trademark] sunglasses were a much cheaper option,” Monaco says.
At a recent outdoor performance at the Shops at Boca Center, the Turnstiles audience cut a wide swath, from boundlessly energetic children frolicking in the grassy areas to seniors quietly tapping along to the music from their seats. If you closed your eyes, you could imagine you were at the BB&T Center, listening to the real McCoy. In addition to the core instruments, Monaco’s band played triangle and flute and tambourine, creating an expansive sound that could easily fill a larger auditorium.
Monaco occasionally left his piano perch to wander into the audience, pretending to stumble drunkenly offstage during “Big Shot”—exhibiting a sense of humor that might make the real Joel wince and laugh at the same time.
Next show: Oct. 10 at Old School Square, 51 N. Swinton Ave., Delray Beach; free; 561/243-7922, turnstilestributeband.com
Frank Donnino
Piano: Tony Monaco Insets: Jody Marlow (sax) and Jeff McDonald (drums)
House of Blues
Whether dubbed cobalt or navy, sapphire or azure, blue is by any name today’s most au courant color. Why not invite it into your home?
By Brad Mee
Carmel Brantley
ROOM WITH A HUE: Designer Susan Lachance uses a palette of dreamy blues and creamy whites to infuse this Hillsboro Beach bedroom with tranquility. A Christopher Guy chandelier hangs above the light blue Cameron Jordan rug and elegant bedding fabrics by Kravet. Tile shell wall covering by Jeffrey Michaels shimmers with light filtered through Romo sheer draperies.
First off, we have to say: Blue, you look amazing. These days, we see you everywhere, enriching rooms and outdoor spaces with shades ranging from dazzling peacock and dark indigo to tranquil sea glass and spirited turquoise.
So what’s your secret? After all, you may be the most popular color worldwide, but you haven’t always topped the list of haute hues for the home.
POWER TO SOOTHE: Proximity to water and a bold integration of indoor and outdoor living inspired the interior of this Boca home. In the kitchen, the Marc-Michaels design team used the calming color of blue water to soften the visual strength of the mahogany floors, Caeserstone countertops, and mahogany and stark white cabinetry.
To uncover the source of your allure, we check in with some of the area’s most talented designers; your personality makes their rooms pop. We also offer words of advice for choosing and using your many shades—plus, we present a selection of furnishings and fabrics that showcase your charisma. Along the way, we’ve discovered that when it comes to decorating with style, everybody’s got the blues.
WATER WORKS: Turquoise garden stools and shapely outdoor upholstery furnish a poolside patio in Delray. The palette of blue and green gives the setting by Marc-Michaels a cool, serene vibe.
PICTURE PERFECT: Performing as curator of a gallery hall in a Delray Beach home, designer Kristin Rocke framed the artwork (heavy on shades of blue) produced by her clients’ children to create unity among the pieces. She then complemented the art with an azure blue geometric rug that accentuates the hall’s colorful, playful theme.
TAKE IT OUTSIDE: Assorted deep-blue tones, from navy to midnight, mix with paler shades and grays to help shape the “barefoot elegance” created by Marc-Michaels for this Fort Lauderdale loggia. Foldaway doors open to a lightblue interior, resulting in indoor-to-outdoor continuity.
jerry rabinowitz
Kim Sargent
ODE TO PAMPERING: To foster the look and feel of a luxurious spa, the Marc-Michaels team chose blue rather than clear glass to lend serenity to this Boca home’s master bath. Blue John Richard vases, bamboo cabinetry and a Victoria and Albert tub adds to the retreat-like ambience.
Five easy Pieces (oF advice)
Our interior experts offer the following tips when it comes to the use of blue.
1
“The worst mistake a designer can make when decorating with blue is when they let it get too dark; it becomes gloomy and stormy. You don’t want a dark blue color to suck the natural light out of a room.”
—Marc-Michaels
Interior Design
2 “We try to stay with calm blues when doing bedrooms or bathrooms and push the envelope with bolder blues in the home’s common areas.”
—Susan Lachance
3 “Blue maintains its integrity no matter the value. Integrity intact, blue can still take on many moods: It can be arresting in cobalt or sapphire, stately in navy or admiral, ethereal in light clear shades, playful with a tint of violet, and contemplative in a grayed blue.”
—Kristin Rocke
4 “Use a variety of shades of your favorite color—then add a splash of a contrasting color. Recently, I have been pairing cobalt blue and aqua with crisp white and taupe/beige neutrals, dark or white woods, then I add a hint of lime green to the mix.”
—Sybil Maxson
5 “Use glass accents and accessories to introduce blue into a room; they can provide a beautiful reflective moment.”
—Marc-Michaels
Interior Design
“Today’s blue is not the ‘Baby Blue’ of the 1960s. Instead, it is a tone of blue combined with light grey, giving it a more neutral feeling.”
—Susan Lachance
WHITE HOT: A patterned rug in shades of gray and dusty blue grounds a white sofa and Vico Magistretti chairs. Kristin Rocke repeated tones of blue to foster continuity throughout this great room; comforting elements of wood help to warm the space.
RHAPSODY IN BLUE: Vivid blues and assorted patterns define rich fabrics by Stroheim in this Boca living room, while a custom area rug in deep blue defines the sitting area. Silvery blue walls adorned with custom molding by Hamlin Woodworks perform as a near-neutral backdrop to Susan Lachance’s elegant design.
WHAT THE PROS KNOW
Paint may be the quickest path to refreshing your rooms. Designers offer a selection of favorite blues that lead the way.
PaDDIngTon BLue 791
Benjamin Moore
“the bright and inviting color looks intriguing when used in a room or on a feature wall. it is so versatile and can be used in a traditional house or an ultramodern one.” —Sybil Maxson, Brown’s Interior Design
QuIeT MoMenTS 1563 Benjamin Moore
“it’s clean, fresh and soft. it has remnants of the sky and reminds me why they used to paint the ceilings of porches this color. ... it’s the highest-used color in our firm today.”
—Marc Thee, Marc-Michaels Interior Design
aDMIRaL BLue 2065-10 Benjamin Moore
“it’s very grounding and stable, making it perfect for an office and exquisite when paired with rich, dark millwork.” —Kristin Rocke, K. Rocke Design
TwILIghT BLue 2067-30 Benjamin Moore
“it offers an artisan complexity, making it fabulous in a dining room. Flowers and food look stunning against it, and it creates a romantic moody backdrop.”
—Kristin Rocke, K. Rocke Design
TRaDewInD Sw 6218 Sherwin-Williams
“it is a powdery, soft blue; when paired with crisp white trimwork, it creates a very fresh look.” —Susan Lachance, Susan Lachance Interior Design
AQUA’S ALLURE: Vivid coloring in the lacquered cabinets led Sybil Maxson of Brown’s Interior Design to select mosaic tiles in blue and pearlized tones for her Boca client’s bathroom. Mirrored walls and crystal lights add to the room’s glamorous vibe.
“The best way to introduce blue is on the ceiling with a very light sky blue, or a grayed down blue.”
—Marc Thee, Marc-Michaels Interior Design
ON THE DARK SIDE: Kristin Rocke paired rich, dark blues with black to create an engaging “clubby look” in this Delray living room. Light blue Bernhardt wingchairs, along with vibrant art and pillows, pop against the deep tones of the walls and overdyed rug.
ART AND ACCENTS: Soft white trim and Tiffany blue walls combine to give this Boca dining room by Marc-Michaels a fresh, inviting feel. Blue and white ginger jars not only punctuate this space with rich color, but also give it a well-traveled feel.
Laurence Tay Lor
BRINGING TIMELESS ELEGANCE TO HOMES FOR 90 YEARS.
Capitol Lighting celebrates 90 years of creating beautiful spaces this fall. From traditional to transitional, mid-century to modern, Capitol Lighting offers exceptional choices for those who understand that great design begins with great lighting. Unparalleled expertise, outstanding selection and the best prices. Guaranteed.
NEW JERSEY LOCATIONS: EAST HANOVER | EATONTOWN | GREEN BROOK | PARAMUS
Wher e: The Fillmore, 1700 Washington Ave., Miami Beach
About: Tulsa native Annie Clark, better known as her stage name St. Vincent, has been churning out clever avant-pop music since 2006, with each of her four releases surpassing the last one in both quality and accessibility. A former Berklee College of Music student and a graduate of the 20-piece orchestral pop group
The Polyphonic Spree, Clark is a silver-haired, postmodern iconoclast whose albums feature imagistic wordplay delivered over loopy, crunchy and unpredictable guitars, keyboards, horns and symphonic flourishes. She rose to mainstream acclaim thanks in part to “Love This Giant,” an album-length collaboration with David Byrne, whose Talking Heads cast a wide influence over St. Vincent’s theatrical sound. She and her band even perform choreographed movements while playing their songs, which they showcased in a season-closing appearance on “Saturday Night Live” in May that left some viewers baffled. After opening for acts like Arcade Fire and Death Cab for Cutie, St. Vincent finally gets its own headlining tour at a major concert hall.
Cost: $25.50–$35
ContAC t: 800/745-3000, fillmoremb.com
backstage pass hotlist
stitCh roCk
When: Oct. 4
Where: Old School Square Vintage Gymnasium, 51 N. Swinton Ave., Delray Beach
About: There aren’t many places you can find a gaggle of demented-looking plush dolls, a heartshaped plaque depicting smooching skeletons, pieces of octopus jewelry and an airbrushed likeness of Bryan Cranston in “Breaking Bad,” all sharing the same offbeat oxygen. But Delray is a town weird enough to support a cash-and-carry indie craft fair like Stitch Rock, now entering its eighth venerable year. All of these items and much, much more lined the tables of some 80-plus vendors last year, drawing lines around the block for what has become the Vintage Gymnasium’s signature annual event. And we haven’t even mentioned the copious T-shirts, pins, coasters, records, pinup paintings, homemade jams and plenty of cupcakes, both decorative and edible. The vendors often have as many safety pins on their bodies as in their craftwork, and at least half the items in the gym look like they’re straight off a Tim Burton set. For unique gifts, we can’t agree more with the event’s tagline: “Skip the Mall, Shop Indie!”
Cost: $5
ContAC t: rockthestitch.com
“Café Dolly”
When: Oct. 12–Feb. 1
Where: Museum of Art | Fort Lauderdale, 1 E. Las Olas Blvd., Fort Lauderdale
About: Three painters—a Danish symbolist, a French Dadaist, and an American neoexpressionist—walk into a bar … er, a museum. What would they say to each other? A better question might be: How would their works, divided across decades, cultures and movements, communicate to each other and to modern art audiences? The Museum of Art’s highly anticipated “Café Dolly” exhibition hopes to answer these questions and more as it groups together the provocative paintings of Francis Picabia, J.F. Willumsen and Julian Schnabel. Curator Bonnie Clearwater hopes that audiences will walk away with a new appreciation of these subversive artists, whose work is rarely shown in Florida museums. She tells Boca Raton, “This exhibition draws strong connections between Schnabel’s and Picabia’s philosophical approach to art and introduces obscure late 19th- and early 20th-century artist Willumsen to not only our local audience but to the international art world that descends on … Art Basel Miami Beach in December.”
Cost: $5–$10
ContAC t: 954/525-5500, moafl.org
“Self-Portrait” by Francis Picabia
Julian Schnabel’s “Large Girl With No Eyes”
Vendors at Stitch Rock 2013
“CaRRie: the musiCal”
When: Oct. 16–Nov. 2
Where: Slow Burn Theatre Company at West Boca Performing Arts Theater, 12811 W. Glades Road, Boca Raton
About: “Carrie” is proof that Broadway producers really can make a musical from any movie imaginable: It’s easy to foresee a time when a show called “Apocalypse … NOW!” blends napalm and jazz hands. In the case of Stephen King’s best-seller about a bullied highschool girl who develops telekinetic powers, the migration from novel to film to stage has been a bumpy one; after debuting in 1988, it garnered a reputation as one of Broadway’s most expensive disasters of all time, closing after five performances. But if there’s one thing west Boca’s Slow Burn Theatre Company loves, it’s finding the kernels of brilliance in misunderstood shows. For this production, director Patrick Fitzwater and his creative team will be working from a 2012 revival of “Carrie” that fixed many of the original’s problems, and they’ll likely find ways to improve on that one as well. Songs include “A Night We’ll Never Forget,” “The Prom” and its follow-up, “The Destruction”—and, yes, Carrie still gets her first period in the first act.
About: The noun “Oprah” stands for many things: a television network, a radio station, a magazine, a book club, a philanthropic powerhouse, an actor who only appears in Important movies. But behind the endless branding of Oprah Winfrey’s vast media empire, there is still a person, the onetime host of a Chicago talk show who has risen to become the only African-American billionaire in North America. And she’s coming to a city near you: The 60-year-old mogul will take the stage in front of 18,000 devotees, discussing how she became who she is and how you too can improve your lot in life. Empowerment, resilience and authenticity are the buzzwords surrounding The Life You Want Weekend, a two-day, eight-city spectacular (Miami is the only Florida visit). After her Friday night keynote, Saturday’s programming will include more speakers centered on Oprah’s theme of self-betterment, including Eat Pray Love author Elizabeth Gilbert, inspirational speaker Iyanla Vanzant and influential pastor Rob Bell.
Cost: $99–$999
ContAC t: 786/777-1000, aaarena.com
“Romeo and Juliet”
When: Oct. 24–26
Where: Broward Center, 201 S.W. Fifth Ave., Fort Lauderdale
About: The joy in experiencing and re-experiencing “Romeo and Juliet” year after year, medium after medium, is in the individuality its creators bring to the ageless text. Just as there are supposedly 100 ways to cook an egg, there are countless ways to interpret a Shakespearean tragedy. In the world of classical ballet, such knighted choreographers as Sir Frederick Ashton and Sir Frederick MacMillan have created full-length dances based on the story, and current Russian maestro Alexei Ratmansky is the latest choreographer to climb the “R&J” mountain. For its 2014-2015 season opener, Miami City Ballet is re-mounting what most consider the best “Romeo and Juliet” ballet of all: the 1962 version by South Africa’s John Cranko, a choreographer who sought to create dance that was “a representation of life itself.” Known for his clear-eyed storytelling mastery and his thrilling pas de deux, Cranko’s take will be presented with romantic costumes and lavish sets.
Cost: $20–$175
ContAC t: 954/462-0222, browardcenter.org
Oprah on Oprah
The Karaoke King
Fun-loving song jockey Frank edwards continues to wear numerous hats.
It’s appropriate that Frank Edwards hosts a weekly karaoke event on Sunday afternoons at a venue called the Mad Hatter Lounge, an offbeat gay bar in Lake Worth. Hats are kind of his thing: Go to any of the shows hosted by him or his team of “KJs” (karaoke jockeys), and you’re likely to see an elaborate array of headgear worn by the hosts and the singers—cowboy hats for country crooners, Rastafarian dreadlocks for reggae enthusiasts, fedoras for Rat Pack warblers.
And just wait until you see the getups for “YMCA.”
“We subscribe to the notion that it’s much easier to sing if you’re not you,” says Edwards, who has been hosting karaoke events under his Frank-E-Oke brand since 2002, and who describes his age as “39 for some time.”
“It’s all about being fun and funny,” he says. “In the world of karaoke, I really dislike the ‘American Idol’ wannabes … the ‘I’m starting at karaoke, and I’m going to go somewhere.’ We cater to the six drunk idiots after a softball game singing ‘We are the Champions.’”
To that end, the funny hats are just one element that distinguishes Edwards’ karaoke business from his contemporaries. In addition to the eight weekly shows he and his staff host from Lake Worth south to Tamarac, he offers such annual shindigs as a pajama party around Labor Day—where singers in their jammies enjoy free M&Ms and Oreos, like in sleepovers of yore—and a pirate-themed party every September,
where “there’s a lot of rum.” He does theme nights, like the “Rocky Horror Picture Show” event circa Halloween, in which fans of the cult movie sing the entire soundtrack, and Edwards narrates the action in between.
And every year on Memorial Day, he hosts an all-day, all-night karaoke festival at his Delray Beach home, where his regular singers gather for free
Frank-E-OkE LivE
Here are three Boca spots that host Edwards’ karaoke nights. Visit frank-e-oke.com for more options and info.
• Packy’s sPorts Grill: 11379 W. Palmetto Park Road, 561/482-0052 (8:55 p.m.–1 a.m. Thursdays)
• Holloway’s irisH PuB: 504 Via De Palmas, 561/361-8445 (8:55 p.m.–1 a.m. Saturdays)
drinks, nosh and music. This year, 125 guests finished three kegs of beer and 80 pounds of chicken wings.
All of these events reinforce Edwards’ larger mission to maintain an upbeat, enthusiastic atmosphere at his shows. “I weed out the non-fun from the fun,” he says. “You can easily find somebody who doesn’t like me because I told them that sad, wrist-slitting, bleeding-over-
the-floor songs are just not welcome here. There’s no emo in my book. Bonnie Raitt’s ‘I Can’t Make You Love Me’ was deleted. Somebody always breaks up with their boyfriend or girlfriend and wants to cry all over the stage. I want ‘Love Shack.’”
Still, chances are you’ll be able to find almost any tune you’re seeking in Edwards’ repertoire, which has ballooned to some 81,000 unique songs. Though his company is 12 years old, he’s been in the entertainment business for decades, and he remembers when karaoke songs were recorded onto 8-tracks, and a 7,000-song catalog was considered extensive. Back in 1983, he would visit the Pierce Street Annex in Fort Lauderdale and perform into what was then called The Singing Machine.
Edwards went on to pursue careers as a radio talker (on WFTL), a stand-up comedian, a concert technician and an actor—for a while, he was a principal player at the Royal Palm Dinner Theatre. Even today, he juggles a few disparate careers, among them Docking Bay 94, the comic book shop he has coowned in Pompano Beach for the past five years; and FLAK designs, a Palm Beach County space that specializes in performance art.
But karaoke has always been there, and probably always will be, for him and for his dedicated followers.
“I joke all the time that I never get hired by a music lover,” Edwards says. “My job is to sell chicken wings. I use a microphone to do it.”
backstage pass
take5
Casey Casperson
Founder, the Sick PuPPieS imProv grouP
Since age 13, casey casperson has been a stage actor, respecting the form’s centuries-old traditions of line memorization and regimented movement. But for this naturally jocular personality, there’s nothing more exhilarating than being onstage and having no idea what you’re going to say, or do, next.
casperson, 35, is a natural at improv comedy, the specialized brand of improvised humor popularized by chicago’s Second city troupe and television’s “Whose Line is it Anyway?” For 12 years, he was part of Laughing gas, a respected improv troupe based in miami Lakes. When Laughing gas dissipated, in 2012, he promptly formed a new team: the Sick Puppies (sickpuppiescomedy.com), a 10-member troupe that hosts monthly performances at Showtime Performing Arts theater in Boca’s royal Palm Place.
each show is very loosely structured around a theme— this past June’s program bore the intriguing title “masticating at a Funeral”—but with the entire performance decided by audience “input,” it quickly spirals toward unforeseen subjects.
contrary to their name, the Sick Puppies don’t perform “blue”; their shows are relatively clean, even if many of the audience suggestions aren’t. casperson, who teaches improv techniques to corporate clients by day, is less concerned about the immediate laugh than he is about arriving at a place of emotional honesty, even when given an input like “hemorrhoids.”
he takes his comedy seriously, in other words, and it’s a technique that has paid off in audience numbers—the Sick Puppies’ Showtime shows often sell out the 125-seat venue—and an increased touring schedule, which has seen the troupe expanding its reach from West Palm Beach to coral gables. there’s even talk of forming Sick Puppies offshoots in islamorada and Los Angeles.
“i think one of the reasons we’ve gotten to be so successful in the last couple years is because we treat our audience like geniuses, artists and poets,” he says. “We don’t try to dumb anything down.”
Q1
Why do you prefer improv to scripted comedy? There’s two major reasons. One is the lazy side of things: When it’s unscripted, you really don’t have to memorize and go through the tedious process of making sure every line is in place. It allows you to rehearse just being an actor and reacting with real emotion. The second part is there’s never any monotony. Everything is brand-new every single moment that you’re doing improv.
Q2
How do you feel Sick Puppies differentiates itself from other improv troupes?
If we have something that is our signature, it’s the fact that we are continually trying new things, new formats. For example, we invented a format that we refer to as the Beegan, where we bring in a standup comedian that we’ve never seen before, that delivers their rehearsed material. And then we do completely improvised scenes based on the material we saw. We’re going to be doing more of that, bringing in original musicians and poets, because for us, the input is the input, whether it’s funny, sad, depressing, it doesn’t matter.
Q3
Is being a good improviser something that is inherent, or can it be taught? That’s the beauty of improv: Anybody can be a great improviser, because all you have to do is be human. Show emotional commitment, react to things in a natural way, and the words will come out of your
head. That’s the easy part. The hard part is realizing that you don’t have to try. As soon as you try to bring plot into an improv scene, you’ve killed it.
Q4 Are there audience suggestions that you’re frankly tired of hearing?
Not really. A lot of it has to do with the questions we ask the audience. If all I’m continuing to ask is, “Can I get a genre from a movie?” [then] you’re always going to get horror and porn. We call it a “get-for.” The get-for questions are really important. You begin to ask questions like, “If there was something I could be doing in two minutes, that thing would be …?” Or, “There’s an object that’s falling from the sky that shouldn’t be in the sky, and it is …”
Q5
How important is helping out your partner in an improv scene?
If you want to use [a] basketball analogy, think of “Hoosiers,” when Coach made people pass five times before they shot the ball. If all you’re doing is shooting, you’re going to create the type of improv that becomes this game of one-liners. The reason people laugh isn’t because you said something clever or funny; it’s because you’re being real, and people relate to the emotional connection you’re making. It’s the type of scene where they go, “I’ve been there! I’m so glad I’m in the safety of my seat and I can watch someone else go through the pain I’ve been through. That’s what makes this funny to me.”
fashion expert, celebrity stylist, TV personality, New York Times best-selling author and breast cancer awareness advocate
Sponsored by the Edward & Freyda Burns Enhanced Living Initiative
Proceeds benefit the fight against breast cancer at the Christine E. Lynn Women’s Health & Wellness Institute Boca Raton Regional Hospital FriDay, october 24, 2014 11:00 a.m. to 1:30 P.m. boca raton resort & club
Exciting Sponsorship Packages with a variety of benefits are still available
Individual Tickets are $150 and are nearly sold out! Call today for information: 561-955-4142 or visit
https://donate.brrh.com/go-pink-luncheon
12th Annual Gingerbread Holiday Concert
featuring the Lynn University Philharmonia Orchestra
Presented by Lynn University Friends of the Conservatory of Music
Now in its twelfth year of spreading cheer throughout the community, the annual Gingerbread Holiday Concert attracts parents, grandparents and kids of all ages to the Boca Raton Resort’s Great Hall to enjoy seasonal classics performed by the Lynn University Philharmonia Orchestra. This annual event raises much-needed scholarship funds for the conservatory’s most deserving, talented student-musicians who hail from all over the world.
3 p.m.
Sunday, Dec. 7, 2014
Boca Raton Resort & Club–Great Hall
501 East Camino Real, Boca Raton, Florida
Tickets: $35 (not tax-deductible) $3 service fee on all ticket orders
Phone: 561-237-9000
Online: events.lynn.edu/gingerbread
Valet parking cost is included in the ticket price. No entry to concert without a ticket.
Table sponsorships (includes 10 tickets)
Gold $2,500 ($2,150 is tax-deductible)
Silver $1,500 ($1,150 is tax-deductible)
To become a sponsor, call 561-237-7745 or visit online at give.lynn.edu/gingerbread.
9th Annual
Keep Memories Alive
Exercise Your Mind
Caring Hearts Auxiliary of the Louis and Anne Green Memory and Wellness Center presents the Sunday, November 2, 2014 9 am - 11 am Town Center at Boca Raton North Entrance
Walk In The Mall
Help raise funds to benefit the Louis and Anne Green Memory and Wellness Center dedicated to meeting the complex needs of individuals with memory disorders and their families. For information on sponsoring or joining the Walk, please contact the Caring Hearts Office at 561.297.4066 or lparke14@fau.edu
Sept. 17
Sept.
18
TasTemakers aT mizner park
Visit Mizner Park on Sept. 17 for its signature culinary event, a night of food, wine, cocktails and entertainment—plus exclusive dining offers at Mizner Park's extraordinary collection of Tastemakers. Tickets available Aug. 1 at participating restaurants for $30 per person, or go online at miznerpark.com. Dining offers are good from Aug. 1 through Oct. 31. 327 Plaza Real, Suite 365, Boca Raton 561/362-0606 • miznerpark.com
Oct. 16-19
TickeTs On sale!
The Food Network New York City Wine & Food Festival presented by FOOD & WINE is back Oct. 16−19! Choose from more than 100 events, including intimate dinners, tastings, late-night parties and wine seminars hosted by some of the world’s best chefs and sommeliers. Limited seats available, purchase your tickets today. 866/969-2933 • nycwff.org
YOu're inviTed TO plasTic surgerY specialisTs Of bOca raTOn
Come join us as Dr. Rafael Cabrera, board-certified plastic surgeon, discusses his new quick recovery face-lift procedure, The SmarterLift™. Minimal downtime, affordable and the use of local anesthesia (or light sedation) are just a few of the perks of this procedure. Call today to reserve your spot as space is limited.
Join us Nov. 6 at Via Mizner Golf & Country Club and help support an organization dedicated to transforming Palm Beach County's economically challenged communities, one life at a time. Sponsorship opportunities are available.
2154 N. Dixie Highway, Boca Raton 561/995-8553 • propelyourfuture.info
Barbara Gracey Backer
Nominated by: Wayside House
Women of Grace
As we celebrate our 2014 honorees Wednesday, November 12, 2014
15th Anniversary Luncheon at the Mar-A-Lago Club
Laurie Raber Gottlieb
Fonda Huizenga
Una James
Anne Vegso
Nominated by: Aid to Victims of Domestic Abuse, Inc. (AVDA) 10:30 A.M. Reception | 11:30 A.M. Luncheon
Nominated by: Peggy Adams Animal Rescue League
Nominated by: 4KIDS of South Florida, Inc.
Nominated by: CROS Ministries, Inc.
Sponsorships available.
Tickets and more information at BethesdaHospitalFoundation.org, or call (561) 737-7733, Ext. 84445
All proceeds will benefit Bethesda’s Center for Women and Children.
dining guide
Good things really do come in small packages to he—or she—who waits.
Just ask Annamaria Arcudi. It took the Sicilian native 18 years, more than seven potential locations, two moves between two states and the convincing of one reluctant husband before she finally got the authentically Italian gelateria she always wanted.
for starters
Girasole Gelato Café
895 E. Palmetto Park Road, Boca Raton, 561/245-8093
The result is Girasole Gelato Café, a cute, colorful, postage stamp-sized spot just an ice cream cone’s throw from the ocean at the eastern end of Palmetto Park Road. To say the tiny, nine-table space is a labor of love is something of an understatement. Most of the time, Arcudi is the only employee (though baker-husband Paolo does contribute freshly baked pastries). She does all the cooking, and did much of the remodeling herself, even painting her own sign.
The menu is a mix of more than a dozen different flavors of gelato— lighter and creamier but not as dense as American-style ice cream—plus assorted cookies, cakes, pastries and coffee drinks. There’s also an array of savory dishes—antipasti, soups and salads, panini and Italian subs. It’s the fulfillment of a dream a long time in the making.
—Bill Citara
Annamaria Arcudi
dining guide
farmer’s table
1901 N. Military Trail, Boca Raton, 561/417-5836
It’s 6:30 on a muggy Saturday evening, and Farmer’s Table is packed. The place is prac tically levitating with energy—the rising buzz of dozens of conversations, the flow and bustle of a small army of servers, the con trolled mayhem of the quick-working kitchen crew. There’s a two-hour wait for a table with out reservations, and still people keep coming. The scrum at the front door is constant, as is the steady stream of diners led through the dining room to unseen tables.
Their meal and the restaurant itself have been totally shaped by the philosophy of part ners Mitchell Robbins and Joey Giannuzzi. No butter, no cream. No refined sugars or flours. Food is fresh, natural, sustainable, organic— and local, as much as possible. There are plenty of choices for the health conscious, for vegans, vegetarians and the gluten-adverse.
IF YOU GO
PrIce ranGe: Entrées $11–$23
By Design
At its best, what this translates to is food that’s as good-tasting and good-looking as it is good for you. When it doesn’t quite succeed … well, every philosophy has its limits.
Among the most popular dishes at FT are its flatbreads, at least judging by the number observed flying across the dining room. Cauliflower, brie, fig jam and arugula on a crisp, wafer-thin whole wheat crust is a beguiling mélange of flavors and textures, one that would have been more beguiling had the kitchen dialed back the sweetness of the jam and not cooked the cauliflower to mush. Expecting this still-trendy vegetable to be grilled
or roasted al dente, caramelizing its sugars and coaxing out its earthy-nutty flavors, left my taste buds longing for what might have been.
A starter of chicken meatballs tempered the letdown of bland-tasting poultry orbs with a vibrant sauce of San Marzano tomatoes under a creamy, molten blanket of house-made mozzarella.
If you hear the sound of one hand clapping, it could be the Buddha himself applauding the bowlful of vegetables, slippery udon noodles and diminutive Laughing Bird shrimp named in his honor. Channeling the broth-based noodle soups found throughout Asian cuisines, FT’s Buddha Bowl parks happily at the intersection of Righteously Healthy and Wickedly Flavorful. If the ginger-inflected over-easy egg was over too hard to spill runny yolk into the bronzed, glistening broth, Buddha says, Eat up. It’s still delicious.
Unrepentant carnivores, however, need not fear being condemned to an evening of tofu, legumes and green stuff. A hunk of slowbraised USDA Prime short rib the size of the Jolly Green Giant’s fist fell apart at the mere
Just as the menu at Farmer’s Table gives lie to the perception that healthy, “natural,” vegetable-oriented fare is all about blandness and self-denial, so too does the restaurant’s design. It announces its values before you even enter, with the space in front of the restaurant filled with raised-bed gardens verdant with vegetables and herbs. Inside is a seamless fusion of rustic and contemporary, done in warm earth tones with modern touches, like a glassed-in wine room and whitewashed wood floors contrasting with homier elements like three-tiered chandeliers made with clear glass bottles suspended from the ceiling with chains.
threat of a fork, each bite a mouthful of rich, meaty, beef-infused silk. Its accompanying red wine sauce, organic yam mash and sautéed Brussels sprouts were right out of the (healthy) steak-house playbook.
Then there’s dessert, where the road to health is paved with good intentions but not—sigh— butter and cream. A wedge of vegan chocolate layer cake with chocolate mousse frosting was to this sybaritic palate much like kissing your sister: chaste, when your taste buds yearn for hot-n-heavy. If you’re a fan of vegan desserts, you’ll probably like it just fine. If not, go home and cozy up to a pint of Ben & Jerry’s. Either way, you’ve just seen restaurant lightning in a bottle.
—Bill Citara
Buddha Bowl
Inside Farmer’s Table
dining guide
The Porch is a rotary telephone in a smart phone world. It’s talking rather than texting, taking time to stop and smell the basil instead of plugging our brains into a keyboard and losing ourselves in a vast metadatabase run by remorseless corporate bureaucrats. At a time when restaurants are about entertainment, theater, dogs, ponies, dancing bears and ever trendier combinations of ever more obscure ingredients, The Porch is about, well … food. Fresh, simple, honest food. What a concept.
The keepers of that concept are Heinrich Lowenberg and wife Pamela Lomba, owners of Cafe Via Flora in Palm Beach and another restaurant in North Carolina. At The Porch— built in 1907 as the Blank House and the third-oldest residence in Delray—they’re offering an Italian-inflected menu of dishes as homey and inviting as the restored restaurant itself.
The Italian generosity of spirit is evident the moment you sit down. Complimentary appetizers of hummus and breadsticks are whisked to your table, followed by rounds of crusty
bread with an herb and chili-spiked olive oil dip that will light a small fire on your tongue.
Carpaccio arrives as leaves of rosy beef tenderloin with real texture and flavor, smartly gilded with shavings of truffled cheese, lemon olive oil and baby arugula. Mesclun greens come gilded with slices of modestly ripe pear, candied walnuts, gorgonzola and a tangy Champagne vinaigrette. If there’s any flaw, it’s that the greens could have been better picked over to remove bruised and wilted specimens.
House-made capellini gets a suave white wine butter sauce flecked with bits of sundried tomato, tiny coins of asparagus and thumbnail-sized chunks of sweet-briny crab. It’s a dish of quiet subtlety that impresses more with each bite. Restaurant chicken is often an option for diners too timid to order something more interesting. Not so The Porch’s “chicken under a brick,” a boneless half-bird that’s citrus-marinated for two days before being flawlessly cooked to produce firm yet juicy meat and marvelously browned and crispy skin.
Desserts are not made in house, but it’s tough to complain about a square of cocoadusted tiramisu whose ubiquity does nothing to diminish the pleasure of its rapid inhalation. Let your smart phone try to do that.
—Bill Citara
“Ugly Tomatoes” salad at The Porch
Capellini Granchio
dining guide
stars next to restaurants in the guide:
palm beach county
boca raton
13 american table —451 E. Palmetto Park Road. contemporary american. This cozy, artfully rustic and modern restaurant is one of the few restaurants in the U.S. that has a Josper oven, a pricy, charcoal-fired grill-oven hybrid that cooks foods quickly at high heat to retain maximum flavor and texture. It works like a charm on chicken, resulting in remarkably crisp skin and tender meat, as well as on fistsized shrimp you can customize with one of several sauces. Don’t miss house-made potato chips with cheddar fondue and feather-light profiteroles filled with caramel and pumpkin mousse. • Dinner Tues.–Sat. 561/409-2061. $$
abe & louie’s —2200 W. Glades Road. Steaks. This outpost of the Boston steak house cooks up slabs of well-aged, USDA Prime beef like nobody’s business. Two of the best are the bone-in ribeye and New York sirloin. Start with a crab cocktail, but don’t neglect side dishes like steamed spinach and hash browns. • Lunch Mon.–Fri. Dinner nightly. Brunch Sun. 561/447-0024. $$$
Sights to Behold
Visit Arturo’s Facebook page (facebook.com/ arturosrestaurant) for mouthwatering images of various menu items.
arturo’s ristorante —6750 N. Federal Highway. Italian. Arturo’s quiet, comfortable dining room; slightly formal, rigorously professional service; and carefully crafted Italian dishes never go out of style. You’ll be tempted to make a meal of the array of delectable antipasti from the antipasti cart, but try to leave room for main courses like giant shrimp with tomatoes, cannellini beans, rosemary and an exceptionally well-done risotto. • Lunch Mon.–Fri. Dinner daily. 561/997-7373. $$$
biergarten—309 Via De Palmas, #90. German/pub. Part vaguely German beer garden, part all-American sports bar, this rustic eatery offers menus that channel both, as well as an
Dining Key
$ Inexpensive: Under $17
$$ Moderate: $18–$35
$$$ Expensive: $36–$50
$$$$ Very Expensive: $50 +
excellent selection of two-dozen beers on tap and the same number by the bottle. The food is basic and designed to go well with suds, like the giant pretzel with a trio of dipping sauces and the popular “Biergarten burger.” • Lunch and dinner daily. 561/395-7462. $
bistro provence —2399 N. Federal Highway. French. With the convivial ambience and hearty good food of an authentic Parisian bistro, this inviting, unpretentious restaurant deserves its local popularity. Mussels are a specialty, and roasted duck is excellent too. • Dinner nightly. 561/368-2340. $$
bonefish grill —21069 Powerline Road. Seafood. Market-fresh seafood is the cornerstone—like Chilean sea bass prepared over a wood-burning grill and served with sweet Rhea’s topping (crabmeat, sautéed spinach and a signature lime, tomato and garlic sauce.) • Dinner nightly. 561/483-4949. (Other Palm Beach County locations: 1880 N. Congress Ave., Boynton Beach, 561/732-9142; 9897 Lake Worth Road, Lake Worth, 561/965-2663; 11658 U.S. Highway 1, North Palm Beach, 561/7992965) $$
brio tuscan grille —5050 Town Center Circle, #239. Italian. The Boca outpost of this national chain of 100-plus restaurants does what it set out to do—dish up big portions of well-made, easily accessible Italian-esque fare at a reasonable price. If you’re looking for bruschetta piled with fresh cheeses and vegetables, house-made fettuccine with tender shrimp and lobster in a spicy lobster butter sauce, and a creditable version of the classic tiramisu, you’ll be one happy diner. • Lunch Mon.–Fri. Dinner daily. Brunch Sat.–Sun. 561/392-3777. (Other Palm Beach County locations: The Gardens Mall, 3101 PGA Blvd., 561/622-0491; CityPlace, 550 S. Rosemary Ave., 561/835-1511) $$
butcher block grill —7000 W. Camino Real, #100. Steak house/contemporary american. This casual steak house with a Mediterranean twist and a local, seasonal, sustainable ethos gives the stuffy old-fashioned meatery a swift kick in the sirloin. Beef here is all-natural and grass-fed, delivering big, rich,
earthy flavor; the New York strip is 12 ounces of carnivorous pleasure. Seafood, whether raw (tuna crudo) or simply grilled (wild-caught salmon), is palate-pleasing as well. Don’t miss the fresh mozzarella, made and assembled into a salad at your table. • Lunch and dinner daily. 561/409-3035. $$$
the capital grille —6000 Glades Road. Steaks. This is one of more than three dozen restaurants in a national chain, but the Boca Grille treats you like a regular at your neighborhood restaurant. Steaks, dry-aged if not Prime, are flavorful and cooked with precision, while starters from Wagyu beef carpaccio to a lighter version of the hardy chopped salad are nicely done too. Parmesan truffle fries are crispy sticks of potato heaven; chocolate-espresso cake a study in shameless, and luscious, decadence. • Lunch Mon.–Fri. Dinner daily. 561/368-1077. $$$
casa d’angelo —171 E. Palmetto Park Road. Italian. Angelo Elia’s impeccable Italian restaurant is a delight, from the stylish room to the suave service to the expansive wine list, not to mention food that’s by turn elegant, hearty, bold, subtle and always delicious. Dishes off the regular menu make excellent choices, like char-grilled jumbo prawns with artichoke, arugula, lemon and olive oil. But pay attention to specials like pan-seared snapper and scallops in a spicy, garlicky cherry tomato sauce. • Dinner nightly. 561/338-1703. $$$
the cheesecake factory—5530 Glades Road. american. Oh, the choices! The chain even has a Sunday brunch menu in addition to its main menu, which includes Chinese chicken salad and Cajun jambalaya. Don’t forget about the cheesecakes—from white chocolate and raspberry truffle offerings. • Lunch and dinner daily. 561/393-0344. (Other Palm Beach County locations: CityPlace, West Palm Beach, 561/8023838; Downtown at the Gardens, Palm Beach Gardens, 561/776-3711) $$
chops lobster bar—101 Plaza Real S., Royal Palm Place. Steak, seafood. Steaks are aged USDA Prime—tender, flavorful and perfectly cooked under a 1,700-degree broiler.
Boca raton Hall of famer
dining guide
There’s all manner of fish and shellfish, but you’re here for the lobster, whether giant Australian tails flash-fried and served with drawn butter or sizable Maine specimens stuffed with crab. • Dinner nightly. 561/395-2675. $$$$
cuban café —3350 N.W. Boca Raton Blvd. Cuban. Diners pack this traditional Cuban restaurant for lunch specials that start at $7.95, including slow-roasted pork served with white rice and black beans. Other highlights include the Cuban sandwich and (on the dinner menu only) lechón asado. • Lunch Mon.–Fri. Dinner Mon.–Sat. 561/750-8860. $
grand lux cafe —Town Center at Boca Raton. American. The Cheesecake Factory’s sister brand is an upscale take on the original formula, with an atmosphere inspired by the great cafes of Europe. The menu offers a range of international flavors, and the specialty baked-to-order desserts are always a big hit. • Lunch and dinner daily; breakfast on Saturday and Sunday. 561/392-2141. $$
the grille on congress —5101 Congress Ave. American. Dishes at this longtime favorite range from tasty chicken dishes and mainplate salads to seafood options like pistachiocrusted snapper or simply grilled yellowfin tuna. • Lunch Mon.–Fri. Dinner Mon.–Sat. 561/912-9800. $$
houston’s —1900 N.W. Executive Center Circle. American. With rustic features like butcher-block tables and comfy padded leather booths, Houston’s has created a “nonchain” feel, although there are more than 40 nationwide. It’s one of the hottest lunch spots in town, hosting business types and power shoppers. The menu is straightforward—big burgers on sweet egg buns, Caesar salad, roasted chicken, filet mignon—but it’s not lacking in ingenuity. • Lunch and dinner daily. 561/998-0550. $$
Theme Nights
Josef’s gives customers earlyweek reasons to dine out with its Seafood (Monday), Latin (Tuesday) and French (Wednesday) night specials.
josef’s table —5030 Champion Blvd. Continental. Josef’s touts itself as offering “the slightest dash of nostalgia,” and that’s a good thing. Though the kitchen does have a timid hand with sauces and seasonings, there’s no quibbling about the execution, whether a light, refreshing “tower” of lump crabmeat with mango, cucumber and tomato; rosy-rare double-cut lamb chops with port wine-mint sauce; pan-seared hogfish with orange beurre blanc; or the richly decadent half-moon chocolate tart. • Dinner daily. 561/353-2700. $$$
josephine’s —5751 N. Federal Highway. Italian. Tradition trumps trendy, and comfort outweighs chic at this Boca favorite. The ambience is quiet and stately but not stuffy, and the menu is full of hearty dishes to soothe the savage appetite, like three-cheese eggplant rollatini and chicken scarpariello. • Dinner nightly. 561/988-0668. $$
kapow noodle bar—431 Plaza Real. Pan-Asian. This wickedly stylish Asian-inspired gastropub delivers a delicious and inventive punch to the taste buds. Among the hardest
hitters are green tea-cured salmon with micro and fried basil and longan berries stuffed with yuzu kosho gelee, and cheesecake springrolls with a banana caramel dipping sauce. • Lunch and dinner daily. 561/347-7322. $
kathy’s gazebo café —4199 N. Federal Highway. Continental. This local stalwart smoothly rolls along with its signature blend of French and Continental dishes. The ornate, formal dining room and equally formal service are anomalies these days but are comforting nonetheless. Classic dishes like creamy lobster bisque, house-made duck paté, broiled salmon with sauce béarnaise and dreamy chocolate mousse are as satisfying as ever. • Lunch Mon.–Fri. Dinner Mon.–Sat. 561/395-6033. $$$
kee grill —17940 N. Military Trail. American. The attraction here is carefully prepared food that is satisfying, flavorful and reasonably priced. The fist-sized crab cake is a good place to start, followed by sea bass with a soy-ginger-sesame glaze. • Dinner nightly. 561/995-5044. $$$
la rosa nautica —515 N.E. 20th St. Peruvian. Expect no ambience, no pretensions, low prices and food that satisfies on a very high level. Good starters include antichuchos, chunks of grilled beef heart, and causa, a terrine-like layering of mashed potatoes and chicken salad. Ceviche and the lomo saltado are among the best in South Florida. • Lunch daily. Dinner Tues.– Sun. 561/296-1413. $$
la tre —249 E. Palmetto Park Road. Vietnamese. For almost two decades, this elegant little spot has been celebrating the delicate, sophisticated flavors and textures of traditional and contemporary Vietnamese cuisine. A house signature, shrimp tossed with coriander curry pesto, is an inspired riff on Vietnamese classics. Service and wines match the refinement of the cuisine. • Dinner nightly. 561/392-4568. $$
la villetta —4351 N. Federal Highway. Italian. This is a well-edited version of a traditional Italian menu, complete with homemade pastas and other classic dishes. Try the signature whole yellowtail snapper encrusted in sea salt; it’s de-boned right at tableside. Shrimp diavolo is perfectly scrumptious. • Dinner nightly. (closed Mon. during summer). 561/362-8403. $$
le rivage —450 N.E. 20th St. French. Don’t overlook this small, unassuming bastion of traditional French cookery. That would be a mistake, because the dishes that virtually scream “creativity” can’t compare to the quiet pleasures served here—like cool, soothing vichyssoise, delicate fillet of sole with nutty brown butter sauce or perfectly executed crème brûlee. Good food presented without artifice at a fair price never goes out of fashion. • Lunch Tues.–Fri. Dinner nightly. 561/6200033. $$
maggiano’s —21090 St. Andrews Blvd. Italian. Do as the Italians do and order familystyle, sit back and watch the endless amounts
Buzz Bi Tes i
Luigi’s
Opens
in DeLray: The (bad) luck of the Irish is good luck for fans of Neapolitan pizza, who have a new outlet for the object of their gastronomic affections since the old Paddy McGee’s space became home to Luigi’s Coal Oven Pizza (307 E. Atlantic Ave., Delray Beach, 561/274-1969).
It’s the second restaurant for chef-owner Luigi DiMeo, whose original Fort Lauderdale pizza joint earned plaudits for its authentically Neapolitan pies, made (mostly) in accordance with the rules of Italy’s pizza police, aka, the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana. Luigi’s joins nearby Scuola Vecchia as downtown’s second purveyor of über-Italian pizzas, though its comfy, clubby look stands in stark contrast to Scuola Vecchia’s sleek, modern appearance. The menu features pizzas cooked in a coal-fired oven, ranging from traditional Margherita to broccoli rabe-sausage to trufflewild mushroom. There’s also a roster of ingredients for DIY pies, as well as panini, fried calamari, spaghetti and meatballs, eggplant Parm and wings. There’s a pretty strong wine list too, focusing on Italian bottles but with the kind of variety not often seen at neighborhood pizza joints.
of gorgeous foods grace your table. In this manner, you receive two appetizers, two salads, two pastas, two entrées, two vegetables and two desserts. • Lunch and dinner daily. 561/361-8244. $$
mario’s osteria —1400 Glades Road. Italian. This popular spot is swanky in its reincarnation, but the rustic Italian and ItalianAmerican fare keeps with an osteria’s humbler pretensions. Signature dishes like the garlic rolls, lasagna and eggplant “pancakes” are on the new menu, as are posh veal osso buco ravioli in truffle cream sauce and thick, juicy rib-eye served “arrabiata” style. • Lunch and dinner daily. 561/239-7000. $$
matteo’s —233 S. Federal Highway. Italian. Hearty Italian and Italian-American food, served in giant “family style” portions, needs no reinventing. Though there is no shortage of local restaurants cooking in that genre,
the boca challenge
craft beer: IPAs
The mantra of the modern American restaurant is “farm to table.”
It makes sense. Fresh and local is always better than old and tired and shipped in from somewhere beyond the Milky Way. The same holds true for beer. Suds that are brewed, bottled, transported and stuck on store shelves for you to buy weeks or months later will never taste as good as beer poured by its maker within days or even hours of brewing.
Call it “tap to table.”
We’re lucky to have three local brewers of first-rate craft beer dispensing their wares in their own facility: Funky Buddha, Saltwater and Due South. For this issue’s Challenge we decided to pay each a visit and do a little tasting, focusing on IPAs, the fastest-growing and most popular style of craft beer. “IPA” stands for India Pale Ale, a term reportedly coined in the 1800s to describe well-hopped beers shipped from England to India. Modern IPAs are potent and complex brews, balancing bitterness from ag gressive use of hops with a caramel-like sweetness and fruity-citrusy aromas.
We judged this trio of IPAs on flavor, maintaining that balance and complexity, as well as on their aroma, mouth-feel and value, before settling on an overall score. Our only real question was: What took us so long?
—bIll CItara
Splitting the difference between the lean, bitters-forward Saltwater IPA and the lush, fruity brew from Funky Buddha is this finely crafted beer that offers exceptional balance and complexity. $5/pint
If beer were wine, Funky Buddha’s IPA would be an old-style California Chardonnay. Rich and creamy, with a sweet fruitiness balancing pleasantly bitter hops, it’s a full-bodied, uncompromising brew. $5/pint
To carry the beer-wine analogy further, if Funky Buddha’s IPA is a big California Chardonnay, Saltwater’s is a steely French Chablis. Its pronounced hoppy bitterness should appeal to hardcore IPA fans. $5/pint
Due South: 2900 High Ridge Road, Boynton Beach, 561/463-2337
Funky Buddha: 2621 N. Federal Highway, Boca Raton, 561/368-4643
Saltwater: 1701 W. Atlantic Ave., Delray Beach, 561/865-5373
it’s the details of preparation and service that make Matteo’s stand out. Baked clams are a good place to start, as is the reliable chopped salad. Linguini frutti di mare is one of the best in town. • Dinner daily. 561/392-0773. $$
max’s grille —404 Plaza Real, Mizner Park. Contemporary American. Though its signature California-influenced cookery and “American bistro” ambience are no longer furiously trendy, this stylish restaurant is as popular as ever due to consistently tasty and well-prepared food. Dishes run haute to homey, from seared-raw tuna to meatloaf wrapped with bacon. And don’t miss the luscious crème brûlée pie for dessert. • Breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. Brunch Sat.–Sun. 561/368-0080. $$
morton’s the steakhouse —5050 Town Center Circle. Steak house. There’s seemingly no end to diners’ love of huge slabs of high-quality aged beef, nor to the carnivores who pack the clubby-swanky dining room of this meatery. The star of the beef show is the giant bone-in filet mignon, which trumps with unusually deep and meaty flavor. The side of Grand Marnier soufflé is a cloud of luscious, citrus-y beauty that says while beef may be what’s for dinner, I am what’s for dessert. • Dinner daily. 561/392-7724. $$$
new york prime —2350 N.W. Executive Center Drive. Steak house. This wildly popular Boca meatery packs them in with swift, professional service, classy supper club ambience and an extensive wine list. And, of course, the beef—all USDA Prime, cooked to tender and juicy lusciousness over ferocious heat. The bone-in rib-eye is especially succulent, but don’t neglect the New York strip or steak-house classics like oysters Rockefeller, garlicky spinach and crusty hash browns. • Dinner daily. 561/998-3881. $$$$
nick’s new haven-style pizzeria —2240 N.W. 19th St., #904. Italian. Cross Naples (thin, blistered crust, judicious toppings) with Connecticut (fresh clams and no tomato sauce), and you’ve got a pretty good idea of the pies coming out Nick Laudano’s custom-made ovens. The “white clam” pizza with garlic and bacon is killer-good; Caesar salad and tiramisu are much better than the usual pizzeria fare. • Lunch and dinner daily. 561/368-2900. $
ninja spinning sushi bar —41 E. Palmetto Park Road. Japanese/sushi. “Whatever floats your boat” isn’t just a saying at this hipster sushi bar. Your sushi really does float on a boat, one of many bouncing along a channel cut into the top of the restaurant’s large, square sushi bar. High notes are the Mexican roll with tempura shrimp and avocado, and the sneakily fiery jalapeño-laced tuna tartare. If sushi doesn’t float your boat, gingery gyoza and crispy fried shrimp with a drizzle of spicy mayo probably will. • Lunch Mon.–Sat. Dinner daily. 561/361-8688. $$
pellegrino’s —3360 N. Federal Highway. Italian. The bold, brash flavors of New York-style ItalianAmerican cuisine are as in your face as a Manhattan cabbie at this low-key favorite of chef-owner Bobby Pellegrino, nephew to the clan that owns the legendary Rao’s in East Harlem. Pungent smells of garlic, anchovies, tomatoes and peppers fill the air; dishes like the rarely seen spiedini alla Romana, chicken Scarpariello and seafood spaghetti in Fra Diavolo sauce fill your belly. • Dinner Tues.–Sun. 561/3685520. $$$
Since 1981, TooJay’s Gourmet Deli has been delighting diners with an exciting and eclectic menu for breakfast, lunch and dinner. When the craving strikes indulge in authentic NY–Style deli sandwiches or settle in with slow roasted turkey, old fashioned pot roast and other time–honored comfort food favorites. Friendly, professional service is a part of every meal, so make plans today to join us for “a little taste of home”
Boca Raton Polo Shops (561) 241-5903 • Regency Court Plaza (561) 997-9911 • Glades Plaza (561) 392-4181
Locations also in Coral Springs, Plantation, Boynton Beach and West Palm Beach www.toojays.com
desserts: carrot cake, black & whites, chocolate Killer Cake.
dining guide
Special Delivery
The Racks in Boca and Delray, along with Table 42, all offer take-out delivery now.
Buzz Bite S ii
Piattini Comes to
BoCa: When Lillo Teodosi ran the kitchen at Caruso’s, it was one of the best and most popular Italian restaurants in Boca. But when Teodosi went away, it wasn’t long before Caruso’s did too.
Now the talented chef-restaurateur is back. He’s even in the same spot at Royal Palm Place. This time, though, the restaurant is Piattini (187 S.E. Mizner Blvd., 561/3678851), where the contemporary Italian menu focuses on pastas and fresh local seafood.
The classy, bistro-esque space has been given a makeover reminiscent of a Tuscan country villa, with wine-colored walls adorned with stylized portraits of Tony Soprano and others, including a giant mug of Marilyn Monroe done by hotshot commercial artist Michael Israel.
The menu features Teodosi’s take on classic Italian cookery, with dishes like crostini with Stracchino cheese, truffled mushrooms and truffle oil; grilled baby octopus with borlotti beans and arugula; house-made fettuccine with scampi, sun-dried tomatoes and garlicky wine sauce; and short ribs braised in Barolo with risotto.
p.f. chang’s —1400 Glades Road. Chinese. There may have been no revolution if Mao had simply eaten at P.F. Chang’s—the portions are large enough to feed the masses—and the exquisite tastes in each dish could soothe any tyrant. We particularly like the steamed fish of the day, as well as the Szechuan-style asparagus. • Lunch and dinner daily. 561/393-3722. (Other Palm Beach County location: 3101 PGA Blvd., Palm Beach Gardens, 561/691-1610) $$
piñon grill —6000 Glades Road. Contemporary American. The menu seemingly lists every recent trendy dish to come out of modern American restaurant kitchens, but Piñon succeeds with spot-on execution, mammoth portions and reasonable prices. Try the grilled artichokes with a zippy Southwestern-style rémoulade, a pair of giant crab cakes with more of that good rémoulade or a chocolate waffle with raspberry sauce that is the irresistible definition of lusciousness. • Lunch and dinner daily. Brunch Sat.–Sun. 561/391-7770. $$
racks downtown eatery + tavern —402 Plaza Real. Contemporary American. Though the menu generally falls under
the heading of modern American comfort food, that can mean anything from elegant presentations like the jaw-dropping lobster cobb salad to homier offerings like burgers and pizza, fiery Buffalo-style calamari, succulent chicken roasted in the wood-fired oven and an uptown version of everyone’s campfire favorite, s’mores. • Lunch and dinner daily. 561/395-1662. $$
renzo’s of boca —5999 N. Federal Highway. Italian. The buzzword is fresh at Renzo’s. Fish is prepared daily oreganata or Livornese style, sautéed in white wine with lemon and capers or grilled. Homemade pasta is artfully seasoned, and Renzo’s tomato sauce is ethereal. • Lunch Mon.–Fri. Dinner nightly. 561/994-3495. $$
ristorante sapori —301 Via de Palmas, Royal Palm Place. Italian. Sapori features fresh fish, veal and chicken dishes imbued with subtle flavors. The grilled Italian branzino, the veal chop Milan and the zuppa di pesce served over linguine are especially tasty, and the pasta (all 17 kinds!) is available in full and half orders, with your choice of 15 zesty sauces. • Lunch Mon.–Fri. Dinner nightly. 561/367-9779. $$
ristorante saporissimo —366 E. Palmetto Park Road. Tuscan. This little restaurant is making culinary magic. Here, a taste of Italy is brought to life with rabbit cacciatorá (Tuscany style), veal ossobuco, homemade pasta with wild boar sausage, and a tasty rack of venison. Homemade desserts, including tiramisu, panna cotta and zuppa ingles, will take your breath away. Service is out of this world. • Dinner nightly. Outdoor dining. 561/750-2333. $$$
ruth’s chris steak house —225 N.E. Mizner Blvd. Steaks. This is a refreshing departure from the ambience common to many steak houses; the room is comfortable, and conversation is possible. Naturally, we come here for the steak (they are sublime), but the lobster and fish are great. All your favorite sides are here, too. • Dinner nightly. 561/392-6746. (Other Palm Beach County locations: 661 U.S. Highway 1, North Palm Beach, 561/863-0660; CityPlace, West Palm Beach, 561/514-3544) $$$
seasons 52 —2300 Executive Center Drive. Contemporary American. The food—seasonal ingredients, simply and healthfully prepared, accompanied by interesting wines—is firstrate, from salmon roasted on a cedar plank to desserts served in oversized shot glasses. • Lunch and dinner daily. 561/998-9952. (Other Palm Beach County location: 11611 Ellison Wilson Road, Palm Beach Gardens, 561/6255852) $$
sushi ray—5250 Town Center Circle. Japanese/Sushi. Impeccably fresh and exactingly prepared sushi and other Japanese specialties are on display. The Nobu-esque miso sea bass gives a taste of this modern classic at a fraction of the price of the original, while the
chef’s sushi assortment offers a generous arrangement of nigiri and maki for a reasonable $20. • Lunch Mon.–Fri. Dinner daily. 561/3949506. $$
table 42 —399 S.E. Mizner Blvd. Italian. A contemporary Amer-Italian osteria with pizza describes Gary Rack’s reborn Coal Mine Pizza. The menu is compact but offers mixand-match opportunities done with great attention to detail—like irresistible honey balsamic chicken wings with grilled onions and blue cheese; and linguine in deliriously rich and creamy pesto. • Lunch and dinner daily. 561/826-2625. $$
tanzy—301 Plaza Real. Italian. Part of the swanky iPic Theater complex (though it does not service the theater), this handsome spot relies on quality ingredients and careful preparation instead of culinary special effects and car chases. The Parma Bar, a sort of sushi bar for meat and cheese fanatics, also does terrific ricotta-stuffed fried squash blossoms. Pan-seared branzino and massive bone-in veal chop are excellent, and the ethereal rosemary beignets with rosemary-olive oil gelato are luscious and cutting edge. • Lunch Mon.–Fri. Dinner daily. Brunch Sat.–Sun. 561/922-6699. $$$
taverna kyma —6298 N. Federal Highway. Greek/Mediterranean. Few present Greek cuisine better. Expertly prepared dishes cover the spectrum of Mediterranean cuisine, from cold appetizers (dolmades—grape leaves stuffed with rice and herbs) to hot starters (spanakopita, baked phyllo with spinach and feta cheese) to mouthwatering entrées like lamb shank (slow-cooked in a tomato sauce and served on a bed of orzo), massive stuffed peppers or kebobs. • Lunch and dinner daily. 561/994-2828. $$
trattoria romana —499 E. Palmetto Park Road. Italian. This local mainstay does Italian classics and its own lengthy list of ambitious specials with unusual skill and aplomb. The cozy dining room is a welcome respite from the outside world, and service is at a level not always seen in local eateries. Pay attention to the daily specials, especially if it includes impeccably done langostini oreganata and the restaurant’s signature jumbo shrimp saltimbocca. • Dinner daily. 561/393-6715. $$$
truluck’s —351 Plaza Real. Seafood This stylish and sophisticated Mizner Park restaurant applies the steak house formula of classy, clubby ambience, formal service and an extensive wine list to seafood from across the nation, with great and consistent success. Crab is the specialty here and there are myriad versions—stone, Dungeness, Alaskan, soft-shell and more. Crispy soft-shells stuffed with crab and andouille are very good, if served without a drizzle of ketchup-y sauce on top. • Dinner nightly. 561/391-0755. $$$
twenty twenty grille —141 Via Naranjas. Contemporary American. You’ve probably licked postage stamps that are larger than Ron
and Rhonda Weisheit’s tiny jewel box of a restaurant, but what it lacks in space it more than makes up for in charm, sophistication and imaginative, expertly crafted food. Virtually everything is made in-house, from the trio of breads that first grace your table to the pasta in a suave dish of tagliatelle with duck and chicken confit. Don’t miss the jerk pork belly and grilled veal strip loin. • Dinner daily. 561/990-7969. $$
uncle julio’s —449 Plaza Real, Mizner Park. Mexican. Taking Tex-Mex cuisine gently upscale with betterquality ingredients and more skillful preparation, this colorful eatery offers more than the usual suspects. You can get frog’s legs and quail, as well as beef and chicken fajitas, and one of the only palatable tamales around. • Lunch and dinner daily. 561/300-3530. $
uncle tai’s —5250 Town Center Circle. Chinese In an area with more cookie-cutter Chinese restaurants than cookies, Uncle Tai’s stands out for the elegance of its decor, the professionalism of its service and its careful preparation of familiar and less-familiar dishes. The “specialties” section of the menu has exciting dishes, like the Hunan vegetable pie, finely minced veggies sandwiched between sheets of crispy bean curd skin, and Hunan-style lamb, whose seared and succulent meat shows off the kitchen’s skill in the use of wok qi. • Lunch and dinner daily. 561/368-8806. $$$
villagio italian eatery—344 Plaza Real. Italian. The classic Italian comfort food at this Mizner Park establishment is served with flair and great attention to detail. The reasonably priced menu—with generous portions—includes all your favorites (veal Parmesan, Caesar salad) and some outstanding seafood dishes (Maine lobster with shrimp, mussels and clams on linguine). There is a full wine list and ample people-watching given the prime outdoor seating. • Lunch and dinner daily. 561-447-2257. $$
vino —114 N.E. Second St. Wine Bar/Italian. An impressive wine list of some 300 bottles (all available by the glass) offers a multitude of choices, especially among Italian and California reds. The menu of “Italian tapas” includes breaded and fried artichoke hearts, and ravishing ricotta and fig-stuffed ravioli with prosciutto, balsamic syrup and brown butter. • Dinner Tues.–Sat. 561/869-0030. $
W est BoCa
city fish market —7940 Glades Road. seafood. A multimillion-dollar remodel of the old Pete’s has turned it into an elegant seafood house with a lengthy seafoodfriendly wine list, impeccably fresh fish and shellfish cooked with care and little artifice. • Lunch Mon.–Fri. Dinner daily. 561/487-1600. $$
sybarite pig—20642 State Road 7. Contemporary american. A labor of love, pork and beer, everything at the Pig but the coarse-grain mustard is made in-house, from the bread for sandwiches to the eclectic sauces to the variety of terrific sausages. Creamy cotechino, savory duck and subtly spicy “Hellswine” are among the standouts. • Dinner Tues.–Sun. Brunch Sun. 561/883-3200. $
tempura house —9858 Clint Moore Road, #C-112. Japanese/asian. Dark wood, rice paper and tiles fill the space. An appetizer portion of Age Natsu, fried eggplant, is a consummate Japanese delicacy. Don’t miss the ITET roll with shrimp tempura and avocado, topped with spicy mayo, tempura flakes and eel sauce. • Lunch and dinner daily. 561/883-6088. $$
HALLOWEEN CELEBRATION
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2014
561-665-4900
Join us for live entertainment, festive decorations, and a costume contest featuring extravagant hotel, spa and dining prizes. Limited seating available. For reservations call:
Reduced hotel rates start at $166.60 per night, based on availability, October 30 through November 2. To book call, 1-877-57-SEAGATE or visit TheSeagateHotel.com and enter code: HALWN
dining guide
villa rosano —9858 Clint Moore Road. Italian. You can be forgiven for imagining yourself in some rustic Italian hill town as the smells of garlic and tomato sauce waft through the air. Start by sopping up the house olive oil with slices of crusty bread, then move on to a stellar version of clams Guazzetto and delicate fillets of sole done a la Francese. • Lunch Mon.–Sat. Dinner daily. 561/470-0112. $$
boynton beach
bar louie —1500 Gateway Blvd., #100. eclectic. Attempting to split the difference between happening bar and American café, Bar Louie mostly succeeds, offering burgers, pizzas, fish tacos and a variety of salads, all at moderate prices and in truly daunting portions. • Lunch and dinner daily. 561/853-0090. $
china dumpling—1899-5 N. Congress Ave., #5. chinese. The dim sum basket is an absolute must-try. Meanwhile, the pork dumplings and shrimp dumplings are not to be missed. • Lunch and dinner daily. 561/737-2782. $
martini Time
Every Thursday, from 5 p.m. to closing, Lucertola runs a $6 martini special (only at the bar)—with complimentary meatballs and riceballs.
lucertola ristoranti & birreria—1417 S. Federal Highway. Italian. What used to be known as Bad Ragaz—the chic Bavarian restaurant/beer hall in the Las Ventanas apartments at Federal and Woolbright—has changed its format, according to chef/owner Alessandro Silvestri. Silvestri is no doubt turning to the kind of menu that has received kudos at Delray’s Tramonti, where he is also executive chef. • Dinner Tues.–Sun. 561/336-3297. $$
prime catch —700 E. Woolbright Road. Seafood. Simple pleasures soar—full-belly clams, fried sweet and crispy, or a perfectly grilled piece of mahi or bouillabaisse overflowing with tender fish. Don’t miss one of the best Key lime pies around. • Lunch and dinner daily, Sunday brunch. 561/737-8822. $$
sushi simon—1614 S. Federal Highway. Japanese. Local sushi-philes jam the narrow dining room for such impeccable nigirizushi as hamachi and uni (Thursdays), as well as more elaborate dishes like snapper Morimoto and tuna tartare. Creative, elaborate rolls are a specialty. • Lunch and dinner daily. 561/731-1819. $$
delray beach
3rd & 3rd—301 N.E. Third Ave. Gastropub. John Paul Kline’s quirky, individualistic, obscurely located little place is one of the most important restaurants in Delray. The menu changes frequently, but hope the evening’s fare includes plump scallops with caramelized mango sauce, stunning delicious roasted cauliflower with Parmesan mousse and bacon, and wicked-good espresso panna cotta on it at your visit. • Dinner Mon.–Sat. 561/303-1939. $$
32 east —32 E. Atlantic Ave. contemporary american. At a time when chefs and restaurants seem to be constantly shouting their own praises, Nick Morfogen and 32 East go quietly about their way of serving thoughtfully conceived, finely crafted dishes with a mini-
ramen rules
When I moved back to the U.S. from Japan more than a decade ago, I knew I was giving up one of the things I had grown to love there—namely, ramen. No, not the microwavable stuff in a cup on which penny-pinching college students survive. I’m talking about a Tokyo-style big bowl of noodles served in pork-flavored or soy sauce-flavored broth with medallions of sliced pork, topped with kamaboko (white and pink fish) green onions, sprouts, dried seaweed, corn and spinach—plus, hard-boiled egg.
However, ramen seems to have slowly followed me back from Japan, as evidenced by its appearance on menus in and around Boca. Here are four spots worth exploring.
m asamune
Where: 310 S. Federal Highway, Deerfield Beach, 954/427-9491
What: This long-surviving sushi restaurant is a favorite with locals and tourists alike. Though sushi is the specialty, occasionally Masamune features soy-flavored ramen (Tokyo-style) or misoflavored ramen (popular in northern Japan) on special. If you are unfamiliar with ramen, this is a good place to start; the recipes here are very traditional.
nori Thai
Where: 217 E. Palmetto Park Road, Boca Raton, 561/392-2999
What: Several locals have raved about this little Asian bistro, which has a reputation for serving great Tonkotsu ramen. Tonkotsu broth is pork-based. This style of ramen comes from Kyushu, one of the southern islands. They also have an extra spicy variety of the same, which is not to be approached lightly.
What: The menu is mostly sushi, but one of the other entrée items is a very good Tonkotsu ramen. It’s less spicy than some, but you can kick it up a notch with the white pepper available on each table.
Cha-Cha Japanese Café
Where: 155 S. State Road 7, #108, Royal Palm Beach, 561/7900072
What: It’s a bit of a haul from Boca to reach this hole-in-the-wall establishment, but it’s worth it. I ordered Shoyu Cha Cha Men, which was the spicy version of the most traditional soy-broth ramen on the menu—yet it was anything but standard. The broth was just the right amount of spice, noodles were the right texture, and the vegetables were fresh. For me, it was like a mini-vacation back to Japan.
—davId Shuff
mum of fuss and artifice. The menu changes daily, but recent examples of Morfogen’s culinary expertise include plump scallops given an elegant bouillabaisse treatment and fork-tender venison with a terrific Asiago-fig risotto. When the food is this good, you don’t need to shout. • Dinner daily. 561/276-7868.
50 ocean —50 S. Ocean Blvd.
Upper Deck at Boston’s on the Beach is now the more upscale, seafood-oriented spot. The menu ranges from familiar to slightly more inventive, from a classic lobster bisque and crisp-tender fried clam bellies to rock shrimp pot pie and baked grouper topped with blue crab. The cinnamon-dusted beignets are puffs of amazingly delicate deep-fried air and should not un der any circumstances be missed. • Lunch Mon.–Sat. Dinner daily. Brunch Sun. 561/278-3364.
atlantic grille —1000 E. Atlantic Ave. Contemporary American.
luxurious Seagate Hotel & Spa is home to a 450-gallon aquarium of tranquil moon jellyfish and a 2,500-gallon shark tank. Savor inventive cuisine that takes the con temporary to the extraordinary. Bold flavors, inspired techniques and the freshest ingredients make every meal a culinary adventure. • Brunch Sat.–Sun. 561/665-4900.
buddha sky bar—217 E. Atlantic Ave. #3. Asian. Don’t miss a meal at this stylish Asia-meetsindustrial chic spot with a view of the Delray skyline. Chinese-influenced dim sum is inspired, while rock shrimp tempura and Tokyo beef skewers with twin chimichurri sauces touch the heart and the taste buds. Veggie fried rice is exemplary thanks to the kitchen’s application of wok chi. • Dinner daily. 561/450-7557.
burt & max’s —9089 W. Atlantic Ave. porary American. Burt Rapoport and Dennis Max have struck gold with their first collaboration in years, bringing an accessible and affordable brand of contemporary comfort food to west Delray. A few dishes from Max’s other eatery, Max’s Grille, have made the trek, like the hearty chopped salad and bacon-wrapped meatloaf. Other dishes are variations on the comfort food theme, from boniato and yuca chips with blue cheese to a stellar truffle-scented wild mushroom pizza. • Dinner daily. Sunday brunch. 561/638-6380. $$$
cabana el rey—105 E. Atlantic Ave. Cuban tropical. Little Havana is alive and well in Delray Beach. The menu is a palette-pleasing travelogue. Mariquitas (fried banana chips) are a tasty way to start your meal. For dinner, seafood paella is a winner, with mussels, shrimp, conch, octopus, scallops and clams. And the churrasco is terrific. • Lunch and dinner daily. 561/274-9090. $$
cabo flats —Delray Marketplace, 14851 Lyons Road. Mexican. Mexican cuisine often has more personas than Madonna. This highly stylized cantina adds another—that of California’s Chicano culture. All your favorite Mexican dishes are there, as well as enormous margaritas, but also niftier items like the terrific tuna tostadas. • Lunch and dinner daily. 561/499-0378. (Other Palm Beach County location: Downtown at the Gardens, 11701 Lake Victoria Gardens Ave., 561/6240024) $
caffé luna rosa—34 S. Ocean Blvd. Italian. This favorite is always lively, and alfresco dining is the preferred
dining guide
deconstructing the dish
hand-pulled mozzarella
with heirloom tomatoes and basil
Taylor roe, butcher block Grill
There’s cheesy supermarket mozzarella, and there’s fresh mozzarella.
Then there’s really fresh mozzarella.
The soft, creamy, silken-textured cheese that’s the glory of Italy doesn’t get any fresher than at Boca’s Butcher Block Grill (7000 W. Camino Real, #100, 561/409-3035), where mozzarella maven Taylor Roe wheels out a cart with the necessary equipment and makes it to order, at your table, while you watch. Presented simply with slices of sweet heirloom tomato, a drizzle of organic extra-virgin olive oil and reduced balsamic vinegar, and a garnish of feathery strands of microbasil, it will spoil you for mozzarella that’s more than a few minutes’ old.
—Bill Citara
1) The way of curd: You can make your own cheese curd, the essential first step to making mozzarella. But it’s a little complicated. First, you need unpasteurized whole milk. Also, citric acid, rennet tablets, a very accurate thermometer and rubber gloves. Or you can do what Butcher Block Grill does and purchase already-made cheese curd.
2) It’s the water, part I: Actually, it’s the temperature of the water that’s especially important in making fresh mozzarella. Heat your water too far past 186 degrees, and the curd “will melt into the water or stick to your hands,” says Roe. Too far below 186 degrees, and the curd won’t stretch properly. Unless you’ve made mozzarella many dozens of times like he has, use a proper thermometer.
3) It’s the water, part II: Actually, it’s the salt in the water that’s especially important in making fresh mozzarella. Roe advises adding one cup or more to the hot water in which you’ll be making the mozzarella. Too little salt, and your cheese will taste bland. Don’t worry about measurements. “It’s almost impossible” to oversalt your water, Roe says.
4) Pull: Stretching the curd after it comes together is what gives the finished product its silky smooth texture. Pick it up and let the cheese stretch under its own weight at first, then pull it gently and fold it together, dunking it in the hot water to keep the cheese pliable. Do that until the cheese is smooth and no longer tears. At that point, “You should be able to stretch it the length of your body without it ripping,” Roe says.
5) Fold: To make a large ball of mozzarella, treat it “like pizza dough,” Roe says. “Tuck [the cheese] in on the bottom so it’s smooth and round on the top. Then it kind of melts within itself and becomes one solid ball.”
6) Ice is nice: If you want to keep your mozz rather than serve it immediately, dunk it in an icewater bath as soon as it’s shaped. Then wrap and refrigerate.
GeT The recIPe Visit bocamaG.com for step-by-step instructions to Roe’s hand-pulled mozzarella.
mode. Entrée choices are enticing, but we went with the penne alla vodka with pancetta, tomato and basil. Also delicious was the costoletta di vitello, a center-cut 14-ounce veal chop lightly breaded and served either Milanese or parmigiana. For dessert, you can’t go wrong with the cheesecake imported from the Carnegie Deli. • Breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. 561/274-9404. $$
casa di pepe —189 N.E. Second Ave. Italian. A welcoming staff, familiar Italian dishes done right and moderate prices define this cozy spot with a spacious outdoor patio. • Dinner Mon.–Sat. 561/279-7371. $$
ceviche tapas bar & restaurant —116 N.E. Sixth Ave. Spanish/tapas. With more than 100 different tapas, plus paellas and entrées, this cozy, bustling eatery in the old Falcon House location has all the small plates-grazing bases covered. There’s also an equally expansive wine list. Among the best dishes to pique your palate are the well-made house ceviche. The towering tres leches cake is merely divine. • Dinner daily. 561/894-8599. $$
city oyster—213 E. Atlantic Ave. Seafood. This stylish mainstay of Big Time Restaurant Group serves up reasonably priced seafood that never disappoints, such as crab-stuffed shrimp with jalapeño cheddar grits, bacon, shiitake mushrooms and warm vinaigrette. • Lunch Mon.–Sun. Dinner nightly. Outdoor dining. 561/272-0220. $$
cut 432 —432 E. Atlantic Ave. Steak house. Hipper decor, a more casual vibe and an inventive take on steak-house favorites make this sleek restaurant just different enough to be interesting. Starters such as ceviche (prepared Peruvian style) and ultrarich oysters Rockefeller are first-rate, while the wet-aged beef is appropriately tender and tasty. • Dinner daily. 561/2729898. $$$
d’angelo pizza, wine bar and tapas —16950 Jog Road. Italian. Nothing on the menu of Angelo Elia’s modern, small plates-oriented osteria disappoints, but particularly notable are the meaty fried baby artichokes stuffed with breadcrumbs and speck, delicate chicken-turkey meatballs in Parmesanenhanced broth, and Cremona pizza with a sweet-saltyearthy-pungent mélange of pears, pancetta, gorgonzola, sun-dried figs and mozzarella. • Lunch Tues.–Sun. Dinner daily. 561/381-0037. $
d’angelo trattoria —9 S.E. Seventh Ave. Italian Don’t go expecting the tired old “Italian” culinary clichés at this wickedly stylish spot. Open your palate to more authentic and exciting Roman-style cuisine, like roasted veal bone marrow with brisk caper-parsley pesto, creamy-dreamy burrata with roasted fava beans and watercress salad, the classic tonnarelli cacio e pepe (“cheese and pepper”) and the best gelato this side of a real Roman trattoria. • Dinner daily. 561/330-1237. $$
deck 84 —840 E. Atlantic Ave. Contemporary American. Burt Rapoport’s ode to laid-back tropical dining is like a day at the beach without getting sand between your toes. Though the restaurant is casual, the kitchen takes its food seriously, whether the steallar flatbreads, the thick and juicy 10-ounce special blend burger or homey apple cobbler. And the waterfront location just seems to make everything taste better. • Lunch Mon.–Fri. Brunch Sat.–Sun. Dinner daily. 561/665-8484. $
Cake Garden Bakery & Tea House
Cake Garden Bakery & Tea House is a unique
dining guide dining
Recently purchased by a mother-and-daughter team, the vibe here is organic, local and sustainable. Expect dishes ranging from barbecue sea-whistle salmon to lump-crab guacamole. • Lunch and dinner daily. 561/279-1002. $$
Buzz Bites iii
Upscale BUrgers: You can never be too rich, too thin or have too many burger joints. Or so it seems in Boca, where two more purveyors of designer patties have set up shop.
In the old El Taco Loco spot south of Yamato Road is Burger House (499 N.E. Spanish River Blvd., 561/900-5030), from the father-and-son team of Alex and William Fernandes. Burger House patties are a half-pound of Certified Angus beef in styles ranging from basic to Philly (onions, mushrooms and provolone) to portobello mushroom and all-natural ground turkey. Of course, you can customize your burger to your taste buds’ content.
Along with burgers there’s a handful of flatbreads and wraps, salads and sides, wings and desserts from tres leches cake to Key lime pie, not to mention 50 or so craft beers and a short list of organic wines.
Dos Dólares along with its everything-ismade-in-house mantra, you have to love Taco Tuesdays at el Camino—$2 tacos all day long.
el camino —15 N.E. Second Ave. Mexican This sexy, bustling downtown spot is from the trio behind nearby Cut 432 and Park Tavern. Fresh, quality ingredients go into everything from the dusky red chili and tangy tomatillo salsas to the world-class tacos of fish clad in crisp, delicate fried skin and set off by tart pineapple salsa. Cinnamon and sugar-dusted churros are the perfect dessert. And do check out the margaritas, especially the half-andhalf blend of smoky mezcal and blanco tequila. • Lunch and dinner daily. 561/8655350. $$
fifth avenue grill —821 S. Federal Highway. American. Since 1989, this upscale tavern has been a Delray favorite. The straightforward menu focuses on entrées, especially the famed Allen Brothers beef; choose from numerous cuts and preparations—and add a lobster tail for good measure. • Lunch and dinner daily. 561/265-0122. $$
greek bistro —1832 S. Federal Highway. Greek. Flaky, overstuffed spanikopita and light and delicate beef meatballs should be at the top of your appetizer list, and though entrées don’t always reach those heights, both a long-braised lamb shank and grilled whole snapper are certainly satisfying. And the baklava is great. • Lunch and dinner daily. 561/266-8976. $
the grove —187 N.E. Second Ave. Contemporary American. Chef-partner Michael Haycook and chef Meghan O’Neal change their menu biweekly, turning out dishes exhilarating in their freshness, creativity and elegant simplicity. An appetizer of octopus with sun-dried tomato tapenade is merely terrific. • Dinner Tues.–Sat. 561/266-3750. $$
henry’s —16850 Jog Road. American. This casual, unpretentious restaurant from Burt Rapoport in the west part of town never fails to delight diners. Expect attentive service and crisp execution of everything—from meat loaf,
Inside Town Center at Boca Raton, hoping to succeed where the short-lived Butcher & the Burger failed, is Zinburger Wine & Burger Bar. This local child of the New Jersey-based parent is the first in South Florida; like the other Zinburgers in four other East Coast states, it augments its roster of Certified Angus and Wagyu beef burgers with a selection of craft beers and almost two-dozen boutique wines, plus cocktails.
The signature Zinburger comes with manchego cheese, Zinfandel-braised onions and mayo; patties can be customized with a variety of cheeses and toppings (from avocado and wild mushrooms to onion rings and applewoodsmoked bacon). There are also turkey, tuna and veggie burgers, plus salads and—of course—fries, from zucchini to sweet potato to “double truffle” (truffle aioli, Parmesan and truffle oil).
Zinburger’s Hawaii 5-0 offering
burgers and fried chicken to flatbreads and hefty composed salads. • Lunch Mon.–Sat. Dinner nightly. 561/638-1949. $$
house of siam —25 N.E. Second Ave., #16. Thai. The normally riotous flavors of Thai cuisine are muted at this family-friendly downtown spot, but that seems to suit diners just fine. Dishes, well-prepared and generously portioned, include steamed chicken and shrimp dumplings with sweet soy dipping sauce and crisp-fried duck breast in a very mild red curry sauce. • Lunch Mon.–Fri. Dinner daily. 561/330-9191. $$
il girasole —1911 S. Federal Highway. Northern Italian. This South Florida classic is not trendy, but it offers a level of comfort and consistency that has been bringing people back for 30 years. The food is fine hearty Italian, with excellent service. Try the veal Kristy or the frogs legs. • Dinner Tues.–Sun. 561/2723566. $$
j&j seafood bar & grill —634 E. Atlantic Ave. Seafood. This local favorite on Atlantic Avenue—owned by John Hutchinson (who is also the chef) and wife Tina—serves up everything from burgers and wraps to a
Avocado salad at El Camino
A fabulous night of food, wine, cocktails and entertainment, featuring Mizner Park’s extraordinary collection of TASTEMAKERS— a progressive food and cocktail tasting event you won’t want to miss!
$30VIp diningbooklet
Available now for purchase at participating Tastemaker restaurants or online at miznerpark.com. Each VIP Booklet also includes three months of exclusive dining offers at participating Tastemaker restaurants now through October 31.
presents
Wed Sept17 6 to 9:30 P.M.
rock, roll & stroll
Rock to the Shindig Band at the Gazebo & Amp’d at the Amphitheater, roll to each Tastemaker restaurant and stroll to the Amphitheater for beer samplings by SweetWater Brewery, New Belgium Brewery, Harpoon Brewery & Florida Beer Company from Gold Coast Beverage Distributors.
dining guide
review
3800 Ocean
3800 N. Ocean Drive, Singer Island, 561/340-1795
In the spirit of full disclosure, the number 3800 comes with a bit of baggage for me. It’s the street number of my boyhood home in Dayton, Ohio, a three-bedroom brick oven that probably compares in square footage to some of Boca’s over-the-top shoe closets. The closest thing to gourmet dining at 3800 Jason Ave. was when my mom actually cooked the hot dogs instead of letting my brother and I eat them raw (which, for some reason, we enjoyed).
So it was with equal parts anticipation and trepidation that I recently dined at 3800 Ocean inside the Palm Beach Marriott Singer Island Beach Resort & Spa. Anticipation in that we’d heard raves about the kitchen prowess of chef Larry LaValley and his talented team, fresh off last summer’s prized invite to cook at the James Beard House; trepidation in that, in order to finally confront my repressed memories, the menu might be filled with various spins on cold hot dogs.
As it turned out, an evening inside this chic seaside gem brought new meaning to the number 3800—for all the right reasons. The vibe inside is upscale contemporary without the fuss—white furniture and chairs set against dark-wood tables, an open and airy floor plan, and an eyeful of the Atlantic through the windows overlooking the beach.
LaValley, first in his class at The Culinary Institute of America Hyde Park back in 2000, worked for Mark Militello as executive chef at Mark’s in South Beach. Prior to 3800 Ocean, he served as culinary director of operations for the DMR restaurant group.
Such experience has LaValley at the top of his game as part of a “collaborative kitchen” (five other out-of-state chefs work the restaurant) at 3800 Ocean, which delights in using seasonal ingredients for its self-described Modern American menu. Appetizers during my visit included Peekytoe “Crab Louie” with tomato, cucumber, asparagus, egg and tarragon dressing and, my favorite, steamed Maine bouchet mussels in red curry broth. It’s not always easy to elevate mussel meat beyond its bland, rubbery texture, but the broth here was so flavorful that we nearly poured its remains into our cocktail glasses.
Entrées all came with some kind of tasty
twist—from the pan-roasted duck breast with kabocha squash puree to the crackercrusted halibut plated with braised leeks, fingerling potatoes and lobster nage. New England day boat scallops were cooked to perfection and served with root veggie mash, haricot verts, almonds and cranberries. As for dessert, the red-velvet cheesecake was an especially wicked slice of decadence. It might take more than one meal to entirely erase the numeric demons from my past, but that’s fine. It turns out 3800 Ocean is just what the doctor ordered.
menu brimming with seafood options. Don’t forget to inquire about the stunning array of 10 specials—every night. • Lunch and dinner Tues.–Sun. 561/272-3390. $$
jimmy’s bistro —9 S. Swinton Ave. Eclectic. Best bets are a lovely salad of ripe tomatoes and fresh, milky house-made mozzarella; a rich, elegant version of lusty Cajun etouffee; and caramelized bananas in puff pastry with silken vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce. • Dinner daily. 561/865-5774. $$
la cigale —253 S.E. Fifth Ave. Mediterranean. True culinary professionals turn out gently updated and classically oriented dishes notable for the quality of their ingredients and careful preparation. Sweetbreads in chanterelle cream sauce are glorious; a barely grilled artichoke with mustardy remoulade is gloriously simple. Watching your server skillfully debone an impeccably fresh Dover sole is almost as satisfying as eating it. • Dinner Mon.–Sat. 561/265-0600. $$
lemongrass bistro —420 E. Atlantic Ave. Pan-Asian. Casually hip ambience, friendly service, moderate prices and a blend of sushi and nouveau pan-Asian fare make this a popular destination. The quality of its seafood and care in its preparation are what gives Lemongrass its edge. • Lunch and dinner daily. 561/278-5050. (Other Palm Beach County locations: 101 Plaza Real S., Boca Raton, 561/544-8181; 1880 N. Congress Ave., Boynton Beach, 561/733-1344). $
Go Local
The
max’s harvest —169 N.E. Second Ave. Contemporary American. Dennis Max, instrumental in bringing the chef and ingredientdriven ethos of California cuisine to South Florida in the 1980s, is again at the forefront of the fresh, local, seasonal culinary movement.
Max’s Harvest soars with dishes like savory bourbon-maple glazed pork belly. • Dinner daily. Brunch Sat.–Sun. 561/381-9970. $$
the office —201 E. Atlantic Ave. Contemporary American. Your office is nothing like this eclectic gastropub, unless your office sports more than two dozen craft beers on tap and a menu that flits from burgers and fries to mussels. Don’t miss the restaurant’s winning take on the thick, juicy Prime beef burger and simply wicked maple-frosted donuts with bacon bits and two dipping sauces. • Lunch and dinner daily. 561/276-3600. $$
park tavern —32 S.E. Second Ave. Contemporary American. The guys from Cut 432 have done it again with this hip, casual modern American tavern. The menu is tightly focused and tightly executed, whether Maryland crab cake featuring fat chunks of succulent crab or mustard-barbecue pork belly with Carolina gold cheese rice. Don’t miss the behemoth slab of tender, juicy prime rib for a near-saintly $29—or the decadent soft pretzel bites. • Lunch and dinner daily. 561/265-5093. $$
prime —29 S.E Second Ave. Steak/Seafood. Prime is aptly named for its heart of the action location, classy neo-supper club decor, extensive wine list and roster of designer steaks. Starters and desserts fare better than entrées, especially plump, crabby Maryland-style crab cakes and indecently luscious chocolate bread pudding. Service is a strong suit too, so with a bit of work this good-looking restaurant will fully live up to its name. • Lunch and dinner daily. 561/865-5845. $$$
racks fish house & oyster bar—5 S.E. Second Ave. Seafood. Gary Rack, who also has scored with his spot in Mizner Park, certainly seems to have the restaurant Midas
touch, as evidenced by this updated throwback to classic fish houses. Design, ambience and service hit all the right notes. Oysters are terrific any way you get them; grilled fish and daily specials are excellent. • Lunch and dinner daily. 561/450-6718. $$$
sundy house —106 S. Swinton Ave. Contemporary American. It’s fine dining served in arguably the most beautiful restaurant and gardens in Delray. Menus are seasonal and imaginative. Try any of the fresh local fish dishes. • Lunch Tues.–Sat. Brunch Sun. Dinner Tues.–Sun. 561/272-5678. $$
terra fiamma —9169 W. Atlantic Ave. Italian. The pleasures of simple, hearty, well-prepared Italian-American cuisine are front and center at Wendy Rosano’s latest venture. Among the pleasures you should enjoy are delicate, pillow-y veal meatballs in Marsala sauce; lusty chicken Allessandro with mushrooms, spinach and artichoke hearts; and a finely crafted tiramisu that’s as satisfying as it is familiar. • Lunch and dinner daily. 561/495-5570. $$
tramonti —119 E. Atlantic Ave. Italian. With its roots in New York’s Angelo’s of Mulberry Street, this venue is always packed. Homemade stuffed manicotti is aromatic and glorious. Tramonti’s platter for two, containing fillet marsala, veal cutlet with prosciutto, fried zucchini and potato croquettes, is terrific. • Dinner daily. 561/272-1944. $$
tryst —4 E. Atlantic Ave. Eclectic. It’s tough to beat this hotspot with the lovely outdoor patio, well-chosen selection of artisan beers and not-the-usual-suspect wines, and an eclectic “gastropub” menu of small and large plates. Try the crisp-fried rock shrimp with chipotlemayonnaise sauce. • Lunch Mon.–Fri. Dinner nightly. 561/921-0201. $$
team at Max’s works with several area food purveyors.
Wild salmon at Max’s Harvest
dining guide
union—8 E. Atlantic Ave. Pan-Asian. This purveyor of “Asian comfort food” has brought in wacky-maki expert Candyfish Gourmet Sushi as a restaurant-within-a-restaurant. Salt-and-pepper calamari, pot stickers with panang curry sauce and “volcano” chicken wings are well-prepared. Candyfish’s sushi rolls blend all manner of fish and shellfish with cream cheese, fruits and veggies. • Dinner Tues.–Sat. 561/330-4236. $$
vic & angelo’s —290 E. Atlantic Ave. Italian. God is in the details at this upscale trattoria, and he doesn’t miss much. Ingredients like Buffalo mozzarella, house-made pastas and San Marzano tomatoes are first-rate, and execution is spot on. Try the “Old School” meatball to start, then sample the perfectly cooked veal chop. Portions are substantial, so expect leftovers. • Lunch and dinner daily. 561/278-9570. (Other Palm Beach County location: 4520 PGA Blvd., Palm Beach Gardens, 844/842-2632) $$$
LAke worth
couco pazzo —915-917 Lake Ave. Italian. Despite the name, there’s nothing crazy about the cooking at this homey eatery. It’s the hearty, soul-satisfying Italian cuisine we’ve all come to know and love. Spaghetti Bolognese is a fine version of a Northern Italian classic. • Dinner nightly. (Tues.–Sun. during summer). 561/5850320. $$
paradiso ristorante —625 Lucerne Ave. Italian. A Tomasz Rut mural dominates the main dining room, and there is also a pasticceria and bar for gelato and espresso. Chef Angelo Romano offers a modern Italian menu. The Mediterranean salt-crusted branzino is definitely a must-try. Plus, the wine list is a veritable tome. • Lunch and dinner daily. 561/547-2500. $$$
dishes like veal chop Milanese, pounded chicken breast and roasted rack of lamb. The wine list features great vintages. • Lunch and dinner daily. Outdoor dining. 561/835-1600. $$$
End-ofSummer Special Through Oct. 1, The Brazilian Court is offering a Mediterranean Dinner Package (starting at $259 per night) that includes resort lodging and a four-course meal at Café Boulud.
safire asian fusion —817 Lake Ave. PanAsian. This stylish little restaurant offers food that gently marries East and West, plus a roster of more traditional Thai dishes and inventive sushi rolls. Menu standouts include tempurafried rock shrimp or calamari cloaked with a lush-fiery “spicy cream sauce.” Expect neighborly service and reasonable prices. • Lunch Tues.–Fri. Dinner Tues.–Sun. 561/588-7768. $
LANtANA
the station house —233 Lantana Road. Seafood. If you’re hungry for Maine lobster, plucked live out of giant tanks and cooked to order, this modest replica of a 1920s train station is the place to go. Lobsters come in all sizes (up to 8 pounds) and are so reasonably priced that getting a taste of one without reservations is highly unlikely. • Dinner nightly. 561/547-9487. $$$
PALM Be ACh
bice —313 Worth Ave. Italian. Bice continues to hold the title of favorite spot on the island. The venerable restaurant offers a marvelous array of risottos and fresh pastas and classic
buccan —350 S. County Road. Contemporary American. Casual elegance of Palm Beach meets modern culinary sensibilities of Miami at the first independent restaurant by chef Clay Conley. The design offers both intimate and energetic dining areas, while the menu is by turn familiar (wood-grilled burgers) and more adventurous (truffled steak tartare with crispy egg yolk, squid ink orrechiette). Dinner daily. 561/833-3450. $$
café boulud —The Brazilian Court, 301 Australian Ave. French with American flair. This hotel restaurant gives Palm Beach a taste of Daniel Boulud’s world-class cuisine inspired by his four muses. The chef oversees a menu encompassing classics, simple fare, seasonal offerings and dishes from around the world. Dining is in the courtyard (not available during summer), the elegant lounge or the sophisticated dining room. • Breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. 561/655-6060. $$$
café l’europe —331 S. County Road. Current international. A Palm Beach standard, the café has long been known for its peerless beauty, the piano player, the chilled martinis and the delicious Champagne and caviar bar. Try one of its sophisticated classics like Wiener schnitzel with herbed spaetzle, grilled veal chop and flavorful pastas. • Lunch Tues.–Fri. Dinner nightly (closed Mon. during summer). 561/655-4020. $$$
chez jean-pierre—132 N. County Road. French. Sumptuous cuisine, attentive servers and a see-and-be-seen crowd are hallmarks of one of the island’s premier restaurants. Indulgences include scrambled eggs with caviar and the Dover sole meunière filleted tableside. When your waiter suggests profiterolles au chocolat or hazelnut soufflé, say, mais oui! • Dinner Mon.–Sat. 561/833-1171. $$$
cucina dell’ arte—257 Royal Poinciana Way. Italian. The wide range of items on the menu and the great quality of Cucina’s cuisine, combined with its fine service, ensures a fun place for a casual yet delectable meal—not to mention being a vantage point for spotting local celebs. • Breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. Outdoor dining. 561/655-0770. $$
echo —230A Sunrise Ave. Asian. The cuisine reverberates with the tastes of China, Thailand, Japan and Vietnam. The Chinese hot and sour soup is unlike any other, and the sake list is tops. This offsite property of The Breakers is managed with the same flawlessness as the resort. • Dinner nightly (during season). 561/802-4222. $$$
hmf—1 S. County Road. Contemporary American. Beneath the staid, elegant setting of The Breakers, HMF is the Clark Kent of restaurants, dishing an extensive array of exciting, inventive, oh-so-contemporary small plates. Don’t depart without sampling the dreamy warm onion-Parmesan dip with house-made fingerling potato chips, the sexy wild boar empanaditas, chicken albondigas tacos and Korean-style short ribs. The wine list is encyclopedic. Dinner daily. 561/290-0104. $$
One of the many seafood specialties at Café Boulud
Mizner Country Club Mansion
AVAILABLE: $2,195,000
Spectacular custom-built lakefront golf course country club mansion perfectly situated on a dream lot with southern exposure. 5 luxurious suites with master on first floor plus second family room or sixth bedroom upstairs, 5.3 baths, movie theatre, resort-style pool and spa, library, fireplace, huge game room with wet bar, 9,985 total sq. ft. Entire home is custom with the highest level of quality, detail and design.
dining guide
imoto —350 S. County Road. Asian Fusion/ Tapas. Clay Conley’s “little sister” (the translation of Imoto from Japanese) is next to his alwaysbustling Buccan. Imoto turns out Japanese-inspired small plates with big-city sophistication, like witty Peking duck tacos and decadent tuna and foie gras sliders. Sushi selection is limited but immaculately fresh. • Dinner daily. 561/8335522. $$
leopard lounge and restaurant
The Chesterfield Palm Beach, 363 Cocoanut Row. American. The restaurant offers excellent food in a glamorous and intimate club-like atmosphere. In fact, it’s advisable to make early reservations if a quiet dinner is the objective; the place becomes a late-night cocktail spot after 9. The menu is equally decadent. • Breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner daily. 561/659-5800. $$
nick & johnnie’s —207 Royal Poinciana Way. Contemporary American. Expect flavorful, moderately priced California-esque cuisine in a casual setting with affordable wines and young, energetic servers. • Lunch and dinner Mon.–Sat. Breakfast Sun. 561/655-3319. $$
renato’s —87 Via Mizner. Italian with continental flair. This most romantic hideaway is buzzing in season and quietly charming all year long with Italian classics and a Floridian twist—like the sautéed black grouper in a fresh tomato and pernod broth with fennel and black olives and the wildflower-honey-glazed salmon fillet with crab and corn flan. • Lunch Mon.–Sat. Dinner nightly. 561/655-9752. $$$
ta-boó —2221 Worth Ave. American. This self-described “American bistro” is less typical “American” restaurant or classical French “bistro” than it is posh-casual refuge for the see-andbe-seen crowd in and around Palm Beach. The eclectic menu offers everything from roasted duck with orange blossom honey-ginger sauce to dry-aged steaks and an assortment of pizzas. • Lunch and dinner daily. 561/835-3500. $$
Curry Quartet
tamarind offers four different thai curry specialties— Red, Green, Panang and Masaman.
trevini ristorante —290 Sunset Ave. Italian. Maitre d’ Carla Minervini is your entrée to a warm experience, complemented by a stately but comfortable room and excellent food. • Lunch Mon.–Sat. Dinner nightly. 561/833-3883. $$$
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café chardonnay—4533 PGA Blvd. Contemporary American. This longtime stalwart never rests on its laurels. Instead, it continues to dish finely crafted American/Continental fare with enough inventiveness to keep things interesting. The popular herb-and-Dijonmustard rack of lamb, regular menu items like duck with Grand Marnier sauce, and always superlative specials reveal a kitchen with solid grounding in culinary fundamentals. • Lunch Mon.–Fri. Dinner daily. 561/627-2662. $$
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b.b. king’s blues club —550 S.
Rosemary Ave. American. The restaurant at this club-dining spot won’t leave you singing the blues, but it will leave you wishing for more than a spoonful of the lusty flavors of its Southern/New Orleans cuisine. Punch up the flavors of pan-fried catfish and shrimp with grits and chicken-fried chicken on a bed of mac ’n’ cheese, and you could let the good times roll. Buffalo wings, fried pickle chips and luscious banana bread pudding are good bets. • Lunch and dinner daily. 561/420-8600. $
cabana las palmas —533 Clematis St. nuevo latino. With its bold, vibrant decor and flavors, this colorful restaurant is a treat for the palette and palate. Must-orders include mariquitas, thin, crispy plantain slices that are the irresistible Cuban answer to potato chips; cookbook-perfect ceviche of shrimp, octopus and calamari that shows how chili heat can be both fiery and subtle; and the signature “Coco Cabana,” a habanero and coconut milkinfused curry with a wealth of veggies, tubers and fat, succulent shrimp. • Lunch and dinner daily. 561/833-4773. $$
café centro —2409 N. Dixie Highway. Italian. There are many things to like about this modest little osteria—the unpretentious ambience, piano nightly after 7 p.m., the fine service, the robust portions and relatively modest prices. And, of course, the simple, satisfying Italian cuisine. The kitchen breathes new life into hoary old fried calamari, gives fettucine con pollo a surprisingly delicate herbed cream sauce, gilds snowy fillets of grouper with a soulful Livornese. • Lunch Mon.–Sat. Dinner daily. 561/514-4070. $$
leila —120 S. Dixie Highway. mediterranean. Flowing drapes and industrial lighting complete the exotic decor in this Middle Eastern hit. Sensational hummus is a must-try. Lamb kebab with parsley, onion and spices makes up the delicious Lebanese lamb kefta. Take your Turkish coffee to the patio for an arguileh (water pipe) experience. • Lunch Mon.–Fri. Dinner Mon.–Sun. 561/659-7373. $$
marcello’s la sirena —6316 S. Dixie Highway. Italian. You’re in for a treat if the pasta of the day is prepared with what might be the best Bolognese sauce ever. Another top choice is the chicken breast, pounded thin and filled with fontina and prosciutto. • Dinner Mon.–Sat. (closed Memorial Day–Labor Day). 561/585-3128. $$
pistache —101 N. Clematis St. French. Pistache doesn’t just look like a French bistro, it cooks like one. The menu includes such bistro specialties as coq au vin and steak tartare. • Brunch Sat.–Sun. Lunch and dinner daily. 561/833-5090. $$
rhythm café —3800 S. Dixie Highway. Casual American. Once a diner, the interior is eclectic with plenty of kitsch. The crab cakes are famous here, and the tapas are equally delightful. Homemade ice cream and the chocolate chip cookies defy comparison. • Dinner Tues.–Sun. 561/833-3406. $$
rocco’s tacos —224 Clematis St. mexican. Big Time Restaurant Group has crafted a handsome spot that dishes Mexican favorites, as well as upscale variations on the theme and more than 200 tequilas. Tacos feature house-made tortillas and a variety of proteins. Made-to-order guacamole is a good place to start. • Lunch Mon.–Fri. Dinner nightly. 561/650-1001. (Other Palm Beach County locations: 5250 Town Center Circle, Boca Raton, 561/416-2133; 5090 PGA Blvd., Palm Beach Gardens, 561/623-0127) $
table 26°—1700 S. Dixie Highway. Contemporary American. Take a quarter-cup of Palm Beach, a tablespoon of Nantucket, a pinch of modern American cookery and a couple gallons of the owners’ savoir faire, and you have Eddie Schmidt’s and Ozzie Medeiros’s spot. The menu roams the culinary globe for modest contemporary tweaks on classically oriented dishes. Try the fried calamari “Pad Thai.” • Dinner daily. 561/855-2660. $$$
browArd county
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nyy steak—Seminole Casino Coconut Creek, 5550 N.W. 40th St. steak house. The second incarnation of this New York Yankeesthemed restaurant swings for the fences—and connects—with monstrous portions, chic decor and decadent desserts. The signature steaks, dry-aged for 21 days, are a meat lover’s dream; seafood specialties include sautéed sea bass, Maine lobster and Alaskan king crab. Don’t miss the NYY Steak 151 volcano for dessert. • Dinner daily. Brunch Sun. 954/977-6700. $$$$
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tamarind asian grill & sushi bar —949 S. Federal Highway. Asian. Quiet and soothing, this multicultural venue serves sushi, sashimi, yakitori and wide-ranging Japanese appetizers, but Tamarind also presents a full menu of Thai classics and a sake lounge. • Lunch and dinner daily. 954/428-8009. $$
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15th street fisheries —1900 S.E. 15th St. seafood. Surrounded by views of the Intracoastal, this Old Florida-style restaurant features seafood and selections for land lovers. We love the prime rib. • Lunch and dinner daily. 954/763-2777. $$
3030 ocean —Harbor Beach Marriott Resort, 3030 Holiday Drive. American. The menu is heavy on seafood and changes several times a week. We recommend the sautéed Florida red snapper or the indulgent butter-roasted Maine lobster. For dessert, try the popular roasted banana crème brûlée. • Dinner nightly. 954/765-3030. $$$
bistro 17—Renaissance Fort Lauderdale Hotel, 1617 S.E. 17th St. Contemporary American. This small, sophisticated restaurant continues to impress with competently presented food. The menu is surprisingly diverse. • Breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. 954/6261748. $$
bistro mezzaluna —1821 S.E. 10th St. Italian. The bistro is all Euro-chic decor—mod lighting, abstract paintings. It also has good food, from pastas to steaks and chops and a wide range of fresh seasonal fish and seafood. Don’t forget the phenomenal wine list. • Lunch and dinner daily. 954/522-6620. $$
bongusto ristorante —5640 N. Federal Highway. Italian. This is a well-kept secret, featuring dishes that will meet the standards of those who savor authentic Italian. Involtini capricciosi—tender-rolled veal stuffed with spinach, prosciutto and fontina cheese—is satiating, while the whole yellowtail snapper is an equal delight. • Dinner Tues.–Sat. 954/7719635. $$
café martorano —3343 E. Oakland Park Blvd. Italian. Standouts include crispy calamari in marinara sauce and flavorful veal osso buco. Our conclusion: explosive flavor, attention to all the details and fresh, high-
quality ingredients. Waiters whisper the night’s specials as if they’re family secrets. • Dinner daily. 954/561-2554. $$
canyon —1818 E. Sunrise Blvd. Southwestern. Billed as a Southwestern café, this twist on regional American cuisine offers great meat, poultry and fish dishes with distinctive mixes of lime, cactus and chili peppers in a subtle blend of spices. The adobe ambience is warm and welcoming, with a candlelit glow. • Dinner nightly. 954/765-1950. $$
casablanca café —3049 Alhambra St. American, Mediterranean. The restaurant has an “Arabian Nights” feel, with strong Mediterranean influences. Try the peppercorndusted filet mignon with potato croquette, Gorgonzola sauce and roasted pepper and Granny Smith relish. • Lunch and dinner daily. 954/764-3500. $$
casa d’angelo —1201 N. Federal Highway. Italian. Many dishes are specials—gnocchi, risotto and scaloppine. The veal chop is grilled and blanketed in a thick layer of Gorgonzola. A delightful pasta entrée is the pappardelle con porcini: thick strips of fresh pasta coated in a light red sauce and bursting with slices of porcini mushrooms. • Dinner nightly. 954/5641234. $$
chima —2400 E. Las Olas Blvd. Steaks. The Latin American rodizio-churrascaria concept—all the meat you can eat, brought to your table—is done with high style, fine wines and excellent service. The sausages, filet mignon, pork ribs and lamb chops are very good. • Dinner daily. 954/712-0581. $$$
eduardo de san angel —2822 E. Commercial Blvd. Mexican. Try master chef Eduardo Pria’s pan-sautéed Florida blue crab and yellow corn cakes. As far as soups go, there’s the pasilla-chile-flavored chicken broth with fresh “epazote” (fried corn tortilla strips, sliced avocado, sour cream and homemade cheese). The pan-seared beef tenderloin filet mignon is sublime. • Dinner Mon.–Sat. 954/772-4731. $$$
emunah café —3558 N. Ocean Blvd. Kosher, organic. Don’t let the New Age “spirituality” throw you off. Focus on the fresh, organic ingredients that are incorporated into inventive sushi, soups and salads and (mostly) Asian-influenced entrées. • Lunch and dinner Sun.–Thurs. Sat. late evening hours. Closed Fri. 954/561-6411. $
il mulino —1800 E. Sunrise Blvd. Italian. This modest, unpretentious Italian restaurant doesn’t attempt to reinvent the culinary wheel.
panied by cookbook-perfect crème brûlée and chocolate pot du crème. • Dinner Mon.–Sun. 786/279-6600. $$$$
bal harbour
la goulue —Bal Harbour Shops, 9700 Collins Ave. French. La Goulue means “the glutton,” and this stylish brasserie offers many excuses for gluttony. Luscious foie gras presented in a green apple for one, opulent lobster risotto under shaved black truffles for a second. • Lunch and dinner daily. 305/865-2181. $$$
the palm — 9650 E. Bay Harbor Drive. Steaks. The portions are giant, but you’ll surely clear your plate of 3- to 7-pound jumbo Nova Scotia lobster or a tender filet mignon. S&S cheesecake shipped from the Bronx is pure heaven. • Dinner nightly. 305/868-7256. $$$
coconut grove
bizcaya grill—Ritz-Carlton, 3300 S.W. 27th Ave. european-american. The versatile menu features “simply grilled” items. The boldly flavored menu also offers “house specialties,” contemporary takes on bistro fare. • Breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. 305/644-4670. $$
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caffe abbracci —318 Aragon Ave. Italian. The dining room is handsome and understated, a fitting ambience for Miami’s movers and shakers. That’s just part of the draw of Abbracci, though the regional Italian fare has achieved its own status as some of the best in the Gables. You can’t go wrong with the porcini risotto or the pounded veal chop “tricolore.” • Lunch Mon.–Sat. Dinner nightly. 305/441-0700. $$
la palme d’or—The Biltmore, 1200 Anastasia Ave. French. Chef Philippe Ruiz emphasizes modern French fare from the southern regions of France, doing so with classic technique and light-handed manner. The portions are relatively small, encouraging five courses, and guests may design their own custom tastings, with a wide variation in price. • Dinner Tues.–Sat. 305/445-1926, ext. 2400. $$$$
ortanique on the mile —278 Miracle Mile. caribbean. Menu highlights include tropical mango salad, spicy fried calamari salad, Caribbean ahi tuna with wasabi potatoes and jerk-spiced Cornish game hen. • Lunch Mon.–Fri. Dinner nightly. 305/4467710. $$$
pascal’s on ponce —2611 Ponce de Leon Blvd. French. When Pascal Oudin ran the kitchen at the Grand Bay Grand Café, his tropical take on French cuisine earned him national acclaim. Now, he offers a more streamlined, but still contemporary, French menu. We definitely suggest the sea scallops, which are topped with short ribs and served with truffle sauce. • Lunch Mon.–Fri. Dinner Mon.–Sat. 305/444-2024. $$$$
mIamI
azul—500 Brickell Key Drive. Contemporary american. The kitcheon tricks out its luxurious Asian-European-Contemporary American menu with flashes of “molecular gastronomy.” Look for dishes like brioche-crusted yellowtail snapper with cuttlefish, chorizo brandade and squid ink “charcoal.” While looking out over the stunning expanse of Biscayne Bay from the chic, elegant dining room, look over the equally stunning wine list, which reads like an encyclopedia of the world’s great vintners. • Dinner Mon.–Sat. 305/913-8288. $$$$
michael’s genuine food & drink—130 N.E. 40th St. american. At James Beard award-winning chef Michael Schwartz’s unpretentious restaurant, you’ll get plenty of genuine satisfaction from genuinely delicious
“Before you and your staff from Boca Nursing Services started taking care of Helen and I, we existed; now we are living again! Thank you, Rose.”
-Dr. K.D.
Rose Glamoclija, R.N. Owner and Administrator
Serving Broward, Palm Beach, Martin & St. Lucie Counties
342 E. Palmetto Park Rd., Suites 1 & 2 Boca Raton, FL 33432 (561) 347-7566 Fax (561) 347-7567
food, exactingly prepared and simply presented. Woodroasted double yolk farm egg and crispy pork belly are divine. Surprisingly, all the desserts from rock star pastry chef Hedy Goldsmith aren’t rock-star quality, but dining here is such a genuine pleasure it almost doesn’t matter. • Lunch Mon.–Sat. Dinner nightly. Brunch Sun. 305/5735550. $$
michy’s —6927 Biscayne Blvd. Contemporary American. There’s a lot to like about Michy’s. Dishes like creamy truffled polenta with poached egg and bacon are lovely. The wine list is exciting and exceptionally well-chosen, and service is on a level rarely seen in South Florida restaurants. • Dinner Tues.–Sat. Entrées 305/759-2001. $$$
romeo’s café —2257 S.W. Coral Way. Northern Italian. There is no menu per se. After ascertaining your food allergies and preferences, Romeo will dazzle you with six courses. We loved the lightly breaded sea bass with lima beans, the risotto with scallops and cilantro, and the penne with capers and porcini mushrooms. Excellent service and a good wine list. • Lunch Tues.–Fri. Dinner Tues.–Sun. Prix fixe six-course menus. 305/859-2228. $$$$
versailles restaurant & bakery—3555 S.W. Eighth St. Cuban. Versailles has been one of Calle Ocho’s most popular restaurants since 1971. This is good-to-the-last-black-bean Cuban with a menu the size of the Old Testament. It’s also one of the better people-watching spots in town. • Breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. 305/444-0240. $
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barton g. the restaurant—1427 West Ave. Contemporary American. Barton G., an event impresario with a flair for serious theatrics, has fashioned his unique restaurant with fun and interesting fare. Choices include popcorn shrimp—served with real popcorn in a movietheater container. Desserts look like props from “Pee Wee’s Playhouse.”• Dinner nightly. 305/672-8881. $$$
casa tua—1700 James Ave. Northern Italian. This 1925 Mediterranean Revival property with an oftchanging menu showcases simple, sophisticated ingredients that typify the best of Italian cooking. • Dinner Mon.–Sat. Outdoor dining. 305/673-1010. $$$$
escopazzo —1311 Washington Ave. Italian. Escopazzo is consistently cited as the best Italian restaurant on South Beach—but patrons also dig the health-conscious vibe; the retaurant bills itself as organic, with a raw foods component on the menu. Pasta is the star here, handrolled and tossed with far more alluring partners than meatballs or clams—as in pumpkin ravioli with whitetruffle cream sauce and pappardelle with buffalo-meat ragoût. • Dinner nightly. 305/674-9450. $$
joe’s stone crab —11 Washington Ave. Seafood You’re likely to wait a few hours for the privilege of getting a taste of old Florida (not to mention the best stone crabs on the planet). But it’s worth it. Fried oysters, lyonnaise potatoes, creamed spinach and Key lime pie are other specialties. • Lunch Tues.–Sat. Dinner nightly in season. Dinner Wed.–Sun., mid-May–July (Closed Aug., Sept. and half of Oct.). 305/673-0365. $$$
5678 Vintage Oaks Circle | Delray Beach | $6,500,000 This exquisite estate sits on 3 lots, one of which is fully buildable and deed-able. Spanning over 16,000 sf, the property boasts 24 foot ceilings with architectural details throughout. Michael Ledwitz 561.235.3900
BOCA RATON - DIRECT INTRACOASTAL 5550 Coastal Drive | Boca Raton | $3,293,000 | This Tuscan inspired residence is richly appointed emphasizing custom craftsmanship throughout. Outstanding features include elevator, 6 bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms and gourmet kitchen. Anthony Mannarino 561.289.7690 Robin Perotti 561.860.5869
OCEANFRONT ESTATE AT THE ARAGON 2492 S Ocean Boulevard, M-N | Boca Raton $5,999,999 | Natural light, ocean views and fine finishing welcome you to this 6 bedroom, 8.5 bathroom beachfront villa at The Aragon with best concierge amenities. Melissa Johnson 561.244.9904
CANYON TRAILS - BUILT 2013 10557 Cape Delabra Court | Boynton Beach | $429,900 Spectacular Aruba model, turnkey & move in ready. This 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath features a chef’s dream kitchen, beautiful open floor plan and too many upgrades to mention. A must see! Randi Pilato 561.866.8263
Oct. 9
taste of Delray marketplace
In support of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, enjoy appetizer and cocktail samplings at participating restaurants and an exclusive $15 shopping voucher valid for use at participating retail and specialty stores. Advance tickets can be purchased online at delraymarket.com or $25 at the door.
Park the car, drop the bags, then roll with your friends at Loews Miami Beach Hotel with our two free drinks and parking offer. For more information, visit loewshotels.com/miami-beach-hotel and reserve your next stay now. 1601 collins ave., miami beach 877/563-9762 • loewshotels.com/Miami-Beach-Hotel
Oct. 16-19
key to the cure charity shoppiNG weekeND
Saks Fifth Avenue Boca Raton will host its annual Key To The Cure four-day shopping weekend Oct. 16-20 to benefit the Boca Raton Regional Hospital’s Christine E. Lynn Women’s Health & Wellness Institute. On Thursday, Oct. 16, Saks will kick off the shopping weekend with Brushes with Greatness, a mega beauty event featuring celebrity makeup artists, exclusive launches, unique beauty experiences, special gifts and much more. For more information, please call 561/620-1231.
Saks Fifth Avenue • Town Center at Boca Raton, 5800 Glades Road • 561/620-1231 • saks.com
balshi mD Derma-ceuticals
Tom Balshi, M.D., dermatologist and cosmeceutical designer, has founded a cutting-edge combination of scientific discovery and natural ingredients to create the finest skin-care products available. Rescue your eyes with “SOOTHE,” the Intense Repair Eye Cream. Balshi MD brings you the foremost thinking in scientific skin-care technology to relieve puffiness, remedy dark circles under the eyes and soothe sensitive undereye wrinkles. 4665 W. Atlantic Ave., Delray Beach 561/272-6000 • southflderm.com
The Bell Estate | 3862 Princeton Estate | $35,000,000 | This palatial home is all about living and entertaining on a very grand scale. The 27,000 sf estate features 8 bedrooms, 16 bathrooms, the Star Trek theatre, “Call of Duty” room, a ballroom, a basketball court and a resort-style outdoor entertainment area. Featured on CNBC, CBS News and many others. Must see to believe! Web# RX-10040636.
750 Lake Drive | Boca Raton | $12,750,000
Located on prestigious Lake Boca Raton with direct ocean access, this estate is a yachter’s dream. With the total of 24,000 sf, the home boasts a 9-car garage, an outdoor entertainment area, loggia, an infinity-edge pool and spa and a tranquility garden. Web# RX-9973831
706 SE 2nd Street | Delray Beach | $7,395,000
Delray Beach showpiece estate that is a serene hideaway with a palm-fringed outdoor entertainment area, private dock and an infinity edge pool. Florida waterfront at its best with 120 ft of direct frontage on Intracoastal Waterway. Web# RX-10045466
1000 S Ocean Boulevard, 105 | Boca Raton | $4,750,000 Incredible contemporary direct ocean front residence with stunning interior design by Steven G at the prestigious 1000 Ocean building. This 4,370 sf villa features 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms, private plunge pool, a garage and amenities of the Boca Resort. Web# RX-10052689
DINE lIKE lEgENDS
The region’s most sought-after steakhouse, NYY STEAK specializes in the finest dry-aged USDA prime steaks, five-star seafood and sumptuous desserts. Featuring a signature Sunday brunch with live entertainment every Sunday from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. $60 per person. Reservations are recommended. 5550 N.W. 40th St., Coconut Creek 954/935-6699 • seminolecasinococonutcreek.com
BOSTON pROpER
Paisley Embellished Top (item #570115347), $119, available only at Boston Proper. Get it at our boutique in Town Center at Boca Raton. Then, wear it like no one else! 6000 Glades Road, Boca Raton 561/447-8633 • bostonproper.com
Sept. 16
STATE-OF-THE ART SKINCARE
Dr. Shari Topper and Dr. Jodi Fiedler of DermPartners would like to invite you to join them on Tuesday, Sept. 16 for their upcoming cosmetic event. Discounts will be offered on Sculptra, Radiesse, Juvederm, Juvederm Voluma, Dysport and Botox, as well as Pearl Fraxel Laser, Limelight Facial, Laser Genesis and CoolGlide Hair Removal. Call for more information and to schedule your appointment.
21020 State Road 7, Suite 120, Boca Raton 561/883-5640 • dermpartnersbocaraton.com
Oct. 15
HOly CROSS URgENT CARE & ImAgINg CENTER COmmUNITy CElEBRATION
Celebrate the opening of our Urgent Care & Imaging Center, 5 to 7 p.m. Services/treatments will include $20 school (and other) physicals, immunizations, digital mammography, 64-slice CT, X-ray, ultrasound, bone density, workers compensation injuries, trips and falls, strains, moderate back problems, mild to moderate asthma, bleeding and cuts, eye irritation, fever and flu. 1799 S. Federal Highway, Boca Raton 561/347-7933 • holycrossurgentcare.com
in boca news
Bill Citara: Dining Reviews
Bill breaks down the tri-county restaurant scene—from new reviews and dining news to kitchen gossip—every Monday, Tuesday and Friday.
Randy Shultz: City, County & State News
As the City Watch blogger, Randy keeps tabs on issues important to residents of Boca and beyond.
John Thomason: Art & Entertainment Reviews
John takes readers inside the arts with concert, exhibition and movie reviews, cultural news and special profiles every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Shaina Wizov: Boca After Dark
Follow Shaina as she explores the nightlife scene at lounges and restaurants throughout Boca and Delray.
out&about
festival of the arts
Where: Boca Raton
aBoUt the eveNt: Festival of the Arts Boca celebrated its eighth season, delivering yet another outstanding group of musicians, dancers and esteemed authors/speakers to its 10-day celebration of culture. The lineup included famed violinist Itzhak Perlman, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and jazz musician Arturo Sandoval.
Visit bocamag.com for photo galleries from social
store openings, charity fundraisers and other community gatherings in and around Boca Raton. To submit images for Out and About, e-mail appropriate material to people@bocamag.com.
[ 1 ] Eva Chilson, Wendy Larsen and Charlie Siemon with the cast of Cirque de la Symphonie
out&about
women with wings and wisdom
WHERE: Boca Raton
ABOUT THE EVENT: About 300 guests gathered at Mar-a-Lago Club for WXEL’s 11th annual Women with Wings and Wisdom luncheon. Elizabeth Fago, Dorothy Lappine and Christine Pitts were honored for their dedication to and support for public broadcasting with the 2014 Women with Wings and Wisdom award. The event included a gourmet meal cooked by chef Pat Harrington and a fashion show hosted by Bloomingdale’s.
[ 1 ] Debra Tornaben and Delaney Brey
[ 2 ] Laurel Sauer and Nancy Nesselt
[ 3 ] Desiree Mufson, Rhoda Warren, Suzi Goldsmith and Mary Ellen Pate
[ 4 ] Mia Maneriti, Roselee Wayman, Elizabeth Fago and Liz Solomon
[ 5 ] Bernard Henneberg and Nicholas Perricone
SAINT ANDREW’S SCHOOL
Developing Students in Mind, Body, and Spirit
Please join us for:
Lower School Open House
November 12, 2014 - 9:00 am
Middle/Upper School Combined Open House
December 6, 2014 - 10:00 am
JK/K Curriculum Night
January 8, 2015 - 7:00 pm
out&about
hanley treatment center reception
WHERE: Manalapan
ABOUT THE EVENT: Yardley Manfuso hosted a reception at her home in Manapalan to honor the legacy of the Hanley Center Foundation, a nonprofit substance abuse center in West Palm Beach. Guest of honor Mike Hanley, son of the Hanley Center’s founders, said he was proud of continuing his parents’ legacy of providing a world-class treatment center in Palm Beach County.
[ 1 ] Ann Davis and John Davis
[ 2 ] Andrew Rothermel, Yardley Manfuso and Mike Hanley
[ 3 ] Anne Keresey, Rachel Docekal and Nellie Benoit
[ 4 ] Basil Diamond and Kathryn Diamond
[ 5 ] Susan Faries and Tom Gerrard
out&about
[
the concert for the children
WHERE: Boca Raton
ABOUT THE EVENT: Diana Ross took center stage during Boca West Foundation’s “The Concert for the Children,” which raised more than $1 million for 14 local children’s charities. The concert was held at Akoya Amphitheater, where 2,000 guests were given the chance to meet Ross after the show.
[ 1 ] Maurice and Dorothy Bucksbaum
[ 2 ] Robert Siemens, Richard Siemens, Rebecca Siemens Spooner and Jim Spooner
[ 3 ] Keith Miller, Olga Katz, Doreen Daily, Sandra Boos, Diana Ross, Rod Hagwood, Alison Weiss and Don Weiss
[ 4 ] Robert and Lisa Siemens
[ 5 ] Cynthia and Sheldon Rubin
PIAGET GOLD CUP
WHERE: Palm Beach
ABOUT THE EVENT: Team Valiente took home the Piaget Gold Cup trophy during the seventh annual Piaget Gold Cup tournament in Palm Beach. The event, which was hosted at the International Polo Club, featured a pre-match brunch at the club’s Mallet Grille.
[ 1 ] Larry Boland, and Michelle and Jeff Hall
[ 2 ] Chalie McGrath, Caissie McGrath and Stephanie Fulton
[ 3 ] Nico Pieres, Facundo Pieres and Gonzalo Pieres Jr.
[ 4 ] Herrick and Dina O’Connor Tommy Kato, and Tara and Eduardo Carrete
out&about
YMCA inspirAtion breAkfAst
Where: Boca Raton
About the event: More than 350 people gathered at Boca Raton Resort & Club to celebrate the YMCA’s impact on the community and honor philanthropist Peter Blum for his dedication to the Y’s cause. The event was hosted by CBS-12 news anchor Liz Quirantes, with former Miami Dolphins linebacker John Offerdahl as a keynote speaker. More than $165,000 was raised at this 12th annual breakfast.
[ 1 ] Joe Mir, Judy Joffe, Tim Smith and Craig Ehrnst
[ 2 ] Carl Foster, Liz Quirantes, Lynn and John Offerdahl, and Jan Savarick
[ 3 ] Joe Cardenas, Steven Rivera, Jason Aube, Marcy Grant, Maria Gordon, Frank Young and John Julian
[ 4 ] Trina Chin Cheong and Peggy Conklin
[ 5 ] Peter Blum, Gloria Hosh, Linda Spielmann and Angel Soto
[ 5 ]
out&about
Allegro Society MuSicAl luncheon
WHERE: Delray Beach
ABOUT THE EVENT: The Allegro Society held one of its most successful fundraisers at the Delray Beach Club, raising more than $13,000 at the event. The luncheon included a silent auction and musical performances. Proceeds will benefit the SYMPHONIA, a professional classical music group in Boca Raton.
[ 1 ] Tamara Morgenstern and Peg Greenspon
[ 2 ] Steve Pomeranz, Orin Levy and Donna Levy
[ 3 ] Pat Ryan, Maria Fife, Sung Knowles, Helve Massakas, Carolyn Miller, Sharon Arnett and Caron McGinley
SAfAri pArty
WHERE: Boca Raton
ABOUT THE EVENT: The Safari Party at Royal Palm Yacht & Country Club, hosted by Fort Lauderdale-based Designs by Sean and Bocabased Famous Firsts Limited, won the Best Decor award from Special Events magazine for the under-$50,000 decor budget. The national awards are akin to the Oscars for event planning.
[ 4 ] Richard Magrid and Judy Magrid
[ 5 ] Party room decor
Michael Buble
Jack Jones
Steve Tyrell
Connie Francis
Frank Sinatra
Tony Bennett
Ann Hampton Callaway
A Dick Robinson Entertainment Station
theBOCA interview: John Kelly
continued from page 89
a partnership … and what the companies got out of it was a well-prepared work force.
Is FAU tAkIng enoUgh AdvAntAge oF Its own pArtnershIps?
Not yet. … To have partners like [Max Planck and Scripps] sitting there with some of the highest intellect that you could ever hope to have— and then you add a research facility into the mix? It’s very fertile ground for student growth— and could really redefine the university.
… The final [strategic plan] is really something that’s iterative. We’ll do a careful analysis based on our strengths and weaknesses, and then determine how we can become a great national university—one that really reflects the talents of the campus.
I want people to own it ... by participating and helping to develop [our goals]. At the end of the day, I understand that somebody has to make the call. But the call will be better if we’re collaborative and listening along the way. We want the thoughtfulness and creativity of the whole campus during the planning process. And then the budget has to align with the
plan. It’s a simple shift, but philosophically game-changing when you budget to the plan. If you plan to the budget, you will stop when you hit the budget number; the budget becomes a ceiling. If you’re passionate about your plan, you’ll find the resources. …
the word AroUnd cAmpUs Is thAt yoU’ve spent A lot oF tIme tAlkIng to stUdents. whAt hAve yoU leArned From those dIscUssIons?
There was a study by Purdue University that [explored] what defines success at a later stage in life and how that equates back to your college experience. … [The study revealed] that it was more about the interaction of people caring about you, the relationships with faculty and people who helped to shape your thinking.
I want the students here to know I care. I want them to be successful. And I want to hear what they think. … I even told the football coaches, if you want me to recruit, I’ll do it. I want the [parents] and the players who come here to know that I care about them; and that I care about them academically.
In A perFect world, how wIll the rest oF the coUntry perceIve FAU FIve yeArs From now? As the fastest-improving university in America. That’s what we’ll be.
For more oF the john kelly interview, visit bocamag.com.
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What I Did This Summer
Two hours in May wiTh MarTha Gail Kelly was all ThaT MaTTered.
At its outset, summer is a vast shimmering field of possibility. It becomes the vacation in the Rockies, a waterfall in Asheville, the Duomo in Florence. You can see the days lengthen and spill into night, the drowsy afternoons, the great dramatic storms—and you have all the time in the world.
Except it’s already over.
Here it is September, school has started and I am already looking back at the last few months—one weekend blurring into the next, a trip here and there, until I come to a full stop on a morning in May that marked the best two hours of the whole summer. I was in London for about 48 hours, part of a whirlwind press trip, and I had made arrangements to see Martha Gail Kelly, who had been a teacher of mine when I lived in London, as well as my idol since the day she kidnapped me from my seventh-grade homeroom and hid me under her desk in the art department so I could help her wash paintbrushes. I have this image of her in thigh-high suede boots, a mass of curly hair held back in a ponytail, the way she bounded through the halls, excited about every little thing, laughing and gesturing and transfixing us with the most unbridled enthusiasm for being alive that I have ever seen. Best of all, when she talked to you, she made you feel as if you were the most interesting person she had ever met, no matter that you were 12 years old and terminally shy.
Martha
Gail Kelly
morning just to visit them. More often than not I would stay for dinner and absorb essential Gail Kelly declarations, like “life is too short to peel tomatoes” or “in my mind I’m still cartwheeling down the beach!” I saw Gail and Bob only once after that, 20 years later, but Gail kept up her e-mails to me all that time, through new grandchildren, her sad years when Bob was sick, the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. But then the emails slowed, as she herself became ill. Still, I had managed to contact her, and the next thing I knew it was May and I was in a London taxi on the way to the Mews, wondering how my seventh-grade teacher could be 88 years old.
Later, when I was in college and went back to England for the summer, I found her again. I posed for her husband, Francis “Bob” Kelly, an artist of some renown. On Saturdays I would take the Tube to their tiny Leinster Mews townhouse, walk up the narrow stairs and spend the day while he painted me. They always had this big stainless steel coffee urn brewing for the people who would invariably show up all
Leinster Mews had not changed. The cobblestones still rattled under the cab, and No. 18 had the same small door, the steep narrow stairs, the tiny living room. And there she was, on the couch, slightly hunched, her hair gray, the same fine bone structure in her face, the blue eyes that danced. I could feel my heart coming up in my throat, the years falling away from us in the mid-morning light, and there I was again, hanging on her every word, still hoping that even a fraction of her joy would rub off on me.
I think that was the fastest two hours of my life that morning. We talked, woman to woman more than teacher and student. We had strawberries and cream and, in a colossal effort, she climbed up a flight of stairs to Bob’s old studio, “where all the magic happened,” as she put it. When it was time to leave, I found myself not wanting to say goodbye. Not wanting to wonder if I would ever see her again.
I was halfway down the stairs when I got the answer.
“I have miles to go before I sleep, you know,” she called out, the voice strong and clear.
Yes, you do, I thought. She was cartwheeling down the beach, and I was right there beside her.
A Salute to Teachers
The hisTory of an educaTion is marked by The people who gave you a hand.
“The best teacher is not the one who knows most but the one who is most capable of reducing knowledge to that simple compound of the obvious and wonderful.”— H.L. Mencken
At some point in our lives, we all need a mentor. Not a boss, not a supervisor, not a drill sergeant, not a coach— but an experienced friend who cares about you and is willing to stand by you through challenging situations. Mentors are cheerleaders, disciplinarians, role models and, I believe, advocates.
Mentoring is not about holding your hand and guiding you down a path. I believe it’s all about a person or persons who will stand beside you in support of your vision and help you move forward. They are people who will permit you to fail because the only way we learn is from our mistakes. Good mentors may throw you into the deep end of the pool, but they give you enough rope (and a life preserver) to make your way out without drowning.
I have been fortunate to have crossed paths with excellent mentors in the course of my life. My eighthgrade teacher, Ms. McDevitt, helped me come out of my shell and build my confidence by asking me to speak to the entire student body, grades seven through 12, about the play they were going to see, George Bernard Shaw’s “Androcles and the Lion.” I remember standing on the auditorium stage, looking out at that sea of faces, my knees knocking, hearing a voice that I realized later was mine. My speech was two minutes long, but it changed me forever. I knew if I was asked again to speak in public, I could do it.
them aside, and then jump right into the scrimmage with us, talking to us as he played, shouting, teaching all the time. And I can still see his disappointment in me after we lost a big game, shouting that he would never tolerate another performance like that, that I was better than that. And it never happened again.
I remember Dan Burke, president of Capital Cities/ABC, constantly tweaking my performance when I was the company’s CFO, encouraging me to improve my public speaking and writing. I can remember one Christmas Eve, after a punishing travel schedule; we were in the office, and he asked me if I had done my Christmas shopping. I shook my head. With that he said, “Put on your hat and coat, because we are going shopping, and then we’re having a drink.” It wasn’t just about communicating, I learned; it was about what mattered, about setting priorities. I am forever grateful to him for his leadership and caring.
My high school basketball coach in Cincinnati, Will “The Old Fox” Bass, was another person who changed my life. Coach Bass produced some of the best basketball teams that ever came out of southern Ohio, and he was legendary by the time he retired. He was already at least 50 when he was my coach, but that didn’t stop him from getting right out there in the mix with us. I can remember him at practice in his old cutoff shorts with his slight paunch. He’d take off his glasses, carefully put
But my latest mentor for the last 24 years has been our magazine’s group editor, Marie Speed. She is a perfectionist for the written word—always insisting on a “good read.” She is an advocate for the reader. In short, Marie has taught me how to write, how to communicate. She has taken an accountant—a numbers guy—and has persistently asked me to “paint pictures” for our readers when I write. She has tossed copy back to me asking me to cite specific examples of my experiences, to share details and facts and stories about how it really was. As tedious as it gets, the editing has made me a better communicator.
Marie is an avid reader, a romantic at heart, who has unselfishly shared her talents and expertise with our entire staff. Those who have followed her mentoring have benefited immensely. They, like me, have only become better. They, like me, have come to know what a mentor truly is and the influence a person can have on one’s life.
As William Arthur Ward so eloquently said, “A mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.”
That sums up Marie B. Speed.
John and margaret mary shuff with marie speed (top right)
