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Elvis Ramirez

Where: Mi Peru, 1760 Miami Gardens Drive, Aventura, (305) 940 9404.

What $15 Gets You: A big plate of chaufa with meat and a drink.

For those who lump Latin cuisine into a category consisting of rice, beans and some sort of meat, Mi Peru in Aventura is one hell of a surprise. The first thing you’ll notice as you browse the menu at the restaurant is the strong Japanese influence over a lot of their rice dishes. Chaufa is essentially fried rice with meat.

The price of the food really pushes the $15 budget, so I ordered the chaufa with meat. From the menu pictures posted above the order counter, I figured that the dish would be decently sized, but that was quite the understatement.

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“I’m sorry to inform you that we have closed this location,” says a recording at the former South Beach restauarant, located at the Nash Hotel. The recording notes that its Las Olas branch remains open. There was no answer at Mark’s corporate office in Palm Beach County late Thursday.

A manager at Mark’s at the Park, in Boca Raton, confirmed that restaurant is still open, but said that the venue in CityPlace, near downtown West Palm, has closed as well.

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Another one, but not just any one. Mark’s South Beach, in the Hotel Nash, is no more. Perhaps not surprising, as The Nash was a curiously low-profile address for so high-profile a chef. It was out of sight from the street and, as far as locals were concerned, pretty much out of mind.

For those who may be new to these parts, the eponymous chef Mark Militello was one of modern day Miami’s very first star chefs. When in 1988 he opened Mark's Place in North Miami Beach (currently the site of Two Chefs Too) it was, bar none, the restaurant In town. Shortly thereafter Food and Wine magazine named Militello one of the Ten Best Chefs in America, and he received one national accolade after another. Just a few years ago The James Beard Foundation honored him as Best Chef in the Southeast.

Militello was, and still is, one of our elite, top-shelf toques, his best dishes so sensational they sear in the memory so that you can -- and do -- recall them for years to come. Larry LaValley, executive chef at Mark’s South Beach for years, is likewise a serious talent to be reckoned with. His name was somewhat buried in the Nash, too, but something tells me we’ll be hearing a lot more of him.

And we’ll still be hearing from, and can still savor Militello’s cuisine -- especially at his flagship Mark's Las Olas but also at Mark's at the Park (Mizner, that is).

--Lee Klein

No details yet, other than that earlier this week Michael Bloise, one of Miami's star chefs, left his position at Wish restaurant in The Hotel on South Beach. Bloise' menus at Wish were as provocative, whimsical, and innovative -- not to mention tasty -- as any in town. Who else served pan-seared foie gras with Cascabel roasted banana, daikon radish, and black pepper marshmallow, or black Chai tea créme brûlée with citrus madeleine and tomatillo marmalade? We wish that Bloise appears somewhere else locally in short time, and are confident he will. And we wish that Wish finds a chef as good, although we are not nearly as confident in this regard.

--Lee Klein

Where: Asaka, 20355 Biscayne Blvd., 33180, (305) 682-9331

What $15 Gets You: Miso soup, salad, several california rolls, chicken katsu, vanilla ice cream tempura (or wine).

Sushi is one of those foreign dishes that have become as American as apple pie (apple fish pie). It's not strange to ingest the raw fishies rapped in rice or seaweed.

To be honest, I had an aversion to fish and all things that once swam in the deep blue sea, so you can imagine how going to a Japanese sushi restaurant could have well turned out to be a nightmarish experience. But I'm glad to say that Asaka in Aventura has reconciled me with seafood, at least when it comes to sushi anyway.

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The affair between chef Jeffrey Brana and The Raleigh Hotel was short and quiet, if not particularly sweet. Mr. Brana, admired for his work for many years as head chef at Norman’s and then for a quick but spectacular stint at his own Restaurant Brana, was brought in to upgrade the Raleighs’ restaurant just a few months ago. But, as Brana tells me, “It was not the right fit.” Being a classy guy he says nothing more, but “not the right fit” is generally a code word for “they were impossible to work for.” This, of course, is just conjecture on my part.

Brana, ready to move on, says he is “looking at doing a project that will allow me to try to do something special and push the envelope a little, without having to sustain a full-scale restaurant operation.” Sounds intriguing -- will keep you posted as we find out more. --Lee Klein

Spots like blissberry, a new highfalutin frozen yogurt place on Alton Road off Lincoln Road on South Beach, seem to be the dairy world’s stab at Starbucks formula. That is, overpricing products and trying to get customers not to care by making you feel trendy and special by merely ingesting them.

Blissberry's décor is funky with low, glass tables and sphere-shaped light fixtures. The busty woman in a tight tank top behind the counter was cute, let’s give her hot, and relatively friendly. The green tea yogurt was okay, bordering on good, but didn’t inspire yums between licks. But, for the more than $6 a medium cost with three chosen toppings (stingy spoons of granola, blackberries and coconut), it should be great. And the tables were dirty so there was no desire to get cozy like there can be at Starbucks.

The yogurt shop offers a decent selection of fruits and cereals but nothing looked scrumptious. Dessert shouldn’t feel that healthy. Leaving blissberry, visions of that dipped, $2 butterscotch cone I should have ordered from Dairy Queen danced in my head.

--Janine Zeitlin

Where: Graziano’s Gourmet in the Gables 2301 Galiano St., Coral Gables, (305) 460-0001

What $15 Gets You: Parrillada with a side salad (or fries) and an Anchor Steam.

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Where: LC’s Roti Shop, 19505 NW 2nd Ave, Miami Gardens.

What $15 Gets You: A chicken roti, a sugar cake, a doubles, and a Coke.

Caribbean cuisine is hard to define because of the mixing of cultures that exist in the area generally referred to as the Caribbean. When a friend suggested that we go get roti, I didn’t know what to expect (think of a giant burrito stuffed with meat and curry and you’ll have a good idea of what it is).

We entered the dimly lit, mostly empty establishment smack in the middle of the Caribbean shopping plaza on NW 2nd Ave. A neon sign on the wall read, “LC’s Roti Shop.” A hand scribbled sign under the menu read, “No credit cards. Only cash.”

The place had that real neighborhood restaurant feel to it, it was a little intimidating however. Here’s a tip: don’t hesitate to order your food or wait there looking mystified as it will be a long while before you get anything.

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Where: Japanese Market Inc. 1412 79th Street Cswy North Bay Village, (305) 861-0143

What you get for $15: The Deluxe Sushi combination (8 pieces Nigiri) plus a fat beer.

Sushi in this town sucks. It’s either prohibitively expensive or poorly done or some combination of the two. Fortunately for us all, there’s a little Japanese food market with a sushi bar that kicks everything else’s ass.

You’re greeted at the counter with a warm hand towel and a fine hello from the store’s confident, capable chef.

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Where: American Adobo, 633 NE 125th St., Miami

What $15 Gets You: Teriyaki chicken, longaniza, rice, cabbage soup and a Coke

Don’t let the name American Adobo fool you, the only thing American in this restaurant is the ketchup. The restaurant focuses on Filipino cuisine.

As me and my friend walked in to the hole-in-the-wall place, we were greeted by the sounds of Filipino television. I learned that apparently they are really big on Valentine’s Day in the Philippines, all the station was broadcasting was romantic movies and teasers for an all day movie marathon today.

Rather than have a menu, the customer chooses what they want to eat by pointing at the different options simmering aluminum pans. There was only one other guy drinking coffee in the corner of the restaurant so we were able to ask what everything was. It all looked strange in the pans.

The food was nothing out of this world, but the price was descent. The rice was bland, but that maybe good for those who are watching their sodium intake (i.e. no one that would visit the restaurant anyway). I ordered teriyaki chicken and longanizas and some cabbage soup.

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Where: DJ’s Diner (Best Western Windsor Inn), 12210 Biscayne Boulevard, Miami.

What $15 Gets You: A Mexican-style burger, fries, mozzarella sticks, and a drink.

DJ’s Diner at the Best Western Windsor Inn on 12210 Biscayne Boulevard is easy to overlook as most people are usually speeding by on that street. The space is clearly marked with a white and green sign, but the inn itself overshadows the small diner.

The place was empty when we walked in, but my friend theorized that we may have just missed the lunch crowd. It was a bit foreboding to be the only ones in the restaurant but the staff was friendly enough.

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It must be a bit disconcerting for an American to enter Caribbean Delite. The Trinidadian eatery is nestled unassumingly in a generic, largely island-themed strip mall on SW 160th. Reggae blares from the record shop down the way, but the interior of the restaurant is silent, save for the sound of cooking in the back room. You know that big overhead menu sign that’s normally present in every fast food restaurant? They don’t have one at Caribbean Delite. Nor do they apparently have air conditioning, as the sweltering heat on a recent Saturday visit revealed. What they do have is a crowd of impatient customers waiting at the front counter, and curry. Delicious, Trinidadian-style curried chicken, beef, goat, or shrimp, served with a heavy portion of paratha roti. Trinis call that particular kind of roti buss-up-shut. We’re getting ahead of ourselves.

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Our lame nation spent Sunday coveting the pig skin. Brazil ate it and had a real party. Because a bawdy, sexual parade is about a million times more interesting than two squadrons of men running into each other between expensive tv ads. That said, I decided to celebrate the week with Brazil’s national dish.

(Also, I’m poor: it’s filling and lasts forever).

It’s called Feijoada and, legend has it, it was invented by slaves who had been handed only the junk parts of the pig and a sack of black beans. Now it’s the national dish, a delicacy of sorts –meant to only be eaten, over rice, in the middle of the day (accompanied by half an orange and cane rum).

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Winston Churchill painted seascapes from his cabana here. In the 1950s, General Motors debuted their new car models in its grand ballrooms. The club has hosted parties for Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Douglas MacArthur, Elizabeth Taylor, and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Tony Bennett and Julio Iglesias have sung on its stage. But not as a duet. And my own admittedly tenuous connection to the recently renovated Surf Club, at 9011 Collins Avenue in Surfside, is that I had driven by the place for years without realizing it. As a private entity, they keep a low profile.

Since 1930 The Surf Club has been known, by those in the know, as a premier destination for upscale dining and dancing in a sophisticated setting. Hotel rooms for members are stately, amenities are plenty, and a wide stretch of ocean front beckons. Grand receptions for up to 1,000 people? Yes, sir. Seated dinner for 800? Right away, Sir.

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