Miami Food Blog

​(Sing to the tune of Home On The Range)
Home, home, down in Dade
Where the rats and the roaches lay eggs
Where seldom is heard
How inspectors find turds
Where you eat and are expected to pay.

Who likes getting rat hairs in their teeth? How about a roach leg stuck to your lip?

Here are our Top 5 places NOT to eat at based on Emergency Order Shutdown dispositions that were the result of routine food inspections less than a week ago.

And your winners are:

Jacob Katel

Monster in the parking lot.

​Yesterday we exited the New Times building and saw a raised up Monster Energy truck pulling up. We figured it meant free drinks in our future so we stopped and asked what they had for us.

One of the broads handed me a couple of cans while the other took a picture. We got a can of Java Monster Mean Bean and Java Monster Russian. Here's what we think.

Most people believe that a "naturally raised" label implies animals have access to sunshine, fresh air, freedom of movement and the ability to perform, um, you know, natural behaviors. Yet the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently allowed companies to slap a "naturally raised" label on meat and meat products that come from animals whose upbringing was anything but. For instance, the labeling is being applied to cows and pigs being raised in cramped crates -- unable to engage in "natural" behaviors such as grazing and rooting for food, taking mud baths, and raising their young.

Farm Sanctuary, the nation's leading farm animal protection organization, is in the process of collecting 10,000 signatures on a "Truth Behind Labels" petition that will be sent to the USDA. The group is currently at 9,556 signatures -- 96% of the way there. If you'd like to let the USDA know that you disapprove of their deceptive claims, go ahead and sign this petition.

Takepart.org

Mystery meat

When Martha Stewart tweets, we best listen up.  She recently mentioned a screening she arranged for employees of a documentary that we just had to see. 

The film is called Food, Inc. and reveals what we eat, how it's produced and how it's consumed.  It's hitting the silver screen nationwide on June 12, and as of last night, Magnolia Pictures scored placement at South Beach's Regal Cinemas on Lincoln Road -- check it out on June 19.

Industry experts like Michael Pollan (who I'm sure you went to see at his appearance the other week at Books & Books for The Omnivore's Dilemma) and forward thinking social entrepreneurs including Stonyfield Farms' Gary Hirschberg and Polyface Farms' Joe Salatin, make cameos. 

Next week we will speak to filmmaker Robert Kenner about how he exposes the nasty underbelly of our nation's food industry where corporate profit is rules at the expense of health.  It's gonna get ugly, but sometimes that's what it takes to jolt us out of complacence to action.

image via diluvi's flickr

A botellon in Barcelona

Domino's Pizza

The Pizza Delivery Experts get some carb on carb action

It's a meal only Michael Phelps could love. And what timing!  Launched just in time to thwart a comeback-hungry Kirstie Alley in her lust for leanness. But  Domino's, I regret to type that your pasta in a bread bowl is a big fat disappointment.  It's just that I expected more -  rather, I expected better -- from you.

Check out Kitchen Interviews, my blog on all things culinary, for the dish on the carbo load catastrophe that is Domino's new BreadBowl Pasta.

Seems as though just about every restaurant is offering some sort of Miami Spice-type "deal" throughout this season. This is a good thing, but not always quite as good as it looks. Take I Corsini's recent offer for a three course meal, including a glass of house wine, for $33. We haven't yet been to this upscale Italian restaurant, which opened last month at 560 Washington Avenue in South Beach (where Baire's Grille had been), and so there is no reason to doubt that chef Beppe Galazzi's cuisine is fresh and well-prepared. We would like to tell you a little more about Galazzi and I Corsini, but the website for this American restaurant is written in Italian!

First course choices are ribollita, a bread-thickened Tuscan soup; gran farro, a spelt and bean soup; or pappa al pomodoro, which is a salad of tomatoes, basil and day old bread moistened with olive oil. Second course is a pick between caprese salad of tomatoes, basil and mozzarella; panzanella salad of tomatoes, red onion, basil, cucumbers, olive oil and bread; or crepes filled with asparagus and gorgonzola cheese. If you're thinking of taking advantage of this special menu, let's hope you like tomatoes and bread.

Main course brings pumpkin tortelloni with butter and sage; spaghettini with seafood (clams, mussels, cuttlefish and shrimp); or a "petite" steak with potatoes and vegetable. So in sum, a dinner will consist of soup with salad or crepes, or salad with salad or crepes, plus either pasta or a small steak. If you selected either of the soups to start ($7), then chose any second course ($9), and finished up with the pumpkin pasta ($15), and decided to pay regular a la carte prices, it would come to $31 -- or two dollars less than the "deal". But then I suppose you wouldn't get the glass of what is no doubt spectacular house wine.

Add tax and gratuity to the $33 and the bill becomes $45-plus. Valet parking is $5, or the cheaper meter option $3, so now it's really a $50 dinner. Note how dessert isn't one of the course options? Guess that was an oversight. Add a napoleon and cappuccino and it's $60-plus. But let's assume you walk to the restaurant and don't have dessert or coffee -- is even the cheap-tipper base price of $45 a "deal" for soup, salad, and either pasta or a flimsy square of steak? We'll let you decide. The folks at I Corsini evidently think it is so special an offer that they are applying it only between the hours of 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. Plus there might be someone standing by the restaurant entrance holding a hoop for you to jump through.

Report: More 9-year-old bulemics reading food labels

Now, I don't want to make light of the eleven million Americans who suffer from eating disorders, particularly since around ten million of them are women or girls. This week is National Eating Disorders Awareness Week, so let me say right now that in their most extreme forms, anorexia and bulemia are scary, sad, and potentially fatal. But mulling over a news report from Arkansas this week, I  had to stop and wonder if maybe these little girls with their "disorders" aren't just as perfectly sane and healthy as you and I. Not that that proves anything.

Here's a quote from an Arkansas doctor about the supposed "rise" in eating disorders in her state. She says girls as young as 9, 10, and 11 are showing up in her office: "They're reading labels and they're cutting back on foods they used to like; they're not eating."

Let me just throw this out there: With an insane number of people getting sick or DYING FROM EATING PEANUT BUTTER, chicken, hamburger, spinach, scallions, tomatoes, cookies, diet sodas, and oysters, couldn't we posit that it sort of makes sense for these kids to be super paranoid about what they're putting into their mouths? And since their "favorite foods" probably contain trans-fats, modified starches, and PEANUTS, would we say that their new attention to labels is a "mental illness" or would we call it a "healthy survival instinct"?

I mean come on. In the U.S. today, "food" more or less equals "poison." Sucking down a yummy spoonful of peanut butter ice cream gives you roughly the same odds as loading a bullet into a revolver, spinning the cartridge, putting the gun to your head, and pulling the trigger. The latest figure I've heard is that 1 in 4 Americans get food poisoning every year. Seems to me these 9-year-olds are crazy like a fox.

Who's gonna call us "sick" if ALL just stop eating?

Coca-Cola Co.

Behold, the future of robotic beverage delivery -- Coca-Cola machines that may be able to serve up to 120 different drinks. The technology is being showcased this week at the Consumer Analyst Group of New York Conference in Boca Raton. The machines would replace those 6-8 valve machines that mix syrup with soda water.

"Instead of us using syrups, (the new beverage robot) uses highly concentrated ingredients that fit into a cartridge like the one you have in your printer," says Ray Crockett, a company spokesman. "We can put over 100 branded products in the dispenser."

Awesome! Finally, I can drink my precious Diet Mountain Dew, my beloved Pepsi One, at restaurants that were formerly stocked only with Coke, right?

"We normally don't carry competitive products in our fountains," says Crockett. "But that's a conversation for the future."

Ah, nuts! At any rate, Coke's going to test the new fountains in Atlanta and Orange County later this year, then roll 'em out nationwide early in 2010.

One of the great joys of my otherwise joyless life is to stride through the front door of a certain local franchise of an Atlanta-based Mexican fast food restaurant chain and be showered with warm greetings: "Welcome to Moe's!" they ring out in near-unison.

And it's not because I'm special. The employees of Moe's Southwest Grill, it is clear, are trained to belt out this refrain to all who walk through that door.

For a long time, however, I have been curious as to what, if any, are the limits to this policy. Specifically, when a Moe's employee is taking a restroom break, is he or she granted an exemption from the requirement to bestow a cheerful greeting? Or is there some kind of alert system within the Moe's restroom that informs the employee when to shout out a welcome, so that he or she can do so even behind a closed door, thereby proving how fiercely they wish to welcome me?

Fortunately, today's lunch break finally brought an answer to this riddle. (Oh hell yes, you're making the jump for this!)

A hail of darts to the Peanut Corporation of America, which it now turns out KNOWINGLY shipped products that had tested positive for salmonella. The worst of it is, so many of these peanut-infested foods went to schools and nursing homes -- they couldn't have done a better job targeting at-risk populations. So far, 500 people have gotten sick and eight have died. The list of products now under scrutiny ought to send chills down your spine. And it should certainly remind us all that we have yet one more reason to avoid processed food. What's the lesson -- if you want to eat peanuts, grow your own? At the very least, we can support a local business that seems to give a rat's ass about its customers: the Barnard Nut Company in Miami, which produces Nuts About Florida. See an interview with company executive Abel Menendez here.

Jack in the Box is apparently testing a program to outsource their drive-through orders, routing requests for burgers and shakes to call-takers outside the country. The program is getting its first test run in Charlotte, North Carolina, where folks innocently pulling up to the order box are being taken for a ride. Let's face it, it's hard enough to get an order from a drive-though that hasn't been totally screwed up, even if you're talking to somebody 10 feet away who's spent the last 16 years speaking some approximation of English. And if my last go-round with a Sprint customer serviceperson in New Delhi is any indication of the kind of accuracy you can expect, I'd say you have about a 25 percent chance of receiving anything you remotely recognize as food (and thanks for asking, it's been six months, and I STILL haven't received my "rebate"). Let's close our eyes and try to imagine the exchange:

"Where you been, bitch?"

Last week, I did something bad. Really, really bad. It was Wednesday, and I was very hungry. But I was also very busy, and short on cash. And so I decided, with a sorrowful resignation, to do something I hadn't done in ages: I went to McDonald's.

 It was $.59 cheeseburger day, so I ordered three of those, as well as two little baggies of $.99 fries -- one for me, one for another writer who had a similar urge. All that cost $4. Shamefully hoisting the stash back to my desk, I quickly unpacked the cheep-o meal and scarfed it down. I felt an immediate rush of guilt -- namely since I've managed to avoid McDonald's for most of my adult life. Yet, there was something about those cheeseburgers -- the tiny flecks of onion, perhaps -- that instantly reminded me of my childhood. Damn them for that. Damn them for owning a piece of my food memory.

The experience haunted me until this morning, when I found this article in the New York Times that tells of a resurgent McDonald's.

If you buy your tomatoes at a major supermarket or eat at McDonalds, Burger King, Taco Bell or Subway, then you may well be biting into the blood-and-sweat product of forced- labor-induced plantation agriculture, a.k.a. slavery, from the fields of Immokalee, where crack-cocaine meets whips and chains.

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a community-based worker organization, fights for the rights of Florida's low wage workers, and one of its members penned an open New Year's message to America. You can read the full letter in English or Spanish here, but check out this excerpt to get an idea of what's going on:

"This past December 19th, 2008, the most recent slavery case was closed in federal court, in which workers were beaten and chained inside trucks at night so that they couldn't escape. Enslaved, the food they produced was distributed by restaurants and supermarkets throughout the country. And there can be no doubt that at this very moment, in some field in this state of Florida, there are compañeros  being forced to work against their will who produced the food consumed today in New Years celebrations by families across this nation."

[Image via www.ciw-online.org]

-- Jacob Katel

This time of year brings all manner of helpful hints, like how to truss a turkey, or how to make your gingerbread men look like Scarlett Johansson (I made that second one up, but you know what I mean). Tips on avoiding food-borne illness are especially prevalent, as they should be -- an estimated 5,000 people in the U.S. die each year from eating something bad. It is bummer enough dying, but perish because of a tainted Christmas turkey and that is all you will ever be remembered for. Yes, it can happen to you -- but probably not if you follow these commonsense guidelines published by Consumer Reports in the January 2009 issue of ShopSmart.

1. Look at the date on the package. Although it's no guarantee the meat won't make you sick, choose a date with the most leeway.

2. Check packages for loose juice. It can be a source of bacteria. So if the meat packages are leaking, sticky, or wet, ask the butcher to cut a dry piece.

3. Triple-bag it. Put a plastic bag (get one from the produce aisle if you can't find one near the meat) over your hand and use it as a glove. Slip the bag back over the package of meat you select to prevent bacteria from contaminating you, your other groceries, or your fridge.

4. Sniff it. If meat smells off, don't buy it because it might not be fresh. (Even if it smells OK, however, that's no guarantee it's not loaded with bacteria.) And never rely on color alone since meat can be treated with carbon monoxide to make it look red and fresh.

5. Get meat ground fresh. Cuts of meat are held to a higher standard than ground. Choose cuts and have your trusted butcher grind them. The machine should be clean.

6. Look for firm fish. The flesh shouldn't have any gaps between the muscle fibers. Also sniff it; fish shouldn't smell fishy or like urine or ammonia. If you're buying whole fish, check the eyes; they should be clear, not cloudy.

7. Take along a cooler bag. Or ask to have meat and fish packed in a bag of ice so it stays cool. That will help slow the growth of bacteria.

 --Lee Klein

 

They'll have it their way.

If you've somehow missed Burger King's hilarious terrible! absolutely terrible! new marketing campaign, where they bring Whoppers to Hmong villagers in remote Thailand, the Inuit of Greenland, and a Transylvanian town in Romania, you have to check this out. Although the campaign generates a seriously sinking feeling (it's only a matter of time before these folks and their descendants give up hand-embroidering their clothing and turn to playing Wii), the ironies abound. For one thing, the Whopper doesn't look like recognizable food, so people have no idea how to eat it. And it doesn't taste nearly as good as seal meat. But we already knew that.

From today forward, whenever I'm worrying about the questionable sanitation practices of my local restaurants and fast food chains, I'll only have to remember today's breaking story of the Wolverhampton Pappu Sweet Center. The owner was discovered by police broiling up some kebabs while the corpse of one of his employees lay on a couch nearby.

But that's not even the worst of it. The story contains all the characteristics of good drama: Man vs. Animal, Man vs. The Elements: A dead rat found under a cooking pot, a smelly piece of meat dripping blood and clotted with flies. I only wish the BBC had gotten some reaction shots from former customers before police shut the place down.

-- Gail Shepherd

Last week the food giant Unilever recalled Lipton Green Milk Tea brand from Taiwan stores because one of the ingredients was milk from China. On Tuesday, the Associated Press reported that “according to Unilever Hong Kong Ltd, internal tests have found four batches of Lipton milk tea powder contaminated with melamine." Unilever then recalled that product from Hong Kong and Macau stores. On Wednesday, Unilever claimed that its milk tea powder products are made in Indonesia, so there should be no worry.

Unilever worries me for all sorts of reasons.

Question:
What yummy treat from a national ice cream chain contains this delectable list of ingredients?

Ingredients: reduced fat milk, heath bar crunch ice cream (cream, nonfat milk, caramel ribbon (corn syrup, sweetened condensed whole milk (milk, sugar), water, high fructose corn syrup, butter (cream, salt), propylene glycol, sodium alginate, salt, natural and artificial vanilla flavors, potassium sorbate (preservative), soy lecithin, annatto color, sodium bicarbonate, propyl paraben (preservative)) , heath® bar candy pieces [milk chocolate (sugar, cocoa butter, chocolate, nonfat milk, milk fat, lactose, soy lecithin (an emulsifier), salt, and vanillin (an artificial flavoring)), sugar, palm oil, dairy butter (milk), almonds, salt, artificial flavoring, and soy lecithin], sugar, corn syrup, toffee base (sweetened condensed whole milk, high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, water, natural flavor, disodium phosphate, and salt), whey powder, cellulose gum, mono and diglycerides, guar gum, carrageenan, polysorbate 80), fudge topping (corn syrup, sugar, water, hydrogenated coconut oil, nonfat milk, cocoa (treated with alkali), modified corn starch, salt, sodium bicarbonate, disodium phosphate, potassium sorbate (a preservative), natural and artificial flavors, soy lecithin), jamoca ice cream (cream, nonfat milk, sugar, corn syrup, jamoca extract (coffee extract, sugar, potassium sorbate and methyl paraben (as preservatives)) whey, caramel color, cellulose gum, mono and diglycerides, carrageenan, polysorbate 80, carob bean gum, guar gum), caramel praline topping (corn syrup, sweetened condensed whole mil, water, sugar, modified food starch, butter, salt, propylene glycol, natural and artificial flavor, sodium citrate, xanthan gum, lecithin, potassium sorbate and propyl paraben as preservatives), hershey’s® heath® milk chocolate english toffee (milk chocolate (sugar, cocoa butter, chocolate, nonfat milk, milk fat, lactose, soy lecithin [an emulsifier], salt, and vanillin [an artificial flavoring]), sugar, palm oil, dairy butter (milk), almonds, salt, artificial flavoring, and soy lecithin), whipped cream (whipped cream (cream, milk, sugar, dextrose, nonfat dry milk, artificial flavor, mono & diglycerides, carrageenan, mixed tocopherols (vitamin e), to protect flavor, propellant: nitrous oxide).

You'd be right if you guessed that magical list is what goes into a Large Heath Shake from Baskin-Robbins. But that's hardly the worst of it. Consumerist.com recently reported that a large Heath shake also contains 2310 calories, just slightly more than than daily calorie recommendation for an average sized woman, like me.

For a minute after reading this news I actually considered trekking down to my local B&R to order one, for the sake of journalistic research, especially since BR is offering a Buy One Get One (BOGO) deal on their frozen beverages this fall ("Parents looking for low-cost family fun need look no further than Baskin-Robbins, which offers a wide variety of treats for under $5." reads the PR.) But when I got to the fat content (64 grams of saturated fat, which is 320 percent of the daily recommended intake) and the 295 milligrams of cholesterol (98 percent) or the fact that the thing contains a half pound of sugar, I just couldn't bring myself to conduct the experiment.

The consumerist does raise a good question in their report: Is this monstrosity really necessary? Yeah, we can all take responsibility for our choices, but why does this particular choice even need to be on the map?

-- Gail Shepherd

A friend of mine brought me a bagful of Russian candy from Brighton Beach, and after tasting it I've decided I'm going to save it for the Halloween trick or treaters. I never have candy to give away on Halloween, and I find myself more often than not cowering in a darkened bedroom as the knocks on my front door become ever more violent. They know I'm home, don't they?

Well this year the little bastards are in for a REAL surprise. I particularly like the one called Kapa-Kym, with the camels on the wrapper -- what do you suppose the neighborhood mommies are going to make of THAT?

One could only wish they came in flavors like "borscht" or "coal," but alas, they just taste like really stale, cheaply manufactured artificially flavored corn oil.

And just in case you forgot that there's a Youtube video on every conceivable subject:

-- Gail Shepherd

Deconstructed Press Release:
Ft. Lauderdale—Fresh from his stint as Oprah Winfrey's chef for her 21-Day Cleanse...

um, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the point of a "cleanse" to stop eating for a while? Don't you drink a lot of juice and warm water with lemon? And doesn't that sort of preclude the idea of having a chef...?

Sublime's Guest Chef Dinner featuring Chef Tal Ronnen will begin at 7 p.m. on Friday, October 10th. The price is $150.00 per person not including tax and gratuity...

OK, stop right there. Let's add this up. Dinner for two, with tax and gratuity, which we can figure right now, comes to $381.60 if you toss them a 20 percent tip. That's $20 per course and $50 for the wine, per person.

Chef Tal Ronnen will offer his innovative vegan dishes to South Floridians by preparing a five-course dinner and mingling with guests at Sublime Restaurant on October 10, 2008.

"He had one of the nicest, calmest, sweetest spirits I've ever encountered in a man," remarks Winfey. "His loving energy came through his food. I think that's why we were all so soothed and nurtured by it and looked forward to every meal."

Let's hope Tal's tableside manner is soothing and sweet enough to to heal his guests' sticker shock at Sublime...

Chef Tal has designed a phenomenal menu for his night at Sublime, sure to enchant vegan purists and novices alike. Dinner begins with Celery Root Soup with Granny Smith Apples [mmm, sounds good, here's Wolfgang Puck's recipe, if you want to make it at home] along with Endive, Orange and Quinoa Salad [here's Elizabeth Luard's recipe]. Next, guests will enjoy Artichoke "Ricotta" Tortellini with Arugula and Roasted Garlic in Saffron "Cream" Sauce [sounds like this is one of Ronnen's standards: too much of a pain to make yourself, so worth having him do it] as well as "Chicken" Scaloppini with Madeira Peppercorn Sauce, Roasted Fingerling Potatoes [kitchen's cost per serving, 45 cents], Caramelized Cipollini Onions [cost per serving, 86 cents] and Grilled Asparagus [cost per serving, 81 cents]. Each course will be paired with specially chosen wines and the meal will be capped with a delectable dessert.

Wow, sounds delicious. On a per-course basis, the price of Tal's menu is equivalent to the Vegetable Tasting Menu at Thomas Keller's French Laundry. Say again, What charity are the proceeds going to? Does this mean the recession is officially over?

For reservations please call (954) 539-9000 or visit www.SublimeRestaurant.com.

-- Gail Shepherd

Carl Gussow, "Oyster Girl"

John Linn and I noticed something fishy about the "oysters on the half shell" we ordered from Jackson's Steakhouse the other night.

Our waitress told us they were Gulf oysters, which you know can't be safe to eat raw in August. The water warms up and makes those suckers ideal conveyors for a little bacteria called vibrio vulnificus. Between the vibrio, the possibility of hepatitis, and now even norvovirus, apparently, you have to be half crazy to eat raw oysters at all (I love raw oysters, so I fully accept the risk). Still, I couldn't believe Jackson's would knowingly serve potentially lethal raw shellfish. So I looked into what's going on with the Gulf oyster industry, and guess what?

Those fresh oysters are frozen.

Oyster processors in the Gulf states are now freezing oysters on the half shell to cut down on the possibility that we'll die from eating them. The companies swear they taste just as good as if somebody had shucked them fresh two seconds ago. But hey, click on the link above, and you tell me if you're likely to get a fresh-tasting oyster once it's been opened, washed, "glazed" and packed in a cardboard box, then thawed in some restaurant's fridge and kept sitting around for god knows how long.

I can tell you that the oysters served at Jackson's didn't have a drop of liquor; they were so dry they had to be scraped from their shell with a spoon (eliminating the head-thrown-back shell-to-mouth pose of the seriously fierce oyster swallower). If I'm paying $12 a half dozen (that's $2 per gulp) I want my shellfish hand-shucked on the premises, please.

And if it's not safe to eat fresh raw oysters in August, just don't freaking serve them!

--Gail Shepherd

National chain restaurant Buca di Beppo, with 89 outlets nationwide (including one in Miami Lakes), is marking its 15th anniversary from now until August 10 by offering 15 of its original dishes “at classic pricing that recalls better days when gas was just $1.16 a gallon and movie tickets were a mere $4.25.” Now granted, portions here are family style and can serve “two-to-three people”. But considering that this is mass-produced chain food, is $6.49 really a bargain for garlic bread? Or $11.99 for a pepperoni pizza? How about $8.49 for tiramisu?

In fact, Buca is offering guests “an average savings of 15 percent” -- which actually brings us back to the times when movie tickets were $8.50 (the good old days of 2005), and gas was $4 a gallon (the good old days of a few weeks ago).

-- Lee Klein

Pictured above: Common microbes causing food poisoning. Ain't they cute?

From www.healthinspections.com:

The most dangerous states for eating out are Florida, California, Minnesota, Ohio, and New York according to the most recent federal data.

Restaurants in these five states spread bacteria such as E.coli and salmonella, making nearly 3,000 customers sick and putting 65 in the hospital.

For restaurants in Florida and California, this is not good news. It's the third straight year they've topped the list for having the most dangerous restaurants.

Healthinspections.com analyzed data from the Centers For Disease Control to obtain the rankings. Here's how the states stack up for outbreaks of restaurant food poisoning in 2006, the most recent year available.

1. Florida 74 outbreaks
2. California 69 outbreaks
3. Minnesota 55 outbreaks
4. Ohio 54 outbreaks
5. New York 50 outbreaks

The federal numbers also raise questions about food safety practices in restaurants because more and more people are getting sick from eating out.

Across the country, restaurants were responsible for at least 605 outbreaks of food poisoning in 2006, compared to 532 outbreaks in 2005.

After the jump: Florida Restaurants #1 For Making Customers Sick

At one Palm Beach restaurant, that dirty martini might be REALLY dirty

I'm about to lose one of my best sources for insider restaurant dish -- a friend of mine is retiring, at least temporarily, from her job as a server to get married.

But she's stored up enough tales of woe to keep me busy while she's on hiatus. Like the one about a well-known Palm Beach Italian restaurant that, as long as she worked there, recycled the complementary olives picked over by patrons. Servers would pluck out the gnawed-on pits from Table A and just pitch those babies back into the bin for the next unsuspecting customer to gnosh on at Table B.

Thank god for PR companies, because I really would have been bummed to have missed the news about Denny's new late-night menu, served only between the witching hours from 10 to 5 in the a.m. At first, I thought I'd post the photo above in our weekly WTF Is It ?!? contest, but it's just too big a challenge. Who'd have the chops to get that the "Sweet Ride Nachos" ($6.99, a bargain, and your postprandial cramps are totally free) are composed of "Freshly fried flour tortilla chips tossed in cinnamon sugar, then topped with strawberry topping, raspberry sauce, seasonal fruit, hot fudge, caramel, white chocolate chips and whipped cream." Ooooh yummy, yummy, yummy. The photo just doesn't do it justice.

Listen up, mes amis. Before digging into your next filet de sole bonne femme, consider that you may be spilling more beans than a drunken chef cooking cassoulet. A friend tells me that at the venerable and hoity Palm Beach French restaurant Chez Jean Pierre, there's a little glitch with the acoustics. If you sit at the banquette table by the back door, you can hear every word being spoken at a single table in the front of the house -- clear as if the celeb who happens to be dining there were whispering her breathy endearments straight into your blushing ear. My spy tells me that for years, Palm Beach Post gossip columnist Jose Lambiet had a standing agreement with Jean Pierre's management. If anybody famous came in, the waiters would seat them at the acoustically enhanced table. Then they'd call Lambiet, who'd haul ass over for a snack at the banquette table, pen poised, ear cocked for dish.

- Gail Shepherd

Words of dining advice: Always ask how much the verbally recited daily specials cost. Or pay the consequences. For Peter and Neil, a vacationing couple from Danbury, Conn., the consequence was a nearly $300 tab for dinner at Rendezvous On The Beach (in the Beacon Hotel on Ocean Drive).

They chose Rendezvous because, as Peter put it, “The food looked really good.” Turns out the food was really good, especially a surf-and-turf of filet mignon and lobster -- according to Neil, “the biggest lobster tail I have ever seen. Seriously.” It had come highly recommended from the waiter. “It was delicious. And I knew it would be expensive” explains Peter. “But when I saw the bill I couldn’t believe it was $105.”