Michy’s makes the case for fine dining on
The restaurant’s décor is at once playful and sophisticated, making use of mismatched white chairs, cheerful wallpaper and orange suede banquettes. But the food is the reason those tables fill up quickly. They’ve come because of the buzz, because she might be in the kitchen tonight, the namesake, the chef with the golden whisk. Michelle Bernstein has certainly proved her mettle as a chef helming The Mandarin Oriental’s Azul and winning against male competitors on TV’s Iron Chef.
The proof is on the plate, or half plate as the case may be with this eatery. Each selection can be ordered either as a full or half portion allowing diners to graze among a sea of carefully crafted salad, seafood, and pasta dishes, never quite forcing you to commit to traditional appetizer/entree dining paradigms. There’s a nice selection of wines available by the glass adding to the casual choose-as-you go dining odyssey. The white gazpacho ($7/$11) was hearty and smooth composed mainly of pureed almonds, cucumbers, grapes, and topped with herbed croutons for a welcome textural distraction. Those grapes showed up again in a fresh watercress salad ($8/$12) with goat cheese and tarragon, clean and crisp as English morning. The truffle infused polenta ($7/$11) topped with a poached egg (sans bacon for us, to the dismay of our server, but hey, that’s how we roll) was rich and decadent, the egg adding layers of creamy goodness to every satiating spoonful. The miso glazed cod ($16/$25, pictured above) though not the most creative selection (an homage to Nobu, perhaps ) was delicate and piquant, with flash fried bok choy and mushrooms providing appropriate heft to the dish.
Our server was extremely knowledgeable about the menu (and the recipes which he easily shared) and incredibly attentive but seemed to take offense when we ordered only half portions or passed on his suggestions, but it appeared to stem more from a love of the food than a desire to pad the bill. And Michy’s certainly is pricey but well worth it. Just make sure you go before Art Basel when the hordes will be sure to descend.
The good news is, then, that Jewish education works. A generation of young Jews around the world have internalized the message that "being Jewish" means fixing the world in its totality, without regard to race, religion or nationality.The bad news for the Jewish state and people is that this generation of American Jews have taken from their education that acting Jewish means doing justice without regard to nationality or peoplehood.
While it feels good to support all peoples and all victims, the nature of the world in which we live in - where Hizbullah amassed thousands of rockets and attacked Israel; where Iran edges towards nuclear weapons; and where over a third of Israel's Jews, and, surprisingly, 20 percent of New York Jews live under or close to the poverty line - makes an ethics of universalism simply irresponsible at the moment.
It is at times like these that we who care about our families need remember the inherent obligation of peoplehood: Justice means providing full support to those whom you live with, those who would die for you, and the people whom you came from, no matter what the world thinks.
The Baltimore engagement was the most controversial. A planned performance at the National Theater in Washington, D.C. was relocated to Baltimore's Maryland Theater because Hecht would not permit his works to be staged at theaters, such as the National, which barred African-Americans. But Hecht discovered, just before the Baltimore showing, that the Maryland Theater restricted blacks to the balcony, which bigots nicknamed "nigger heaven." The Bergson Group and the NAACP then teamed up against the theater management, with the NAACP threatening to picket and a Bergson official announcing he would bring two black friends to sit with him at the play. The management gave in, and African-Americans attending the opening night performance on February 12, 1947 -Lincoln's Birthday- sat wherever they chose. Exuberant NAACP leaders hailed the "tradition-shattering victory" and used it facilitate the desegregation of other Baltimore theaters in the years to follow.
A Flag is Born was a triumph. It influenced American public opinion by reaching large audiences with an inspiring message about the plight of Holocaust survivors and the need for a Jewish state. It raised enough funds to purchase a ship - renamed the S.S. Ben Hecht- that tried to bring 600 survivors to Palestine, and focused international attention on the refugees when it was intercepted by the British. And Flag scored an important victory over racial segregation in Baltimore, demonstrating that, as Hecht put it, "to fight injustice to one group of human beings affords protection to every other group."
Louie’s Brick Oven Grill Rotisserie Bar, 15979 Biscayne Blvd, North Miami Beach
The new developments on the Biscayne corridor of North Miami Beach are to blame for the proliferation of brand-new strip malls readying themselves for the masses of young professionals soon to populate places like Biscayne Landing and other high-rises in Aventura. These restaurants are built for volume, with ample space and fortified staff. With THE SEASON almost upon us, it remains to be seen if these eateries will succeed with the P.F. Chang's-loving crowds up north. Located in the same plaza as upscale Delano-esque Sushi House is Louie’s Brick Oven Grill Rotisserie Bar. The restaurant is a pleasant enough alternative to the overcrowded eateries at the Aventura mall, it boasts friendly servers, “well-done” pizza, and a variety of beers on tap including my Italian favorite, Moretti.
Décor: Spacious, pseudo-converted-warehouse look with ample brick walls, large exposed air- conditioning ducts, and high ceilings. Two large flat screen TV’s flank the bar for requisite game watching comfort.
Service: Earnest and attentive. The only strange moment came at the beginning when in his introduction to the restaurant the server explained that all Louie’s s Brick oven pizza come out “well done.” It seemed more like a disclaimer than an introduction. And the use of the term well done for pizza seemed odd. Note to management, worlds like “crusty, crunchy, and crisp” are more flattering and appetizing.
Prices: Moderate to Expensive. Appetizers $8-$10. Salads and Pastas $8-$20. Pizzas (good enough for two) range from $11 for basic cheese to $17 for a meat lover’s pie. Entrees $11-$29. Wide beer and wine selection.
The Food: The “individual” size portion of the Caeser salad was large enough for two and came with fresh and crunchy romaine lettuce, not too much dressing, and rudimentary croutons. Disclaimer aside, the pizzas are wondrously executed. Thin-crusted, crisp and populated with fresh toppings, these pies are the real draw. The mushroom pie came heaping with sliced portabella and button mushrooms, caramelized onions, and tangy goat cheese. The grilled vegetable pie was also satisfying with diced marinated red peppers, generous slices of eggplant, and sautéed spinach.
Meet the Zacksenberg. It is a juice press like no other. Produced by the pioneers of Kibbutz Holit in the south of Israel this little gem weighs in at approx. 20 pounds of pure unadulterated juice-producing hardware. The Zaksenberg is a staple of Israeli convenience kiosks that sell everything from cigarettes and candy to fresh-squeezed juice and pastries. It produces delicious nectar from anything squeezable including (but not limited to): oranges, grapefruits, lemons, pomegranates, and maybe kiwis? Peaches? The possibilities are endless! Not only is this juice press the sexiest juicemaker to come out of the Holy Land, but using this piece of equipment everyday will result in firmer biceps, guaranteed. Even Gilad would agree!
Monday & Wednesday: 6:00pm-7:15pm
Saturday: 9:00am-10:15am
Beginners, intermediate and advanced welcome.
(Hat tip to Rebecca)
About five minutes after I polished off the beer, as we drove down a quiet residential street, the warning blared again—louder now. Then, just moments after that—maybe 100 feet away from us, just on the other side of a row of crumbling old homes—we heard a roar like thunder on the ground. The windows of the car vibrated slightly; Keren went pale, and Yossi's hands jerked on the steering wheel. We sped down a side street and careened to a sudden stop. As we peeled out of the car and clambered into a darkened apartment stairwell for shelter, I caught a glimpse of the plumes of smoke and dust billowing behind us. Much later, I realized that I didn't remember hearing a whistle after all.Lisa has a fantastic post on going up to the northernmost town of Metulla and encountering the various journalists, soldiers, and guesthouse owners.
And so I sat myself down at one of the tables in the shaded garden, placed my laptop on the mosaic tile surface and checked my email while Chaimke brought my coffee. It was a beautiful garden. Water tinkled quietly in a carved stone fountain, the birds twittered, the leaves rustled gently in the breeze, the sun shone, Etta James continued to sing about love and the artillery boomed every few seconds. Tweet tweet tweet, sang the birds. "At last...." sang Etta. Tinkle tinkle tinkle, chattered the water. BOOM! answered the artillery. Such a lovely, pastoral scene in wartime northern Israel.She's also got pictures of Kibbutz Kfar Giladi in flames - something that tore me up since Kfar Giladi holds a special place in my heart, not only because it has one of the most beautiful pools in Israel.
NORTHERN ISRAEL – War does strange things to the mind. The first time you hear the loud BOOM, BANG, and CRASH of incoming and outgoing artillery, you will jump. You will twitch. You will want to take cover. You will want to hide. You will feel like you could die at any second, like the air around you is drenched with gasoline, like the universe is gearing up to smash you to pieces.
This is a nation whose heart has been broken: by our failure to uproot the jihadist threat, which will return for another and far more deadly round; by the economic devastation of the Galilee and of a neighboring land we didn't want to attack; by the heroism of our soldiers and the hesitations of our politicians; by the young men buried and crippled in a war we prevented ourselves from winning; by foreign journalists who can't tell the difference between good and evil; by European leaders who equate an army that tries to avoid civilian causalities with a terrorist group that revels in them; by a United Nations that questions Israel's right to defend itself; and by growing voices on the left who question Israel's right to exist at all.
Israel wants peace, the Arabs want Israel gone (in 2000 Arafat on the eve of ending a territorial dispute which would have given him 98% of the land he desired, withdrew and went to war). Yet most of the Western Press, European and American, pictures Israel as, somehow the aggressor, and the Israelis as somehow inhuman, and delighting in blood.
There is no "cycle of violence." Israel wants peace behind the 1949 armistice borders, with some relatively minor variation. There is no indictable "disparity of force." Israeli civilians are being bombed. Hezbollah knows where the Israeli military bases are, but chooses to bomb civilians. Hezbollah murderers put their armaments exclusively in the midst of civilians. The Israeli aim is not to invade Lebanon (they left Lebanon) but to force Hezbollah to stop killing the Jews.
That the Western press characterizes the Israeli actions consistently as immoral is anti-Semitism. What state does not have the right to defend itself - it is the central tenant of statehood.
On an inspiring note, an all-Druze battalion of the Israeli army returned without a single casualty:
They hiked over 40 kilometers, killed close to 20 Hizbullah guerrillas and spent 32 days in Lebanon without a single casualty. But on Monday, soldiers from the Herev Battalion emerged from battle, sweaty, dusty and tired making history twice - as the first battalion to enter Lebanon and the one to spend the longest amount of time deep in enemy territory under Operation Change of Direction.....For Herev, the war in Lebanon was not just a war against a fierce enemy but was a war in defense of their home - not just the State of Israel, but their homes in the literal sense. All of the soldiers, without any exception, Abu Faris said, live in northern Israel and their homes came under the incessant Hizbullah Katyusha rocket attacks during the past 30 days of fighting.
Over at Channel 4, Jon Snow interviewed an Israeli diplomat with all the finesse and objectivity of a neo-Nazi spraying a six-foot swastika on a wall. Of the rockets which murdered Israeli civilians in the town of Sderot, he said "Rockets, pretty pathetic things - nobody gets injured." This was gleefully picked up and proclaimed by The Guardian, the newspaper I left some years ago in protest at what I saw as its vile anti-Semitism.
All across the board, Lebanese civilians are referred to as "civilians" where Israeli civilians are referred to as "Israelis" - an eerie and sinister difference pointed out by the non-Jewish stand-up comic genius Natalie Haynes, and one which very few people appear to have noticed - even me, until then.
Q. 6. Do you, as an intellectual in France, feel that you are afforded more credibility in speaking out and writing in support and understanding of Israel than other Jews who seem rather too intimidated by French anti-Semitism to speak out and be visible in French society?
— Deidre Waxman, Newton, Mass.A. I don't even understand what you are saying! For me, anti-Semitism is a form of terrorism and the very idea of letting myself be intimidated by any terrorism whatsoever completly horrifies me. Jewish or non-Jewish, intellectuals must speak out. Jewish or non-Jewish, they have a duty to truth. And, conversely, to tell them-or tell oneself-"A Jew has, because a Jew, a duty to reticence" would be to give into anti-Semitic terrorism. Not my style. I want to add that my defense of Israel is not so closely tied as you perhaps think to the fact that I am Jewish. There is an element of that, of course. But it is certainly not the essential. I defend Israel because I defend democracy. I defend Israel because I have a horror of all fascisms. I defend the Israelis in this war as in the past I have defended other peoples who have nothing to do with Judaism. Bosnia, for example. The Bosnian Muslims whom I defended, I believe, with no less ardor or passion.
Damn, he's good.
Bernard Henri-Levy’s piece in this Sunday’s NYTimes Magazine is a revelation. It is a moving, straightforward assessment of the situation from the point of view of a battered Israel. Tinged but not clouded by emotion, Henri-Levy talks with the major superstars of Israeli politics and culture – from Shimon Peres to David Grossman and shares some candid conclusions. The scope of this war, he writes, is larger and involves global dynamics that Israel has heretofore not dealt with:
Israel did not go to war because its borders had been violated. It did not send its planes over southern Lebanon for the pleasure of punishing a country that permitted Hezbollah to construct its state-within-a-state. It reacted with such vigor because the Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s call for Israel to be wiped off the map and his drive for a nuclear weapon came simultaneously with the provocations of Hamas and Hezbollah. The conjunction, for the first time, of a clearly annihilating will with the weapons to go with it created a new situation. We should listen to the Israelis when they tell us they had no other choice anymore. We should listen to Zivit Seri tell us, in front of a crushed building whose concrete slabs are balancing on tips of twisted metal, that, for Israel, it was five minutes to midnight.
He writes of the power of semantics in this war, something not many members of the media besides pro-Israel watchdogs have discussed. If psychology is one aspect of this struggle, than using powerful language may actually communicate the impact of those brutal, barbaric deeds:The damage these rockets can do, when you see them up close, is insane. And insane, too, is the racket you hear when you’ve stopped talking and are just waiting for the sound they make to blend with the noise of the car’s engine. A rocket that falls in the distance leaves a dull thud; when it goes over your head, it creates a shrill, almost whining detonation; and when it bursts nearby, it shakes everything and leaves a long vibration, which is sustained like a bass note. Maybe we shouldn’t say “rocket” anymore. In French, at least, the word seems to belittle the thing, and implies an entire biased vision of this war. In Franglais, for example, we call a yapping dog a rocket, roquet; the word conjures a little dog whose bark is worse than his bite and who nibbles at your ankles.. . .So why not say “bomb”? Or “missile”? Why not try, using the right word, to restore the barbaric, fanatical violence to this war that was desired by Hezbollah and by it alone? The politics of words. The geopolitics of metaphor. Semantics, in this region, is now more than ever a matter of morality.
There are beautiful bittersweet moments in this piece, like when Henri-Levy chats with Grossman in a garden restaurant in an Arab village, or when he meets military commander Ephraim Sneh at Koah junction, a place he describes as a “landscape of dry stone, brought to a white heat by the sun.” Henri-Levy’s piece reads as a sort of travel essay of a stricken yet still stunning Israel, an homage to the country’s ability to balance survival and aggression.
The younger Marley deserves credit for performing in Israel during this troubled time, having moved but not cancelled a show previously scheduled to take place on a beach near Israel's northern border. Whether music can truly change the world is open to debate, but for one evening, at least, it was easy to feel that it indeed can, if only by bringing positive vibrations to where they are needed.
The audience responded, treating the packed concert as a welldeserved vacation. But only a temporary one: one 20-year-old reveler, after expressing his amazement at the concert and his annoyance that alcohol wasn't available inside the Amphi-Park, said that he had to report back to his army unit at 6 a.m. the following day. "But every little thing will be all right," he stated with a smile, quoting a line from Bob Marley's "Three Little Birds." Hopefully he's right.
This is the July 20 cover of Time Out Tel Aviv, published one week after the current conflict began. It is based on a famous 1970's New Yorker cover, A View of New York from Ninth Avenue. But whereas the world beyond New York's Hudson River is portrayed as a quiet, peaceful place, the world beyond Tel Aviv's Yarkon River is one of turmoil and violence. To the right are Baghdad and Tehran; on the left are Haifa, Tiberias, Carmiel, Acre and Kiryat Shmona - areas that have been under constant bombardment since July 12. The cluster of buildings at the top is Beirut.The rest of the post goes on to explain how the two editors are no longer friends, mostly because the Beiruti editor has become disillusioned and vitriolic against Israel (and all Israelis, it seems). Sigh. Depressing. There's also a link to a Wall Street Journal article about the fragile friendships ( and disintegrating relationships) between bloggers from the two countries.
The paltry summer cultural offerings leave plenty of time to partake of such playful things as video art. Save the Dates for the following caffeinated events:
AUGUST 18
OPTIC NERVE VIII
7PM | 1ST SCREENING
8PM | ARTIST ROUNDTABLE WITH STARBUCKS
9PM | 2ND SCREENING
LOCATION: MOCA NORTH MIAMI
Showcasing today's most cutting edge filmmakers and video artists in South Florida, come and see who got chosen for this year's coveted film festival. | This event is sponsored by STARBUCKS COFFEE COMPANY. Come enjoy complimentary drinks provided by STARBUCKS at 8PM during the Artist Roundtable. RSVP is REQUIRED! Call 305.893.6211 ext. 23 to reserve.
AUGUST 26
OPTIC NERVE VIII
7PM | SCREENING
LOCATION: MOCA AT GOLDMAN WAREHOUSE
Showcasing today's most cutting edge filmmakers and video artists in South Florida, come and see who got chosen for this year's coveted film festival. | This event is sponsored by the City of Miami. RSVP is REQUIRED! Call 305.893.6211 ext. 23 to reserve.
Since the last installment of “Mission: Impossible,” Cruise has found somebody to marry him for real, and to bear his child. This scarcely unusual news would hardly be worth rehearsing, were it not for the kinks and wavers that have been observed in the arc of his stardom—and “M:i:III,” like many blockbusters, would be nothing without its star. The Cruise fan base has been shaken by a number of public pronouncements, although some of us have merely been confirmed in our original suspicions that there was something about this actor that was not quite of this earth. The stiff-necked jerk of his motions; the grit of his bared teeth; the eyes switched to perennial full beam but never quite blinking, even during tears; his ability to remain totally upright when sprinting, as if carrying an invisible egg and spoon—what are these, if not the techniques of an alien life force who has just graduated summa cum laude in advanced human behavior? Just who was scared of whom, precisely, in last year’s “War of the Worlds”?It's true! He never blinks! And I've always been mesmerized by his run (there's an opportunity for him to run in every movie. He probably even runs in Born on the Fourth of July before he's wheelchair-bound) and now it all makes sense. Lane has cracked it wide open. TC is really an ET.
Mann’s narrative style in this movie is terse, abrupt, and fragmentary, his dialogue little more than advanced drug-dealer-and-cop jargon, verbal hardtack spat out of the corner of someone’s mouth, some of it by Latino and Chinese actors with accents thick enough to make you long for the bad old days when Americans played most of the foreigners in Hollywood films and delivered their lines in accents that any Missourian could understand. “Miami Vice” risks, and often achieves, a kind of clenched impenetrability. The movie must have six variants of an ugly ruffian speaking into a cell phone words like these: “The deal is going down now. Fifty keys at three thousand each. Only the location is changed. The second barge on the Gowanus Canal. You have twelve seconds to get there.” The picture turns dealing into a kind of expensive, high-speed scavenger hunt. Sometimes the geography is so confusing that we wonder how the film crew managed to show up at the right location.This movie sounds flamingo-tastic!
And no, it’s not that we Israelis long for war or death or grief, but we do long for those “old days” the taxi driver talked about. We long for a real war to take the place of all those exhausting years of intifada when there was no black or white, only gray, when we were confronted not by armed forces, but only by resolute young people wearing explosive belts, years when the aura of bravery ceased to exist, replaced by long lines of people waiting at our checkpoints, women about to give birth and elderly people struggling to endure the stifling heat.
Suddenly, the first salvo of missiles returned us to that familiar feeling of a war fought against a ruthless enemy who attacks our borders, a truly vicious enemy, not one fighting for its freedom and self-determination, not the kind that makes us stammer and throws us into confusion. Once again we’re confident about the rightness of our cause and we return with lightning speed to the bosom of the patriotism we had almost abandoned. Once again, we’re a small country surrounded by enemies, fighting for our lives, not a strong, occupying country forced to fight daily against a civilian population.
And in his Huffington blog Bill Maher gives the presdient props for cutting through the bullsh*t like the no-nonsense cowboy that he is. He writes:
I have to say, watching George Bush talk about Israel the last week has reminded me of a feeling that I hadn't felt in so long I forgot what it felt like: the feeling of pride when your president says what you want your president to say, especially in a matter that chokes you up a bit. I surrender my credentials as Bush exposer - from the very beginning - to no man, but on Israel, I love it that a U.S. president doesn't pretend Arab-Israeli conflict is an even-steven proposition. Lots of ethnic peoples, probably most, have at one time or another lost some territory; nobody's ever completely happy with their borders; people move and get moved, which is why the 20th century saw the movement of tens if not hundreds of millions of refugees in countries around the world. There was no entity of Arabs called "Palestine" before Israel made the desert bloom. If those 600,000 original Palestinian refugees had been handled with maturity by their Arab brethren, who had nothing but space to put them, they could have moved on -- the way Germans, Czechs, Poles, Chinese and everybody else has, including, of course, the Jews.Compare the president's response to that of Spain's prime minister who has basically destroyed any dimplomatic relations with Israel with stunts like this.
For the Israeli right, this is the moment of "We told you so." The fact that the kidnappings and missile attacks have come from southern Lebanon and Gaza -- precisely the areas from which Israel has unilaterally withdrawn--is proof, for right-wingers, of the bankruptcy of unilateralism. Yet the right has always misunderstood the meaning of unilateral withdrawal. Those of us who have supported unilateralism didn't expect a quiet border in return for our withdrawal but simply the creation of a border from which we could more vigorously defend ourselves, with greater domestic consensus and international understanding. The anticipated outcome, then, wasn't an illusory peace but a more effective way to fight the war. The question wasn't whether Hamas or Hezbollah would forswear aggression but whether Israel would act with appropriate vigor to their continued aggression.Also worth reading is Ari Shavit's editorial in Haaretz on Israel's most justified war.
The target audience, at least during the early stages, is Israelis living in New York that are familiar with the taste of the Iraqi sandwich. "“We realize that during the first few weeks we will rely on Israelis that are familiar with Aroma and this will remind them of home," says Milevitski. "But in the long run, we are counting on the American crowds. Aroma will not be an Israeli coffee shop in New York. We don'’t have a menu in Hebrew, we will not have newspapers from Israel, and we will not showcase the local Israeli channel on the television screen."I wonder if ordering in America will have the same rapid-fire banter ordering in Israel requires. The plethora of questions are designed to drive you insane. For example:
"The location is the most important," said Marianne R. Sanua, an associate professor of history and Jewish studies at Florida Atlantic University, in Boca Raton, who grew up in Brooklyn in a half-Syrian Sephardic family. "They're willing to completely gut a house and rebuild it to the latest specifications rather than spend $5 million to buy a penthouse on the Upper East Side, which would mean nothing to them."
"It's very important for members of the community to live close to one another," she added. "They put tremendous emphasis on keeping their children in the community and having them socialize and marry within the community. Many parents will go to tremendous efforts to buy houses for their children. They will buy houses and give them as wedding gifts."
What, a little fine china and a fancy juicer isn't good enough for those Syrian kids? Sheesh.
"Strangers With Candy" revolves around Ms. Sedaris's character Jerri Blank, which was inspired by a former substance abuser turned motivational speaker featured in a documentary Mr. Dinello found in a video store. "The film was terrible and preachy, and the woman looked like Michael Dukakis," Ms. Sedaris said. But it propelled her to start playing an overweight 46-year-old who decides to go back to high school after years spent as a drug addict and prostitute. "Strangers With Candy" is at once a wry and puerile comment on our cultural obsession with prolonged adolescence. In the film Jerri competes in a science fair in the hope that it will rouse her father out of a coma.My favorite line from the show involves Jerri asking some popular girls what their plans are for the weekend and she phrases it something like "You doin' anything on Fri, Sat, Sun?" The social awkwardness contained in that line is brilliant.
There may be more subtle effects as well. In an information economy, productivity is based on the best people finding the jobs best suited for their talents, and interns interfere with this cultural capitalism. They fly in the face of meritocracy — you must be rich enough to work without pay to get your foot in the door. And they enhance the power of social connections over ability to match people with desirable careers. A 2004 study of business graduates at a large mid-Atlantic university found that the completion of an internship helped people find jobs faster but didn't increase their confidence that those jobs were a good fit.
