Ratatouille This weekend I took my children to see the new Disney/Pixar film, Ratatouille. It’s about France’s greatest chef—a rat. The food in the animated feature looks good enough to eat. A majority of the movie takes place in a French restaurant kitchen and most of the main characters, sans the rat and his family, [...]

Café Rendez-Vous SEASIDE, Fla.— The hippest restaurant in the Florida Panhandle just might be Café Rendez-Vous in Seaside, the small community which serves as ground zero of the New Urbanist movement. I happened upon Café Rendez-Vous through the girlfriend of a friend who told me to take my wife there to check out the Tahitian [...]

Sal and Mookie’s JACKSON — In the world of independent pizza joints one has three primary choices outside of the chain-pizza realm: California pizza, Chicago pizza, and New York pizza. The California pizza movement originated in the early 1980s with Wolfgang Puck who brought the simple art of pizza making into fine-dining restaurants using upscale [...]

I have developed and tested my version of Harbor Docks Smoked Tuna Dip. It is listed in the column below. Robert

The World’s Best Smoked Tuna Dip WATERCOLOR, Fla.— Twenty years ago, before I opened my first restaurant, I lived in the Florida Panhandle and worked as a waiter. I was single, the money was good, and I had the stress level of a turtle. In my Florida days I awoke around 10 a.m., traveled across [...]

The Camellia Grill On a hot August day in 1989, I took a young, beautiful, and adventurous 22-year old girl to New Orleans for our first, out-of-town date. We spent time in the French Quarter and then drove down Canal Street to admire the houses and their architecture. We were at the testing phase of [...]

Luke My daughter turned ten-years old last week. To celebrate her decade on the planet she asked to be taken to New Orleans to eat breakfast, lunch, and shop (not necessarily in that order). The moment she mentioned breakfast I knew exactly where to take her. Chef John Besh has opened yet another restaurant— Luke. [...]

Top Secret Ceviche ISLA MUJERES, MEXICO— The next time I gripe about the summer heat in Mississippi, I will try to remember Mexico at noon, in May. Business took me to the Yucatan Peninsula, and the Easternmost point of Mexico, an island on the Caribbean Sea— Isla Mujeres. The island is surrounded by clear, turquoise [...]

The Great Soft-Shell Crab Crisis of 2007 News travels fast, but incorrect news travels even faster. Five weeks ago I wrote a column that opened with this sentence: “Soft-shell crab season is here. Halleluiah, amen, and pass the Remoulade sauce!” That was a true statement— at the time. By the time the column was published [...]

Donuts and Age I am in my 46th year. Some days I feel every minute of those four and a half decades, others I feel as I did in my teens. My wife would say that, maturity-wise, I am still in my teens… early teens. I ate breakfast this past Saturday and felt older than [...]