The new modern phrase is to buy experiences and not things. As such you have the not so new trend of people buying smaller homes so that they can travel. A trip to Coconut Grove for Ariete grants you a culinary experience perhaps of a lifetime. This michelin star restaurant is next to the Coconut Grove Playhouse and created by Michael Beltran who is born and raised in Miami. I am always pleased to see local talent do well, as having grown up in Miami myself, a lot of friends swore to leave for bigger and better things, but having done so and returning, I believe it's not better "out there" and the grass is not always greener.

For some unbenownst reason I expected a huge restaurant with lots of seating and boisturous activity, but this restaurant is a relaxing smaller size and could be consdered a romantic destination. There is outside seating and inside is well laid out to not feel overly crowded.

I was seated at a window table with a beautiful view of the courtyard entrance and was quickly greeted by my wait staff of approximately 3 different people. However, I mostly interacted with one person. The service was impeccable as every need was attended with prompt refills of water, table cleaning between courses and of course clean silverware. The impressive thing about the service was that things were anticipated. The staff had interleaved additional dishes into my meal without having too contrasting or similar flavors between them. When I left to go to the bathroom, my napkin was neatly folded upon my arrival.

If I had ordered the wine pairing, I would have had an additional person come by and explain the wine selections. However, I generally don't order the wine pairing though I know it can greatly accentuate intended flavor profiles. I opted for a 9 course meal to get as much overview of the restaurant as possible.

My first course was the "taste of miami" which consisted of vaca frita, cuban sandwich gougere, creme fraiche, and caviar flan, wagyu tartlet. The presentation was dramatic.

I am a huge fan of Masters of Orion and Civilization even Sins of a Solar empire. I even played the original Galactic Civilizations on OS2/Warp back in the day but I had lost touch with this game even if it was later available in Windows and on Steam. So when this game became available for early access, I jumped at the chance to play it. Now, completely a newbie I am truly enjoying this 4x game.

The most exciting thing about this game is the new chatgpt inspired AI that helps generate new custom races that you can play with or against. You can start out as the humans (Terans) and slowly go to conquer the galaxy and wni the game through several win-conditions: Prestige (which is like a total score), economic, conquest, research, alliances, ascension, end of turns.

According to the dev notes entry #9, the map has been reworked to allow for sectors of tiles within the galaxy and subspace streams to warp between them.

The idea of the game is you start out on your home world with a few ships, a probe, a colony ship and a fighter ship. You slowly expand and explore until you find some suitable areas to colonize until you meet your neighbors (friend or foe). Rinse and repeat until you win the game. Pretty standard formula for most of these types of games. Besides of where the game takes place (space, the mideval period of europe, earth) what makes them all different is the nuances of how you expand and succeed.

Galactic Civilizations 4 (Galciv4) toys with the idea of a completely randomly made universe that has a lot of surprises via anomolies which are discoverable objects that can give you resources, money, ship enhancements or unleash monsters, ships or pirates. These anomalies can be discovered by a flag ship and every civilization is supposed to get only one. This flag ship becomes more powerful as it discovers more and gains more experience.

A quest to finding the best ribs in Miami is no easy task. Many have their favorite restaurants and especially locals prefer some of the historically honored traditional establishments such as Shiver's or Shorty's.

A good rib is one that is tender, not dry and above all else, tasty. And with these come subjective interpretations, which is delicious to one person may simply be atrocious to another. Some are ok with parboiled ribs for tenderness while others demand that they be slow roasted or slowly smoked. There are varying styles of barbecue that differ from Texas to North Carolina as well as the regional accompanying sauces.

I went to four different barbecue places to try their selection, in search of the best ribs and I was surprised at the complexity of the task. Each place I went to held their own and have their own special merits and I could easily go to any of these places depending on what I am in the mood for on that particular day. I am in the fortunate, or if you look at my waistline, unfortunate position of liking everything, beef ribs, spare ribs, baby back ribs, so long as it tastes good and the meat is tender.

First on the list is Shiver's BBQ in Homestead. It is a landmark and has been around since the 1950s.

They have a large variety of offerings and when it comes to ribs they have the full gamut of pork spareribs, baby back ribs and beef ribs. You can get all three in the "rib trio" which is what I did:

Note, this is an older article. There is a comprehensive regularly update pate here: https://endlessvolo.com/blogs/alaines-osteria-in-palmetto-bay-total.html

Some places are memorable by lending themselves to haughty taughty pretenses with in your face food presentations. Others are memorable for their wild, exotic ingredients and others are memorable as the "cool, hip place for 20 somethings." Alaine's Osteria (https://www.yelp.com/biz/alaines-osteria-palmetto-bay) is none of these things, it is much better, a comfortable, wholesome, happy place where you can go to relax and enjoy good tasting comfort food.

The restaurant has a nice warm feel to it, dark wood and warm colors decorate the establishment a bar, mostly empty divides the restaurant from its more romantic, quieter dining area to the more social side where the bar is, where there are  several 1-2 person tables.

Kobe meatball in porcini broth, topped with melted mozzaralla

Short rib agnolotti in creamy porcini sauce -- a ravioli filled with shredded short rib and riccotta

I am a big fan of Bravo's Top Chef, so when there is a local restaurant by a top chef contestant in town, I try to go, whichever town I'm in. The Root and Bone in South Miami serves southern comfort food from a husband and wife team that were on in 2013. Known more for their evening meals, I wanted to sample the brunch menu and showed up shortly after opening at 10am on a Sunday. It was not busy for which I was thankful, only a few tables. I am a pretty standard breakfast eater, preferring the simple bacon, sunny side up eggs, sausage links and potatoes. Of course they did have the "American roots Breakfast" dish which would have all I wanted with the exception of scrambled eggs, but this was not a place to go for standard food and I wanted creativity.

I sat at the bar and had a course of the Drunken Deviled Eggs, and Smoky Bacon Board, which were both very tasty. Every morsel of these two dishes was delicious and they were well balanced with different flavors on the same plate.

The deviled eggs had surprising pink color to them due to the pickled beets giving it a slightly acidic flavor which brings out the dill that is important in the dressing. A not-too-crunchy chip was buried slightly below the top of the egg dressing giving it a nice texture. However, I truly enjoyed the smokey bacon board and felt by itself, it had a nice complemetnary set of flavors that lends itself to eating each piece of of food in succession to ready the palate for the next flavor, a very well thought out dish. The pieces of the bacon were very thick, probably double or triple the thickness of a thick center cut bacon from costco. The fresh/mixed pickles gave a nice sweet heat along with the marinated cheese to reset your palate for the next bite of the bacon. The fried pork skins was a nice touch as well giving a slightly crunchy, dry taste before the deep smoke of the bacon on the next bite. I thoroughly enjoyed this dish and felt it paired well with the drunken devilled eggs.

For the main course, I had the braised short rib meatloaf with eggs which was also absolutely delicious. I'm usually unimpressed with dishes that have short rib in them, generally because they tend to be underseasoned, but the veal demiglaze gave it a nice touch of flavor. The asparagus and eggs were a nice complementary flavor and nothing was overcooked.