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.

I may be in the minority on this but I have enjoyed this season much more than Mandalorian which also ended this week. This could be the enjoyment of the nostalgia, or it could be the writing.

The final episode culminates in a battle with the arch enemy of the federation, the Borg. As a couple of my friends have lamented, Picard doesnt seem like the Picard of TNG (Star trek, the next generation), because of either his age or the show's writing. However at the beginning of the show he answers with an astounding "What began over 35 years ago, ends tonight!" The solution is to sever the connection from the borg collective to the rest of the fleet. The underlying conflict is if Jack Crusher dies as a result of this.

What Star Trek Picard brings us more than the old Star TreK: TNG is character development and the acting is more subtle, especially from Patrick Stewart but still powerful. The facial expressions from Jonathan Frakes (Will Riker) during this season would have been comical on his younger 30 year old self. The love between Deanna and Riker would have been too cheesy in the old, young versions. But with the older versions of Deanna and Riker, they appear as a quaint happy old couple, like your favorite set of grandparents.

Beverly Crusher is an ace gunman on a starship.

When it comes to South Florida, Asian flavors are lacking. This is probably due to location as it is literally as far away from East and South Asia as you can go. Ghee ( https://www.gheemiami.com/ ) is a bright spot in what is otherwise a desert for quality indian food.

The atmosphere is very trendy with somewhat loud jazzy music. The arrangements are very interesting and inviting with a wall of ingredients that surround a dark warm interior.  There is plenty of parking, which is validated, and plenty of outdoor seating. It was a very warm day when I visited so I decided to sit inside. There is a bar area where individuals can opt to sit which was full of older women when I went on a weeknight.

The staff was not up to the quality that I have been used to, although the waiter was excellent, the host and greeting staff seemed flat which was heartbreaking however I will chalk it up to being an off day. The waiter was superb in his recommendations to keep you away from all the same flavor profiles and allow you to sample a variety. It is obvious that there is a lack of sophisticated knowledge of nuanced asian flavors in south florida and the wait staff is well prepared to get you on the right track, if needed. The menu changes roughly monthly and there is a "this menu was printed on this date" at the bottom, which I appreciate and am excited about. What is really nice is that menu items are labelled if they are gluten free, vegetarian, vegan, or halal. Of course, non of these affect me as I have no dietary restrictions but I have plenty of friends who fret over this when they go out for food. What is even nicer is that the spice and ingredients are grown fresh from the family's farm in Homestead.

The menu includes a chef's tasting menu which also changes. I will definitely try this next time I go.

For my meal I had the Duck Confit Samosa with cranberry chutney and short rib dosa to start off. One of my favorite indian foods is samosa and I found this sort of ok but to my surprise the short rib dosa was extremely good.

Fabledom developed by Grenna Games released with early access yesterday on Steam for only $15.  It is a city builder game with a cartoonish bent set in a land of fairytales. You can pick to be a prince or a princess to govern a small. Throughout the game, you will have random events that add a little fairy tale flavor that ranges from additional quests that involve giving away some of your resources to enduring spells from evil witches. Keep in mind, the game is still unfinished but offers a bit of playthrough and I spent a solid 8 hours on it. It has a very relaxing feel to it that is similar to cities skylines and as you grow your settlement, you can annex neighboring aras.

You start out with 4 peasants and have a series of tutorial quests that involve building livnig quarters (homsteads), farms and workshops (laborers huts). These are used by the populace to live. Lumber camps and stone camps employ the populace and are used to gather resources which can be turned into buildings or higher tier resources.

The game has seasonal and weather cycles which add a nice twist to the game. Crops take time to grow and there are boom and busts cycles of resource gathering which must be taken advantage of in spring and summer so that you may last through the winter. It's a nice refreshing take on a well established genre.

The set up screen has a random seed generator that is well appreciated in this style of game where you are dependant on map resources.

The game has diplomacy as well as combat however the combat system does not appear to be implemented yet, and the diplomacy focuses mainly on fairytale romance at the moment. However the backbone of the game is in place for what appears to be a rich environment for NPC interaction.