FONTAINEBLEAU RESORT
For some reason, it seems as if time really flew between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year, which means that most of us have been scrambling to get our greeting cards and presents in order, as well as trying to keep track of the various holiday functions we feel obliged to attend. When your main preoccupation is trying to find just one good gift for your mom and realizing that you haven’t sent anything to your in-laws while they sent you a box of presents, the last thing on your mind is planning a Christmas (or Noche Buena) feast. Sure, you can do what I do and round up a selection of charcuterie and cheeses from Graziano’s and Epicure to nibble at throughout the holiday - or visit a Blue Sky for your lechón - but with so many fabulous restaurants offering such wonderful Christmas and Christmas Eve dinners, it’s hard not to take the easy way out and leave the preparations to the gourmet chefs. If you’re finding yourself in Miami without dinner plans this Christmas, let Joonbug outline a few suggestions for you:
It's a beautiful thing for anyone who seeks out the good life when spa month and restaurant month coincide. It's an even better thing when you can experience a spa day and a gourmet dinner all in one place. Miami's top resorts have been known for having some of the nation's best spas for quite some time, but now that the foodie movement is in full force, it seems as if luxury hotels have also become the destination for epicurians seeking out some of the city's finest meals. For those of you who are addicted to enjoying life's finer pleasures and have an affinity for a good deal, August is the month to be in Miami when Miami Spa Month and Miami Spice overlap, and there are fewer places more adept at satisfying the most seasoned spa aficionados and ardent foodies than the Fontainebleau Resort on Miami Beach.
Graduation time is here, and to commemorate those of us who have worked long and hard to acheive that diploma, celebrations are in order! However, it seems awfully unfitting to congratulate a recent law or med school graduate with an arficial-tasting sheet cake entombed within a dense layer of Crisco and powdered sugar frosting acting as "buttercream". Our graduates deserve much better than that, and Solo, The Fontainebleau Resort's decadent bakery and patisserie, is here to help with some of the most elegant graduation confections in South Florida. Celebrate your loved one's recent accomplishment with a Graduation Hat Cake ($16.50) consisting of an unctuous chocolate mousse dome topped with an edible chocolate mortarboard and tassle. Or, surprise your grad with an assortment of meticulously decorated cupcakes ($5.50 each) in such flavors as vanilla, chocolate, and red velvet, among others. Knowing The Fontainebleau, no expense is spared in bringing customers the best ingredients prepared with the utmost attention to flavor and presentation.
Whether you love or hate the Vegas-style monolith of a resort on Miami Beach, any self-respecting foodie has to admit that the Fontainebleau complex offers one of the best concentrations of fine dining to be had anywhere in South Florida. While it would be a dream-come-true to one day get a Michelin-starred restaurant in Miami, such a thing won't realistically happen for quite some time. Fortunately, there are some other awards that an exceptionally good restaurant with a lot of financial backing can aspire to that aren't as unattainable and are much less "francocentric". The much-coveted AAA Four Diamond award has already been awarded to two of the Fontainebleau Resort's restaurants. Scarpetta, perhaps the best Italian restaurant in South Florida, was the well-deserving recipient of one, and Hakkasan, the resort's gourmet Cantonese restaurant, was the recipient of the other. The Fontainebleau can now add Gotham Steak to its list of award-winning restaurants, for it too has caught the attention of critics and has scored the resort its third AAA Four Diamond award, making The Fontainebleau the only resort in Florida to have three restaurants with such an distinction.
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