I didn't know until I just visited there that Miami was nicknamed "the Magic City." That seems a little strange when another city in Florida is already associated with one kind of magic and another, but whatever.

I just spent the better part of a week in Miami for work travel. It was my first visit there since I was little, and we barely had time to see much of the city outside of work events (although I had a good view from my hotel room), but I'm still glad that i went.

I'll skip over the boring work stuff and focus on the next most important part, the food! We ate a total of five meals of Cuban food, if you count the lunch served during the conference. The first meal was at a low-key casual restaurant described on their menu as "abuelita-style," which is the first time I have heard that phrase not applied to my driving. I got the mahi mahi, which a coworker freaked out about upon mistaking it for dolphin. The second meal was guava BBQ chicken at the same restaurant, revisited when another coworker heard us raving about it. The third meal was an Elena Ruz sandwich, which is the comfort food that I didn't know I needed in my life until now. And the last was best: We went to Gloria Estefan's restaurant and I got some Cuban risotto, accurately described in that article, and enjoyed a live band playing fantastic Cuban music. What a great experience.

My Cuban coworker goes to Miami every few weekends to see family, and he loves the city. He's proud of his Cuban heritage, often sharing jokes about his people. I think I'll ask him to lunch at a Cuban restaurant in Bradenton to have some further guidance exploring the menu, because so far I can't get enough.


Logical Operator

The creator of Funeratic, Scott Hardie, blogs about running this site, losing weight, and other passions including his wife Kelly, his friends, movies, gaming, and Florida. Read more »

Scott's Pet Peeve #8431

Random strangers on Facebook are not exactly known for impressive displays of intellect, but with several of my friends in the hospital recently, I've been annoyed by one particular bad habit that their friends seem to have: 1) Someone posts that s/he is experiencing a certain medical problem and is going into the hospital. Friends reply with supportive words. 2) A few hours later, the OP posts an update describing what the doctors are doing. Go »

No Disrespect

One of my pet peeves is people saying, "Have you ever noticed that the phrase 'no disrespect' is immediately followed by something disrespectful?" Well, YEAH. That's the point of the phrase. Go »

Pandora

[This post wound up being very long-winded and self-absorbed, but that's what blogs are for, I guess.] For years, I've gotten increasingly picky about how I listen to music. Sometimes I just want to listen to everything I have on shuffle, but sometimes I want to get more specific like only music from one genre on shuffle or all songs by one artist in chronological order, and sometimes I want to get really specific, like songs about dreams or artists from Michigan or recordings featuring violins. Go »

Ten Things I Learned While Kelly's Parents Pat & Russ Spent a Week Visiting Us

• Florida reminds me of Dave Barry's quip that vacationing in Britain is great because you meet people from entirely different states. We stopped a woman to take our picture; she was visiting from New Jersey and her daughter beside her was from California. The only local we met warned us what bridge not to jump off for swimming because the water is shark-infested. Go »

Screw the Braden River Post Office

I haven't written in this blog lately, and I hate to resume with a negative topic, but I need to vent and this makes a good outlet. I hate junk mail, as longtime TC users may recall from my many rants on the subject. Honestly, I've considered opening a storefront business that offers PO boxes to the public, and pre-filters your junk mail for you. Go »

Garfunkel and Oates

Kelly and I had a good time last night taking out two old friends for their birthdays to see Garfunkel and Oates in Tampa. I'm only familiar with the duo's songs, so it was refreshing that only maybe a third of the show consisted of music. The rest was stand up comedy, storytelling, audience interaction, and a weird extended commercial for their sponsor Monster Energy Drink, tall boys of which were being handed out for free, because that's just what my heart needs at ten o'clock at night. Go »