Carlos Santana plays the Cruzan Amphitheatre on Aug. 1 with Steve Winwood. (Fadel Senna/AFP/Getty Images)

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Carlos Santana is levitating. He’s talking about gifts from the universe, brain-lulling mantras, relishing the child-like spirit in all beings.

"My feet are not touching the ground. I’m very, very grateful and happy," he says in a voice that sounds sleepy — blissfully sleepy.

He sighs, then:

"We’re in love."

That’s we, as in he and percussionist Cindy Blackman, the foxy, 50-year-old hard-bop drummer best known for performing with Lenny Kravitz. Santana proposed to her three weeks ago while onstage in Chicago. She had just finished a drum solo on “Corazon Espinado”, a languid cha cha about heartache, when he popped the question.

She said yes. Kissed him passionately. Now he levitates.

Note to self: when I grow up, I want to levitate like Santana. Granted, it would be a massive feat for a grounded earth sign like me with more astrological houses in "earth" than Trump has real estate on earth. But to reach Santana’s age, 63 years young, and continue to be greatly inspired creatively, romantically, universally, to the point that one barely touches the ground — that’s golden.

The rock-roots guitar god brings his heaven tonight to the Cruzan Amphitheatre, and for those of us who have followed his sweeping musical career there will be a stream of eclectic Santana hits.

And there will be something else: an added layer of brand new joy. Did I mention he’s in love?

"Cindy and I keep repeating these words: Pristine, purity and innocence. Pristine, purity and innocence," he says by phone from a Washington hotel suite.

He says this to illustrate his belief that certain words repeated like a mantra can nudge the brain out of the way and create a new reality.

"If you say this, it keeps you like a child, in virgin territory," says the musician in his trademark ethereal way. "First time ever, everything. First time ever, everything."

He delivers these words with the kind of natural rhythm one might imagine accompanies his song-writing sessions. And you can almost feel the germ of an idea rustling to life.

"First time ever, everything. Ah, you’ve got to write that down," says Santana, who is divorced from his first wife of 34 years. He plans to remarry Dec. 19.

I had asked where he finds inspiration. The short answer is: Everything — women and love, especially.

His earliest musical inspiration came from his father, Jose Santana, who loved to serenade the love of his life, Carlos’ mom, with gorgeous boleros from their native Mexico, like Vereda Tropical.

"He’d sing to her in the middle of the night, his voice dripping with beauty and melody, and my mom would open the curtain. It was a beautiful cycle of romance," he says. "I learned this from him, the gift of serenading and capturing the heart."

And still today, Santana’s performances are targeted at the fans he seeks to honor with his melodic lines and soulful rhythms — the ladies. His concerts, he says, are all about "celebrating and arousing the female."

It’s a motif, his love of the ladies. He brings it up again when I ask him about his upcoming album, Guitar Heaven: the Greatest Guitar Classics of All Time (Sept. 2010), featuring his interpretation of hits from rock greats.

Taking on a mighty repertoire of iconic songs, he says, is like romancing a woman.

"It’s an affirmation that it takes courage to date the Mona Lisa," he says. "No, I didn’t wear the same cologne, but I want to honor them and make them feel totally different."

Insert searing guitar solo here, and prepare to float.

~liz_balmaseda@pbpost.com

Santana with Steve Winwood

When: 7:30 p.m. Sunday

Where: Cruzan Amphitheatre,

suburban West Palm Beach

Tickets: $25.50-$125.50; (866) 614-4183; www.ticketmaster.com

Kenny Gilbert, who is in the midst of the new season of 'Top Chef', took over as PGA National's executive chef earlier in July.

Kenny Gilbert was about 3 years old when his culinary passions fired up — quite literally so. It happened one day as his mother sewed in the basement of their family home near Cleveland, and as his baby brother fidgeted in his crib.

An energetic child, Kenny barreled into the kitchen, where there was a roast cooking in the oven. He grabbed a dish towel from the oven door and somehow pulled out the roast. And as he did this, the frayed edge of the towel snagged on the oven coils.

The ruckus of his mischief and the smoky wafts from the oven reached the basement and Carlotta Gilbert, a clothing designer and keen pragmatist, bolted from her sewing machine to the rescue.

She turned off the oven, retrieved the towel and inspected her roast: it was perfectly done. She realized she had two choices — she could teach her son a punishing lesson that could scare him out of the kitchen for good, or she could teach him to cook.

Luckily for the culinary world, mom chose the latter, for that was the day Kenny Gilbert — now a standout contestant on Bravo TV’s Top Chef D.C. and the new executive chef at the PGA National Resort & Spa — became a cook.

Under his mother’s tutelage, he learned how to work the knobs on kitchen appliances, how to scramble an egg, how to respect the kitchen and love the meals he could create there.

“She showed me how to turn all the knobs on and off. She showed me everything about the kitchen. She just nurtured something in me,” recalls Gilbert, 36, who started work two weeks ago at PGA National, the AAA Four Diamond resort in Palm Beach Gardens.

These were lessons enhanced by outdoor grilling sessions with dad, the late Carle Gilbert, and fueled by sibling culinary rivalry with younger brother, Kirk, who also grew up to be a chef. (He’s an executive chef at the Palmetto Bluff resort in South Carolina.) By the time Kenny was 11 years old, the boy chef was the chief cook at the family’s Thanksgiving dinner.

Gilbert would go on to greatly refine his kitchen skills, from home-ec classes in middle and high school to cooking classes in vocational school to flipping burgers on “the fast-food tour” to the Pennsylvania Institute of Culinary Arts.

The training and persistence landed him a series of distinguished posts. At 23, he commanded the kitchen of the Ritz-Carlton resort in Amelia Island as the AAA Five Diamond resort’s youngest executive chef. Nearly a decade later, he landed in Palm Beach County as executive chef at The Ritz-Carlton Golf Club & Spa in Jupiter.

Thanks to his fine-dining chops, Gilbert out-performed his Top Chef competitors on Episode 1, when the 17 “cheftestants” raced through an obstacle course of food prep, peeling and slicing and brunoise-ing. From the start, Gilbert, the beefy, self-proclaimed “alpha male” of the cast, emerged as a fierce competitor with a style that is as soulful as it is refined.

This is the essence of his cooking.

“I describe my food as international cuisine with a Southern influence,” says Gilbert, who came to Palm Beach Gardens from the Capella Telluride resort in Colorado, where he was executive chef. “There’s a comfort food element to what I do. I could be serving a guest seafood from the Mediterranean sea — a sea bass he’s never heard of before — and I’ll serve it with an aged white cheddar grits. And it won’t be a massive portion, but one that is portioned perfectly.”

His own idea of a weeknight comfort dinner is one rooted not in the South, but in his love of Asian cuisines. His go-to meal: pad Thai with chicken or shrimp.

“I do a lot of Thai food. I tend to go to the Asian market and stock up on rice noodles and different kinds of curries,” says Gilbert, who also owns and operates his own food and beverage consulting and training business, Passionate Culinary Enterprises.

One of his favorite local haunts, in fact, is the Fortune Cookie Oriental Market on Forest Hill Boulevard in Palm Springs.

“I could walk around there for hours, picking up bottles and looking at the labels. Then I bring it home and play around with the ingredients,” he says.

At home awaits one of his most discerning diners — his daughter Adrienna.

“She has a very excellent palate. She’s almost 17 and she loves all kinds of food. She’ll ask, ‘Daddy, what are you making for dinner?’ Then she’ll just lay it out there — she knows what she wants,” says the chef, who now oversees all menus and food concepts at the PGA resort’s dining venues, including its fine-dining restaurant, Ironwood Grille.

His guests at PGA can expect fresh food created with gusto, says Gilbert.

“My goal is to bring a sustainable and organic feel to the property,” he says. “I’ll be working to train and develop the staff and get everyone really excited about food.”

His biggest message to his new staff: “Feel the love in the food.”

It’s his daily mantra, he says — “It’s what my parents taught me.”

Chef Kenny Gilbert’s Edamame with Preserved Lemon and Cumin

1 cup edamame in the shell

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon whole cumin

1 teaspoon preserved lemon*

Chopped Kosher salt to taste

Heat olive oil in sauté pan, medium heat.

Add cumin and toast.

Add preserved lemon and sweat the lemon, about 1 minute.

Add edamame and cook until hot.

Sprinkle with the coarse salt.

* Preserved, or pickled, lemon can be found in specialty food markets.

WATCH CHEF KENNY
Top Chef: Washington D.C. airs tonight on Bravo TV. The winner of the reality TV competition will be crowned ‘Top Chef’ and receive $125,000 from Dial NutriSkin, a feature in Food & Wine magazine and a showcase at the annual Food & Wine Classic in Aspen.

TASTE THE CUISINE
At the PGA National Resort & Spa,
400 Avenue of the Champions, Palm Beach Gardens. Visit www.pgaresort.com or call (800) 533-9386.

Fah Asian Bistro's Sex on the Moon roll. (Libby Volgyes / Palm Beach Post)

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GARY CORONADO/Palm Beach Post

It’s refreshing to find a spot like DeVine Bistro deep in the ‘burbs, tucked into the land of chain restaurants and generic shopping plazas. Yes, there are a couple of large-screen TVs in the place, which does sit in a shopping plaza, but there’s also a menu reflecting depth and experience in the kitchen.

This is because DeVine’s executive chef and owner, David Palmateer, is a veteran of a few celebrated dining establishments. The former Café Chardonnay chef ran the now-closed Off the Vine bistro in Palm Beach Gardens some years ago.

He’s a chef who favors fresh, natural ingredients prepared in comfort food fashion. Even the sandwich meats he serves here are nitrate free and freshly slow-roasted.

He offers an ample menu overflowing with appetizers, soups, salads, sandwiches, big-plate entrees, desserts and children’s dishes – not to mention a decent wine menu, which includes a fabulous Argentinean torrontés by the glass ($9). Plus, there are nightly and summer specials. A ravenous diner has choices at DeVine – tons of them.

Tempted and slightly overwhelmed by these choices, we dove into a hearty round of appetizers. We chose a fried green tomato Napoleon ($11.90) that quickly set the evening’s tone for crunch and flavor. It arrived as a neat stack of crispy tomatoes wedged amid petite lump crab, fresh mozzarella and roasted peppers, zig-zagged with a balsamic reduction and a fresh basil cream. I found it to be a dish of wonderful contrasts, both in flavor and texture.

Equally crisp and flavorful were the smoked chicken spring rolls ($9), stuffed with sweet corn, black beans and apple-wood smoked bacon and accompanied by two dipping sauces, a chipotle ranch and a roasted tomato aioli. As with the fried tomatoes, the spring rolls were served in a reasonable, even smallish, portion – a good thing at this bistro, where the entrees are quite large.

We also ordered one of the nightly specials, bacon-wrapped dates stuffed with Manchego cheese ($12). It was a dish of bold, sweet-salty flavors, which is usually music to my palate. However, the bacon proved to be overly thick, not at all crispy. And it also foreshadowed the bacon motif to come.

Now, I’m a fan of just about everything bacon. But if our meal was marred by anything at all it was the sobering realization that there is such a thing as too much bacon.

This was evident in the beef stroganoff entrée ($23.90), a creamy dish of filet mignon, egg noodles, portobello mushrooms and bacon. The sauce was delicious and classic – one of the reasons that landed this popular dish, a former nightly special, a spot on the regular menu. But it could have benefited from more mushrooms, and less bacon.

My favorite entrée, the osso bucco (a nightly special, $26), was a robust, fall-off-the-bone tender rendition of the Italian bistro favorite. Perfectly braised, it was large enough for two. However, it was accompanied by a cheesy risotto weighed down with chunks of bacon. Clearly, the bacon situation is a matter a taste, and I’m sure it can be a selling point to diners who can’t get enough cured pork goodness. But a kitchen that pays such attention to detail could benefit from a slightly finer touch in the bacon department.

We also sampled a hog snapper nightly special ($24), a meaty fish fillet, breaded and fried and served atop a kind of smashed potato cake – a rich and hearty dish that proved to be fresh and filling.

For dessert we tasted a spectacular banana cream pie (a nightly special, $8) with slices of fresh banana on top, and a homemade carrot cake ($6), a light and moist version of the classic, layered with caramelized pears and topped with fresh whipped cream.

We lingered over our sweets in the lively bistro on that recent Friday night. It’s a solid, welcoming place with friendly service and enough juicy choices to keep locals coming back to try different dishes. It’s the kind of place any hearty, adventurous diner would love to have in his neighborhood. And perhaps DeVine will be the place that defines a new, eclectic edge in the chain-driven western reaches.

R E V I E W

DeVine Bistro

FOOD: B+

SERVICE: B+

ADDRESS: 2465 State Rd. 7, Suite 300, Wellington

TELEPHONE:

(561) 204-5432

PRICE RANGE: Moderate to expensive

HOURS: Open Tuesdays through Sundays from 5 p.m. to closing. Closed Mondays.

CREDIT CARDS: All major

RESERVATIONS: Suggested

WHEELCHAIR ACCESS: Yes, including restrooms

Chef Carlo Sernaglia at his West Palm eatery, Vagabondi. (Damon Higgins / Palm Beach Post)

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I have died and gone to heaven in a bowl of pasta. It is a dish of thin ravioli expertly handcrafted by chef Carlo Sernaglia, who filled the pasta pillows with arugula, spinach and goat ricotta, then coddled them gently in sage-infused butter.

I have consumed this with home-baked olive bread that was pressed and molded by hand in the magical kitchen that is chef Carlo’s new domain. And I have sampled dish after dish so defined in flavor, freshness and simplicity that any one of them is worth a return visit to Vagabondi, the cozy sliver of a restaurant nestled in the plaza on the corner of Belvedere Road and South Dixie Highway in West Palm Beach.

The chef, a Venezuelan of Italian roots, hails from the kitchen of Cioppino at The Ritz-Carlton Key Biscayne. (That restaurant was named one of America’s best new restaurants by Esquire magazine in 2005, during his tenure.) Now, lucky for us, he has joined businessman Fernando Diaz in this 5-month-old culinary venture, a little gem of a place that has thrived on word-of-mouth momentum.

It is an understated, 10-table restaurant run on precision, attention to detail and an evident love of good food. The Argentina-born Diaz, a former oil man who spent years in Venezuela, is a first-time restaurateur. But you’d never know it by watching him run the place – the service is impeccable, the reservations well timed. And perhaps the most extraordinary thing he has accomplished here is that he has managed to keep it all so seemingly simple.

There is no unwieldy menu to make sense of, no complicated description of the Italian fare. The menu, which is sometimes tweaked to match the chef’s whim and customer preferences, is a manageable but varied list of antipasti, primi and secondi dishes. We started with an antipasto of thin, lightly fried eggplant layered with mozzarella, arugula and tomato ($12), a dish of delicate contrasts – creamy, crispy, tangy, rich. We also sampled a plate of prosciutto from the San Daniele di Friuli area ($12). It was served beneath chunks of glorious parmigiano.

But the main attraction arrived with the secondi dishes: a veal saltimbocca ($21) that was true to its nickname. (Indeed, it "jumps in the mouth.") Served in a light, caper-tinged sauce, the thin, tender medallions of veal were accompanied by roasted potatoes and a mound of fresh arugula.

Part II of this main attraction: a roast breast of duck in a port wine and blackberry reduction ($25), a dish that was crisp, tender and deep (but not dark) in flavor. It arrived with a fresh, tricolor salad and potatoes.

We also sampled the fettuccine with wild mushrooms tossed with arugula and drizzled with truffle oil, a richly satisfying dish brimming with meaty mushrooms. (Like the ravioli, this pasta dish is $18.) Miraculously, we had a little room for dessert. This was a fortunate thing; we decided upon the first bite of Vagabondi’s chocolate amaretti pear cake, a flourless torte that drops perfect pear notes into the smooth depths of chocolate. The sweetness continued with a bite of the chef’s perfectly balanced and creamy tiramisu.

The flavors of the evening lingered for days on my palate. With them came this fleeting concern: As the word spreads on this wonderful place, will we manage to get another reservation? I do wish chef Sernaglia continued success, but I hope it takes a long while for the dinner crowds to realize just how great he is.

R E V I E W

Vagabondi

FOOD: A+

SERVICE: A+

ADDRESS: 319 Belvedere Road, West Palm Beach

TELEPHONE: (561) 249-2281

WEB SITE: vagabondirestaurant.com

PRICE RANGE: Moderate to expensive

HOURS: Open for summertime dining, Wednesday

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Call it culinary magic. Call it a cookery gimmick. Call it what you want, but one thing is certain when it comes to the pizza at Carmine’s Coal Fired Pizza Ristorante in Jupiter: A 900-degree, coal-fired oven is a pie’s best friend. Any pie.

On my first visit to the place, an upscale space defined by clean lines, warm, brick-colored walls and thematic World Cup touches, I sampled the puttanesca pizza, with capers, black olives, roasted peppers, oregano, mozzarella, Parmesan cheese and Carmine’s flavorful red sauce made with San Marzano plum tomatoes.

The beautiful contrast of flavors, from the salty capers to the sweet peppers and tomatoes to the nutty cheese, took on majestic dimensions in the coal-fired oven. The crust emerged toasty, with a smoky tinge to it and its crunch stood up to the nicely melded toppings. A crust this great makes a pizza lover want to try the gamut of toppings.

In addition to offering all the classic pies, the pizza joint recently debuted on Military Trail by restaurant and market entrepreneur Carmine Giardini serves 12 specialty pies, from a shrimp scampi pizza with mozzarella and crushed red pepper to a pizza a la Florentina, with spinach and artichokes. (Specialty pizzas are $12.95 for a 12-inch pie, $16.95 for a 16-inch pie; classic pizzas range in price from $7.95 to $13.95, with an extra charge for toppings.)

Carmine’s does coal-fire pizza right. It doesn’t rely on the toasty crust alone to carry the pie – it lavishes each pie with a hearty helping of toppings. This was clear from the "salsiccia" pizza we ordered on a later visit. It arrived brimming with Italian sausage, sweet red peppers, onions, mozzarella and tomato sauce. (On a future visit, I’d love to try the prosciutto and arugula pizza with shaved Parmesan – cool toppings over a hot crust.)

On its pizza alone, Carmine’s could run an extraordinary eatery. But there’s much more than pizza on the varied and quite complete menu, which offers most dishes in family-style servings.

There are great appetizers, like the calamari e zucchini fritti, a heaping dish of fried squid with zucchini crisps ($7.95 for an individual order, $12.95 for a family-style portion). We also sampled a dish of Italian sausage and broccoli rabe ($7.95 and $14.95), a garlicky sauté that could serve as a main course. A more popular item on the menu, the shrimp Zingara – lightly fried shrimp tossed in a spicy aioli sauce – proved to be crisp and rich, though perhaps a little too rich.

On a lighter scale, there’s a good selection of salads. ("Lighter" does not refer to portion. After all, this is Carmine’s, where generous servings are the norm.) Our server raved about the spinach salad ($6.95 and $9.95) with pancetta and mushrooms – and with good reason, we learned. Well tossed in a light olive oil dressing, each element in this salad popped with flavor. As good as it was, there was something missing, something we didn’t notice until our server spotted it: the salad was missing its final zing factor. She returned with a dish of dried cranberries to sprinkle atop the greens. Again, she was right – the sweet-sour note exalted the flavors to their perfect point.

On a later visit, we ordered the insalata gorgonzola, a deconstructed wedge of crisp iceberg and creamy cheese dressing ($6.95 and $9.95). Simply delicious.

In the entrée department, the menu offers a range of pastas and robust, trattoria-style main courses, from Carmine’s meaty and delicious oven-baked lasagna ($9.95) to the outstanding pollo Scarpariello ($12.95), a lemony, aromatic bone-in chicken sautéed with potatoes and slivered sausage.

There’s an abundance of other entrée items to choose from here, from fresh fish to char-grilled steaks to risotto.

On the classics front, the linguine with meatballs I ordered ($9.95) proved to be a respectable choice, although it could have benefited from a more thoroughly drained pasta. That said, the marinara sauce – which is bottled and sold in a mini-market at the front of the restaurant – is superb.

Not content with unveiling a fabulous coal-fire joint, Carmine opened a burger joint (CG Burgers) right next door to the pizza restaurant. (The two restaurants are connected by a long corridor.)

I’m not surprised to find this kind of quality at a Carmine establishment. As a longtime patron of Carmine’s Gourmet Market on PGA Boulevard and its adjacent trattoria, I’ve come to expect fresh, authentic fare from the Carmine name. Now the name with conjure memories of yet another delicacy: that toasty, smoke-tinged crust.

R E V I E W

Carmine’s Coal Fired Pizza Ristorante

FOOD: A-

SERVICE: A

ADDRESS: 4575 Military Trail, Jupiter (In the Bermudiana Plaza)

TELEPHONE: (561) 340-3930

WEB SITE: www.carminescfp.com

PRICE RANGE: Moderate to inexpensive

HOURS: Open daily from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.

CREDIT CARDS: All major

RESERVATIONS: Accepted but not required

WHEELCHAIR ACCESS: Yes, including restrooms

WHAT THE GRADES

MEAN:

A

To keep food coming in to his Green Gourmet restaurant, Joey Giannuzzi has organized a patchwork of farms. (Damon Higgins / Palm Beach Post)

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Chef Joey Giannuzzi runs a busy market café in southern Delray Beach, a place that quickly morphed into a full-fledged, white-linens eatery after his regulars started calling to ask if he took dinner reservations. They were smitten with The Green Gourmet’s fresh offerings.

Like the ingredients on the daily menu, the transition was beautifully organic. But that’s not to say it was easy. As laid-back as the surfer-turned-chef may seem, he struggles daily to produce pure, organic home-cooking. In his search for fresh, certified organic ingredients and all that is thoroughly green, Giannuzzi has assembled a patchwork of farm sources, local vendors and environmentally friendly suppliers.

“It’s a like being an air traffic controller,” says the 39-year-old, Wellington-raised chef.

Indeed. He buys tomatoes grown in Boynton Beach, green beans harvested in Clewiston, wheatgrass from an organic farm in Royal Palm Beach. The beef comes from a “never ever” farm — one that prohibits the use of antibiotics and growth hormones during the animals’ entire life — in Kansas City, Mo.

Buying ingredients from out-of-region vendors, however, is not the norm for Giannuzzi, who sings the praises of Florida growers, like Lady Moon Farms in Punta Gorda, Alderman Farms in Boynton Beach, C&B Farms in Clewiston, Somerset Organic Farms in Naples, Glaser Farms in Miami, and so on.

On a recent afternoon, he sips the essence of these farms in the form of a strong green potion prepared for him by sous chef Aline Fernandes, who juiced together broccoli, celery stalks, cucumbers, apples, carrots and ginger and served him a tall glass in the lull between lunch and dinner.

“It’s for energy,” Fernandes explains as she preps the kitchen for dinner.
Giannuzzi’s run on gallons of the green stuff since he opened The Green Gourmet last November at 16950 Jog Road, south of Linton in the upscale Addison Place shopping plaza.

Formerly the executive chef at Henry’s restaurant, across the plaza, Giannuzzi wanted to create a place that would be “green” from top to bottom. So, well before he embarked on his search for fresh culinary ingredients, the chef ventured out to find recycled furnishings and materials from sustainable forests. The result is a place where the yellow lights above the deli case are recycled traffic lights, the deli platters are made of bamboo or recycled glass, the interior tables are re-used butcher block, the blue tiles behind the counter are hand-crafted from sand and glass. Even the stove boasts one of the most energy-efficient exhaust hoods on the market — it uses two-thirds less power than the usual cooking hood.

The place is defined not only by what Giannuzzi has put into it, but also by what he has left out. Namely, the deep fat fryer and the microwave. Neither is conducive to the kinds of fresh-tasting foods he prefers.

Also left out: butter.

“We bought a case of butter when we first opened, but days went by, weeks went by and we never used it,” says Giannuzzi. “I can get the same flavor profile from using olive oil.”

Take his cauliflower mash, for instance. The chef cooks the dish’s ingredients — olive oil, onions, cauliflower — in layers, allowing them to caramelize over a low fire, flipping each layer with a spatula at just the right time. The result is perfectly buttery without the butter. Ditto for the cream-less mashed potatoes.

“The fun part is looking at the empty case in the morning and thinking about how I’m going to fill it,” says Giannuzzi, who became a chef as a fluke — he got a night gig at a restaurant so he could surf by day.

He began to see the kitchen in a new light, however, after he met Florida chef Fran Casciato (DeVito, South Beach), who would become his mentor.

“I saw the way he touched the food, with respect and love. Everything in his kitchen was handled with great care. The ravioli, for example — you lined them up like little soldiers, in a neat row, like you were putting them away to sleep.”

That kitchen experience taught him to appreciate simple food, unadorned with heavy sauces. If the food is fresh and well prepared, he realized, it could stand on its own.

RECIPES FROM THE GREEN GOURMET

Says Chef Joey: ‘Both of these recipes are easy to make and quick.’

HUMMUS
8 ounces chick peas
2 ounces tahini
2 ounces fresh-squeezed lemon juice
1 garlic clove
1 ounce extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon cumin

Blend together all the ingredients in a food processor or blender.
Makes 1 cup of hummus.

VEGAN TOMATO-BASIL SOUP
1 quart tomato juice
8 ounces San Marzano plum tomatoes (Italian, canned fresh)
1 yellow onion, julienned
2 ounces fresh basil
4 ounces extra virgin olive oil

In a sauce pot, sweat onions with 1 ounce of olive oil. Take care not to brown the onions just cook slowly until translucent. Add tomato juice and tomatoes. Simmer for 5 minutes. Put all ingredients except olive oil into a blender. Puree on high. Drizzle in remaining olive oil. Add salt and pepper to taste. Garnish with fresh basil leaves.
Makes 4 bowls of soup.

The Fisherman's Catch at Lock Stock and Barrel was the best dish of the night, our critic says. (Libby Volgyes / Palm Beach Post)

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The new place on the block is decidedly retro. Step into the time warp that is Lock, Stock and Barrel, an old-school chophouse in Palm Springs, and you’ll find items you’re not likely to find at many places. From the filet of sole almondine ($23.95) to the chicken cordon bleu ($16.95), the menu transports you to the days of mixed whiskey drinks and classic desserts. (Peach melba, anyone? It’s on the menu, for $6.95).

Classic does not mean stale, however. Once you settle into a table or booth in the wood-lined dining room – a space painted the color of fresh cream and appointed with stained-glass panels, white tablecloths, Tiffany lamps and a massive, exposed-brick, copper-hooded grill – you are in for a fresh (and filling) feast.

The portions here are quite ample, brimming with accompaniments. Most entrées come with fresh, steamed vegetables and either "confetti" rice, pasta or a potato dish – and a crisp garden salad that is served family-style. All this is preceded by a crusty loaf of warm, sesame-seeded bread that’s delivered when you arrive. So ordering an appetizer may just well be over the top.

That said, the place offers some respectable apps. Over a span of two visits, we sampled the stuffed mushrooms "a la maison," ($9.95), flavorful caps stuffed with a light veal filling. We also tried the nightly soup ($1.95 for a cup), a thick, spinach tortellini cream that proved to be delicious, albeit decadently rich. We preferred those selections to the warm spinach and artichoke dip that is served with tortilla chips ($6.95).

Salads range from $6.95 for a California iceberg wedge to $14.95 for a dinner Caesar with steak. We skipped this course, as we were more than content with our complimentary tossed green salad with a light vinaigrette.

Diane Decker, dining room manager for Lock Stock and Barrel. (Libby Volgyes / Palm Beach Post)

The entrée selections, a varied and tempting lot, are designed for all whims. There are robust steaks, chops and prime rib. On separate visits, we enjoyed a nightly special, a nicely flame-broiled porterhouse ($27.95) and a tender and flavorful filet mignon ($24.95) served beneath two crisp strips of bacon with mushroom caps and au jus.

And there are traditional comfort dishes, like the chicken cordon bleu in mushroom Madeira wine sauce, which I found to be on the salty side. In retrospect, I realize one could get carried away with the throwback theme and overlook the menu’s strongest dishes – the seafood! We sampled a spectacular sea bass (a nightly special, at $22.95) that was perfectly flaky and tender. But as delicious as it was, it proved to be no match for the Fisherman’s Catch ($22.95), the best dish we tasted.

Served in a large skillet, this dish boasted tender shrimp, big, juicy scallops, clams and mussels, all sautéed with garlic and olive oil in a white wine sauce with just a touch of plum tomatoes, over an al dente tangle of linguine. Phenomenal. Every component of this dish was beautifully cooked. And, in a sense, the dish came to symbolize the restaurant’s ethic, its generous attention to detail. Just as the dishes are fresh, the service is solid.

The folks at Lock, Stock and Barrel seem to know what they do well – and what they are not staffed to do well. With no pastry chef on premises, they farm out the sweets. They are no less delicious. We loved the espresso-laced tiramisu ($7.95) and the chilled banana split pie ($5.95).

After such a feast, however, ordering dessert may seem gratuitous. Of course, at the time, in the time warp, it seemed perfectly peachy.

R E V I E W

Lock, Stock and Barrel

FOOD: A-

SERVICE: A-

ADDRESS: 3208 Forest Hill Blvd., Palm Springs

TELEPHONE: (561) 649-4545

WEB SITE: lockstockandbarrelrestaurant.com

PRICE RANGE: Moderate to expensive

HOURS: Open for lunch Monday to Friday only, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Dinner is served every night, 4 to 9 p.m. (A sunset menu is offered from 4 to 6 p.m.)

CREDIT CARDS: Major credit cards

RESERVATIONS: Accepted but not required

WHEELCHAIR ACCESS: Yes, including restrooms

WHAT THE GRADES

MEAN:

A

Pub chips are complimentary, while the dipping sauces are $6. (Libby Volgyes / Palm Beach Post)

More: Directions, hours | Video: Beer Guy visits Gratify | Gratify’s recipe for rock shrimp and manchego grits

With its brisk foot traffic, outdoor events and energetic dining scene, West Palm Beach’s Clematis district seems a welcome shore for the nation’s "gastro pub" wave. The gastro pub concept, popular in England for more than a decade, showcases good, brasserie-style dishes in a casual tavern setting. At its best, it’s epicurean fare with a bluejeans aesthetic.

Of course, achieving this is no laid-back feat – it requires juggling seemingly contradictory elements of style and substance. Imagine a comfy booze joint with menu references to truffle oil and micro greens and fleur de sel.

This is what managing partner Gene Playter and chef Scott Helm have done in opening Gratify American gastro pub in the old Spoto’s location on Datura Street. They’ve hit the right balance between relaxed (the atmosphere) and resplendent (the food).

Across the street from the Meyer Amphitheatre and just steps away from the newly refurbished waterfront, Gratify sits at a perfect location for watching the pedestrian goings on, the pups on parade, the world as it breezes by and filters into the place of industrial chic décor.

But relaxed as the tavern might be, the pace in the kitchen and in the server ranks is nothing short of bustling. And, luckily, we reaped the benefits of the bustle. Our complimentary basket of homemade potato chips arrived in a flash, toasty hot. (If you order these with three dipping sauces it costs $6.) Moments later, our small plates arrived piping hot and crisp.

We bypassed the salad choices (like the whole-head baby iceberg topped with bacon, tomatoes and blue cheese, for $9) and took the tavern-food route. A terrific choice, we decided as we took a bite of the artichoke fritters ($8). Served with a tarragon-infused béarnaise sauce that echoed the creaminess of the artichoke filling, the fritters were perfectly crisp to the bite.

These were nearly upstaged by the mushroom mix appetizer ($12), sautéed mushrooms with herbs and cheese layered into phyllo dough wafers – just superb.

Equally superb were the risotto balls ($6), accompanied by a cool roasted pepper aioli. Served in a paper cone with sauce on the side, these were crunchy nuggets of rice with a hot, decadent parmesan center.

"I like to say they’re heaven in my mouth," enthused our very busy and competent server.

I’d have to agree. And because heaven can be a satiating place, we didn’t have room for more of the small plates, but I have to say I’m greatly intrigued by the Mozzarella Ciliegine (with herbs, garlic and fleur de sel, or hand-harvested sea salt, for $7), and the home-style barbecue pork sliders ($9). We vowed to return for those.

I did have one of the best burgers I’ve had in a long time, a juicy, seared-just-so patty served on a lightly toasted bun and accompanied by the finest fries around, thin, crispy and drizzled with a touch of garlic-parsley oil. This is a burger so grand in taste that it’s listed on the menu simply as The Burger ($11). And I know it’s one I’ll certainly order again.

In the "not so much" category, however, stands the local snapper ($19), a blackened, flash-fried filet served on Southern cooked greens. While the fish was fresh and nicely cooked, the dish as a whole struck me as overly bitter. That said, this dish was clearly in the minority, as everything else we tried proved to be on mark.

This includes our evening’s final note, the chocolate cake ($6), a dense, rich sliver of flourless cake, a delicious way to end our comfort-food experience. A gratifying meal, indeed.

R E V I E W

Gratify

FOOD: B+

SERVICE: B+

ADDRESS: 125 Datura St., West Palm Beach

TELEPHONE: (561) 833-5300

WEB SITE: gratifypub.com

PRICE RANGE: Inexpensive to moderate

SUMMER HOURS: Tuesday-Thursday, 11:30 a.m. to 11 p.m.; Friday-Saturday, 11:30 a.m. to 1 a.m.; Sunday, 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m.

CREDIT CARDS: All major

RESERVATIONS: Accepted but not required

WHEELCHAIR ACCESS: Yes, including restrooms

PGA National's Ironwood Grille retains a steakhouse feel. (Richard Graulich / Post file photo)

More: Directions, upcoming events at Ironwood

Just steps from the lively lobby of the PGA National Resort & Spa, dinner is served in a relaxed, urbane atmosphere. The resort’s centerpiece restaurant, the Ironwood Grille, with deep-red leather booths set against exposed brick walls and metropolitan lines, transports you out of the traditional hotel eatery mind-set.

If Ironwood has something of a warm steakhouse feel to it, it’s only appropriate. The steaks are stellar. Perhaps it’s the friendly ghost of its predecessor, Shula’s Steakhouse, which shuttered more than three years ago. But I doubt it. Ironwood departs from the standard steakhouse fare, offering a nicely varied, contemporary American menu.

Appetizers and small plates range from the obligatory favorites — fried calamari ($12), baby back ribs ($12), shrimp cocktail ($15) — to the unexpected, such as the outstanding fennel-seared ahi tuna ($13) with an oven-dried tomato, kalamata and caper panzanella. The fragrance of fennel offers a light, surprising layer of flavor to the sushi-grade tuna slices. Also a nice surprise: the shrimp and cheddar grits ($12), served with a maple demi-glace. Maple and grits may sound like breakfast, but this is a dish I thoroughly enjoyed with a nice red zin.

On a later visit, I sampled baked artichoke and Portobello stack ($14), with spinach, mushroom and parmesan — a heavenly combo. Equally divine, the arugula salad ($12) with crispy prosciutto and pecorino Romano brought together the fresh and the decadently smoky. This proved to be a perfect preamble to our seafood entrées, the evening special of seared, tender scallops ($28) and the seared red snapper with roasted fennel and garlic spinach ($29). Both dishes were light, decent choices.

But they were not as impressive as the filet mignon ($34 for 8 oz., $38 for 10 oz.) we had on our earlier visit. Buttery and expertly seasoned, the steak not only was the highlight of our visits — it was still tender and juicy the next day when I warmed and sliced the leftover portion atop a green salad. At the restaurant, we paired the filet with a sturdy wedge ($9) of baby iceberg, Point Reyes blue cheese, bacon and tomato, and concluded this was the winning combo, a superbly cooked steak and a fresh, crisp salad.

Scoring far fewer points was the pork chop ($28), which is listed on the menu as one of the house favorites. The double-thick chop is served in a flavorful port wine glace with braised escarole and a sausage risotto cake. But the thickness of the meat makes it unnecessarily dense and difficult to maneuver. And the risotto cake only confirmed my belief that the words risotto and cake should go together sparingly, if at all. It was neither crispy nor creamy.

That night’s desserts — a rather dry bread pudding ($7) and a chocolate “Mortal Sin” cake ($8) — also failed to impress. However, on a return visit we were more than satisfied with a trio of mousses ($8), small, sweet pots scented with hints of Grand Marnier, Key lime and berries.

As we lingered over dessert that Saturday night, the upbeat music of the adjacent lobby bar filled the restaurant. The PGA resort, a favorite of mine, is truly the people’s resort, a place that, despite having undergone a fancy face-lift, doesn’t take itself too seriously. The staff is as charming as it is attentive, and this is also true of the Ironwood Grille, where the servers are friendly and competent. They do earn the 18 percent gratuity that is added to the total bill.

Two years after the resort underwent a $40-million renovation, it’s nice to see the place is still hopping.

R E V I E W
Ironwood Grille

FOOD: B
SERVICE: B+
ADDRESS: 400 Avenue of the Champions (in the PGA National Resort & Spa), Palm Beach Gardens
TELEPHONE: (561) 627-4852
WEBSITE: ironwoodgrille.com
PRICE RANGE: Moderate to expensive
HOURS: Dinner: Sunday – Thursday 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. off season, 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. in season, Friday – Saturday: 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. off season, 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. in season.
CREDIT CARDS: AmEx, Visa, MC, Discover
RESERVATIONS: Yes. (Also accepted at opentable.com)
WHEELCHAIR ACCESS: Yes, including restrooms
WHAT THE GRADES
MEAN:
A — Excellent
B — Good
C — Average
D — Poor
F — Don’t bother

Wild Olives owner Lirim Jacobi may have hit on something when he partnered with Chef Todd English. (Bill Ingram / Palm Beach Post)

On some levels, Wild Olives Café by Todd English has found a natural home at CityPlace in West Palm Beach. Both the café and the shopping/dining complex radiate Mediterranean aspirations. Yes, these aspirations are at times filtered through an Epcot -esque lens, but the end result is this: polished aesthetic and accessibility.

Just like CityPlace, Wild Olives knows what it wants to be, a casual, lightly upscale spot where locals and tourists alike can find a nice glass of wine and an inspired bite or two.

On a couple of visits to the café, sister establishment of the larger, more formal Wild Olives restaurant in Boca Raton, I opted for the full dinner experience. And while I was not disappointed, I know I would have been more than happy with any of the non-entrée dishes I sampled: The nicely balanced "ugly tomato" salad with fresh mozzarella, balsamic-drizzled arugula and crispy shallots ($10) or the delightful, crisp, rosemary crusted fig-and-prosciutto flatbread with fontina and gorgonzola dolce cheeses nestled into waves of dry-cured ham upon a thin layering of fig jam ($14), a popular item on the menu.

In the small plates department, cheers for the addictive little asparagus frites ($8), served with honey mustard aioli and a tangle of arugula and local organic greens. Ditto for the Maytag bleu cheesy potatoes ($5), a rich, creamy mash that are as good alone as they are paired with, say, the beef tenderloin ($29), a buttery filet that’s served with a nest of sweet peas and a shiitake truffle glaze.

Equally substantial were the wasabi crusted tuna with a ginger carrot puree and a sweet soy glaze ($23) and the organic brick oven roasted chicken with a porcini crust and roasted garlic glaze ($20), served with a potato cake, "bacony" beans and cool watercress.

Less thrilling, however, was the spaghetti polpettine "Brooklyn style" ($18). Touted as handcrafted, the meatballs and the red sauce packed surprisingly little flavor. Also disappointing: the yellow fin tuna tartare appetizer ($14) with spun cucumber and crispy rock shrimp in a wasabi cream sweet soy glaze. For all its bells and whistles, the dish’s main component – the tuna – failed to rise above bland.

But the disappointments proved fleeting once the apple cobbler ($7) arrived. Topped with mini buttermilk biscuits and served with Tahitian vanilla gelato, this cobbler is luscious, comfort food exalted. Todd’s ricotta cheesecake ($8) and the warm chocolate bread pudding with gelato and fresh cream ($8) proved to be excellent choices as well.

Palm Beach County’s busiest restaurateur, Lirim Jacobi (Taverna Opa, City Pizza, Taco Vida), may have hit on something when he partnered with Todd English, the Boston celeb chef with restaurants in New York, Las Vegas and Orlando. While English has traveled a rocky path in the expansion of his restaurant brands, fending off critics and food snobs at each turn, his ventures have hit South Florida with a vengeance (Figs at the Gardens Mall, da Campo Osteria in Fort Lauderdale, and both Wild Olives locations).

While the CityPlace venture might have plunged during a precarious business climate, earlier this year, it offers many important reasons why it should succeed. The service is solid. The setting of clean, understated lines is inviting. But most importantly, the menu delivers.

R E V I E W

Wild Olives Cafe

FOOD: B+

SERVICE: A-

ADDRESS: 477 S. Rosemary Ave., West Palm Beach

TELEPHONE: (561) 832-7771

WEBSITE: wildolivescafe.com

PRICE RANGE: Moderate

HOURS: Monday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., Sunday from noon to 9 p.m.

CREDIT CARDS: MC, Visa, AmEx

RESERVATIONS: Accepted

WHEELCHAIR ACCESS: Yes, including restrooms

WHAT THE GRADES

MEAN:

A

Those devotees of fresh, locally grown food can find the golden crop at its flavorful peak now. This from Florida’s Fresh Supersweet Corn Council, which launched the picking season April 25 at the South Florida Fairgrounds.

The mega-launch attests to a little known fact: Florida grows more sweet corn than any other state in the union, and Palm Beach County grows more than any other county in the state, according to the council.

Florida’s “supersweet” crop is harvested with more natural sugars and retains its sweetness longer. Rich in vitamin C, thiamin and folate, the quick-cooking sweet corn should be stored in the fridge until you’re ready to grill it, steam it, boil it, stew it or microwave it.

Star chef Michelle Bern-stein (of Michelle Bernstein’s at the Omphoy, Palm Beach) has a nifty, spicy way of serving supersweet corn. The recipe below comes to us by way of the Corn Council.

Chef Michelle Bernstein’s Corn on the Cob ‘Lollypops’

Serves 12

4 ears fresh supersweet corn (each cut into thirds)

1 tablespoon light brown sugar

1⁄2 teaspoon salt

1⁄8 teaspoon ground red pepper

1⁄8 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1⁄8 teaspoon ground ginger

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

12 lollypop sticks

With the tip of a knife poke a hole in one end of each piece of corn. Cook the corn in boiling salted water 2 minutes.

Meanwhile, combine the brown sugar, salt, red pepper, cinnamon and ginger in a small bowl. Pour the melted butter into a pie plate.

Drain the corn well. Roll each piece in the butter; insert a stick into the end and sprinkle with the brown sugar mixture.

Restaurant Listing: Directions, reviews, more
It’s all about the wait at Guanabanas, the hopping, island paradise of a restaurant on the Jupiter waterfront. On most nights, the wait can be as long as a round-trip flight to the Bahamas the place, a bar, restaurant and live music venue sprawled beneath canopies of tropical foliage can be that packed.

“It’ll be about an hour and a half,” reported the ebullient hostess on a recent night, when we stepped up to request a table.

It was a Thursday night.

Now, you may think this is a bad thing. But at Guanabanas it could be quite a good thing. The wait is a relative term in the lush, green, open-air oasis of food and drink.

For some it means gathering around the lively bar for a drink or milling about the pathways and bridges of the place. For us it meant finding a high-top bar table beneath a palm grove and ordering a round of drinks and appetizers. The orders were taken as promptly and professionally, by our server, Emily, as they were delivered.

First up was a batch of Sharky’s conch fritters ($8.95), fried perfectly crispy on the outside, tender and light on the inside and served hot with a spicy-sweet sauce and lemon slices. At an islandy place like this, one might order the conch fritters by reflex, for they’re the obligatory finger food of the tropics. Here one should order them not just because they punctuate the fronded setting, but because they’re outstanding.

Then again, so were the chicken and cheese empanadas ($8.95), three airy, savory pillows filled and crisped just right, and served with a sweet jalapeño jelly sauce. Served piping hot, the empanadas pack a lot of flavor in a crescent pouch crisp, with a light, crusty wrapper and a surprisingly juicy filling. I had these on a visit some months ago and they were just as fabulous.

Equally flavorful was the smoked fish dip ($7.95), served with jalapeños, lemon and hot sauce. Cool and easy to spread on a cracker, the dip proved to be a respectable choice in The Wait.

And speaking of the wait, it vanished between the delectable bites, the good conversation and the splendid environs. Not once did we feel the need to check the beeper thing that would signal that our table was ready. In fact, when the beeper flickered red, we moved along with some reluctance we could have gone, easily, for another round of appetizers and called it a night.

That said, our waterfront table proved to be lovely as our cheerful server, Alyssa, explained menu favorites. I decided on the avocado bacon mango salad ($11.95) to start. Yes, I could have gone with the blue cheese wedge salad or the mango tangerine salad (both $8.95), but, honestly, how does one pass up the flavor trifecta that is avocado-bacon-mango? And it gets better: the salad is served with a creamy white “queso anejo” dressing. The dish offers an unforgettable flavor combo, both fresh and decadent.

By comparison, our entrees proved to be less stellar. My New York strip steak ($29.95), a thick, 16 oz. cut, was flavorful, but overly chewy. Notably superior were the grilled rock shrimp tacos ($15.95), served hot and garlicky with soft tortillas and toppings.

Our best entrée choice of the evening proved to be the lemon-butter hogfish nightly special ($25.95). Flaky and nicely seasoned, it was the ideal choice for a light evening meal. The accompanying rice and black beans, served with a dollop of fresh salsa, left only a fleeting impression. Yes, the salsa is a nice touch, but if the beans and rice are good, it’s decidedly unnecessary.

We wrapped up the evening with a nibble of coconut cream pie ($4.95). Stiff and a touch gummy, it didn’t reflect the quality of our earlier dishes.

Then again, who needs dessert or entrees, even when one has perfect fritters and empanadas, cool drinks and an island setting? Oh, yes, and the wait. The wait can be quite delicious.

R E V I E W

Guanabanas

FOOD: B

SERVICE: A-

ADDRESS: 997 North AIA, Jupiter

TELEPHONE: (561) 747-8878

WEB SITE: guanabanas.com

PRICE RANGE: Moderate

HOURS: Breakfast daily, 8:30-11 a.m.; Lunch daily, 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m.; dinner nightly, 5-10 p.m., Friday and Saturday until 11 p.m. The bar is open daily, 11:30 a.m.-11 p.m.; Friday and Saturday until 2 a.m. The bar menu is available from 3 p.m. until closing.

CREDIT CARDS: MC, Visa, AmEx

RESERVATIONS: Not accepted

WHEELCHAIR ACCESS: Yes, including the restrooms

Cabo Flats Cantina & Tequila Bar does California Mex in all its grand, funky glory. From the chandeliers made of Mexican punched-tin star lanterns to the wild, lime-frame garage doors, this new spot at Downtown at the Gardens is hot in a big way.

The crowd of tequila-shooting revelers spills out around the indoor-outdoor bar on weekends, when the music’s live, the impromptu bar-top dancers are lively and the rough-hewn tables are laden with all things crunchy and spicy.

What attracts such crowds goes beyond the festivities — this is clear after just a few nibbles of your appetizer, a sip of Dos Equis Ambar and a glance around at the space formerly occupied by Rosa Mexicano:

Not only is the décor sizzling, with a mix of rustic and more stylized pieces set against a bright palette of Cabo colors, the food is caliente — and not just in temperature and spice factor.

I have to confess here that I loved this place before stepping foot in it. As a Rosa Mexicano fan, heartbroken at its demise, I was delighted to see another establishment venture into the space, a space too fabulous to waste. But when I glimpsed the swelling bar scene one night, I wondered if the food would be worth braving such crowds.

Short answer: Yes! What restaurateur Paul Ardaji has done here is far more significant than simply replacing one Mexican restaurant with another. He has conjured a place that is neither Mexico nor L.A., a capsule of cool that combines touches of both to forge a unique identity. Unlike Rosa, which aimed for the upscale, Cabo is unabashedly casual.

That’s not to say it’s less exquisite.

My first visit was on a Saturday night on the early side (just past 7 p.m.) and, while the place was bustling, the wait wasn’t bad at all. Even better, we scored a fabulous booth in the back, away from where the live band would set up a little later.

Perhaps it was the déjà vu of the space where I had tasted some pretty outstanding tableside-fresh guacamole, but after indulging in a handful of warm, crisp tortilla chips and bright-flavored salsa fresca, I had to settle my craving for smashed avocado. The Cabo Flats version, Guacamole El Cabo ($8), was not prepared tableside, but it arrived in an authentic volcanic-stone molcajete (mortar) and it proved to be fresh, creamy and light, perhaps a little too light for my taste. I like mine with a little more onion and cilantro. (Cabo also offers a version with rock crab and shrimp for $11.)

But whatever minor flavor the guac was missing was more than made up for by the next two appetizers we sampled: the Rock Shrimp Popcorn “Tempura Style” ($9) and the Tuna Chile Rub Tostadas ($8).

The popcorn shrimp, crunchy, flavorful nuggets enhanced with an orange habanero aioli, proved outstanding. As did the tuna tostadas, with a hint of jalapeño-lime aioli — crisp, fresh and delivering a range of flavor notes, this dish is heavenly. (I loved it so much I may order it as my main course next time.) These two dishes alone are worth a return trip to Cabo Flats, I thought as we polished off the appetizers. Less stellar was the Queso Fundido, or melted cheeses in a cast iron skillet ($6) we sampled on a return visit, though we did not try the versions containing chorizo ($7.50) or rock crab and shrimp ($9.50.)

Then came the tacos: Steak “Al Carbon” ($3.50) and Ground Beef ($3). Cabo also offers Baja Fish tacos ($3.50) and Chicken “Al Carbon” tacos ($3). Served in a soft tortilla, the tacos are fresh, flavorful and served a la carte, individually, so you can mix it up and sample the lot. We ordered rice and two bean dishes (black beans and “charro,” or cowboy-style pintos) on the side. These were the only misses of the evening, as the beans lacked depth of flavor and the rice lacked flavor, period.

But, hey, you don’t go to Cabo Flats for the beans and rice. You go for the wow factor. And I found this when I returned a few nights later and ordered one of Cabo’s signature plates, the Filet Mignon Tiaquepaque, a buttery filet in a Roquefort blue cheese sauce and chipotle chile ($24). Equally wowing were the chicken enchiladas (a plate of three for $12), which were offered with either a ranchero or a tomatillo cream sauce. I opted for the tomatillo cream, a sauce that struck the ideal balance of creaminess and zing, keeping this normally over-sauced dish perfectly light.

That evening brought us another terrific sauce in the Chicken Mole ($15), also a Cabo Flats signature dish. Rich, sweet and smoky, this mole sends a happy hum on the palate. The chicken, however, was not as moist as it could have been.

On a future visit, I’d like to try one of the burritos bearing the names of music legends Bob Marley, the Doors and the Beach Boys (ranging from $9 to $14). We simply had no room for anything the menu calls “ginormous.” Nor did we have room for dessert (all $8), although on both my visits our very efficient servers raved about Cabo Crunch Fried Ice Cream. I don’t know — I may have to try the Mango Bread Pudding as well.

In any case, the good folks at Cabo Flats made sure we didn’t leave the place without a sweet finish — they brought us some free cotton candy. It arrived at the end of our dinner — a pink, sugary bundle atop a long, retro-style paper cone. How appropriate it was, this bright pink, Cali-Mex exclamation point that punctuated a couple of fabulous meals.

R E V I E W

Cabo Flats Cantina & Tequila Bar

FOOD: A-

SERVICE: A-

ADDRESS: 11701 Lake Victoria Gardens Ave. (in Downtown at the Gardens), Palm Beach Gardens

TELEPHONE: (561) 624-0024

WEB SITE: caboflats.com

PRICE RANGE: Moderate

HOURS: Open daily at 11:30 a.m. for lunch, dinner and late night meals to 2 a.m.

CREDIT CARDS: AmEx, Visa, MC

RESERVATIONS: Yes, but walk-ins are welcome

WHEELCHAIR ACCESS: Yes, including restrooms

WHAT THE GRADES

MEAN:

A

Martinez, star of the Food Network’s Viva Daisy!, is a chef of disarming qualities. Her cuisine is as welcoming and down-to-earth as her demeanor. Call it pan-Latino soul cooking, a cuisine accented with the flavors of Martinez’s Puerto Rican heritage, her Nueva York childhood, her family travels across Spain, Argentina, Mexico and the Caribbean.

And if you’ve been watching Martinez since she launched her onscreen cooking career with Daisy Cooks! on PBS in 2005, four years before landing the Food Network show, you know that virtually no dish in her culinary repertoire seems too daunting to undertake. Never mind that it might well be too daunting to undertake. Martinez has a genial way of making it all seem so doable.

She doesn’t toss around the epicurean lingo or cast herself as any kind of master chef. She could. After all, she’s a graduate of the French Culinary Institute in New York — the same cooking school that gave us chef Bobby Flay. She worked as a prep chef on Lidia Bastianich’s cooking show on PBS. She also ran her own private chef and catering business, The Passionate Palate.

But Martinez is more inclined to regale you with family stories as she leads you through the fine points of, say, achiote** seeds, a cornerstone ingredient in her favorite yellow rice dishes.

The Brooklyn-born child of mainland Puerto Rican parents is a down-home storyteller with a kitchen full of memories and family anecdotes.

"Nothing triggers a memory quicker than the smell of food cooking," Martinez says by phone on a recent morning, during a break from her hectic tour to promote her newly released cookbook, Daisy: Morning, Noon and Night ($30, Atria). "The minute I smell roasted red peppers, I’m in my grandmother’s kitchen on a Saturday afternoon."

The thought triggers a tangent or two.

"That was my paternal grandmother, Valentina — she was a force of nature. And then you have my grandmother in Puerto Rico, who grew everything in her garden. She had mangos, avocados — avocados the size of footballs — toronjas (grapefruit), herbs. She cured everything that ailed you with those herbs. When it was mango season, we’d eat and eat till we had mango everywhere. We’d have mangoes in our eyes!"

The common thread in every tangent is Martinez’s celebration of humble food, good food.

"Good food doesn’t have to be complicated food," says the Brooklyn-based mother of four. "It has to be fresh, seasonal and well-seasoned food."

Take the aforementioned roasted red peppers, her grandmother’s Saturday dish, for instance. Grandmother Valentina would choose large red bell peppers, char them and lovingly peel them, stuff them with creamy rice and cheese and bake them. Instead of using the tops of the peppers, Valentina would cap them with a piece of white bread that had been dipped in egg and seasonings.

"So when you eat it, it’s like a little savory bread pudding on top of the pepper. I would eat the whole thing and save that little plug for my dessert. Girl, it was serious," says Martinez.

That recipe shares space in Martinez’s cookbook with dishes from places such as Peru (an aromatic shrimp chupe, or bisque), Argentina (an orange-scented hearts of palm salad), Spain ("cinnamon-perfumed" custard), and her family’s native Puerto Rico ("soupy rice" with pigeon peas and Tierrita Dulce, a popular chocolate mousse dessert).

The recipes were inspired by the flavor profiles encountered on family travels abroad. Martinez would take lots of food photos and scribble copiously in her travel notebooks, describing each meal with a connoisseur’s attention to detail.

"The way I took my notes, I would say the top note (of the dish) is this, the middle note is this, the finish note is this. So even if I came home and couldn’t find the ingredients, I could remember what the dish tasted like and I could recreate it as best as I could," she says.

The family trips started after her daughter, her youngest child, turned 8 and "Santa Claus stopped visiting our house," says Martinez. She and her husband, Jerry Lombardo, sat the kids down and told them, pretty much, that Christmas was going to be about trips, not toys.

"We said, ‘From now on, we’re going to give you memories,’ " Martinez recalls. "There was total silence and a look of abject horror in their faces."

Their first family destination: Barcelona.

"Imagine going to Spain with three teenage boys and a young girl. I tell you. They were like a horde of locusts invading Barcelona," says Martinez, laughing at the memory of the trip that launched many great — and quite delicious — family adventures. "They’re still talking about us over there."

~liz_balmaseda@pbpost.com

Sweet Peppers Stuffed

with Rice and Cheese

(Serves 6)

INGREDIENTS:

10 large yellow, orange, or red bell peppers, or a mix of all three

FOR THE FILLING:

1 small zucchini

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 small yellow onion, finely diced (about 1 cup)

¼ pound cremini mushrooms, thinly sliced (about 2 cups)

1½ cups long-grain white rice

1 tablespoon salt

6 ounces smoked Gouda, shredded (about 13⁄4 cups)

5 extra-large eggs

¼ teaspoon onion powder

Kosher or fine sea salt and freshly ground pepper

5 slices white bread

1¼ cups tomato juice

PREPARE THE PEPPERS:

Roast the peppers until well blackened on all sides. Wrap each one in a double thickness of damp paper towels as it is done. Let peppers stand until cool.

MAKE THE FILLING:

Trim the ends from the zucchini and cut the zuke lengthwise into quarters. Scoop out the seeds and coarsely grate the zucchini.

Heat the olive oil in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the onion and mushrooms and cook, stirring, until softened, about 4 minutes.

Pour the rice into the saucepan, stirring to coat with oil, then add the salt. Pour in enough water to cover the rice by about 1 inch (about 2 cups) and bring to a boil. Cook until the water reaches the level of the rice. Stir the rice once, cover the pan, and lower the heat to very low. Cook, without uncovering the pan or stirring, until the rice is tender but not mushy and the water is absorbed, about 20 minutes. Fluff with a fork and set aside to cool a bit.

Preheat the oven to 350°. Stir the zucchini and Gouda into the warm rice.

Slide the paper towels from the peppers, removing as much of the blackened skin as you can with them. Wipe off the rest of the blackened skin with the paper towels. Cut a circle around the stems and remove the stems and cores from the peppers. If you feel like being meticulous, use a spoon to scoop out any remaining seeds.

Place the peppers in a 13 x 9 x 2-inch baking pan (or any baking pan that fits the peppers snugly) and, using a tablespoon, fill the peppers with the rice mixture, leaving about ¼ inch of headroom. Set aside.

Beat the eggs, onion powder, and a generous amount of salt and pepper together in a large bowl until smooth. Cut the bread slices in half and add them to the beaten egg. Soak, turning them gently occasionally, until well saturated.

Cover the filling in each pepper with a piece of the sliced bread, folding and tucking it in as necessary to completely cover the filling. Pour the tomato juice around the peppers. Cover with aluminum foil and bake for 20 minutes. Uncover and bake until the bread lids are golden brown, about 10 minutes. Serve, spooning some of the baking juices around each pepper.

TIP: High heat for roasting the peppers is important. It will blacken the skins completely while leaving the pepper shells firm enough for stuffing.

(Prep time: 45 minutes. Cook time: 35 minutes unattended)

"Tierrita Dulce" (Sweet Earth)

Chocolate Mousse with Chocolate Cookie Crumbles

(Serves 6 to 8, depending on size of pots)

INGREDIENTS:

One 12-ounce bag bittersweet chocolate chips

2 tablespoons dark rum

1¼ tablespoons instant espresso powder

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Pinch of salt

3 extra-large eggs, separated

3⁄4 cup sugar

1 cup heavy cream, well chilled

2 packages Oreo Thin Crisps chocolate cookies or 1¼ cups crushed Famous Chocolate Wafers

6 to 8 edible flowers, with stems if possible, or candy flowers (from a bakery supply shop)

TO MAKE:

Mix the chocolate chips, rum, espresso powder, vanilla, salt, and ¼ cup water in a large heatproof bowl. Set over a pot of simmering water and whisk until the chocolate is melted. Set aside.

Using a hand mixer, beat the egg yolks with ¼ cup of the sugar in a medium bowl until they are pale yellow and fluffy and you can see the bottom of the bowl as you beat, about 2 minutes. Fold about one-third of the chocolate mixture into the yolks with a rubber spatula, then fold the yolk mixture into the chocolate remaining in the bowl. Set aside.

Wash the beaters and bowl thoroughly and dry them. Beat the egg whites with the remaining ½ cup sugar in a medium bowl until they hold soft peaks when the beaters are lifted. Fold one-third of the whites into the chocolate mixture with a rubber spatula. Once they are incorporated, fold in the remaining whites.

Beat the cream in a clean bowl until it holds firm peaks. Using a rubber spatula, fold the cream into the chocolate mixture one-third at a time. Divide the mousse among 6 to 8 food-safe flowerpots (see Note) or dessert cups. Chill for at least 2 hours or up to 1 day.

Put the cookies in a heavy resealable plastic bag. Whack them with a rolling pin into coarse pieces, then roll until fine crumbs. Top each dish of mousse with crumbled chocolate cookies to resemble soil. Finish with the edible flowers, standing them straight up by inserting the stems into the mousse.

NOTE: Food-safe flowerpots are available in specialty bakeware shops, or feel free to use ramekins.

(Prep time: 45 minutes, plus 2 to 24 hours chilling time)

Recipes from "Daisy: Morning, Noon and Night — Bringing Your Family Together with Everyday Latin Dishes" (Atria Books). For information, visit daisymartinez.com

* Sofrito: A mix of chopped aromatics that is the cornerstone ingredient in many Latin cuisines. Daisy’s version uses chopped Spanish onions, garlic, cubanelle peppers and cilantro.

** Achiote: Achiote or annatto seeds are small, rust-toned seeds picked from the pods of a tropical shrub. Nutty in flavor and highly saturated in color, they are used to color yellow rice dishes and lend flavor to native Caribbean dishes. Daisy gently simmers 2 tablespoons of seeds in 1 cup of olive oil, then uses that flavorful, color-infused oil in her favorite Puerto Rican dishes.

The 10-week campaign, which created special "freedom schools" for a neglected and disenfranchised African-American population, is credited for aiding the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and energizing the movement that led to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Scenes of that summer, captured by a team of eight photographers who comprised the Southern Documentary Project, are on view now in the Delray Beach museum’s "Oh Freedom Over Me" exhibit.

The images speak to the sacrifice and determination of a population to gain equality, access to education and the right to vote.

"This is a pivotal point in the African-American rights movement. We wanted to educate the younger people in our community, so that they may know the resilience of those in the struggle," says Brandy Brownlee, Spady Museum educator. "And for the older people in our community, the exhibit offers an opportunity to reflect on an era they witnessed and took part in."

The "Oh Freedom Over Me" exhibit, which opened in January, was particularly popular during February’s Black History Month, Brownlee says, with a bustle of visiting student and community groups.

On loan from Duke University’s Center of Documentary Studies, the exhibit includes 13 reportage-style photographs of that summer, a series of campaign banners and a documentary film titled Freedom On My Mind.

"The first five minutes of the documentary will blow you away," Brownlee says. "I’ve learned a lot about the era myself. I’m always amazed at the courage of the people, their pride and strength, and the sacrifices they made to have the freedoms and the liberties we have today."

‘Oh Freedom Over Me’: Through March 27 at the Spady Cultural Heritage Museum, 170 N.W. Fifth Ave., Delray Beach.

Information: (561) 279-8883.

Paul Michael Merhige looks into the 'America's Most Wanted' cameras after being captured. (AP/Courtesy 'America's Most Wanted')

In the end, it took just one phone call. When Paul and Melinda Pfaff saw the strangely familiar mug flash on a preview for America’s Most Wanted, the Long Key innkeepers took action. After securing their family and guests, they called the show’s hot-line with a tip:

The guest in Room 14 at their Edgewater Lodge was a dead ringer for the guy in the fugitive mug.

That call mobilized a stealthy law enforcement operation to capture accused killer Paul Michael Merhige, on the run since a Thanksgiving Day massacre left four relatives dead in Jupiter.

This is what it took: an aware citizen. Not a cowboy or a vigilante. Not a single bullet from a civilian weapon. Just a caller on the tip line.

The call goes to the essence of America’s Most Wanted’s greatest gift to crime victims everywhere: By tapping into the power of the average citizen, it multiplies the reach of law enforcement.

And in this case, it helped to bring down an unemployed, 35-year-old Miami man accused of shooting six relatives, and killing four of them — his cousin’s daughter, Makayla Sitton, age 6, and mother, Raymonde Joseph, 76; and his twin sisters, Lisa Knight and Carla Merhige, 33.

Paul Michael Merhige became the 1,099th fugitive to be nabbed after appearing on America’s Most Wanted.

Both Jupiter police and victims’ relatives thanked the show and its host, John Walsh, for their role in aiding the capture.

AMW’s brand of broadcast justice defies easy labels. The show may border on the sensational, but it is never gratuitous in its mission.

John Walsh of 'America's Most Wanted'. (AP)

John Walsh isn’t Nancy Grace, who indulges in the needless post-mortem of true crime stories on her nightly CNN program. His mission is laser focused: Capture the fugitives.

In doing this, Walsh and AMW have empowered victims and would-be victims. With one call, they can put away fugitives like Merhige.

“These wonderful, caring people in the Keys were watching TV and happened to see the photo. They made the call,” Walsh told me last week shortly after appearing a press conference at the Jupiter home where the massacre occurred. “I’ve been doing this show for 23 years and I can tell you it’s always that good, average citizen who calls up America’s Most Wanted. Thanks to them, we help to take down the worst of the worst.”

Haunting familiarity

For Walsh, this was a story so hauntingly familiar that he plunged in for an in-depth report. He and his wife, Reve, share a horrific connection with Jim and Muriel Sitton, who hosted the fateful holiday gathering during which their young daughter was murdered in her bed. It is a connection no parent should have to fathom.

Both South Florida families lost children to violent killers. Makayla Sitton and Adam Walsh were just 6 years old when they were murdered 28 years apart.

The sheer brutality of the Thanksgiving Day massacre proved unshakable for Adam’s mother. As the story began to fade from national headlines, Reve Walsh urged her husband, America’s best-known crime show host, to go full guns on the case.

“I was off doing a show — I think in the Ukraine with Interpol. It was my wife who focused me in and said, ‘This guy is still at large,’ ” said Walsh.

The show had been airing information about Paul Michael Merhige. But, thanks to his wife’s persistence, John Walsh brought the AMW crew to Jupiter for a deeper look at the case.

Walsh says he admired the Sittons’ courage in their most painful hour.

“They carried themselves with grace and dignity. They made themselves available to the press, even though it was the most difficult thing to do. I told my crew, ‘I want to sit down with this family,’ ” said Walsh, who is based in Washington, D.C., but keeps a home in South Florida. (He won’t say where, for security concerns.)

Adding to the family’s nightmare was the fact that the accused killer was still on the loose and heavily armed.

“There was always that fear, ‘What if he comes back and tries to shoot us in our driveway?’ ” said Walsh.

In an interview last week, Jim Sitton recalled the nightly drill at his Via Veracruz home.

“I was going from window to window, looking for shadows, listening for strange sounds, not sleeping till four or five in the morning. I thought he may be returning to my house to finish what he started,” said Sitton, a TV news photographer for WPTV.

It was a chilling thought, but not as frightening as the thought that the killer could slip off the public radar and get away.

“Our whole intent was to make the world a smaller place for Paul Merhige,” Walsh told me. “You’re looking for justice. You’re not looking for revenge.”

Justice in this case, both Walsh and Sitton agree, would be nothing short of the death penalty.

“The guy planned it. He bought the guns. He bought the ammo. He hid in this hotel. He had all this fake suicide crap in his room,” said Walsh.

He believes the noose and three helium tanks recovered from Merhige’s room were a ruse.

“He had five weeks to kill himself and he didn’t do it. He’s a cold-blooded, calculating guy. I’ve profiled hundreds of these guys — they know what they’re doing,” said Walsh. “This guy is going to play on the sympathy angle — and you and I are going to pay for his $10 million trial.”

For the Sittons and the other survivors of the massacre, it will be costly in more grievous ways, for they will have to relive the horror of that night.

For now, however, Jim Sitton is relieved to know that, as he puts it, “the evil has been captured.”

For this, he thanks John Walsh.

“If it wasn’t for him and America’s Most Wanted, the evil presence would still be out here,” said Sitton. “I admire and respect John Walsh — he was able to turn his family tragedy, the loss of his son, into a cause for the greater good. I can only hope that I can find ways to give back to society.”

On spot for arrest

Walsh kept the cameras rolling after Merhige’s arrest, holding an impromptu press conference, capitalizing on his show’s success. And who can blame him? Not only is it de rigueur in the broadcast business, it’s smart — it gets the word out, leads viewers to the show’s “most wanted” lists online, reaches out to other potential witnesses who may place that one, critical call.

But he knows something else. He knows what happens after his crew packs up and leaves.

“When the media is gone and John Walsh goes away, they’ll have to go back to their daughter’s empty room,” he said. “For some of us, that bed will always be empty. Your child doesn’t come back.”

But in the fictional universe where he mindlessly frolics, irking those around him, there is a greater plan for Wiggens: He must attend classes to learn good manners.

And, as it happens rarely in real life, he learns his lessons beautifully with the help of a wise soul who gives him the great secrets to civility.

Of course, Wiggens is not a YouTube sensation, not a soccer player or a rapper. Wiggens is a rough-and-tumble chocolate Lab puppy. He’s an energetic bolt from the imagination of Vero Beach resident Leslie McGuirk, a successful children’s book author and illustrator with a decidedly unfashionable belief in the power of good manners.

“If you have good manners, life is just easier for you,” says McGuirk, who has written and illustrated 14 children’s books, including the popular Tucker the dog series. “When you have good manners you have quiet power.”

Quiet power. There’s a foreign concept in this day of ponytail-yanking women soccer players and Kanye “I’m-a let you finish” West.

But it is exactly the “epidemic” of bad behavior, as McGuirk calls it, that inspired her most recent book, Wiggens Learns his Manners at the Four Seasons Restaurant (Candlewick Press, $16.99).

The bad manners plague has not only seeped into pop culture, it has been accepted as mainstream — in some cases, exalted as the defining edge of celebrity.

Think about it: Uncouth conduct is just as TV-worthy as a red-carpet Valentino gown these days. And, certainly, it’s more viral.

Take rapper Kanye West, who crashed the stage during country singer Taylor Swift’s speech at MTV’s Video Music Awards in September.

Take Elizabeth Lambert, the new star of YouTube. She’s the University of New Mexico soccer player who shoved, tripped, punched and ponytail-yanked her way into bad-girl star status when videos of her antics mushroomed online.

“A kid who sees that and wants that kind of attention, just may be inspired to do the same,” says McGuirk, 49, aunt to eight nieces and nephews. “It’s difficult for parents to have a voice when their kids see what gets acknowledged on TV. Kids don’t always realize that although this kind of behavior gets noticed, it’s not noticed in a good way.”

The funny thing about learning good manners, she says, is that progress is measured in terms that seem to contradict all other accepted markers of success:

The harder you work at it the less you’ll be noticed.

This is a central lesson from the Wiggens book. Well-mannered people have mastered the art of becoming invisible when necessary. hey don’t cause an unwelcome stir or call attention to themselves at the expense of others’ feelings or the common peace.

McGuirk, who co-wrote the book with Alex von Bidder, an owner of the famed New York restaurant where the Wiggens story is set, believes the best way to counteract the bad manners epidemic is to focus on the basics of civil behavior.

“When you meet someone for the first time, look them in the eye and repeat their name. ‘It’s nice to meet you, Saint Bernard,’” she says. “When you make a mistake, acknowledge it and see if there’s anything you can do to correct it.”

Through his story, the fictional chocolate Lab teaches kids what some parents fail to: that they will be more successful in life if they mind their manners.

“Good manners is about being aware of others. You have an awareness of others and you have empathy for them,” says McGuirk, whose book has generated raves from Martha Stewart, Tom Brokaw and Mary Higgins Clark, among others. “That’s really what it boils down to.”

Well said. I wonder if the well-mannered pooch is willing to go work that soccer field in New Mexico.

So when you ask the author if she’s the only writer in the family, it’s no wonder she responds with a smile and a shrug that says, “I doubt it.”

Perhaps her ancestors were not published authors. Perhaps they weren’t awarded the MacArthur “genius grant,” as Danticat was several weeks ago. Perhaps they were never awarded an American Book Award as she was, or reached the finalist ranks for a National Book Award, a PEN/Faulkner Award, or a National Book Critics Circle Award, as she has.

But, yes, they were writers. They were storytellers.

The most celebrated author of the Haitian diaspora, in such books as Breath, Eyes, Memory and The Dew Breaker, Danticat is as humble as she is revered.

When she heard the news that she had won a $500,000, no-strings-attached MacArthur grant, Danticat says she was thrilled — but she also felt a rush of anxiety.

“I get as anxious about good news as I do about bad news. It’s my Caribbean-ness, I think. I can never be fully joyful, without a bit of anxiety.”

Danticat is a quiet force in her city of immigrants, Miami, where she lives with her husband, Faidherbe Boyer, and their two young daughters in an airy, light-filled home at the edge of Little Haiti. Here, where schoolchildren study — as well as inspire — her works, Danticat is the most understated star in a celebrity-obsessed town.

Calm, graceful and “of the people,” she says her favorite hideouts are, of all places, book stores. Book stores, she says, are “church.”

This is because she found safe harbor in books when she felt lost as a child. She was just 12 when she left Haiti to join her parents in New York, after an eight-year separation during which Danticat and her brother were cared for by an aunt and uncle. Torn from a neighborhood of open doors and neighbors she knew by name, she landed in a large apartment building lined with undistinguishable doors and populated by barely visible residents, a sliver of confinement with a wrought-iron balcony overlooking the train tracks.

“Moving to Brooklyn at age 12, being severed from everything I knew — it was a turbulent time for me. But I was always one to suppress my emotions,” says Danticat, now 40, seated in the book-lined den of her home one recent afternoon.

Her 9-month-old daughter, Leila, plays on the floor just inches away. The baby gazes at her and squeals with delight.

“My brother was 10 and as soon as he got to New York, he thought, ‘This is what I’ve wanted all my life,’” Danticat goes on. “But for me, if I enjoyed anything I’d feel like I was betraying my family back in Haiti. If I enjoyed my pizza too much, I was slighting Haiti. So I’d lose myself in books.”

She devoured anything from novels to comics, searching for roadmaps to the daunting new country that spread out in steely grays and brick browns outside her balcony.

“In books, you find ambivalence, nuance,” she says.

She also found unfamiliar habits and feelings she didn’t recognize.

“In books, for some reason, people are always ‘torn.’ They’re at the dinner table and they’re ‘torn,’” she says, pronouncing the word with some fascination.

Danticat’s voyage into literature not only gave her a sense of place, it introduced her to a range of voices. Now the woman who has heard countless voices, and who finds inspiration in “the way people talk,” believes she is just one in a chorus.

“I’ve always felt that, in my writing, I’m involved in some communal work,” she says.

This belief may explain what moves Danticat to select her topics. From Haitian refugees embarking on perilous sea crossings to the secrets some families keep from their children about violence they’ve seen — and perpetrated — to the slaughter of Haitian laborers under a Dominican dictatorship, the author has delved into the core events that have shaped the Haitian psyche. And she has done this in a language that is both elegant and accessible, opening the pages of her books to literary sophisticates and rank-and-file students alike.

“Edwidge is a cultural treasure. She is a powerful voice for the immigrant experience and for universal human struggles. South Florida is most fortunate to have her here,” says Susana Barciela, policy director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center.

Author and anthropologist Ruth Behar, who won a MacArthur grant in 1988, says she is struck by the balance in Danticat’s writing voice.

“She speaks with an unusual kindness and humility while addressing terrible questions of violence, trauma, and loss,” says Behar, a professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan, who has taught Danticat’s works in her course on ethnographic writing. Danticat, she says, “has made a difference in how we think about literature, identity, history, and community.”

Taking on painful realities head-on gives her perspective and a measure of distance, Danticat says.

Even in trying to heal after 2004, a year of deep personal losses, she says she knows no other way but to walk through the fire. That was the year her father, Andre Miracin Danticat, died in New York and his brother, her uncle Joseph — a frail, 81-year-old Haitian pastor fleeing thug violence against his church — died in U.S. immigration custody while seeking temporary asylum. Her uncle was like a second father to Danticat, caring for her in Haiti during her childhood separation from her parents.

Danticat, who still dresses in black to reflect her deuil, her bereavement, braved the depths of mourning to write her 2007 memoir Brother, I’m Dying, her most recent book.

“It was a way of maintaining my balance,” she says. “Getting it out of me and into an objective space, into the pages of my book, it helped me mourn.”

It also gave her an outlet for the outrage she felt over the senseless death of her uncle, whose medication was taken from him at the time of his detention on U.S. soil.

“What happened to my uncle was maddening. And it kept happening to other people. And it’s still happening to other people,” she says, echoing the frustrations of refugee advocates disappointed with President Barack Obama’s failure to grant Haitian asylum seekers protection from deportation. “It’s stunning. There’s been no change.”

Besides a memoir and a cathartic space, her most difficult year also gave her a great joy: She gave birth to her first child, a girl. The baby was born in Miami shortly before Danticat’s father died.

“He always said, ‘I want to meet the first child of my first child,’” she says.

And, on a day when life seemed to come full circle, making seamless the passage of one story to another story, he did.

He will perform at the Plaza of the Revolution, in the shadow of an eight-story-tall Che Guevara image that exhorts “Until victory always!” But it’s not political.

He has invited Cuba’s most militant troubadour, Silvio Rodriguez, his childhood idol, to join him for the Sept. 20 concert. But it’s not political.

Rodriguez is one of the officialist cultural figures who signed a letter supporting the execution of three youths who had attempted to flee Cuba by commandeering a ferry in 2003. It was one of his countless gestures in support of the totalitarian regime — but that wasn’t political, either.

Juanes will wear white, and he has asked that his expected throngs wear white, as well. He says he will sing for “peace,” and he will sing for “tolerance.” And, of course, he will sing for Change. What gig could ever generate lasting heat if it didn’t involve today’s de rigueur platitude?

So, armed with his bouncy, rebel-lite tunes and Bono ideations, the 37-year-old Juanes now attempts to surf the political riptides that stretch across the Florida Straits.

And for all his best intentions, he’s floundering.

Facing mounting criticism from diverse sectors of Cuban-Americans and exiles, Juanes has retreated to that safe place reserved for the dreamers, the imprecise and the irresolute: the bunker of denial. His “Peace Without Borders” concert is not a political act, he insists. It is simply a people-to-people thing, dig?
It will be Juanes’ second Peace Without Borders extravaganza — the first one took place on the border of Venezuela and his native Colombia, during a time of heightened tension between those governments. And, no, for all its geopolitical implications, that one wasn’t political, either.

The Key Biscayne-based singer debated whether to stage this year’s concert on the U.S.-Mexico border. But once someone in the brainstorm session mentioned Cuba, he jumped at the idea, he recounted in a Miami radio interview last week. And why wouldn’t he leap at the thought? Cuba, with its mystique and forbidden qualities and rebel brand, provides the ideal backdrop for a poetic folk-rocker like Juanes. (Imagine the video!)

The problem is no event in Cuba is amplifier-worthy unless it involves U.S. foreign policy. Therefore, along with his nonpolitical disclaimers, Juanes drops the obligatory allusions to the decades-old U.S. trade embargo against Cuba.

“Don’t you think it would be good that they talk after 50 years?” the entertainer posted on Twitter some days ago.

Memo to Juanes: Cubans on and off the island have never stopped talking. The estrangement you speak of applies to the politicians, not the people.

As a Colombian national, Juanes could have planned this concert from his native soil, hired sound crews from Latin America, traveled to Havana with greater ease. But instead, he met with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in June to ask for her blessing and help in granting visas to U.S.-based crews and musicians like Puerto Rican salsa singer Olga Tanon. He flew to Havana and met with culture ministry officials there. He met with exile opinion leaders in Miami. Juanes could not have been more clear about his intentions to step into the U.S.-Cuba fray.

This trip has never been about singing for the Cuban people — it was designed from the start to call attention to U.S. foreign policy, which continues to be marked by the embargo, despite a recent easing of travel restrictions by the Obama administration.

So why the apolitical front? Because it means Juanes doesn’t have to bring up the hard facts about life in Cuba. He doesn’t have to talk about the jailing of dissidents, the ban on the political opposition, the censorship of musicians and journalists, the laws against leaving, the political cops posing as culture ministers, the executions, the racism, the homophobia, the basic fact that his fellow musical stars in Miami would never be granted a Cuban government visa. He doesn’t have to advance the story. He only has to tread water.

So instead of calling attention to the hardships of the people, he continues to call attention to the harangues of Miami. How progressive of him.
But what if he did choose to shatter those taboos? What a powerful song that could make. Dare he sing it in Havana?

Anna Maria and Brian Clement on the grounds of the Hippocrates Health Institute in West Palm Beach. Gary Coronado, The Post

Brian Clement, a luminary of the raw foods movement, wears a light-colored suit and yellow pocket square, which contrasts with the dramatic brown of his hair and goatee.

He appears to be a man in peak condition, his body lean and fully alkalized, his veins perfectly aerated, his brain unclouded by the fog of a fat, starchy life. And it’s no wonder why. On this day, which began a good hour before dawn, he has exercised vigorously, taken a detoxifying sauna bath and consumed green vegetable juice, sprouts, algae, pollen and enzyme supplements.

No double-shot java. No crullers. No hitting the snooze button. Just chlorophyll and oxygen — free radicals, beware!

“After you get over the glory of food, the addiction of food, a salad looks really great,” he tells a gathering of casually dressed guests at the Hippocrates Health Institute, the spa and healing sanctuary he brought to West Palm Beach from Boston 22 years ago.

The guests attending Clement’s lecture are an eclectic mix of vegans, health seekers and curious visitors taking a glimpse into the world of “living foods,” where nutrients are consumed for their healing, cleansing and immunity-boosting properties.

Clement weaves personal testimony between tidbits of nutritional wisdom: cucumbers create hydration; kale is chock-full of calcium; fennel is fabulous for digestion.

“I was never filled,” he says of his previous self. “I’d go to bed not being filled.”

The room smells of spices, an aromatic layering of turmeric and ginger and garlic, all emanating from the dining room adjacent to this conference lounge. Along the back wall there are pitchers of pure water, cucumber juice and garlic juice, dishes of lemon wedges and prominently displayed instructions on how to consume the liquids:

“KEEP LIQUIDS SEPARATE FROM SOLID FOODS! WAIT AT LEAST 15 MINUTES AFTER DRINKING JUICE TO EAT. IF YOU JUST ATE, WAIT 1 TO 3 HOURS BEFORE DRINKING LIQUIDS.”

The institute, scattered in lush woods in a series of Mexican-style villas, has been a trailblazer in the world of alternative healing methods since 1957. That’s the year a Lithuanian-born holistic health practitioner named Ann Wigmore opened the center in Boston, helping to launch the living foods movement in this country.

Wigmore was legendary for her decision to battle colon cancer with raw foods and wheatgrass. She died in 1994 — in a fire, at age 85.

Bodhi Da Silva, a body work therapist, performs a Thai massage on a guest on the grounds of the Hippocrates Health Institute. Gary Coronado, The Post

Clement carried forth the philosophy of health and rejuvenation through raw foods since going to work with Wigmore in the 1970s. All programs at the institute, which requires a minimum one-week stay, include an organic raw food buffet, green drinks throughout the day, wheatgrass juice therapy, blood work and live blood cell analysis, a massage, a colonic, crystal therapy, electromagnetic therapy, a consultation with a psychotherapist, educational lectures, exercise classes and guided meditation.

Hot dogs to health

One might imagine the leader of such a New Age-y, nature-centric place to be a guy or woman in earth shoes, loose-fitting cottons or, at the very least, a hint of patchouli in his aura. But Clement is no such character. At first glance, he could be a salesman or an insurance agent, a businessman en route to his next convention.

Agriculturalist Ed Blume says wheatgrass is a possible cure for cancer and a super-antioxident, or blood purifyer. He grows it in his laboratory greenhouse in palm City, along with other possible cancer cures and vegetables. Chris Matula, The Post

Perhaps this is because he was not a child of wheatgrass. He was a child of Nathan’s Famous hot dogs.
“I used to go to Yankee Stadium for the hot dogs,” says Clement, a 53-year-old New York native, settling into his desk at the institute after the morning lecture.

His pre-vegan self weighed 240 pounds. He smoked three packs of cigarettes a day. But one day as he climbed a flight of stairs, something happened that jarred him to the core: He was panting so hard he had to stop. He was barely 20 years old.

It was a friend, a vegan, who helped him connect the dots to better health, appealing to Clement’s love of animals. He gave up meat.

“I took a moral stand,” Clement recalls.

He quit smoking, cold turkey. A couple years later, he gave up all dairy, believing it contains cancer-causing agents.

“Dairy was the hardest thing to give up. But I radically lost weight when I gave up dairy,” he says.
Clement’s newfound interest in health led him to make new friends. Among them was one elderly New York woman, who introduced him to a group of health-minded seniors in Florida. They invited him to nutritional lectures in Hallandale, where they taught him about the healing power of greens.

“I met an 102-year-old Russian guy who said, ‘Look at me. You gotta eat like me,’ ” he recalls.
A kindred spirit

Soon, Clement was on the lecture circuit himself. In the mid-1970s, he went to work for Wigmore at the Hippocrates Health Institute in Boston. Clement discovered his niche as a Hippocrates emissary to Europe and Scandinavia, where he met his kindred spirit in 1978.

Anna Maria Gahns was a young Swedish woman who had traveled a parallel path in the world of healing foods. She was the director of a natural healing clinic in Stockholm. Her personal transformation came at age 15, when her meat-and-potatoes family began to clamor for something different at dinner. Her father went out to the market and returned with a bag of fresh vegetables. He made a huge, elaborate salad for the family.

“We ate that thing and it was like a bomb fell in the house that day,” she said. “It was great. When we woke up the next day, we were totally different people. We started to read books on health and experiment with healthy foods. And now we had energy.”

Like her husband, Anna Maria Clement is a naturopathic doctor and co-director of Hippocrates. The Clements have four children, ages 26 to 11.

Natural beginnings

“What today is called the ‘green’ movement is how we raised our kids,” says Brian Clement. “Our idea of church is going to the beach and doing a beach cleanup. We’ve raised our kids to have respect for nature.”

Anna Maria nursed all her children until at least age 2, allowing them to select the natural foods they wanted to munch on here and there, as they grew older and more curious. The children, she says, chose to nibble on seaweeds and vegetables. They drank fresh green veggie drinks like other kids might drink Kool-Aid or Seven-Up.

“My kids grew up asking me, ‘Why do people kill animals and eat them?’ If you hand them a can of food or a soda, they won’t take it,” says Brian.

The Clements minister to waves of guests from all over the world on their 30-plus-acre compound west of Jog Road, between Belvedere and Okeechobee. They have hosted notables like Coretta Scott King, Roberta Flack, Kenny Loggins and, perhaps most famously, model and TV personality Heather Mills, the former Mrs. Paul McCartney.

Mills went to the center after a 1993 accident that forced the amputation of her leg. She was struck by a police motorcycle as she crossed a street in central London. She recounted the story for London’s Observer Food Monthly in July:

Her amputation wound wouldn’t heal, she said, “and they kept chopping my leg off more and more, further and further up my leg. And they’d give me all the disgusting antibiotics that break down your immune system. And my girlfriend had cured herself of breast cancer on a raw vegan diet, and that’s how I got into it. … I discharged myself, went over (to the Hippocrates Health Institute in Florida), had wheatgrass juice, every green drink you can imagine, garlic poultices on my wound. Two weeks later, less than two weeks even, I was completely healed.”

Brian Clement has countless such testimonies to share. But the one he never fails to tell is his own. Indeed, it has been a radical path from the hot dog stand in Yankee Stadium, but it has brought him to a belief he now shares with his Hippocrates visitors:

“It’s not what we put into our lives that’s important — it’s what we take out of our lives, those things that are not good for you,” he tells his audience. “This is what is going to heal you.”

If you go:

WHAT: The Hippocrates Health Institute

WHERE: 1443 Palmdale Court, West Palm Beach

INFORMATION: Call the institute at (561) 471-8876 or visit the Web site: hippocratesinst.org

Pauline MacArthur, 94, center, sings to Fred Bowen- Smith, right, of Hobe Sound, and Gene Stenger, of Pittsburgh, left, while at Harry and the Natives restaurant on Wednesday. MacArthur, the matriarch of the restaurant, still comes to work six days a week. (Sara Grille/The Post)

Harry & the Natives cafe

Smile, natives. It’s a spectacularly routine day.

In Hobe Sound’s most iconic café this means a gator burger with a side of twisted humor, real-deal Florida funk and a tableside song from Mom.

Mom is Pauline MacArthur, four months shy of 95. A farm-raised Michigan girl of hardy stock, Mom still comes to work at 6 a.m., six days a week, serves breakfast and keeps the books.

Oh, and she sings.

“When you’re smiling, when you’re smiling, the whole world smiles with you…” she crooned on a recent weekday as lunchtime waned. “When you’re happy, when you’re happy, the sun comes shining through…”

Mom has been the matriarch of Harry and the Natives since its previous incarnation, when the place was a one-stop hub called The Farm and it served as a motel, a Western Union post, a Greyhound bus stop and a gas station.

Mom has been here, in the pecky cypress splendor of it all, for 57 years. She and her husband, the late Jack MacArthur, bought the place in the spring of 1952 and settled in Hobe Sound with their three young daughters. Later, they had two sons, the younger of whom is the restaurant’s namesake, Harry.

Harry started working at the restaurant when he was old enough to carry water glasses to the patrons. Like his siblings, he pumped gas, cleaned the motel cottages, fussed about in the kitchen, and soaked in the blissfully unorthodox philosophies of his parents.

Pauline MacArthur, 94, clockwise from bottom left, poses with her son, Harry, and daughter, Paula, at Harry and the Natives restaurant in Hobe Sound. ( Sarah Grile/ The Post)

“My parents would tell me, ‘You have to make someone smile every day,”” recalls Harry, who went on to travel the globe, surf in Hawaii and work as a hotel executive chef before coming back to The Farm, three years after the 1986 death of his father.

Serving community, too

The once-vibrant restaurant had been running as a beverage-only place for a few years, when Harry approached his mother about a revamp. With Mom’s blessing, he remodeled the kitchen, dreamed up a new menu and renamed the establishment Harry and the Natives.

The place was reborn, but it kept its vintage soul, its walls and tables appointed with relics of the days of community gatherings and weekly covered-dish dinners, of the Old Florida spirit of hard work tempered by attitudes as breezy and salty as sea wind.

It still served World Famous Pancakes à la Jack MacArthur at breakfast. It dispensed snippets of the MacArthur family humor on the menu, listing “cash, dishwashing, silver rolling, honey dipping, oceanfront homes, table dancing” as acceptable forms of payment, in addition to Visa, MasterCard and American Express.

And it still featured Mom, a song on her lips and a big red hibiscus flower in her hair. She’s the woman you’d like to be when you grow up, an energetic soul fully engaged in life. She walks every day. She grows orchids and roses. She writes crisply lettered longhand. And, most inspiring, she takes requests.

This is a woman who volunteered at the Manors nursing home in Hobe Sound on her only day off, running bingo games, baking sugar-free cookies and regaling the residents with fresh flowers. She did this until she turned 94.

It’s no wonder her son Harry has made his own mark as a humanitarian and community force, helping locals through his Natives Helping Natives charitable organization.

“Always give back. You have to. That’s how we were raised,” says Harry, 51, whose seriously noble deeds contrast sharply with his not-so-serious fashion sense. He’s the guy with the whimsical get-ups, the shark hat, the joke T-shirts. He wears tuxedo shorts to fancy galas. That guy.

Anniversary gift to patrons

Now, as the family café approaches its 20th anniversary in September, the MacArthurs will celebrate the way they always do – by doing something nice for their customers. For the entire month of August, they’re serving free coffee and cold drinks.

No need to plan a big celebration, says Harry, not when everyday life is a party.

“It’s pretty special that we’ve been able to work together,” says Harry of the partnership with his mother, who lives next door to him and his family in Hobe Sound.

When she hears him say this, she smiles.

“There’s been no trouble at all,” she says. Her oldest daughter, Paula, an artist, is also working at the restaurant. And as is family tradition, the entire clan gathers for dinner on Mondays, the only day Harry’s is closed.

Service with a song

Before the family bought the restaurant, it had been through a slew of owners. But for the Mac-Arthurs, it was a magical place. It’s where Jack came to heal from a back ailment, after spending years sailing freighters on the Great Lakes. Hobe Sound brought him health and rebirth.

“Here, he would swim in the ocean every day, sometimes twice a day,” recalls Mom, her face framed by green beaded eyeglass holders. “There would have to be a hurricane to stop him from swimming.”

So it is fitting that the restaurant has survived for nearly two decades, running on sea breeze and a sizable helping of MacArthur gusto.

Mom rediscovers the magic of the place each day, as the regulars show up for breakfast. What song will she sing for them? She has no idea. But she knows one thing: It’ll make them smile.

Pauline MacArthur and her late husband, Jack, opened the restaurant in 1952, which was then called The Farm. In 1989, her son, Harry, helped remodel and reopen the restaurant, naming it Harry and the Natives. Sarah Grile/Freelance Photographer

Smile, natives. It’s a spectacularly routine day.

In Hobe Sound’s most iconic café this means a gator burger with a side of twisted humor, real-deal Florida funk and a tableside song from Mom.

Mom is Pauline MacArthur, four months shy of 95. A farm-raised Michigan girl of hardy stock, Mom still comes to work at 6 a.m., six days a week, serves breakfast and keeps the books.

Oh, and she sings.

Pauline MacArthur, 94, (center) sings to Fred Bowen-Smith (right) of Hobe Sound, and Gene Stenger of Pittsburgh, while at Harry and the Natives restaurant. MacArthur, the matriarch of the restaurant, still comes to work six days a week. Sarah Grile/Freelance Photographer

“When you’re smiling, when you’re smiling, the whole world smiles with you…” she crooned on a recent weekday as lunchtime waned. “When you’re happy, when you’re happy, the sun comes shining through…”

Mom has been the matriarch of Harry and the Natives since its previous incarnation, when the place was a one-stop hub called The Farm and it served as a motel, a Western Union post, a Greyhound bus stop and a gas station.

Mom has been here, in the pecky cypress splendor of it all, for 57 years. She and her husband, the late Jack MacArthur, bought the place in the spring of 1952 and settled in Hobe Sound with their three young daughters. Later, they had two sons, the younger of whom is the restaurant’s namesake, Harry.

Harry started working at the restaurant when he was old enough to carry water glasses to the patrons. Like his siblings, he pumped gas, cleaned the motel cottages, fussed about in the kitchen, and soaked in the blissfully unorthodox philosophies of his parents.

“My parents would tell me, ‘You have to make someone smile every day,’” recalls Harry, who went on to travel the globe, surf in Hawaii and work as a hotel executive chef before coming back to The Farm, three years after the 1986 death of his father.

Serving community, too
The once-vibrant restaurant had been running as a beverage-only place for a few years, when Harry approached his mother about a revamp. With Mom’s blessing, he remodeled the kitchen, dreamed up a new menu and renamed the establishment Harry and the Natives.

The place was reborn, but it kept its vintage soul, its walls and tables appointed with relics of the days of community gatherings and weekly covered-dish dinners, of the Old Florida spirit of hard work tempered by attitudes as breezy and salty as sea wind.

It still served World Famous Pancakes à la Jack MacArthur at breakfast. It dispensed snippets of the MacArthur family humor on the menu, listing “cash, dishwashing, silver rolling, honey dipping, oceanfront homes, table dancing” as acceptable forms of payment, in addition to Visa, MasterCard and American Express.

And it still featured Mom, a song on her lips and a big red hibiscus flower in her hair. She’s the woman you’d like to be when you grow up, an energetic soul fully engaged in life. She walks every day. She grows orchids and roses. She writes crisply lettered longhand. And, most inspiring, she takes requests.

This is a woman who volunteered at the Manors nursing home in Hobe Sound on her only day off, running bingo games, baking sugar-free cookies and regaling the residents with fresh flowers. She did this until she turned 94.

It’s no wonder her son Harry has made his own mark as a humanitarian and community force, helping locals through his Natives Helping Natives charitable organization.

“Always give back. You have to. That’s how we were raised,” says Harry, 51, whose seriously noble deeds contrast sharply with his not-so-serious fashion sense. He’s the guy with the whimsical get-ups, the shark hat, the joke T-shirts. He wears tuxedo shorts to fancy galas. That guy.

Pauline MacArthur, 94 (bottom left), with her son Harry and daughter Paula. Sarah Grile/Freelance Photographer

Anniversary gift to patrons

Now, as the family café approaches its 20th anniversary in September, the MacArthurs will celebrate the way they always do — by doing something nice for their customers. For the entire month of August, they’re serving free coffee and cold drinks.

No need to plan a big celebration, says Harry, not when everyday life is a party.

“It’s pretty special that we’ve been able to work together,” says Harry of the partnership with his mother, who lives next door to him and his family in Hobe Sound.

When she hears him say this, she smiles.

“There’s been no trouble at all,” she says. Her oldest daughter, Paula, an artist, is also working at the restaurant. And as is family tradition, the entire clan gathers for dinner on Mondays, the only day Harry’s is closed.

Service with a song
Before the family bought the restaurant, it had been through a slew of owners. But for the Mac-Arthurs, it was a magical place. It’s where Jack came to heal from a back ailment, after spending years sailing freighters on the Great Lakes. Hobe Sound brought him health and rebirth.

“Here, he would swim in the ocean every day, sometimes twice a day,” recalls Mom, her face framed by green beaded eyeglass holders. “There would have to be a hurricane to stop him from swimming.”

So it is fitting that the restaurant has survived for nearly two decades, running on sea breeze and a sizable helping of MacArthur gusto.

Mom rediscovers the magic of the place each day, as the regulars show up for breakfast. What song will she sing for them? She has no idea. But she knows one thing: It’ll make them smile.

The Rascals, 1960s hitmakers. (courtesy www.the-rascals.com)

Beach mornings smelled of coconut oil and salt, and they tasted like Cuban crackers, slicked with butter and sprinkled with sugar.

Those aromas drifted in on waves of blue-eyed soul, sturdy tunes that echoed familiar syncopations. One in particular plays on a loop in my head when I think of summer, 1968:

“All the world over, so easy to see,
“People everywhere just wanna be free …”

The Rascals, with their thick harmonies and percussive sounds, blasted on the AM radio atop our picnic table at Crandon Park beach in Miami, bouncing off the sand, the curved palm trunks, the cooler. It was music that seemed made to order for Cuban girls still grappling with the hairpin turns of American culture. To my 9-year-old senses, it was Cuban.

I had heard no American song more rhythmically Cuban than “Good Lovin’”. And when I heard “Groovin’”, my suspicions seemed to be confirmed — it was a song to be danced “Cuban slow,” each beat to be marked with a swivel of hips.

But there was something particularly compelling about “People Got to Be Free”: It seemed to articulate a yearning I sensed in my mother and her sisters, even on breezy beach days. For almost 10 years, they had been separated from my grandparents, who were forbidden to leave the island.

I didn’t remember them, couldn’t visualize them. I could only sing for them:

People got to be free!