When kitchens go on a diet, it has nothing to do with deprivation. Today’s homeowners are slimming down their kitchens with sleek, functional, contemporary designs. They’re discovering that smooth silhouettes can be aesthetically pleasing while providing efficient and artful spaces for work, storage and entertaining. Contemporary aesthetics depend less on external details and more on [...]

Beginning on April 27, Florida Winefest & Auction will celebrate its 16th year with four intoxicating days of connoisseurs and casual drinkers mixing at The Ritz-Carlton in search of the next great grape-and the cuisine to go with it. At the end of the festivities, Winefest will have added a considerable amount to the $5 [...]

It is "the vision thing," isn’t it? Looking around our city, after the years that have passed since we first began to formulate a new downtown master plan, I can’t discern any strong vision at work. Instead, we see construction everywhere, surging upward and outward, often devoid of any obvious commitment to urban context or [...]

If horse racing is the sport of kings, and football (except for certain college games) is for Joe Six Pack, then baseball is the sport of writers. Particularly the intellectuals. Remember Marianne Moore, that little old lady poet, sitting in the stands at all the old Brooklyn Dodgers games? Or all the various famous essays [...]

The item: The Macallan limited-edition 50-year-old single-malt Scotch whisky, distilled in the Speyside region of the Scottish Highlands and bottled in a Lalique crystal decanter. This semi-centennial vintage, just released in January, boasts rich, complex flavors-dark prunes, chocolate, maraschino cherries, cumin, cardamom-and a lingering finish of sherry, oak and a hint of peat smoke. It’s [...]

Some rooms are made beautiful by adding fine fabrics and furnishings. Others become lovely by what is taken away. In the case of husband-and-wife interior designers Jeff and Joyce Hart’s 1926 Ringling-era home on St. Armands, good bones and distinguished features were there all along. The Harts’ task was how best to reveal them. "We [...]

Design experience: 22 years. Trained at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale. Perla Lichi Design in Tamarac, Fla., opened in 1992. I got so many calls from Sarasota, now I go there regularly for special appointments. My home is: Renaissance Venetian. My dinner parties: I cater. My kitchen is beautiful, but I don’t use it. [...]