Ask Sebastian La Rocca why anyone should come to The Blu Fin, and he does not answer the question. He throws one back. Why, he asks, would you drive 30 or 45 minutes past a hundred restaurants to get here? Then the Argentine-born chef, Italian by blood, global by résumé, and visibly incapable of doing anything at half volume, answers himself. “We don’t sell food,” he says. “We offer you an experience.” Sebastian La Rocca That is Sebastian La Rocca: a chef with 27 years in int

Jack Donahue's ghost is tap-dancing across the Riverside Theatre stage starting next week and you have until Nov. 22 to catch him. The two-person musical draws on the true story of Jack's letters home as he climbed the brutal early 20th-century vaudeville circuit. You know vaudeville better than you think. It gave us terms like "big time" and "a tough act to follow," plus the mix of monologue, sketch and musical guests that late-night TV shows like Saturday Night Live still r

Forget the great snowbird migration. Downtown Vero's season really starts with the First Friday Gallery Stroll in October. This year that's October 2, when Gallery 14 opens its 19th season with a two-artist show you won't want to miss. John H.C. Davis is a Tulane-trained printmaker who carves Florida wildlife into linoleum, in reverse, one gouge at a time. He prints each piece by hand, paints it in acrylic, and then, if that wasn't labor-intensive enough, builds the wooden fr

Tickets for the Vero Beach Museum of Art's 45th International Lecture Series go on sale Thursday, and the lineup would make even a Manhattan cultural calendar jealous. The best-known name on the bill is Pico Iyer, the best-selling author and travel writer whose byline has run in The New York Times, Harper's and The New York Review of Books. He has spent decades explaining Japan to the rest of the world, and on February 1 he'll explain it to Vero. He's joined by two leading sc

Backstage Access offers an exclusive, first-rate passport into the inner workings of Riverside Theatre. Designed for established and budding connoisseurs of the craft, these classes take you beyond the curtain of every mainstage production this season, with most courses including rare access to a tech rehearsal. Seating is limited, so only a small group gets into each class. Each production in the lineup has its own dedicated class, spanning two or three sessions, most on Thu

The artists arriving at McKee next month have been called the most prolific and successful creators of public art in New York's history by the Times. Marc and Gillie Schattner in front of The Last Three Gillie & Marc Schattner have installed bronze animals in over 250 cities, from Singapore to Shanghai to London. Best known for their recurring characters Rabbitwoman and Dogman, the British-Australian duo work as self-described eco-warriors, using sculpture as a platform for w

At long last, we have a hit. PUCKETT'S MOVIE PICKS Mark Puckett reviews Coyote vs. Acme I was 20 when Who Framed Roger Rabbit burst onto the screen in 1988, though the live-action hybrid stretches back to 1900’s silent short The Enchanted Drawing, and down through the dismal depths of Space Jam: A New Legacy. At long last, we have a hit. Coyote vs. Acme finally gives Wile E. Coyote his day in court against the corporate behemoth that supplied his defective anvils. Naturally,

Getty Images You've got two days left to catch special screenings of Steel Magnolias and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. AMC Indian River 24, part of a nationwide tribute to her legacy running through September 2. Was this forwarded to you by a friend? Scroll to the bottom of the page and sign up to never miss a Vero minute! Visit the Home page to explore all stories. Visit The Week Ahead to see a curated list of upcoming events.

Something special is being unveiled at McKee Botanical Garden during this weekend's second annual Rare & Exotic Orchid Exhibition & Sale! And you can be among the first to hear about it -- before anyone else. Fill out this form to sign up for the early reveal before the gates open! The secret drops alongside the Orchid Sale, running Saturday from 9 a.m. - 4 p.m. and Sunday from 9 a.m. - 3 p.m. McKee members can enter early at 8 a.m. Saturday for an exclusive preview. Featured

If you love A Land Remembered, the MacIveys and their sweep from cracker poverty to Florida fortune that's become required reading for crackers and transplants alike, you need to read Gregory Enns' Cow Creek Chronicles: The Rise and Fall of an Early Florida Cattle Ranch, recently published by the University Press of Florida. It's the same sweep, the same century of Florida clawing itself out of the muck, told true. Real names on real gravestones, with real family still around

Florida's only endemic bird species lives right here in Indian River County, and this Thursday, Bob Montanaro is bringing its story to Raw Space. The Pelican Island Audubon Society naturalist has spent years filming the county's wildlife, from ospreys to river otters. His program, The Secret Life of the Florida Scrub-Jay, covers the bird's life history and the scrub habitat it depends on. It's his third talk at Raw Space this summer, following programs on the ospreys of Pelic

Raw Space’s STEWARDS series continues Thursday with Team ORCA Research Assistant Courtney Brooks, who works at the intersection of field science and public participation. Courtney Brooks Her work invites residents to help monitor the Indian River Lagoon, spot changes in its habitats, and take part in restoring the places that sustain its wildlife. Brooks will discuss citizen science, habitat restoration, and the daily research behind ORCA’s work to protect the lagoon. She’ll

Saturday, September 5 and Sunday the 6th. Be there! McKee Botanical Garden's Second Annual Rare & Exotic Orchid Exhibition & Sale returns, and if last year is any indication, this year will be an even bigger hit. A quick history lesson: During World War II, Britain shipped its rarest orchids across the Atlantic to dodge the bombing, straight to Arthur McKee to keep alive. This summer, McKee's own collection racked up four American Orchid Society awards. The American Orchid So

There was no distance between the audience and the art this past Saturday; it was a breathtakingly close-up experience at Riverside's Dance Festival. You felt the physical sweep of air as the dancers flew past, witnessing the exquisite mechanics of moving muscle and shifting ribs right before your eyes. A flawless, up-close revelation of the strength behind the grace. If that wasn't enough, it also happened to be Camilo Rodriguez's 50th birthday, marked by a cameo appearance

The place to be this Sunday at 3pm is the Sanctuary at Community Church of Vero Beach, where the Music and Fine Arts program hosts the Space Coast Symphony for Landscapes & Legends. The sanctuary’s world-class acoustics have long attracted global music royalty. Its stage has welcomed both the Moscow and Royal Philharmonics, alongside legendary soloists Joshua Bell and Marc-André Hamelin. Following suit, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center transferred its entire 2027 s

The buzz around Vero Beach right now is all about Ballet Vero Beach Artistic Director Adam Schnell, who has crafted a lineup so raw and kinetic for the Riverside Dance Festival, its like an athletic masterclass disguised as high art. You will see dancers push the absolute boundaries of physics, testing their limits right in front of your eyes. As Schnell so aptly put it recently while talking to Willi Miller: "One of the things I love about dance, and one of the things I alwa

VBMA pours three themed cocktails this Friday, August 7 at 6:30 p.m. for Flight Pattern, the latest installment of Art of the Cocktail, the museum's recurring series pairing whatever's on view with a drink menu. This round celebrates James Prosek: At Work, drawing inspiration from birds and the natural rhythms of flight. The exhibit itself is a 70-piece survey of an artist who's spent three decades painting trout, ocean fish, birds and prairie grasses, and who has been referr

If you've been meaning to get more literary in Vero, start marking your calendar now. The Laura Riding Jackson Foundation just released a sneak peek at its coming season, one of its most exciting ones yet, complete with a downtown poetry cookout, a full-day publishing bootcamp, and a book festival unveiling a brand new local anthology, plus a growing lineup of programming for kids and teens all year. Nov. 7: Local Author Book Festival at Vero Beach Book Center. Food trucks, a

It's that time of year again. Every summer, Riverside Theatre and Ballet Vero Beach bring a world-class dance company to Vero Beach, move a group of serious young dancers into rehearsal alongside them, and put all of it on the Riverside Stage together. Year after year, they deliver. This year is something else entirely. Jennifer Kronenberg Meet Jennifer Kronenberg. She trained on scholarship at the School of American Ballet, joined Miami City Ballet as an apprentice at 17, an

Jill Nathanson paints without figures or scenery. There's no subject to speak of, just color, carrying the entire picture on its own. Starting this Saturday, July 25, 20 of her paintings fill VBMA's Schumann and Titelman galleries in a show entirely the museum's own, built in-house, every piece on loan from the artist and her gallery, Berry Campbell. Nathanson works in the Color Field tradition, a school of painting built on the idea that color alone, without shape or subject