On Sept. 20, 1973, in their so-called “Battle of the Sexes,” tennis star Billie Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs in straight sets, 6-4, 6-3, 6-3, in the Houston Astrodome. It was the first time a woman had played against a man in such a venue, and it was an historic event with much media hype and an astounding amount of betting in Las Vegas with the odds in Riggs’s favor.

You leave town for a few days and the entire restaurant scene changes I came home to discover that the Fort Lauderdale landmark riverfront restaurant, The Downtowner and its next-door venue, Maxwell Room, will close on Sunday, Oct. 6 after 30 years.

Boy, you leave town for two weeks, and you somehow have six weeks of mail and emails accumulated when you return. There were so many goodies that I couldn’t include them all in my last column, so I’ll catch you up. But I promise to dine out and give you a review soon!

Recently The New York Times released its annual list “Restaurant List” of “Our 50 Favorite Places in America,” and two Miami spots made the list for Florida.

After months of deliberation, David Sheldon Fearon wrote a letter in 1959 to the committee responsible for developing the Revised Standard Version (RSV) of the Bible. Fearon, recently deceased, was then a 21-year-old seminary student in Canada who hoped to call attention to a mistranslation he’d discovered.

I’ve been up in Chicago for a couple of weeks getting my fix of the chow I can’t get in SoFlo (pan pizza, Italian beef sandwiches, Maxwell Street Polish, a decent banh mi, good Indian food) and while I’ve been gone my inbox has filled up with all kinds of dining news I need to share.