Cobaya Brasel at Meat Market

I'm not really sure what happened. I know Sean Brasel is a talented chef: I've had good meals at the restaurant of which he's chef and owner, Meat Market on Lincoln Road, and I've seen some interesting menus that he's put together for wine dinners there.^[1] But if I'm going to be brutally honest – and I am – our Cobaya dinner at Meat Market just wasn't as good as dinners I've had at the restaurant, nor as interesting as other special event menus I've seen them do.

This puts me in an incredibly awkward position. As one of the organizers of these Cobaya dinners, I'd like nothing better than to tell you how fantastic every meal is, and heap praise on the chefs who work with us. Fortunately, I almost always get to do that, and through 44 events over the past five years, I think we've got a pretty great track record. But if I'm going to maintain credibility, I have to tell you when I think we miss the mark – and as a paying customer myself (we organizers buy our own seats), I feel it just as much as our guests.

The truth is, Experiment #44 was pretty disappointing to me, both in concept and execution. We give chefs free reign to create their menus, with the knowledge that they will have a group of adventurous, unrestricted eaters as their audience. Brasel apparently decided to use the opportunity to do a dry run of menu items for his new restaurant opening soon in Palm Beach. Though I guess we were the "guinea pigs," the result felt more like a Miami Spice menu than a dining experiment.^[2]

(You can see all my pictures in this Cobaya Meat Market flickr set).

For a first course, we started with lobster pigs in a blanket (a sort of lobster forcemeat wrapped in puff pastry, served over a lobster mayo and topped with a potent mustard seed relish) and buffalo cheese steak rolls (topped with a bruléed cipollini onion and served over a cheese fondue and a heavily reduced mushroom jus). These are destined to be bar snacks at the new Palm Beach venue, and that's exactly what they tasted like: crispy, saucy, and very salty.

Next course was a beet and goat cheese salad. I guess I'm just surprised when you tell a chef, "You can make whatever you want!" and the response is, "I'm going to make a beet and goat cheese salad!" It was a fine salad – a mound of arugula and frisée dressed with a truffle vinaigrette hiding some nice roasted baby beets, with a dollop of goat cheese mousse, dots of beet purée and some crisp, airy, croutons – but it's also the kind of thing you can find on nearly every menu in town.^[3]

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first thoughts: L'Echon Brasserie - Miami Beach

First it was an Asian gastropub. Then, Spanish tapas. Sushi. Italian. A steakhouse. I would joke that when the Pubbelly Boys opened a burger joint, they'd be able to declare Miami restaurant "BINGO!"^[1]

Instead, they went a different route – their latest project is L'Echon Brasserie, located in the Hilton Cabana hotel, up in the northern reaches of Miami Beach (i.e., 62nd Street). This makes me happy for at least a couple reasons: (1) Miami lacks good casual French restaurants; and (2) North Beach is closer to home for me than the rest of their South Beach outposts.

(You can see all my pictures in this L'Echon Brasserie flickr set).

The hotel, well, looks like a Hilton. And the dining room too is maybe a bit more corporate than other Pubbelly venues, but it still keeps some of the same spirit, and has the added virtue of an outdoor bar backing up to the ocean. The food, meanwhile, is very much in the typical Pubbelly style: it takes the classic French bistro menu as a jumping-off point for some contemporary, usually indulgent, and often pork-centric, variations.

For instance: chicken liver mousse, paired with fried chicken livers? Sometimes I think the Pubbelly style is a bit too heavy-handed, and then I try something like this. Or, pictured at top, the "Pan con L'Echon," a nice little slider of juicy cochinillo topped with pickled shallots and mojo aioli on a brioche bun, and the Croque Monsieur made with salty country ham, melty Gruyere cheese and an oozy bechamel.

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Cobaya Conor at The Dutch

Almost exactly two years ago we did a "Cobaya" dinner – Experiment #24 – at The Dutch. Number 24 was one of only two Cobaya dinners over the course of the past nearly five years that I couldn't attend. It was a tough one to miss – Chef Andrew Carmellini came down from New York and put on a show that many veteran guinea pigs say was among the best we've ever had.^[1]

Since then, I've been to a number of great events at The Dutch: the Hurricane Sandy Relief Dinner we helped coordinate in late 2012, a really classy Spring Equinox Dinner that The Dutch's local chef de cuisine Conor Hanlon put on last year with chef Brad Kilgore (before Brad was hired at JG Grill), an indulgent "Trufflepalooza" a few months ago. But what I really wanted was another Cobaya, this one with Conor getting to do his thing. It came together this past week, and fortunately, I didn't miss this one.

We had a smaller group than usual – only 25 – at Conor's request, so that he could really focus and do more complex, individually plated items, rather than the family style service we've had at prior events. His menu spanned ten courses, each round dramatically delivered to the table simultaneously for all diners at once by a swat team of servers.

We started with a raw Stellar Bay oyster on crushed ice, garnished with a spicy, vegetal nasturtium granite, roasted tomato oil, celery, and Meyer lemon: a lot of flavors packed into one bite, designed to duplicate the flavors of a Bloody Mary.

Another spin on classic flavors: Conor's "Eggs on Eggs" packed a silky deviled egg farce into a cleaned eggshell, and then spackled the surface with a generously thick layer of black bowfin caviar. The briny saline pop of the roe was a nice contrast against the creamy, mildly spicy egg mousse.

I was floored, though, by the next course. A creamy, tangy buttermilk panna cotta served as the base for a composition that was like a spring cornucopia: stalks and spears of white and green asparagus, fresh shucked peas, golden-orange smoked trout roe, pickled mustard seeds, a tangle of delicate greens and flowers, all nestled into a bed of crispy dark brown quinoa. Every bite yielded a different combination of flavors, textures and colors. Just an outstanding dish.

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Cobaya Nina at Scarpetta

I'll confess, it's actually been a long time since I've eaten at Scarpetta, the Scott Conant restaurant in the Fontainebleau where Chef Nina Compton holds down as chef de cuisine. But we knew good things were happening there - I've never heard of anyone reporting anything but a great meal at Scarpetta, and Compton's performance on this season of "Top Chef" has her as the clear front-runner to take that honor. We figured we had to get in on a Cobaya dinner with her before she blew up. After the seed was planted when she helped out former kitchen companion Michael Pirolo for his Cobaya dinner at Macchialina a few months ago, it came together earlier this week.

As is our usual modus operandi, we gave no limitations other than "Cook what you want," which is what Chef Nina did for a group of forty seated at several long tables on a veranda looking out over the Fontainebleau pool. She let us know at the start, there would be no "theme," just "good food." She was right. It was a great meal: a bit more adventurous than the usual offerings at Scarpetta, but with that same elegant, modern Italian spirit.

(You can see all my pictures in this Cobaya Nina at Scarpetta flickr set).

A simple crudo to start, playing on the flavors of the Mediterranean - tender scallop, with slivered fennel, orange and pine nuts - was a clean and bright start. A refreshing bubbly prosecco was a perfect pair with this; indeed, the wine pairings throughout the night were very well done, unfortunately I didn't take notes on producers.

Some heartier bites followed: whipped morcilla (blood sausage), a slice of testa (headcheese), and fegato (chicken livers) making up a nice offal sampler.

Sweetbreads are tough to get right. Over-breaded or over-cooked and they just become little nuggets of "fried"; not enough and they can be floppy and flaccid. Nina's were close to perfect: a nice bit of crunch on the exterior, but not enough to overshadow the delicate puffy texture of the sweetbreads. They were served over a truffled sunchoke purée with brussel sprout petals and black trumpet mushrooms, making for a really a nice layering of earthy flavors.

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CobayaBelly with Chef Jose Mendin at PB Steak

It's always interesting to see how chefs approach doing a Cobaya dinner with us. Having a "theme" is entirely optional, but many chefs choose to do so. When we lined up a dinner with Chef José Mendin, of Pubbelly and its sibling PB Steak, he went with a "Bloody Monday" motif.

The decorations seemed inspired equally by a butcher's abattoir and a goth chick's boudoir,with PB Steak's unfinished wood and concrete dressed up with lots of candles, black apothecary bottles and the occasional crow.

Chef Mendin's offal-intensive menu, making extensive use of the "fifth quarter" of the cattle whose prime cuts usually grace the restaurant's menu, was drawn up like a butcher's diagram, though the pieces actually came from several different places - beef heart from Niman Ranch in California, veal brains from Strauss Farms in Wisconsin, tongue from Jackman Ranch in upstate Florida, prime rib from Cox Family Farms in Alabama.

(You can see all my pictures in this CobayaBelly flickr set, though you'll have to put up with some wonky lighting and grainy shots.)

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The Dutch - Miami Beach

I'll confess, I didn't really understand The Dutch at first. Here was a French-trained chef with an Italian-sounding last name, with a menu that seemed like a hodge-podge of American comfort foods, but with things like kimchi and jerk chicken making random appearances  - and it was called "The Dutch"?^[1]

Andrew Carmellini is a protege of Daniel Boulud whose first big gig was as chef de cuisine at New York's Café Boulud. When he went out on his own, he made a name for himself with Italian restaurants, first A Voce and then Locanda Verde. But when he opened the Dutch in Soho in 2011, it was something different: oyster platters, steaks and chops shared space with smoked white fish chowder, rabbit pot pie and "barrio tripe." And when he brought a second iteration of the Dutch to Miami the next year, in the W Hotel South Beach, it had the same kind of eclectic mix, but with a South Florida twist - think ceviches of local fish and salted lime pie.

After getting Carmellini's cookbook, "American Flavor," it started to make some more sense. From Southern style biscuits to pozole inspired by Puebla-born dishwashers to steak with the flavors of Flushing's Korean BBQ joints, the book is an extended love note to "American" food in all its traditional and modern polyglot guises. It is one that Carmellini seems simultaneously overqualified and underqualified to write - you might just as easily ask "Why is a chef who worked with Gray Kunz, Alain Passard, and Daniel Boulud wasting his time making fried chicken?" as "What does that fancy-pants chef possibly know about fried chicken?"

The answer perhaps lies in something Albert Adrià was recently quoted as saying: "There are only two kinds of cuisine. Good and bad." Carmellini? He makes the good kind.

After going there many times over the past year and a half since it opened, the Dutch strikes me as a sort of restaurant incarnation of "American Flavor." You can dine much as you might have a hundred years ago, getting a dozen freshly shucked oysters and a dry-aged, bone-in steak. Or you can get yellowtail crudo with spicy watermelon, followed by a pork chop "al pastor." Either way, you'll eat well.

(You can see all my pictures in this The Dutch flickr set).

There is no better way to start a meal at the Dutch than with the "Little Oyster Sandwiches" that head up the "Snacks." The oysters are rolled in cornmeal with a dash of cayenne and pimentón, fried just enough to crisp the exterior without hammering them, then tucked into a soft sesame seed flecked brioche bun that's been smeared with a pickled okra tartar sauce, a sheet of iceberg lettuce providing some delicate cool crunch. It is a perfectly designed and crafted bite, showing a lot of attention paid to a small package.

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Tongue & Crux - Chefs Brandon Baltzley, Jamie DeRosa and Jeremiah Bullfrog

The last time Brandon Baltzley - chef, author, farmer - came to town, it was a bit like Planes, Trains and Automobiles meets Supermarket Sweep. As Brandon had one travel mishap after another, I was racing through the grocery store filling carts from the shopping list he texted me so that there would be something to cook when he finally arrived for our Cobaya dinner. But as I said then, Brandon seems to thrive amid chaos, and it all turned out just fine.

This more recent Miami journey was not without its adventures, but Brandon got into town - a couple days early, even - and I didn't even have to do any shopping. The purpose of this visit was to collaborate on a brunch with the gastroPod's Jeremiah Bullfrog (which I sadly missed), and a dinner at the recently opened Tongue & Cheek in South Beach with T&C's chef, Jamie DeRosa, and Jeremiah. After several days of exchanging ingredient lists and dish ideas, here is what they came up with:

(You can see all my pictures in the Crux @ Tongue & Cheek flickr set)

And here is how it came out:

As an amuse bouche to start things off, a delicate composition of beets (in both lightly pickled and powdered forms), slivered radishes, dots of pea purée, wasabi peanuts, and a thin, airy, crispy sheet of toast. I was mystified by a flavor I could taste but couldn't find anywhere on the plate - something light, bright and intensely aromatic. After the dinner, Brad Kilgore (who was helping out in the kitchen, and who you can currently find doing a Tuesday night BBQ pop-up at Josh's Deli) gave away the secret: T&C pastry chef Ricardo Torres gave the plates a haze of orange oil from a squeezed peel (like a twist for a cocktail) right before service. It was a great touch.

I did not detect the carbonation in these "chilled, carbonated" oysters, but they were still very good regardless - plump and sweet, lacquered with a well-balanced chardonnay mignonette and topped with nasturtium petals, with some sea beans (a/k/a salicornia) alongside. Even Mrs. F, who is usually not much of an oyster fan, was a fan of these.

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Cobaya Macchialina with Chef Michael Pirolo

Too often, I feel about Italian food the way I feel about handjobs: even when it's done well, it's satisfying but rarely very exciting; and when it's done poorly, I may as well do it myself.

After our Cobaya dinner at Macchialina, perhaps I should reconsider (about Italian food; not handjobs). Macchialina is the fourth restaurant opened by the Pubbelly boys, and to head this one up they poached Chef Michael Pirolo from Scarpetta in the Fontainebleau, where he had been chef de cuisine. Chef Pirolo put together a dinner for us that was hearty and satisfying, but also showed off a real range of flavors and techniques, classical in inspiration but contemporary in style.

(You can see all my pictures in this Cobaya Macchialina flickr set.)

We entered the restaurant to find the long bar counter completely blanketed in the finest meats and cheeses of the land: parmigiano reggiano in rough chunks, waves upon waves of prosciutto, mortadella, salami, and best of all, Macchialina's house-made porchetta, served in thinly sliced, fat-laced ribbons. As guests arrived, GM and wine director Jennifer Chaefsky offered glasses of Baldini Lambrusco dell'Emilia, a refreshing sparkling Lambrusco that was perfect with the salumi (yes, Lambrusco is back).

The meal followed a classical Italian progression: antipasti, pasta as a "primi piatti," followed by a hearty "secondo piatto," mostly served family style. First up, a couple of crudo-style cured fish items:^[1] tuna, cured like prosciutto, wrapped around compressed melon; and swordfish, cured with citrus zests, topped with a dab of a bright green dill purée, and finished with shavings of bottarga.

For the next round, a fritto misto of seafood, each diner was handed a paper cone, stuffed with fried shrimp, calamaretti, whitebait, baby eels and anchovies. Delicate and crisp, the real standouts here were the gorgeous head-on shrimp - though all were good, especially after being dragged through the anchovy-infused salsa verde offered alongside. To accompany, Jennifer poured the Vietti Roero Arneis, a crisp, floral white from one of my favorite Italian producers, better known for their Barolos.

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Spring Equinox Dinner at The Dutch

Our upside down seasons here in South Florida are a mixed blessing. On the one hand, we get gorgeous fresh tomatoes all winter. On the other hand, we have no real comprehension of the excitement the rest of the country feels as fresh green things like asparagus, and peas, and ramps start making their first appearances this time of year. For us, Spring is actually the end of our primary growing season. Other than lychees, then mangoes and avocados, there isn't much to look forward to other than six months of running the A/C non-stop.

Last week, Conor Hanlon, chef de cuisine at The Dutch Miami, and Brad Kilgore (last seen as chef at Exit 1 and previously sous chef at Azul), decided to celebrate the turn of season as experienced by the rest of the country. Their collaborative effort resulted in a "Spring Equinox Dinner" that offered a taste of the season's bounty.

(You can see all my pictures in this Spring Equinox Dinner at the Dutch flickr set.)

An elegantly simple salad set the frame of reference for the meal: an assortment of colorful, thinly sliced radishes, generously seasoned and dressed in a vinaigrette of fines herbes and pickled ramp vinegar, with a shower of grated parmesan over the top. A refreshing interplay of fresh, peppery flavors with just a hint of sweet and salty.

There's a certain courage in not putting too much on the plate. When two chefs work together, it may become even harder to summon that courage, as each looks to contribute "something" to the dish, maybe show off a little. But Conor and Brad refused to fall victim to that kind of hubris, which allowed the spring theme to stand out in each course. This assortment of green and white asparagus was perfectly complemented by picked stone crab meat, a silky truffled sabayon, fine shavings of lemon zest and snipped chives. It didn't need anything else.

Ditto for these delicate ricotta gnudi, one of the best pasta dishes I've had in recent memory (actually, come to think of it, the last one was at The Dutch too). The puffy pillows were served over a minted pea purée amid a scatter of fresh peas, pea tendrils, and shards of crispy bacon. Classic. And delicious.

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Cobaya Khong

I have never been to Thailand. I've not had the chance to eat from a floating market vendor or a Bangkok street stall. But when Chef Piyarat Potha Arreeratn (a/k/a "Chef Bee") talks about preparing the food he grew up eating as a child, I feel pretty comfortable using that dangerous buzzword - authentic.

Chef Bee is the chef at Khong River House, which played host to our latest Cobaya dinner the Thursday before last. As always, our marching orders were simple: cook the dishes that get you excited, that you don't otherwise have a chance to serve at your restaurant. Chef Bee's response was as passionate and heartfelt as any we've ever experienced.  The result was a rewarding meal that provided a view of Thai cuisine we aren't often afforded by Miami's Thai restaurants.

Our dinner started with a trip up the stairs of Khong, named for the Mekong River which winds its way through China, Burma, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. In the comfortable upstairs hideaway,^[1] a long table awaited, covered with blown-up photos from Chef Bee's trips back home. The bar was also set with some drinking snacks that would set the tone for the meal:

(You can see all my pictures from the meal in this Cobaya Khong flickr set.)

Dak Dae Tod are plump salt-and-pepper fried silk worm larvae. Mang Da Tod^[2] are deep-fried water bugs, which chef Bee tossed with five-spice. Of the two, I genuinely enjoyed the former - the silkworm pupae had a pleasingly soft, almost creamy texture, and were as good a vehicle as any for the classic salt-and-pepper flavors. The water bug was more texturally challenging - the kind of papery feel of a shrimp head that's not quite been fried crispy enough to eat comfortably - but had an intriguing, almost floral flavor as you crunched down on its carcass which reminded me of elderflower. Though perhaps shocking to Western sensibilities, both are common Thai street snacks.

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Cobaya Gets Cruxed

At some point fairly late Monday evening, after the last course had been served, somebody asked me how this all came about. I looked at the chef. He looked at me. I shrugged. The truth is, we no longer had any clear recollection how, exactly, we'd gotten to this point.

The chef was Brandon Baltzley, former sludge metal drummer and Chicago cooking wunderkind, mastermind of the Crux itinerant pop-up restaurant / culinary collective, author, and soon-to-be chef and farmer at TMIP, somewhere in the country an hour or so out of Chicago. We were decompressing in the Broken Shaker bar in the Freehand Miami (f/k/a the Indian Creek Hotel), which had just played gracious host to Brandon's nine-plus course dinner for forty Cobaya guinea pigs. It was a dinner that he'd really only started prepping some time around midnight the night before. The fact that it came together at all was still something of a surprise to me. The fact that it turned out so well was nothing short of remarkable.

It was always going to be a bit tricky. Brandon was planning to come in to Miami early Sunday morning, have a sous chef from Chicago join him down here, and shop and prep all day Sunday and Monday with help from Chef Jeremiah Bullfrog at the Freehand. Then the sous chef went AWOL and Brandon missed his flight (TSA taking particular interest in a duffel bag full of vacuum-sealed offal and little baggies of white powders - "They're just hydrocolloids!"), and as of mid-day Sunday it looked like there wasn't going to be any dinner at all.

But we would not be so easily sidetracked. After some quick reshuffling, Brandon was on another (non-direct) flight from Pittsburgh (his temporary home base), his mom was on a Greyhound bus down from Jacksonville to come help, Jeremiah had a trip to the seafood market to make, and I had a grocery list to feed a crowd of forty so there would be something to cook when Brandon finally arrived. Jeremiah and Steve Santana busted ass the next day to help with the prep, and Brandon's backup kitchen reinforcements arrived Monday afternoon.

Some people thrive on chaos and stress. And by Monday morning, Brandon had gone from thinking we needed to reschedule, then thinking he wouldn't be able to execute the menu he'd planned, to actually adding on a couple extra snacks on top of it (and supplementing my grocery shopping duties as a result). Somehow, it all happened.^[1]

With the benefit of hindsight and sobriety, I now have a better idea of how this thing came about. I'd actually been following Baltzley for some time: his most recent project, Crux, a sort of itinerant restaurant pop-up / co-op, seemed very much in the same spirit of what we're trying to do with Cobaya. Plus, he's got a pretty intriguing backstory, interesting enough to have scored himself a book deal (which clearly gets bonus points for having a blurb that manages to mention Paula Deen and Grant Achatz in the same sentence).

So I sent him a message: "You want to come down to Miami in December and do a dinner?" The response came quickly: "I am definitely game." I reached out to Chef Jeremiah, now the in-house chef at the Freehand, and a long-time Cobaya facilitator, and we were able to line up a kitchen and a dining space at the Broken Shaker, with the Bar Lab boys Elad Zvi and Gabe Orta contributing some cocktail pairings to go along with the dinner.

After 36 frantic hours, here was the end result.

(You can see all my pictures in this "Cobaya Gets Cruxed" flickr set.)

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Hurricane Sandy Relief Dinner at The Dutch

"Superstorm Sandy" hit the eastern seaboard exactly three weeks ago on October 29, leaving a trail of damage that will have lasting aftereffects. Lower Manhattan went dark for days; some New York and New Jersey communities like Rockaway, Red Hook, Staten Island and Long Beach Island have been devastated by flooding, fires and ongoing power outages.

The restaurant community, with its thin margins, perishable inventory and dependence on customer foot traffic, is among the most sensitive to disasters like this. And at the same time, it is also one of the most apt to respond and assist: almost immediately after the storm cleared and the damage was assessed, chefs and restaurant owners were looking for ways they could help others.

One of the first to jump on the task was Andrew Carmellini: two days after Sandy, before the power was even restored, The Dutch in New York was serving up free soup and salad for anyone in the neighborhood. And together with fellow New York chefs Marco Canora, George Mendes and Seamus Mullen, he quickly put together "NYC Food Flood" to provide direct aid to those impacted by the storm.

When I heard Carmellini had a stash of truffles for a planned "Trufflepalooza" dinner that had to be cancelled, I suggested he send them down to Miami so we could do a fundraiser down here. The truffles found another home, but the idea stuck. Chef Carmellini suggested lining up some local chefs to team up for a charity dinner, and the outpouring of support was overwhelming. In only a couple days, Michelle Bernstein (Michy's), Richard Gras and Antonio Bachour (J&G Grill), Aaron Brooks (Edge Steak), Brad Kilgore (Exit 1), Jeremiah Bullfrog (gastroPod), and Bar Lab had all agreed to participate. Andrew Zimmern sent his AZ Canteen truck down for the event. Many others - Michael's Genuine, The Bazaar, Bourbon Steak, neMesis Urban Bistro, Wolfe's Wine Shoppe, South Beach Wine & Food Festival, Miami Wine and Food Festival, and more - contributed items for a silent auction.

And when we called for our Cobaya "guinea pigs" to come out and support the event, we received an equally enthusiastic response, filling more than 40 of the available spots for the dinner. South Floridians can surely empathize as New York recovers from the aftermath of a destructive hurricane, and I was gratified and moved by the generous support for the efforts of Chef Carmellini and so many others. Thank you for being "Cobayas for a Cause".

So, sure, it's all for a good cause; but what about the food?

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Estiatorio Milos - Miami Beach

I started this blog with the purpose of sharing great dining experiences in the Miami area, but I'll admit it: there are times that I'd like to keep some things to myself. There's a certain pleasure in having secrets, particularly when they're small, intimate places that for an hour or two you can sort of claim as your own.^[1]

Estiatorio Milos, the newish Greek restaurant from Costas Spiliadis on the SoFi^[2] end of South Beach, is far from a small, intimate place. To the contrary, Milos (which has siblings in Athens, New York, Montreal, and Las Vegas) is built on a grand scale. It seats a couple hundred in a breezy wide-open space with billowing white curtains and natural blond wood all around. The back of the dining room has an extravagant display of fish and seafood, flown in overnight from the Mediterranean and packed on ice. They're so impeccably fresh that even right next to the display, the only fish you smell are the ones cooking nearby in the open kitchen, on massive open grills with grates that can be wheeled up or down to control their proximity to the heat.

(You can see all my pictures in this Estiatorio Milos flickr set, or click on any picture to view it larger).

The menu at Milos is minimalist: basically, you can choose from among a few raw seafood items, several typical Greek meze, salads and vegetables. Then go pick your fish and decide if you want it grilled or perhaps baked in a salt crust. There are lamb chops and a few steaks for the landlubbers. And that's it.

But the menu also has prices to match the grandiosity of the venue: The "Milos Special" appetizer, a tower of fried zucchini and eggplant with cubes of kefalograviera cheese and tzatziki, is around $30;^[3] four little slices of avgotaraho (cured mullet roe) on crostini ran me $32; those fish you see have price tags in the $40's and $50's per pound. These tariffs quickly add up to make Milos one of the most expensive dining propositions in town.

Whether it's worth it depends a lot on how passionate you are about über-fresh seafood: yes, it's very pricey, but the red mullet (barbouni, for the Greek) we had one visit was so fresh it seemed still ready to jump back into the water.^[4] An item rarely seen around these parts, this is one fish they elect to delicately fry instead of grill, and it was fantastic: plump, firm flesh with an almost crustacean sweetness. And there really is something inspirational about that display case: my 12-year old daughter has seen me pick apart plenty of whole fish, but was never inclined to do so on her own until she saw those mullets.

Curiously, Milos is both one of the most expensive restaurants in town and one of the most affordable depending on how you do it: while the regular menu is borderline prohibitive, they also offer a much more wallet-friendly three-course lunch special (recently increased from $20.12 to $24.07), and a $49 four-course dinner special from 5:00-7:00 pm (and all day on Sunday).^[5]

But I'm not really here to tell you about the regular restaurant.

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Cobaya 1500° with Chef Paula DaSilva

"What would be your last meal?" Given their line of work, it's a question chefs are often asked - often enough, in fact, that someone's devoted an entire book to fifty famous chefs' answers to that very question. To the surprise of many people on the other side of the kitchen door, who might expect chefs to favor elaborate, extravagant, fancy food, the answers are often very simple dishes. For José Andrés, it's tortilla española and fresh seafood; for Gordon Ramsay, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding; for Sean Brock, chicken and dumplings (and, of course, a gigantic glass of Pappy); for Tony Maws, it's either a hot dog or a pastrami sandwich. When you spend your days arranging complicated, fussy plates, it turns out to be, for many chefs anwyay, one of the last things you want to eat when you get off work.^[1]

When we do Cobaya dinners, we don't dictate any theme, giving the chefs freedom to realize on their own vision. We push them to give voice to their creative impulses, and encourage them to offer an off-the-menu experience, but beyond that, we want to see their ideas, not our own. So when Chef Paula DaSilva, of 1500° in the Eden Roc Hotel on Miami Beach, chose to do a "Last Meal" theme for her Cobaya dinner, she and her sous chefs, Adrienne Grenier and Tony Velazquez, put together some of their own "last meal" requests, compiled into a format of several rounds of multiple dishes, all served family style.

Many were, like those chosen by many other chefs when asked that question, simple classical dishes. But "simple" is not the same thing as "easy." The truth is, simple is hard: if you're going to do a minimalist, classic dish and make it something special, you have to have the best ingredients, the best technique, the best execution. There is no hiding place. So the task that Chef DaSilva chose for herself and her team was not by any means an easy one.

(You can see all my pictures in this Cobaya 1500° flickr set, or click on any picture to enlarge).

The location of our dinner, on a fourth floor terrace in the back of the hotel overlooking the ocean, was stunning, as was the table stretched out along the balcony, set with festive arrangements of bright sunflowers. A sparking sangria cocktail was served along with several passed hors d'oeuvres as the guinea pigs arrived.

The appetizers included creamy custards served in the eggshell with a sheet of crispy bacon; silky house-made ricotta cheese slathered on grilled bread, topped with a tangy-sweet mandarinquat marmalade; crispy bacalao fritters with a garlic and parsley aioli; pork belly and kimchee sandwiched inside crispy taco shells; and a small burger intended as homage to the legendary In-N-Out Burger (though not done Animal Style as best I could tell).

We were then directed to the table, which had already been set with a platter of charcuterie along with thick slabs of grilled bread rubbed with tomatoes, the classic Catalan pan con tomate.

The charcuterie was a mix of house-made and thoughtfully procured, the standouts for me being those that came from in-house, a thinly sliced smoked duck breast and a hearty sausage. Prosciutto, mortadella and salami completed the selections, which were accompanied by some pickled vegetables and cured olives. Each round of our dinner was paired with a cocktail, here a Bloody Mary in a crumbled bacon-rimmed glass.

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