Someone's in the Kitchen ...

I have written previously elsewhere about some fascinating meals I've had from Chefs Kurtis Jantz and Chad Galiano and their "Paradigm - The Test Kitchen" weekly dinners - some of the most adventurous and cutting-edge cooking that you can find in Miami. Prompted in part by some recent discussion about "interactive dinners" and the relationship between kitchen and dining room, they agreed this week to a very different approach - they're letting me into the kitchen to "help"^[*] with tonight's Paradigm dinner. It should be an interesting and crowded kitchen, with Chris Windus from BlueZoo in Orlando also in as a collaborating guest chef.

Their food and beverage manager was smart enough to insist that I provide a waiver and release of liability before setting foot in the restaurant kitchen. Here is the one I suggested:

WAIVER AND RELEASE OF LIABILITY

I fully understand and acknowledge that:

1. Kitchens involve sharp, pointy, hot, heavy, and/or greasy objects which may have inherent dangers, risks and hazards. If any fingers or other appendages are severed or otherwise damaged in the course of the evening, I will suck it up and deal.

2. Contemporary kitchens often use a variety of products and devices that some people consider unnatural, intimidating, foreign and even dangerous. I agree not to snort or otherwise ingest copious quantities of Activa transglutaminase, not to use the “smoking gun” for anything other than culinary purposes, and not to stick my tongue to the anti-griddle.

3. Kitchen staff often have a, let’s say, unique sense of humor which often involves practical jokes. I hereby assume the risk of: the “hot plate”; duck fat "ice cream"; "mayonnaise creme brulee"; drinks laced with mussels, worcestershire sauce, fish sauce, or Tabasco; and pockets surreptitiously stuffed with raw shrimp or liquid nitrogen (damn "molecular gastronomists"!), or even a whole salad.

4. I may be directed to "chop flour" or get "chicken lips", a "bucket of steam", a "left handed chicken stretcher", "cans of elbow grease", a "parsley curler," a "Kuemmelspaltmaschine,"
a "tomato ripener" or a "grape peeler". I will try not to be too gullible.

5. Some chefs are raging egomaniacs prone to yelling and throwing things or attempted infliction of psychic damage - apparently, especially if their name rhymes with Shmarlie Frotter. I agree that if subjected to such treatment, I will pay them back later when I retell the story to a national audience.

I hereby release Paradigm, and each of its present and former owners, principals, members, agents and employees from any and all liability for damage, losses or personal injury to myself resulting from my participation in such activities.

^[*]Mrs. F reminds me that while it's nice of Chefs K and Chad to humor me, I should not begin to delude myself that my rudimentary kitchen skills will be in any way useful.

Slàinte! Artisan Scotch Dinner @ Neomi's

In follow up to the "Great Whisk(e)y Debate" a couple months ago, Neomi's Grill in Sunny Isles will be doing an Artisan Scotch Dinner on June 25 in conjunction with Cellars Warehouse. The event features five courses of food pairings to go with selections from two independent bottlers of single malt Scotch whiskeys, Gordon & MacPhail and Signatory.

For more than a century, Gordon & MacPhail have been buying whiskeys directly from Scottish distilleries, aging them in cask and bottling them when determined to be at their best. Though they are only bringing four examples to the party, their inventory includes more than 450 of their own-bottled single malts, ranging from 5 to 60 years old. Signatory likewise is an independent bottler, producing what it calls "single, single, single malts" - bottlings from a single distillery, only particular distillations or batches from that distillery, and bottling only one cask at a time from those selections. There's a good rundown of a Signatory tasting on this Chowhound thread.

The menu, listed below, features several courses, each designed to pair with a particular whiskey (no doubt after much sampling in the kitchen).

‘warm ups’
foie gras, 85% chocolate, granola crunch
spinach pakora, curried raita
st. andre fondue, rye crisps
jamon iberico, sweet corn, almond

Benromach Traditional, Speyside, Gordon & Macphail

bbq’d copper salmon
ginger pickled daikon, toasted nori
honshemiji, wasabi froth, barley sushi rice, oyster emulsion

Laphroaig 7 year old, Islay, Signatory

malt duck
accents of fennel, drambuie, vanilla, citrus, soft herbs

Smith’s Glenlivet 21 year old, Speyside, Gordon & Macphail

arugula & watercress
‘brown butter’scotch, shropshire blue cheese
scotch quail eggs, grilled orange vinaigrette

Tullibardine Vintage 1993, Highlands, Signatory

wagyu & tatties^[*]
low smoked brisket, black garlic, sea salted Kennebec potatoes
25 yr. scotch + 25 yr. sherry vinegar = glace de viande

Strathisla 25 year old, Speyside, Gordon & Macphail

cocoa & oats
honey almond sable, coffee-vanilla toffee, chocolate cremoso
oatmeal caramel & streusel, scotch air

Dunkeld Atholl Brose, Speyside, Gordon & Macphail

Festivities start at 6:30 pm with dinner starting at 7:00 pm. The price is $85, tax and service included.



Trump International Beach Resort
18001 Collins Avenue
305.692.5770

^[*]What gives? Everyone knows those tatties should come with neeps.

Timo Restaurant - Sunny Isles

Tourists usually think South Beach is the only place to go in the Miami area. Locals going out to dinner may have figured out that some of the best dining is now in the Design District and along the "Biscayne Corridor" where nationally known chefs like Michael Schwartz and Michelle Bernstein now ply their trade. But there are still other places where good eats can be found, and Timo, up toward the northern reaches of Miami-Dade County in Sunny Isles, is one of them.

"Timo" means "thyme" in Italian, but I believe it's also a combination of the first names of the restaurant's owners, Chef Tim Andriola and General Manager Rodrigo Martinez. Chef Andriola's resume has some of the most distinguished names in local and national kitchens - Mark Militello (exec chef at Mark's South Beach), Alan Susser (chef de cuisine at Chef Allen), stints at Chez Panisse, Charlie Trotter;^[*] and Rodrigo Martinez likewise came in with some solid experience, having served for some time as the GM and beverage manager at Norman Van Aken's restaurant in Coral Gables. About 5-6 years ago they opened Timo and have been putting out great food ever since.

The restaurant is of the simple modern school of design, with lots of wood, glass and brown leather and a quietly elegant but completely unstuffy feel. There is a bar with about a dozen seats as well as about a half-dozen high-rise 2-tops, which is where we usually happily end up when showing up without reservations. (Gentlemen, and lady sports fans, a hint here: there is one flat-screen behind the bar which usually is tuned to an appropriate sporting event; pick your seat wisely and be discreet when looking over your date's shoulder). The place has a strong following among the Sunny Isles / Aventura / North Miami Beach crowd and is usually busy without being packed.

The menu has a mild but not overly pronounced Italian / Mediterranean bent and is updated fairly often (something I am convinced is key to maintaining a local following). There are usually about a half dozen salads and soups, another half dozen or so "small plates" (something they were doing before MGF&D was even a glimmer in Michael Schwartz's eye), several "gourmet" pizzas that come from a wood-burning oven, a handful of pasta dishes, and about a dozen entree choices with roughly half of those of the piscine variety. There's also a good selection of vegetable sides to choose from. Prices for starters generally range from $9-15, and almost all the entrees stay in the mid-$20s. They also offer a 4-course "tasting menu" which is a very substantial amount of food for $58. Sometimes we will do one tasting menu and add a couple additional small plates and split everything, or just order several small plates to split.

A sampling of "small plates" from a recent visit:

• Calamari, presented as four whole baby calamaris stuffed with minced Italian hot sausage, daubed with a spicy tomato sauce and served over a bed of rich polenta. The calamari were perfectly cooked, the sausage and spice added a nice dose of heat, and the polenta made for nice ballast.
  
• Scallops - wrapped with duck prosciutto and seared, plated with grilled artichokes and mushrooms, and sauced with a richly flavored and textured mushroom fonduta.
  
• Open faced raviolo of escargot, a big round of silky pasta topped with a ragout of snails and fresh tomato, all drizzled with a pungent garlic butter.

Some other favorite items (some of these long gone from the menu):

• oyster salad, with fried oysters crispy outside but still gooey within, served over a bed of frisee, white beans, and crisped pancetta;


• crispy eggplant, layered with slices of nice mozzarella and prosciutto along with fresh yellow tomato;


• short rib canneloni, super-rich and made even more so with a slather of truffle fonduta;


• a salad of lightly wilted spinach and thinly slivered red onion in a mustardy dressing topped with slices of rosy seared duck breast, with a duck-liver shmeared crouton alongside;


• calamari sauteed with chunks of salami and hot peppers;


• sweetbreads, with bacon, honey and balsamic;


• a great tripe stew served in a bubbling clay pot (haven't seen this one for years, I may have been the only person ordering it!);


• pizzas, with a thin crispy crust and done in several variations (I've liked the one with porcini and sausage, and also the "black and white" with ricotta and shaved black truffles; these are a hit with the kids too);


• fettucine with pulled chicken and mushrooms in a cream sauce was a rich treat;


• grouper with white beans and escarole;


• a nicely done simple skirt steak with a pile of thick steak fries is Frod Jr.'s usual meal.

Some of the vegetable sides are also very good, including the "Roman-style" peas with pancetta and tomato, and the roasted beets tossed lightly in a vinaigrette with a sprinkle of goat cheese. Like many places, I typically prefer the small dishes to the entrees. Given the neighborhood and clientele, I think there's some pressure to have pretty sizable portions (this can still be sort of the "The food was lousy - and the portions were too small!" crowd) and I find that often palate fatigue sets in, though this is mitigated somewhat by several fish options.

The service is worlds apart from typical South Beach incivility or incompetence. Most of the waitstaff have been there for years and are real pros. The wine list is also a real treat, with about 150+ bottles from around the globe, a strong focus on smaller producers and lesser known regions rather than the same ubiquitous names, and typically fairly reasonable prices - things like the St. Jean de Barroux from Cote de Ventoux, or Bodegas El Nido from Jumilla, or a nice reasonably priced Cotes du Rhone like the Deux Albion from St. Cosme. Indeed it's one of the few places where I'd almost never contemplate bringing a bottle, in part because their inventory looks a lot like mine.

Timo
17624 Collins Avenue
Sunny Isles Beach, FL 33160
305.936.1008

^[*]Here's something I didn't know. Apparently "Top Chef" Howie Kleinberg worked as a sous chef to Tim Andriola and called Andriola his "greatest inspiration in the kitchen." Make of that what you will.

NAOE - Sunny Isles

What would you say if I told you there was a tiny place, in a little strip mall somewhere in Miami, that was turning out incredible, creative, beautiful Japanese dishes like nothing else you will find in this city? That they were flying in fish overnight from Japan or buying it that day from fishermen at Haulover Marina? That they did only an omakase menu, followed, if you're still hungry, by the chef's choice of beautifully pristine sushi until you say "uncle"?

No way?

NAOE.

A couple weeks ago while surfing OpenTable, I saw a new name on the list of restaurants. The description was intriguing:

Brand new to Sunny Isles Beach, Chef Kevin Cory specializes in natural Japanese Cuisine at NAOE. Every Wednesday through Sunday from 7pm - 1am, Chef Kevin Cory serves a unique Chef's Choice menu.

Looking over the website for NAOE, I learned that Chef Cory had trained in Japan at a traditional kaiseki restaurant, and returned to the States in 2001 where he took over the sushi bar at Siam River, a then-undistinguished Thai restaurant along the eastern stretch of the 163rd Street Causeway. Chef Cory's work with the sushi bar at Siam River earned him many fans, and apparently a couple years ago he got the ambition of running a place entirely his own. He opened NAOE about a month ago and it is undoubtedly one of the most unique restaurants I have eaten at in Miami.

It is a small but quietly elegant space, done mostly in shades of grey, brown and black with soft lights throughout (of course you have to recognize that I see nothing inelegant about an open kitchen literally stacked with shining stockpots, pans and steamers). There are 17 seats total, roughly half of which are at a beautiful blond wood bar which faces the open kitchen. The bar - made from hinoki wood, the same wood used for Japanese temples, this stuff sourced from Oregon - is sanded down with a small file every week. The entire restaurant staff consists of two people - Chef Cory (whose business card reads "executive chef, general manager & dishwasher") and Wendy Maharlika (that's who was listed on our receipt as "server", but her business card ought to read "maître d', hostess, sake sommelier, and public relations liaison"). We were the only ones there when we arrived around 9pm, but another couple came in shortly after. The location is a tiny little strip mall on the 163rd Street Causeway right before it connects with Collins Avenue on the beach side.^[1] You could easily drive by a dozen times without ever noticing it.

You are given a small menu, but there are no choices as to what food to order. Rather, there are about a half-dozen choices of sake, all produced by Chef Cory's family in Japan, including junmai (organic to boot), ginjo, and daiginjo styles. There's also Sapporo beer - on tap! - and a couple non-alcoholic choices, including one of our kids' favorites, Ramune soft drink. For the food, you must put yourself entirely in the chef's hands, with only an inquiry as to food allergies before he gets to work.

Given the minimal staffing, obviously the cooking is entirely a one-man show. We watched as Chef Cory began his prep, meticulously fileting a small locally sourced Spanish mackerel (a/k/a sawara) and then slicing and arranging small strips. As he continued his preparations, our anticipation began to build. I had initially anticipated a series of small dishes like a tasting menu, but instead they explained that the service is bento box style with all the dishes presented together.

After about 20-30 minutes - during which our hostess conscientiously made sure our sake glasses never went dry, gave us some of the backstory on herself and Chef Cory, and showed us the future plans they have for the restaurant space - we were presented with two covered wooden boxes which were simultaneously unveiled before us. Alongside was a small covered bowl of soup.

The contents were just magnificent, at least if you're an adventurous and open-minded eater. The bento was divided into four compartments:

• aji (horse mackerel), in a small bowl with a dab of wasabi paste (made not from the stuff in a tube but from freshly grated wasabi root supplemented with some horseradish), along with wasabi leaves and flowers. The aji's slight oiliness was nicely offset by the piquancy of the wasabi. The wasabi leaves and flowers - which I've never seen before - have the flavor of wasabi without the heat, providing a nice contrast and a texture similar to the smallest florets of broccoli rabe.
• home-made egg tofu, beautifully silky and rich like a custard, topped with an uni (sea urchin roe) sauce with a delicate, almost peachy flavor, and crowned with a nasturtium flower.
• a small little bowl carved from a turnip, filled with cubes of cooked turnip and rich, delicious ankimo (monkfish liver); alongside was a marinated whelk (sea snail), removed from its shell and then replaced for service, along with a small "cracker" of kohada (gizzard shad),^[2] basically the frame (bones and tail with a little bit of attached meat) quick-fried, the entire thing crispy and edible, together with a couple little dumplings of parsnip with potato and seaweed.
• a rice dish made with sardine and portobello mushroom, not at all overwhelmed by the sometimes strong taste of sardine, pleasantly dry and crispy and molded into the shape of a star or flower, and topped with slices of pickled daikon (daikon nukazuke, pickled in rice bran). Chef Cory is working on doing these in-house as well but they're not ready yet.

The soup was dashi-broth based but gelatinous and dense (thickened with kuzu) and carried the flavor of a cage-free chicken egg yolk that was poached in the broth (mine hardened to hard-boiled because I saved my soup for the end), and another tongue of uni floating within along with a fiddlehead fern.

The price for this fantastic little assemblage? $26.

After what we'd experienced so far I definitely wanted to try more. Chef Cory then moved us on to nigiri, serving two pieces at a time until we'd had enough. He started by first getting warm rice, and put some into a small wooden bowl with just enough for our service. We were started with salmon belly, a couple pieces for each of us cut from a beautiful slab of Scottish salmon which was immediately wrapped back up in plastic wrap and stowed away again in the fridge. The nigiri were quickly shaped with the warm rice, presented to each of us on small wooden boards, and given a delicate brushing of a shoyu-based sauce the chef has prepared himself to perfectly match the sushi. The salmon was wonderfully fresh and rich, and the contrast of the cool fish against the still-warm rice was just magnificent.

Knowing there was kohada in the house, I couldn't stop there. The next round of nigiri was the kohada, which Chef Cory brings in fresh from Japan and does a light vinegar cure himself in-house. The fish - which has beautiful silver skin speckled with black dots - was cut into strips and braided. One of my favorite things, and one that I've not been able to find elsewhere in Miami.

Next - and finally, for us, though I didn't really want to quit - was aori ika, a big squid brought in fresh (our hostess showed us a picture of the squid with its suckers still holding onto the cutting board). It is lightly salt-cured, with a small bed of finely shredded nori over the rice, and then the squid topped with a tiny yellow flower. Unlike any squid I've ever had before, this had a soft, almost creamy texture, rather than the bounciness you usually associate with squid.

Though we didn't try it during our visit, our hostess advised that Chef Cory does his own in-house "bbq" eel - unlike the pre-packaged eel you will find at most sushi places, he brings the eel in fresh and cooks it and makes his own sauce from scratch.

Everything we were served was elegant and beautiful, but most of all, delicious. The ingredient list here reads eerily like a list of my personal favorites (uni, ankimo, kohada, aji ...) but Mrs. F, who is not nearly as partial to these kinds of things as me, thoroughly enjoyed it as well. Chef Cory said that he tries to not give diners too much of a preview, so that they do not write off things before they've tried them.

This was, quite simply, one of the most unexpected and special dining experiences I've had in Miami in quite some time. The food was creative and delicious with adventurous and magnificently fresh ingredients. The chef and hostess were earnest, friendly, and absolutely charming. I enjoyed this so much, and was so pleasantly surprised, that I was afraid to go to sleep last night for fear that it would all turn out to just be a dream.

I will go back soon just to make sure.

Note: For pictures from a subsequent meal at NAOE, go here.

NAOE
175 Sunny Isles Boulevard
Sunny Isles Beach, FL 33160
305.947.6263
Wed-Sun 7pm - 1am^[3]

^[1] If it helps you get your bearings, it is right next door to the "Neptune Seafood Restauarant" - you can even sometimes hear the drumbeat of the Russian karaoke music through the walls.

^[2] I may have misheard this, as I've never seen kohada cooked before. The size was about right though.

^[3] Though the place is not busy (yet), I would highly recommend making reservations. Much of the food is made to order and with the one-man show in the kitchen, some advance notice will likely make for a much better dining experience.