best thing i ate last week: razor clams and rice at Bazi "kaiseki" dinner

I was surprised when I heard that pasta master Michael Pirolo of Macchialina was opening an Asian-inspired restaurant – Bazi. Pirolo's culinary upbringing is Italian through and through. He was raised in Italy, went to culinary school in Torino, and did apprenticeships in Bologna and the Piemonte. The first kitchen he ran as chef de cuisine was Scott Conant's Scarpetta, then he went out on his own with Macchialina (originally opened with the Pubbelly boys, but from whom he split a few years ago).

I didn't see how an Asian restaurant fit with that resume and, to be very candid, figured the motivation was money rather than passion. My theory was thrown into doubt, though, when Bazi recently announced it would start doing a special "kaiseki" style dinner on Wednesday nights for up to eight people at the downstairs bar. Not that $150 per person is exactly giving food away, but considering it's for a ten-course dinner inclusive of drink pairings, tax and tip, it doesn't seem like much of a money-maker either.^[1] This is the kind of thing a chef does because they really want to, and maybe because they're a little crazy.

Let's not dwell too long on how much this truly resembles a traditional Japanese kaiseki dinner (short answer: not too much).^[2] Instead, let's talk about the best thing I ate last week: the clams and rice dish Pirolo served as one of the courses.

(You can see all my pictures in this Bazi Kaiseki Dinner flickr set).

In this one dish, Pirolo ties together his Italian background and his Japanese ambitions. Diced razor clams are combined with chewy but tender viaolone nano rice, all served in the clam's shell. The rice is prepared in classic "all'onda" fashion, and bound with the clams by an uni vinaigrette which further highlights the flavors of the sea. A shower of fresh lemon balm adds a bright, herbaceous, citrusy note. It's a beautiful dish.

It was a close call between this, the chicken wing stuffed with five-spiced foie gras torchon, the black cod stuffed with Key West shrimp and Alaskan king crab with a nasturtium and avocado purée, and the roasted squab served with a coconut and ginger rice fritter. If that many dishes were in the mix, that's the sign of a pretty good meal. If you're interested, maybe check it out yourself this coming Wednesday.

Bazi
1200 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach, Florida
305.695.0101

^[1] Full disclosure: Chowfather and I were guests of the house for this first of their Kaiseki Dinner Series. Had I been spending my own hard-earned dollars, however, I'd still have felt this was a pretty good value. Ten courses, several featuring at least some small doses of luxury ingredients like osetra caviar, uni and foie gras. A pairing with each course by Will Rivas, the talented beverage director of Bazi and Macchialina, including cocktails, sakes (some fruit-infused in-house), smartly selected wines, a rare Japanese beer, and a couple JoJo teas. With tax and tip included. You can spend $150 on a meal in Miami and do far worse.

^[2] Longer answer? To my admittedly extremely limited knowledge, most of which is derived from the gorgeous book "Kaiseki" by Yoshihiro Murata (of Kikunoi restaurant) and a couple meals in Japan, there are a few key components to kaiseki. One is the procession of courses, which typically follows a certain pattern though there is some room for variation. Another is the importance of seasonality, with dishes and presentations that attempt to capture a particular moment in time (and consequently are often locally sourced as well). Finally, and linked indelibly to the seasonality component, is the focus on the ingredients themselves; presentations and plating can be rather ornate, but the dishes themselves are often quite elemental – not so much austere as serene, if that makes any sense.

Pirolo's menu paid some heed to the traditional kaiseki progression, without being mindlessly obedient to it. He started with "sakizuke," effectively an amuse-bouche, followed by "hassun," typically an assortment of several different seasonal items, then a sashimi course. Where there are usually then a series of simmered dishes and soups, often followed by a grilled fish, Pirolo took a detour through a series of dishes that didn't really have much traditional antecedent. But whatever – they were some of the best courses of the night. I did miss one of my favorite parts of the typical progression: a rice dish, typically served with pickles and soup, as the final savory item before dessert.

But what I felt was missing more than the progression was the seasonal, local element. There were lots of  great dishes; but the ingredients were from literally all over the map, not much of it local, and not seemingly connected much to the season. Perhaps on a related note, too many dishes seemed to be more about the preparations than the ingredients themselves. For instance, with three fish used in the sashimi course, none were local and none were actually served raw: the arctic char was cured, the escolar was marinated in koji, the eel was grilled. This was also probably my least favorite course of the evening; while I have huge respect for Pirolo bringing in live eels and tackling the task of butchering and preparing them from scratch, I'm not convinced the end result is better – or more to the point, more in the spirit of "kaiseki" – than a simple preparation of pristine, fresh local fish.

Personally, I'd love to see a menu that's more about the ingredients, and less about what's been done with them. In this sense, I think Chef Kevin Cory's omakase dinners at Naoe – though he doesn't call them "kaiseki" – are actually much closer to that spirit. And if Pirolo called these "omakase" dinners rather than "kaiseki," I could spend a lot less time spinning wheels in my own head over whether that term really makes any sense here, and instead just focus on the food, which is what I'm really trying to do in this post, other than in this overlong footnote.

best thing i ate last week: sweetbreads with tomato, fennel and pickled strawberry at Cena by Michy

The decor and menu have changed at Cena by Michy (f/k/a Michy's), but at least one thing remains the same: if there is a sweetbread dish on the menu at a Michelle Bernstein restaurant, it will be outstanding. Case in point: this sweetbread milanese, like a cloud encased in a crispy shell. It's served with a tangy sort of stew of cherry tomatoes and fennel ribbons, with a wonderful little surprise: pickled strawberries, which provide little jolts of refreshing, sweet-tart contrast.

I had been holding off on a visit to Cena because the online menu had not changed since my last visit and I was hoping for a little variety, but it turns out that's just because it's not updated in real-time. A couple other new items I really liked: croquetas of 'nduja and stracciatella, served with a romesco dipping sauce; and lurid magenta beet cavatelli with a pistachio and green almond crumble and Point Reyes blue cheese.

best thing i ate last week (feb. 15-21): beef, chimichurri, lettuce cores at Alinea Miami pop-up

There is something surreal about any dinner at Alinea, a meal which may feature edible helium balloons, bottomless plates, and desserts served right on the table. There is something even more surreal about having such a dinner in Miami.

But the surreal has become real. While their Chicago home, which opened in 2005, gets a facelift, the Alinea team has been doing a traveling road show: first a couple weeks in Madrid, and starting a few weeks ago, a run here in Miami at the Faena Hotel.

(You can see all my pictures in this Alinea in Miami flickr set).

I was there on February 18, the day after the opening, and overall, was very impressed by how well they played for a road game. The menu included both some "greatest hits" from the Alinea oeuvre – hot potato cold potato, black truffle explosion, the bacon trapeze – as well as a few items that took inspiration from the local flavors.

From this latter category came my favorite dish of the evening, and of the week. To save a bit of the mystery of the dinner, I won't tell how the steak was cooked, other than to say that sometimes things are hidden in plain view. But I will say that the tranche of crimson-hued wagyu beef was paired with a bright tangy green emulsion inspired by Argentinian chimichurri, complemented by my favorite item on the plate: spears of crunchy, tart pickled lettuce cores, a really effective use of an unheralded and unexpected ingredient.

Although the Alinea Miami dinners have been reported as sold out for several weeks, when I checked this morning a few open spots were showing up in their ticketing system for this weekend and next. If you're intrigued, you may want to jump on those quickly.

best thing i ate last week: Andrew Zimmern's vitello tonnato at Cobaya SoBeWFF

Last week, for the second year in a row, Cobaya Gourmet Guinea Pigs teamed up with the South Beach Wine and Food Festival to put on a dinner together, this time at Chef Alex Chang's Vagabond restaurant in the hotel of the same name. In a repeat performance, Andrew Zimmern joined us again, and once again stole the show among a group that also included Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo of Animal, Son of a Gun and an ever-expanding roster of other Los Angeles restaurants, and Carlo Mirarchi of Brooklyn's Michelin two-star Blanca, the grown-up sibling of Roberta's Pizza.

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

Most folks probably know Zimmern from his James Beard Award winning Travel Channel program, Bizarre Foods. What they may not know is that the guy can also flat out cook. In addition to a silky vichyssoise with a citrus-cured oyster that was served as guests gathered around the Vagabond's poolside bar, he also was responsible for my favorite course of the evening: a riff on an Italian classic, vitello tonnato, done here with thin slices of veal tongue, a tangy anchovy-laden dressing, citrus segments, chile oil spiked fried capers and slivered olives for some punch, and crispy chickpea crackers for scooping.

Whenever we do a Cobaya dinner on our own, people generally know they're going to be in for something a bit different and adventurous. But seats at the SoBeWFF dinner get filled by all sorts of folks, including many who may not quite know what they're in for. So one of the highlights of the evening for me was Zimmern making sure to wait until everyone was about four bites into the dish before giving its description, and letting everyone know that he'd used veal tongue. I'd guess that about a quarter of the diners' jaws dropped. It makes me even more grateful for the support and open-mindedness of the group who come out to our regular dinners.

We had some great dishes from everyone, and I'll post more on our SoBeWFF dinner soon.

best thing i ate last week (feb. 8-14): chow fun with braised pork and mustard greens at Talde Miami Beach

I still have little hope of keeping up with the pace of Miami restaurant openings, but lately I've made a small dent in the list. Saturday before last, I braved my way through Miami Boat Show traffic to visit Talde Miami Beach, Chef Dale Talde's new restaurant in the Thompson Hotel (OK, maybe not even so new any more - it opened in November).

(You can see all my pictures in this Talde Miami Beach flickr set).

Where its companion in the Thompson, Michelle Bernstein's Seagrape, harmonizes with the hotel's 1950's, Morris Lapidus vibe, Talde brings a little of Chef Talde's Brooklyn home base to the beach: half the seating is in a re-purposed shipping container, graffiti covers the walls, hip hop blares over the speakers. The menu is similar to the chef's Brooklyn outpost which also bears his name, and features a hodge-podge of unabashedly inauthentic "Asian-American" dishes: kung pao chicken wings, pretzel pork and chive dumplings and the like.

It's a refreshingly casual place in a part of the beach that is becoming increasingly fancy. Prices are not exactly cheap, but they aren't ridiculous either, especially the short list featured on the "Late Night Noodles" menu from midnight to 4am on Thursdays to Saturdays for the club kids crowd.

I took a spot at the small kitchen counter that lines the back of the restaurant, where I tried a few things including one real standout: Talde's chow fun with braised pork and mustard greens. The broad rice noodle is given an unusual presentation, rolled in a tight spiral and seared on its top surface, the idea being that you break up the noodle and mix it with the rest of the components at the table. It makes for a great combination of crispy and chewy. The noodle, once given some encouragement, is an effective vehicle for the flavors of the tender braised pork, a broth that's redolent of sweet soy (and possibly Chinese fermented black beans), and some pleasantly tangy pickled mustard greens that provide much-wanted brightness.

I'll be back soon to try the Benton's bacon dumplings and the Korean fried chicken with spicy kimchi yogurt.

best thing i ate last week (feb. 1-7): salsify, nori, black trumpets at Aubergine, Carmel-by-the-Sea

This was not an easy one. The fact is, I had two exceptional meals back-to-back during our most recent brief visit to the west coast. In Carmel-By-The-Sea, we went to Aubergine, where Chef Justin Cogley does some masterful things with both local products like Monterey Bay abalone and exotica like insanely marbled Hokkaido beef, all in an elegantly restrained, almost Japanese style.

The next day, after dropping Mrs. F at the airport (she was off to another conference in San Diego) and visiting Frod Jr. in Berkeley, I still had several hours to kill before a red-eye flight home. So I'd booked an early seating at Michael Tusk's Quince in San Francisco, and proceeded to have one of the most indulgent, pleasurable, flat out smile-inducing dinners I've had in recent memory.

(You can see all the pictures from these two great meals in this Aubergine - Carmel flickr set and this Quince - San Francisco flickr set).

Both experiences are worthy of further thoughts (I've been jotting down notes), and any of about a half dozen or more dishes from the two nights could easily go here. So I've opted for the one that was the most unexpectedly good: a baton of Belgian salsify served at Aubergine, roasted until it had gone slack and almost sticky, shellacked with a dark, dense purée of nori and trumpet mushrooms, all adorned with a spray of fresh, grassy chickweed. There was just such a beautiful intensity and purity to the flavors here, an unexpected beauty in fairly simple ingredients.

Ask me another day, and I might instead single out that incredible Hokkaido beef dish, or Aubergine pastry chef Ron Mendoza's beautiful combination of chocolate, walnut, fermented pear ice cream, Amaro Nonino, and wood sorrel, or from Quince, a beautiful dish of caviar, uni and julienned apple, or the zenned-out bliss triggered by the combination of truffle-shrouded pork tortellini and old Burgundy.

best thing i ate last week (jan. 25-31) - camarones en aguachile verde at Mariscos Puerto Nuevo, Seaside CA

I finally got caught up on "best thing i ate last week" and then immediately got sidetracked once again. But rebounding will be quick. We spent the weekend before last on the left coast again, as Mrs. F had a conference in Monterey. While Aubergine in Carmel-by-the-Sea would be the dining highlight of our visit (you can sneak a peek at the pictures here), that wouldn't be until later in the week and there were many meals to be had in the interim.

Lately when traveling, I've been using Google Maps as a form of aerial restaurant reconnaissance, scouring nearby neighborhoods for places that might not turn up on the usual lists. I doubt I would have found Mariscos Puerto Nuevo otherwise. But there was a promising density of Mexican restaurants in Seaside, a town just north of Monterey that felt less hoity-toity than its other neighbors, Carmel and Pacific Grove. And the menu sure looked right: scan past the usual suspects, and true to the name, there's a focus on oceanic dishes like ceviches, cocteles, and seafood soups.

(You can see all my pictures in this Mariscos Puerto Nuevo flickr set).

Like these camarones en aguachile verde: sweet raw shrimp, swimming in a bright green sauce rippling with citrus and chile, simultaneously cool and spicy. More freshness from some cubed cucumber suspended in the marinade. A few slices of dead-ripe, creamy avocado. This, along with a crisp tostada topped with octopus ceviche, was a pretty perfect lunch.

Mariscos Puerto Nuevo
580 Broadway Avenue, Seaside, California
831.583.0411

best thing i ate last week - tendon and conch at Alter / Contra dinner

The list of NYC restaurants I want to try runs deep, but Contra is one place in particular that is pretty high up on that list. The accessibly priced 6-course, $65 tasting menus put out by young chefs Jeremiah Stone and Fabian Von Hauske are, by many people's estimation, not just one of the best deals in town, but one of the best meals in town without qualification.

So I was thrilled to hear that one of my favorite local restaurants, Brad Kilgore's Alter, was bringing the Contra guys to Miami to do a collaborative dinner. It all happened last Tuesday, as the chefs alternated rounds for nine courses. It was a great night with some really outstanding food.

Dish of the night? For me, it was this combination of beef tendon and conch in a pool of creamy, nutty sauce, given funky depth by XO sauce and bitter contrast with sprigs of radicchio tardivo. It was a great, unexpected combination of flavors, but even more so was all about the unusual, exciting textures of the components: the gelatinous tendon, the spingy conch, the subtle crunch of the radicchio, the creamy sauce.

Other standouts: the sweet raw shrimp with onions and burnt cream (the burnt cream almost like a savory dulce de leche, with the richness of miso); the chawanmushi with crispy artichoke, venus clams and truffle (maybe a soft egg v.2.0?).

This is, I hope, the first of several collaborative dinners Alter will be hosting; it was an auspicious start.

(You can see all my pictures from the dinner in this Contra @ Alter flickr set).

best thing i ate last week (jan 11-17) - short rib carpaccio at Kris Wessel gastroPod brunch

Only a week behind now! It's been mostly home cooking since returning from our winter break Southern expedition, but a Kris Wessel sighting was enough to get me to venture out. Wessel, chef of the much-missed Red Light on Biscayne Boulevard (who then passed through Florida Cookery and Oolite), surfaced to do a brunch with Chef Jeremiah Bullfrog of the gastroPod. Fortunately the rains let up and the winds calmed down enough for them to serve up five courses the Sunday before last.

It was all good and tough to pick a favorite, but the standout for me may have been the short rib "carpaccio" – thinly sliced boneless short rib cooked at low temp to bring it up to medium rare and melt all the connective tissue, brushed with warmed beef fat, and plated with slivers of fresh and dried pears, nutty asiago cheese and a drizzle of olive oil. Also in the running: Kris' eggs creole with tropical BBQ goat, and Jeremiah's chilaquiles spiked with gochujang and sprinkled with crumbled chevre.

(You can see all the pictures in this Kris Wessel gastroPod brunch flickr set).

Maybe the best news is that Wessel is close to getting back in the game in Miami – be looking for more details soon on a "southern tropical" BBQ spot in Little Haiti.

best thing i ate last week (jan 4-10): seafood plateau at Le Zoo

I'm still playing catch-up on "best thing i ate last week" but there's only two weeks to go. After our week-long Southern expedition (here's a report on Memphis; similar travelogues for Nashville and Louisville hopefully coming soon), I figured we'd be eating a lot of home cooking. I was right, but not entirely. Within a week, we were ready for someone else to cook for us.

Miami has recently seen a mini-wave of new French bistro / brasserie type places. I've not tried them all, but I've been to several, and found them mostly underwhelming or worse. Le Zoo, Stephen Starr's new place in Bal Harbour Shops (in the cursed spot across from the thoroughly mediocre but ever-popular Carpaccio that has previously been home to La Goulue and Elia before that), seems to be getting it right.

We didn't sample much, but what we did try was quite good. The standout was this seafood platter; a "petit plateau" came with a half-dozen oysters from east and west coasts, four littleneck clams, four sweet scallops in their shells with a dusting of espelette pepper, about a dozen little Mediterranean mussels, a cluster of cold poached shrimp, half a lobster, and both king crab and snow crab. Everything was perky and fresh, and for $75, seemed like a relative bargain as such things go.

Runner-up; a vitello tonnato from the same meal, with properly rosy, thin-sliced veal, a mayo properly redolent and funky with anchovy, and a scatter of cherry tomatoes, capers and celery leaves.

best thing i ate last week (dec 28 - jan 3) - oysters at Husk

"Best Thing I Ate Last Week" is still playing some catch-up from our winter break trek through Memphis, Nashville and Louisville, but we're getting there. New Year's Eve 2015 found us in Nashville, and as I was booking reservations for the trip I was pretty happy to find a spot open at Husk. We'd visited Chef Sean Brock's original incarnation of Husk in Charleston, South Carolina almost exactly three years ago (pictures here), and I was excited to try the Nashville version.

Holidays menus at restaurants are usually a bummer and I typically avoid them; but at Husk they did it up right. The three-course menu offered several choices for each, which were not that far afield from the typical restaurant experience. Out of several really good dishes, my favorite were these roasted Rappahannock oysters, swimming in an herbaceous bone marrow butter, and topped with spoonfuls of Tennessee hackleback caviar. A great way to close out 2015.

(You can see all the pictures in this Husk - Nashville NYE flickr set).

Runners-up: slices of Benton's ham brushed with coffee vinegar, and a version of shrimp and grits, both from the same meal at Husk; the Tennessee tonkotsu ramen at Otaku Ramen in Nashville; the fantastic roasted marrow bones with XO butter and kim chi at Louisville's Proof on Main.

best thing i ate last week (dec 21-27, 2015) - Thunderbird! Forty Twice! pizza at Hog & Hominy

It's been a little quiet over here in FFT-land, as I took advantage of the holidays to plan a family trip through the South. We flew into Memphis, where we spent a few days before driving to Nashville, then to Louisville before flying home. These were all towns I've wanted to visit, and with a week free, we were able to get to all of them (and then some). I told the kids before we left: "I hope you like BBQ, fried chicken, bourbon and the blues, because there's going to be a lot of them." And there was. We did some good eating, and had a couple surprising disappointments too.

Anyway, to catch up and fill in some blanks on the "best thing i ate last week," I'm going to backtrack to the second day of our trip, when we visited Hog & Hominy in Memphis, where chefs Michael Hudman and Andrew Ticer do Italian-style cooking with Southern-style ingredients. On Sundays they offer a "Sunday Funday" menu all day which is mostly pizzas and brunch-type items, and the best of them may have been this "Thunderbird! Forty Twice!" pizza, topped with fontina, mozzarella and parmesan cheeses, thin-sliced pepperoni and a drizzle of spicy honey. A puffy, chewy crust with just speckles of char, a balance between crust and toppings; a great interplay of spicy, cheesy and meaty with just a touch of sweet. Mrs. F regretted not ordering a second one.

(You can see all my pictures from our dinner in this Hog & Hominy flickr set).

Runners-up: these lady peas with guanciale and chicken liver mousse from the same meal; a supremely satisfying fried oyster poboy from Kelly English's New Orleans' themed Memphis restaurant, The Second Line; some delicious Delta style hot tamales from Mose Tamale truck, spotted in a gas station parking lot on the way between the Memphis airport and Graceland.

best thing i ate last week: duck leg confit at Alter

The best thing I ate last week could easily have been the Japanese wagyu beef shabu shabu at N by Naoe which I wrote about yesterday. But as good as that was, this was still better: the duck leg confit from the lunch menu at Alter.

The duck meat is pulled off the bone and served over a pearl onion kimchi that's given an extra jolt of flavor from little "sweety drop" peppers. These bright red, teardrop-shaped chiles are simultaneously fruity and spicy, and remind me of the Brazilian biquinho peppers which Chef Micah Edelstein of the late Nemesis Urban Bistro turned me on to a few years ago. Additions of a cashew condiment and black garlic tweak the umami dial. A sheet of drisp dehydrated cabbage mimics the usual crispy skin (Hey Brad - where'd the duck skin go?). Perky pea shoots add some contrasting freshness. This was a great dish.

It can also be part of one of the best value meals in town: Alter serves a 3-course, $29 lunch which may be the most effective use of $29 you can make in Miami; even better, you can also upgrade that to a $48, 5-course lunch tasting menu. (You can see all my pictures from a recent lunch visit at the end of this Alter - Miami (Wynwood) flickr set).

best thing i ate last week: cod confit a la catalana at Cobaya Niu

Sometimes I will read a dish description and have no clue how it could possibly taste good. This was one of those. The chef was Deme Lomas, the spot was Niu Kitchen, which was playing host to our 58th Cobaya dinner on Monday night. The dish was cod with dry figs, roasted onions, mustard and honey. Why would anyone put all those sweet things with a piece of fish?

Shows what I know. Here, the residual saltiness of the rehydrated bacalao, all unctuous and shiny, was balanced against the sweetness of the figs and honey; the zing of mustard for a bit of contrast, a nest of golden caramelized onions as a bridge between savory and sweet. The combination of salt cod and honey actually has a long history in Catalan cooking, which is Chef Lomas' focus at Niu Kitchen. Here's Colman Andrews in his book "Catalan Cuisine: Europe's Last Great Culinary Secret":

I remember a game I used to play with friends, in younger years, of trying to invent the most unlikely or revolting-sounding food combinations possible – things, I recall, like raw oysters with chocolate sauce and pineapple-clam cake. This dish, I imagine, must sound a bit like one of those to many readers – or at least like some mindless nouvelle (or nova) excess. In fact, though, salt cod with honey is neither nouvelle nor revolting. It's an old Catalan mountain dish, first mentioned in print in the seventeenth century and said to have been an invention of necessity – the union of two easily stored, well-preserved ingredients, eaten together simply to provide a kind of calorie-loading, essential for survival in cold climates during the cropless winter months.

The most exciting dishes can be those you don't expect to work. This one was the best thing I ate last week.

best thing i ate last week: pork braised in milk at Eating House

As I groggily arise, still digesting last night's Thanksgiving feast (while simultaneously plotting what to do with the leftovers), it occurs to me that I'm still a week behind on "best thing i ate last week." So let's catch up.

Sometimes for no good reason, restaurants fall off your radar screen. That had happened to me with Eating House. Though I've always had good meals there, somehow more than a year had passed without a visit. I've been back in twice in the past couple months, and it's been better than ever. The old "standards" are still around – the tomatoes with coconut ice, the chicken and "foiffles" – but much is new as well, including roughly half the menu now being taken over by vegetable-centered dishes.

(You can see all my pictures from the restaurant in this Eating House 2.0 flickr set).

Many of these have been very good, like the burnt cabbage with fried garlic and egg vinaigrette, and the red wine risotto with bitter radicchio, pistachios and dried black olives. But the star of my last visit was a pork dish.

The starting point is maiale al latte: pork braised in milk, an old school Italian dish that is about as traif as you can get, which yields fork-tender meat in a rich brown sauce of pork juices and fat emulsified in reduced milk that is almost like a porcine dulce de leche. But then chef Giorgio Rapicavoli does a few things his nonna wouldn't do. He adds crumbles of raw cauliflower, which sounds odd but works, the squeaky texture and fresh, vegetal flavor providing some contrast against all that richness. He adds meaty seared mushrooms and petals of charred onion, upping the umami quotient. He sprinkles it with charred vegetable ash, an intensified iteration of the caramelization that produces the sauce.

(continued ...)

best thing i ate last week: Guillermo's Taco de Chicalada from Taquiza

Before I fall a full week behind, a quick "B.T.I.A.L.W." Competition was fierce, as everyone came strong for P.I.G. 6 last Sunday, but my single favorite bite of the day was "Guillermo's Taco de Chicaladas" from Chef Steve Santana of Taquiza. I learned from masa master Steve that "Guillermo" is Izzy's Oyster chef Will Crandall; I learned from a commenter here that "chicaladas" are the tasty little bits of pork from the bottom of the pot. Topped with a roughly chopped salsa and folded into a perfect two-bite sized taquito speckled with chiles de arbol, this was a perfect little package.

Runners-up: the chitlins and chorizo paella from Edge's Chef Aaron Brooks; the miso butterscotch laquered pork belly with black olive crumble and smoked banana purée from Alter's Bradley Kilgore. And there were plenty more great things too (you can see most of them in this P.I.G. 6 flickr set and read a recap here).

best thing i ate last week: "Amazon's Tree of Life" at Cobaya del Cielo

It was a runner-up a few months when I first tried it; it will get top billing this week. Juan Manuel Barrientos is the chef of El Cielo, a highly regarded restaurant in Colombia which last year opened a branch in Miami. JuanMa's creative, theatrical style fit well with our Cobaya thing, so we asked him to host a dinner for us.

We usually ask chefs to go completely off-menu, but I can understand why he'd include a staple from the restaurant, which he calls "Amazon's Tree of Life." Visually it's a stunner: an undulating copper frame mounted to a stone, supporting a flatbread whose surface is pocked with bubbles, almost perfectly duplicating the appearance of a baobab tree. And it's delicious too, the chewy, crusty, cheesy bread meant to be torn and dipped into a a bowl with a creamy coconut sauce dusted on top with a black squid ink powder. It was the best thing I ate last week.

(You can see all the pictures from the dinner in this Cobaya del Cielo flickr set).

best thing i ate last week: pork schnitzel at Cypress Tavern

Sometimes, change is good. A month ago news broke that chef Roel Alcudia was parting ways with The Cypress Room, which he had joined as chef de cuisine when Michael Schwartz opened the place a couple years ago. That wasn't the only change: after a bit of revamping, last week the Cypress Room became Cypress Tavern. It's not a complete gut job by any means: chef Bradley Herron, who has a long tenure with the Schwartz empire, is now manning the kitchen, and maybe 1/3 to 1/2 of the menu will still look pretty familiar. The lovely aqua banquettes are still there, but the starched white tablecloths are gone. As the new "Tavern" in the name suggests, it's been simplified and un-fussified, and happily, the prices have been notched down too.

I was in there Saturday night for dinner, and enjoyed it so much I was back for brunch the next morning. (You can see all my pictures in this Cypress Tavern flickr set). There was much that was good, but my favorite was a new menu item that's pretty reflective of the new style: a delightfully crisp, juicy pork schnitzel, served over a bed of braised cabbage and a puddle of creamy mustard sauce.

Runner-up: the bucatini carbonara, topped with a poached egg and an avalanche of shaved parmigiano reggiano, which I had the next morning for brunch. Sometimes this is how I like to get my bacon, eggs and toast.

best thing i ate last week: chirashi style squid ink noodles at gastroPod

Some of the most interesting meals I've had in Miami have come out of a truck or shipping container – the various reincarnations of Chef Jeremiah Bullfrog's gastroPod. Its latest iteration – a shipping container stationed on a lot in Wynwood – took a temporary hiatus for a few months on account of permitting issues, but returned this past week. A friend orchestrated a little "welcome back" dinner, and Chef Jeremiah orchestrated the menu, which included ember-cooked, tempura-fried, porcini-dusted sweet potatoes, fancy musubi with "center cut" spam, crispy nori and fish roe, and a salad featuring absinthe-cured salmon belly, among other things.

But my favorite was a pasta course of jet-black squid ink noodles tossed with braised octopus and the octopus' braising liquid, served chirashi style with ama ebi, uni, and ikura cured with sake and soy. The Italian-Japanese hybrid was the best thing I ate last week.

(You can see all my pictures from the dinner in this gastroPod 2.5 flickr set).

Runners-up: the lobster poutine at recently-opened Izzy's Fish and Oyster; the secretive,Texas meets Mexico (but not Tex-Mex) BBQ at Barbacoa (I'm not at liberty to disclose the details); the eggplant-stuffed manti dumplings in a creamy yogurt sauce at Byblos.

best thing i ate last week: soft scrambled eggs at Vagabond

It doesn't sound like much the way it's listed on the menu: "soft scrambled eggs, fines herbes, pecorino, evoo." It looks like even less: a shallow plate of runny eggs that might have been scooped up from some budget hotel's breakfast buffet.

Don't be fooled. This, from the brunch menu at Alex Chang's Vagabond, is luxurious stuff. The eggs are warmed through but still virtually liquid, barely forming any curds. The texture is like silk, the flavor rich and pure. A few more grace notes: a tangle of fresh herbs, a dusting of salty pecorino cheese, a drizzle of good olive oil to sort of round everything out.

I just loved this. It was the best thing I ate all week. And it's only $7. (Pro tip: Vagabond's home made English muffins make a good vehicle for scooping).