Lüke - New Orleans

Even a successful restaurant has certain inherent limitations on its profitability. You can only squeeze so many butts into so many seats. You can only increase your prices by so much before you wander beyond whatever particular niche of the dining market you've captured. So for many - particularly in this era of celebrity chefdom - at some point there comes the urge to grow, which means adding additional venues.

There are at least a couple different approaches to such growth. Some restaurants take what I call the "clone and colonize" approach, bringing the same package to different regional or even international markets. Nobu has restaurants in nearly twenty different cities in a dozen different countries. Joel Robuchon (after basically retiring from cooking) has restaurants in Paris, London, Monaco, Hong Kong, Macao, Tokyo, New York and Las Vegas. A plethora of chefs have set up satellite offices in Vegas, and over the past couple years the influx of "invasive exotic species" has made its way to Miami as well. Even Thomas Keller has gone bi-coastal with Per Se in New York, plus Bouchons in Las Vegas and now Beverly Hills.

Other chefs stay closer to home, creating fiefdoms in their native territory. In Seattle, Tom Douglas has opened several restaurants all within a few blocks of his original flagship, Dahlia Lounge. Here in Miami, restaurateur Myles Chefetz has done much the same thing on the "SoFi" (South of Fifth Street) end of South Beach with Prime 112, Nemo, Shoji Sushi, Big Pink, and the latest addition, Prime Italian. Jonathan Eismann is looking to do the same in the Design District, where he recently opened PizzaVolante a block away from his flagship Pacific Time and will soon be opening Q and Fin right down the street. (Of course some chefs follow both approaches: Mario Batali has his chubby fingers in nine New York restaurants, three in Las Vegas, and a few in L.A. too).

Unlike the "clone and colonize" approach, which simply seeks to duplicate the same experience in a different venue, the "fiefdom" approach requires that there be something to distinguish one restaurant from another to reach different segments of the same geographic market. The easiest thing to do, particularly if you started with a high-end restaurant, is to do a lower-end, more budget-friendly place (note that David Chang did this in reverse, starting with Momofuku Noodle Bar and later opening the higher-end Ko); but then what? If you want to build an empire, the next step is to diversify the range of cuisines you offer.

That's what John Besh has done in New Orleans. Chef Besh's reputation was made at his Restaurant August, which I'd loosely characterize as contemporary French in style with a strong influence from the Creole and Cajun cuisines and native ingredients of Louisiana. Riding the waves of acclaim for August (to say nothing of other favorable attention including a strong appearance in Top Chef Masters), Chef Besh now runs no fewer than a half-dozen restaurants in New Orleans. They range from the inevitable steakhouse, to an Italian restaurant, Domenica, to the one we visited, Lüke.

Lüke is a brasserie with a curious Franco-Germanic (Alsatian?) tilt to it. The menu, picking up on some of the trends-du-jour (not necessarily a pejorative, I happen to be very much in favor of some of these), features lots of charcuterie and many varieties of pig parts. It also has typical brasserie items like moules & frites, roast chicken, steak & frites, and croque monsieur (or madame). The Germanic/Alsatian tilt manifests in dishes such as flamenküche (a/k/a tarte flambée),choucroûte, and an entirely unexpected matzo ball soup (!)

It's a somewhat rustic looking place with a bit of a turn-of-the-century feel, featuring a long bar with carved wooden pillars, tiled floors, a pressed tin ceiling, and fans operated by a pulley-and-belt system supposedly invented in the 1880s. We showed up early for our reservation and so started our meal at the bar, where we sampled their custom-brewed pilsner and some items from the raw bar.

The local P&J oysters were impeccably fresh and expertly shucked, and the Louisana shrimp were likewise fresh, sweet and tender. I generally prefer a smaller, tighter oyster like a kumomoto to a big sloppy one, but these were a happy medium - plump, firm and loaded with salty liquor. I might have hoped for something more adventurous to go along with them than cocktail sauce and horseradish sauce, but all they really needed was a squeeze of lemon anyway. Both the oysters and the shrimp seemed like a remarkable bargain at $7 and $11 per half-dozen, respectively.

Notorious P.I.G. [Pork Is Good]

This past Sunday was the P.I.G. (Pork Is Good) fest by Chef Jeremiah Bullfrog at Harvey's By The Bay, east of Biscayne Boulevard off 64th Street, and a good number of VIPs (Very Important Pigs) turned out for the occasion.

Our group of about 25 took over the bay-windowed back room of Harvey's for the afternoon, when we weren't outside monitoring the progress of the whole boned-out piglet cooking away in Chef Jeremiah's new-fangled high-tech caja china. While the pig roasted, we were given samples of a number of his other pork-centric creations. The underlying theme was to revel in all the glories of the porcine, with dishes created from just about every part of the pig. Belly, butt, skin, and trotter were all well represented (I saw a headcheese, too, though I didn't see where it ended up). Some of the dishes may be previews for the menu of the gastroPOD, a shiny Airstream trailer Jeremiah is retrofitting with a high-tech kitchen to bring mobile cuisine to Miami.

Sadly my camera batteries died about midway through so I don't have pictures of everything, but I did get to taste it all and there's some other good recaps at Tinkering With Dinner and Jean-Marc's blog. All my pictures are now up on flickr.


Chef started us off with some nice chicharrones, dried and fried pork skin cracklings, crispy with just a little hint of chew to them, along with a little moonshine-black cherry soda, frothed on the spot in an iSi canister.



Next round was some southern-style char siu bao, a nice cross-cultural mashup which took the fluffy, dense dough of the traditional Chinese steamed dumpling, but instead of filling it with the typical Chinese "bbq" pork (with its sweet sticky glaze), these were filled with rough-chopped smoked dry-rubbed pork butt.


If they were a little dry for you, you could dose them with a little dropper of shoyu. Chef also kept out on the table some sriracha sauce (a/k/a "ketchup" he said, and I agree) if that was more to your tastes. These were good, and I thought the East Meets South thing worked well. I would have liked to have seen it carried even further, maybe with a BBQ sauce variation instead of the shoyu (something strongly vinegar-based may have hit the spot).


No pix of the next few items, so we'll have to rely on my meager descriptive powers (and the pictures taken by other VIPs). For whatever reason, Chef's panini press was the final straw that tapped out all the available power in Harvey's back room, and so there was a brief struggle to find a working outlet to finish the next course. When that glitch was overcome, Chef Jeremiah handed out some pressed Cuban sandwiches filled with sliced pork belly, home-made pickles and spread with Dijon mustard. I liked the tender pork belly, all slippery and soft rather than crisped up (more in an Asian style).

Incanto - San Francisco

They smelled good. They were topped with bacon. When I asked if he wanted to know what he was trying before he took a bite, he declined. And that's how my 11-year old son came to eat lamb balls at Incanto.

image via @offalchris

Before you accuse me of some form of child abuse, please keep in mind that he should well have known better. I have long been a fan of the so-called "fifth quarter," or offal. Tongues, cheeks, ears, feet, livers, sweetbreads, tripe, hearts, intestines, marrow, gizzards. They're all my friends. These are things I eat not on a dare, but because they have the capacity for deliciousness. They offer depth of flavor you often won't discover in the "prime cuts" (though in fact many are actually quite mild), and unusual, sometimes luxurious textures. And it is often the measure of a chef's talent what they're able to do with the misnamed "nasty bits." Anyone can take a prime New York strip and make it taste good. It takes some skill to make lamb balls tasty.

Chef Chris Cosentino has that skill, and has been one of the most prominent and vocal champions of offal cookery (along with perhaps his kindred spirit in England, Fergus Henderson). So his restaurant in Noe Valley was one of my "don't miss" destinations on our current San Francisco trip. And Frod Jr. was on clear notice that whatever he was taking a taste of could have come from just about anywhere on or in the animal.

Incanto looks much like many other Italian restaurants, with rough-cut stone floors, simple dark wood furniture, and a series of columns and arches that separate a partially open kitchen from the bustling, boisterous dining room. One thing that's a little different is the glass case of house-cured salumi on display as you walk in (this love of cured meats has expanded into a side business for Chef Cosentino, who now produces several "tasty salted pig parts" for retail sale through Boccalone, with an outpost in the Ferry Building). Many of those pig parts can be sampled on an antipasto platter at Incanto; and the menu, with a leaning towards starter-sized items and almost all pastas available in half portions, lends itself to trying a variety of dishes.

We started with the antipasto platter, which our server helpfully advised was also available in a 1/2 portion, even though this was not listed on the menu. My memory has faded a bit at this point, but I believe it featured some mortadella, prosciutto cotto (a cooked ham, delicately spiced and more sweet than salty), soppressata, porchetta di testa (rolled pig's head, thinly sliced), and a pork paté, along with some nice bright pickled vegetables. All were quite good, and surprisingly conservative with the salt - almost to the point where I thought they could have used a touch more. Some nice crusty bread, along with focaccia and breadsticks, were accompanied by a black olive tapenade.

image via @offalchris

We followed with a simple dish of lobster mushrooms, sea beans and a sizzled egg. The lobster mushrooms are truly beautiful things, gigantic firm mushrooms, almost white in color, but with a gorgeous orange-red blush to the caps like the color of a cooked Maine lobster (they're actually the product of a parasitic fungus that grows on the mushroom). Here they were sliced thin, sauteed, sprinkled with a scatter of sea beans, then topped with an egg quick-fried in olive oil (I'm guessing) which made its own sauce for the mushrooms. I enjoyed this though I found (as I've experienced when cooking them myself) that the lobster mushrooms are actually somewhat short on flavor, though they have an interesting firm, almost steak-y texture.

The lamb fries were also a starter, and were done in a piccata style with bacon. They came, as I guess can be expected, two to an order.^[*] The fries were actually a wonderful delicate texture, similar to sweetbreads or fish quenelles. They had a lightly meaty flavor with maybe just the slightest hint of iron, as in liver. And they were soaking in melted butter spiked with capers, topped off with a few strips of salty savory bacon. I thought they were genuinely delicious; Frod Jr., while he didn't go back for a second bite, didn't think they were bad (until after I told him what they were; and even then, he admitted he was more bothered by the idea rather than the flavor).

Next, a 1/2 order of the spaghettini with Sardinian cured tuna heart, egg yolk and parsley. I've had and enjoyed a similar dish at Sardinia Ristorante in Miami made with bottarga, the dried and cured roe sac of a tuna. The cured tuna heart has a flavor very similar to the bottarga, salty and with a deep funky marine whiff to it. It was generously shaved over the hot spaghettini, which had been tossed with olive oil, many slivers of browned garlic and a handful of fresh parsley, and topped with a raw egg yolk which is then lightly cooked by the heat of the pasta as you further toss the pasta yourself.

But Chef Cosentino's cooking is not just about offal. A handkerchief pasta sauced with a pork ragu was just flat-out good cooking. The pasta was just about perfect, supple and smooth without being insipid and limp; and the rustic meat sauce was rich, tender and hearty. Nothing unusual or exotic about this, just a delicious pasta dish.

what was left of the beef rib

Frod Jr.'s appetite was not so thrown by the lamb fries that he couldn't dig into a Fred Flintstone-sized English-cut beef rib (a massize length of short rib), topped with "God's butter" (Chef Cosentino's name for beef marrow), dandelion greens and a simple onion salsa. Indeed he made pretty good work of that rib. We also had a braised duck leg, with contrasting notes of sweet and salty provided by grapes and pancetta in the braising liquid. Also very hearty and satisfying.

The wine list, if I recall, was almost exclusively Italian wines, and showed some nice breadth both regionally and in price ranges. A 2003 Fanetti Vino Nobile di Montepulciano Riserva hit the appropriate note of refined rusticity to match the food.

And that is perhaps the best way I can think of to describe the cooking at Incanto - refined rusticity. While much of the attention is paid to Chef Cosentino's work with offal, I think perhaps that angle is overworked to a degree. It's exciting to explore the different flavors and textures that can be offered by the "fifth quarter," but unless it's done well, it's just something to brag about to your friends, which to me is infinitely less rewarding than a genuinely great meal. In our experience, whether it was lamb fries or pasta with pork ragu, this was just good, satisfying food.

Incanto
1550 Church Street
San Francisco, CA 94131
415.641.4500

^[*]As good as they were, I don't think I could eat 28:

What Do Yelp and Tripe Have in Common?

I'll admit it. I was once "Yelp Curious." I was younger, and I experimented with it, and I found out it just wasn't for me. For me it was just a phase. But to each his own, live and let live, and so on. I believe in tolerance. So I have no hesitation in noting that Yelp has come up with something that caught my attention: "Yelp Eats! Week."

From July 20 - 26, a dozen local restaurants will be doing special prix fixe dinners at $25. A few things impressed me: (1) $25! (2) it seems some efforts were made to discourage restaurants from just offering the "same old" (i.e. the Miami Spice trifecta of chicken paillard, skirt steak, and farmed salmon), with some of these menus actually showing some variety; and (3) andouillettes?!?

Among three entrée choices at Au Pied de Cochon is the rather innocent sounding "grilled andouillettes." Which, for Mrs. F and me, brings to mind a dining experience from our younger days. Not long after we were married, we took a trip to Paris for a week. One of our first meals when we were there was at Le Procope. Le Procope was founded in 1686 and is said to be the oldest operating restaurant in the world. It was the haunt of folks like Voltaire, Rousseau, Balzac and Hugo. There is a hat on display which was supposedly left there by Napoleon.

Neither Mrs. F nor I speak French, and so we were phumpering our way through the menu (since then, I've developed a savant-like ability to read menus in several languages even though I am otherwise completely incapable of communicating in any language other than English). I ordered a duck dish, while Mrs. F saw something called "andouillettes," and figuring it be something comparable to an andouille sausage, which we were familiar with, she ordered it. Our dishes came out, my duck looked quite nice, Mrs. F's looked like a large, greyish beige sausage. I started to dig in, and she took a bite of hers. She's looked at me, and I couldn't quite make sense of her expression. It was initially puzzlement, but then shifted to mild distress. After a lengthy pause, she said: "I just bit into something. It wasn't meat. It wasn't fat. I don't know what it was. It felt like a rubber band." Another pause. "And this smells funny." We switched plates, and I had the dubious privilege of eating the rest of the andouillette.

It turns out that andouillette is a particularly visceral tripe sausage, usually coarse ground, and often with pork intestines in the mix as well (hence that rubber-band texture). It has been described as "a pale, lumpy sausage made from pigs’ intestines that smells like a pissoir," and "like chewing on rubbery . . . poop." Apparently Seattle chef Tom Douglas' assistant recently made the same andouille/andouillette mistake that Mrs. F made, and likewise concluded that "it wasn't my cup of tea." Needless to say, the French have an association dedicated to their appreciation, the Association amicale des amateurs d'andouillette authentique (or AAAAA).

I have enjoyed more than my share of tripe in the intervening years, and have even started to come around to pig intestines, though I'm convinced there must be a better way of preparing them than the simply grilled chinchulines that are often served at Argentine parrillas. So of course I now feel obligated to pay a visit to Au Pied de Cochon to see if they're serving real-deal andouillettes, and if so, whether I'll like them better than the first time. Somehow I think Mrs. F will be sticking with the duck.

Not the Yelp/Tripe connection you thought I'd make? Anyway, here's the full rundown of menus on offer:

660 at the Anglers
1. Andalusian Gazpacho or Risotto & Mushroom Croquetas
2. Pappardelle Carbonara or Half Chicken "Al Mattone" or Moules-Frites
3. Liquid Center Chocolate Cake or Vanilla Bean Panna Cotta

AltaMar
1. Peruvian Style Ceviche or Peruvian Style Tiradito or Bahamian Conch Salad
2. Grouper Ravioli or Yellowjack with mustard sauce or Breaded Filet of Mackerel
3. Passion Fruit Mousse with Crème Anglaise or Tiramisu

Au Pied de Cochon
1. Warm Crispy Camembert Cheese, Beetroot & Apple Salad or Escargots Vol au Vent Provencale
2. Grilled Salmon Filet or Grilled Andouillette or Duck Confit Parmentier
3. Red Fruit Clafoutis, Raspberry Sorbet or Apple Tatin Tart, Sour cream, Caramel Sauce

Cafe Sambal
1. Organic Greens Salad or Pork and Shrimp Shu Mai
2. Salmon Teriyak or Wok Seared Kobe beef or Chicken Pad Thai or Tofu Vegetable Pad Thai
3. Mango Rice Pudding or Coconut Flan

Casa Toscana
1. Sausage, cannellini beans, tomatoes, and greens casserole or Mixed Plate
2. Spaghetti with littleneck clams or Pappardelle with mini veal meatballs or Risotto of the day prepared with vegetables seafood or meats
3. Homemade amaretti gelato or Ricotta almonds chocolate figs semifredo

Escopazzo
1. Eggplant timbale or Baby arugula salad or Beet carpaccio with celery salad
2. Pasta or risotto of the day or Large shellshaped pasta or Pennette or Crepes filled with ham, fontina cheese and cabbage or Giancarla's fish stew
3. Selection of homemade desserts

Grazianos Brickell
1. Grilled Homemade Argentine Style Sausage or Bay Scallops Involtini
2. Hand Cut Angus Sirloin Steak or Egg Pappardelle or Grilled Free-Range Chicken Breast
3. Graziano's caramel filled (Dulce De Leche) crepes Flambé with orange liquor or Argentine style cake

Jaguar
1. Choice of three Ceviche Spoons
2. Mexican Tortilla Lasagna or Rice Platter "Chino del Chifa" or Chopped Celia's Salad with Chicken
3. Palomas de Cajeta or Flan de Queso

La Cofradia
1. Pears and Manchego Salad or Goat Cheese and Yuca Croquettes or Tapa of Ceviche
2. Chicken Saltado or Salmon with Scallops or Fettuccini
3. Peruvian Style Dulce de Leche Topped with Port Meringue or Sorbets

Pacific Time
1. Hot and Sour Popcorn Shrimp or Sesame Chicken Salad
2. Skirt Steak or Grilled Fish Szechuan Style or Spaghettini
3. Drunken Grape Parfait or Vanilla Creme Brulee

Red Koi
1. Tuna Tartar or Tuna Yuke or Thai Combination Platter
2. Chicken Teriyaki or Santini Roll or Mitch Roll
3. Fried Ice Cream or Thai Donuts or Green Tea Ice Cream

Red, The Steakhouse
1. "Red" House Salad or Classic Caesar
2. Bucatini, Meatball, Red Lead or CAB Prime Sirloin Steak or Fish du jour
3. Housemade Sorbet or Molten Chocolate Cake

Michael's Genuine Food & Drink - Miami Design District

As much as it is a favorite of mine, I've found it somewhat difficult to write about Michael's Genuine Food & Drink. Maybe it's because I fear not being able to capture why I enjoy the place so much - it's pretty simple food, mostly - why do I find it so satisfying? Maybe it's because I can no longer count the times that I've been there since they opened two years ago. Do I try to describe the sum of dozens of visits over the past couple years, or simply describe one meal there as an example? I'll try to do both, and hopefully it'll all become clear.

I first experienced Chef Michael Schwartz's cooking more than a decade ago when he was the chef at the then newly-opened restaurant Nemo on South Beach. The food at Nemo was full of flavor but still executed with something of a light hand, and for years the place was one of my favorites. Schwartz left Nemo several years ago after a falling out with partner Myles Chefetz, and pursued a few other ventures. Some of these went by pretty quickly - a brief stint at Atlantic in the now-demolished Beach House Bal Harbour then owned by the Rubell family (both the restaurant and the hotel were hidden jewels for a brief period of time); a menu of "beauty cuisine" at the short-lived restaurant Afterglo in South Beach.

If there were a culinary award for "Comeback Player of the Year," Michael Schwartz would have won it in 2007. Following about a year behind Michelle Bernstein, who took a first bold step by opening up Michy's on a dodgy section of Biscayne Boulevard in 2006, Michael opened Michael's Genuine in late March 2007 in the Design District, another neglected neighborhood with no evening traffic whatsoever at the time (in any legitimate business activities, in any event). And people came.

My first visit there was about a week after they opened, and I was immediately hooked. Here was a restaurant that felt like a neighborhood place but was still classy enough to bring a date or a client; food that was creative without being goofy, made with high-quality ingredients and a focus on local products; the "small plates" menu options made it possible to try a number of different items; and the prices weren't crazy. You can follow something of a chronicle of my MGF&D experiences on this Chowhound thread. I said after my first visit:

My only hesitation in recommending it is the fear that it will become impossible to get in.

Oh well. Too late now.

The furnishings are low-key but classy, with simple wood tables covered with white paper and a polished concrete floor, the primary decoration being a few large artworks on the walls and some big red-shaded rectangular lamps hanging from the ceiling. It reminds me of the kind of places we've been to in the Pacific Northwest - comfortable, casual, but still nice enough for date night. There's outdoor seating in the atrium out front which is nice in the cooler months, and a second dining room adjacent to the main space has been added - though it has something of a Siberian feel to it, the food still tastes just as good there.

The menu is divided into "snacks," small, medium, large and extra-large dishes, as well as several vegetable side dishes. When they first opened, snacks were $4, and in two years that's only increased to $5-6. Prices across the menu have generally held steady, with most "small" and "medium" dishes being mostly in a $10-15 range and larger items (including the "extra-larges" which are meant to be shared) in the $20s-$40s.

The food at Michael's Genuine has a few defining characteristics: a focus on artisanal, high-quality ingredients; a dedication to local and sustainable products (including neglected species and cuts); and a purity and vividness of flavor. This is a place that features things like Poulet Rouge chicken (an heirloom breed descended from French stock now being raised in North Carolina and Georgia), Fudge Farms pork (more on this below); locally sourced fish that you'll almost never see on a restaurant menu^[1] like pumpkin swordfish, cero mackerel, triggerfish, and golden tilefish; fresh local produce from Paradise Farms and Bee Heaven Farm; house-cured bacon and sausages; and "variety meats" like chicken livers, sweetbreads, beef cheeks, and pig ears all put to great use. Chef Schwartz styles himself as a disciple of Alice Waters (the chef, not the more annoying public persona of late)^[2] and it really shows in the menu. He even has a "forager" regularly hitting the produce markets and farms to source great product for him.

But to focus exclusively on the ingredients and their provenance would pay short thrift to the creativity and quality of the cooking here, which puts out combinations like a beef cheek over a celeriac mash with a chocolate reduction and a garnish of celeriac salad (since replaced on the menu), or a crispy pork belly and watermelon salad with a soy-inflected dressing. Yes, much of the good stuff happens on the farm, but a good bit of it still happens in the kitchen too.

A Sample Meal

Let me start by describing the last meal we had at MGF&D a couple weeks ago. The "snacks" section of the menu is always a good place to begin, and this time around we had the crispy hominy, the puffed kernels fried and dusted with a sprinkle of chile powder and a squeeze of lime; the potato chips with caramelized onion dip, a favorite of Frod Jr. and Little Miss F (it also hits all the right nostalgic notes for the grown-ups); the falafel (another of Little Miss F's favorites, the balls of mashed chickpeas crispy outside and tender inside, and flecked with fresh parsley and mint); and a newer addition to the menu, crostini shmeared with a fresh goat cheese, an apricot thyme jam and a little sprinkle of micro-greens so fresh they seemed to still want to stand upright, a nice light warm-weather starter.

Michael sent out a new item he's been working on for us to try, a crispy corned beef dish. Keep your eyes out for this one. Many of MGF&D's dishes work with what I think of as "complementary contasts" - crispy and tender, salty and sour, the contrasts keeping the palate refreshed - and this was a great example. A slab of super-tender house-cured corned beef is given a bread crumb coating and seared for a crispy exterior, and is paired with a creamy remoulade/Russian dressing sauce, and some finely julienned sauerkraut-like pickled cabbage. Crispy, tender, creamy, salty, sour - like the best Reuben sandwich you've ever had. Mrs. F literally grabbed my arm after her first bite, she was so excited by this (but then she has a serious Reuben fixation - she basically subsisted on Reubens when pregnant with Frod Jr.).

We shared a couple more of the smaller dishes. The crispy pig ear salad is loaded with strips of shatteringly crispy strips of pig ear, tossed with tiny leaves of baby arugula, slivers of red onion, and thin disks of pickled radish (again with the pickled flavors - Chef Schwartz often makes great use of this flavor note). The strips of pig ear still visually reflect their origin (with a lighter strip of soft cartilage in the middle) but actually with the frying lose much of the ear-y texture some people find, well, eery.^[3] Frod Jr. wouldn't stop picking these off my plate. A local grouper ceviche, with a dice of mango and avocado, was one of the few disapppointments - not bad, just lacking the punch that MGF&D usually delivers.

I followed with a Fudge Farms pork chop which nearly brought tears to my eyes. This is, simply, some of the best pork I have ever tasted - rich, sweet and densely flavored. A server once described this to me as the "prime beef of pork" and that's probably pretty close to the mark. And one of the things I so admire about Chef Schwartz's cooking is that he knows how to stay out of the way of a great ingredient. The pork chop is just brined and grilled, and served with simple pairings of an apple chutney and mashed turnips. And - as if to prove a point - this is not presented as a composed plate, but rather each of the accompaniments is in its own small bowl, so as not to mess with this great pork unless you choose to do so.

Mrs. F had the grilled octopus as a main. The octopus (a big fat whole tentacle served as a "medium" dish) is first slow-cooked in olive oil at a low temp, and then briefly finished on the grill for a little crisping of the exterior and light infusion of smoky flavor, and served over a bed of fat white gigande beans, roasted red peppers, olives and a salad of torn herbs and leaves, all given a good drizzle of olive oil. Frod Jr. tried a new item for him - the Harris Ranch shortrib, which is roasted, cooled, sliced off the bone into planks and then also finished on the grill, served with a hearty romesco sauce. Little Miss F had a pasta dish of home-made fettucine with shrimp, strips of zucchini, shards of fiore sardo cheese and a generous dusting of black pepper. On prior occasions I've found Chef Schwartz's pasta almost too silky and slippery, so much so that it doesn't effectively hold the condiment. This iteration was tender and soft but had enough traction to grip the buttery sauce.

The standout dessert of the night was a bowl of Meyer lemon curd topped with strips of candied peel, with a couple of dainty currant scones alongside as well as a couple Meyer lemon jellies. Like a mini English tea service for dessert, this perfectly captured the perfumey aroma of the Meyer lemons. Frod Jr. had his favorite, the chocolate cremoso. I'm still not sure exactly what "cremoso" translates too, but I know this dessert features a lusciously rich quenelle of dark chocolate, almost ganache-like in texture, with a sprinkle of coarse sea salt, a drizzle of peppery olive oil, a crispy sourdough crouton for scooping, and a cold espresso parfait for contrast. Though the combination of chocolate, salt and olive oil sounds exotic, it is actually a delicious spin on a traditional Catalan dish.

A Tour Through the Menu

I should note that some of the dishes I describe here may no longer be found on the menu. In fact, the menu changes quite regularly, and while there are some stalwarts, new dishes appear frequently, old ones come and go, some are just momentary inspirations based on what's fresh that week, and still others get tweaked here and there depending on what ingredients are at their best and what's interesting to the kitchen at that time. I have often said that I think this approach is one of the keys to a successful restaurant in Miami as, among other things, it gives the locals reason to come back repeatedly and provide a base business not subject to the fickle and seasonal whims of the tourist crowd. Indeed, I suspect the menu at Michael's Genuine probably changes more in any three-month span than the menu at Nemo has changed since Chef Schwartz left several years ago. Given the number of things I've tried, it should not surprise that I've not loved them all - but even when a dish goes off the mark, it rarely strays far.

Snacks

One of the nice things about the "snacks" is that these almost always hit the table within 5 minutes of ordering. Several of the snacks are mentioned above - the crispy hominy, the falafel, the chips & dip, the goat cheese crostini - but my favorite item is the chicken liver crostini, a few slices of bread smeared with a rich chicken liver puree with just a hint of sweetness, mostly contributed by a scatter of caramelized onions. MGF&D's kimchee is an interesting take on the Korean staple, without any real whang of fermentation but with a fresh, crisp flavor and enough spice to perk up the taste buds. Deviled eggs are creamy, rich and, like the chips & dip, nostalgia-inducing, but not anything special unless you're really in the mood for deviled eggs (I often am).

Small & Medium Dishes

The designation of dishes as "small" or "medium" has often seemed somewhat arbitrary to me. Both are usually appetizer-size, though some of the "mediums" are more substantial and could serve as a small main course.

house salad - the components of this vary from week to week but almost always involve some nice cheese, some nice fruit, and toasted brioche croutons. One variation I recall had champagne grapes, shards of manchego cheese, and a veil of thinly sliced serrano ham. The current menu iteration includes pickled rhubarb, Georgia peaches and the wonderful Midnight Moon goat cheese. There's often another nice salad that features butter lettuce, oranges, hazelnuts, and avocado.

BLT salad - house cured bacon, cut thick, in a classic combination with curly frisee (with a bacon fat dressing, I believe), heirloom tomatoes, and Roaring '40s blue cheese.

panzanella - a simple salad of brightly flavored heirloom tomatoes (you will often see a huge stack of them along the bar in front of the open kitchen) and cubes of toasted bread tossed with a vinaigrette.

pork belly and watermelon salad - cubes of crispy pork belly and cool juicy watermelon, tossed with some slivered onion in a soy-inflected dressing. A happy combination of crispy, salty and sweet.

sweetbread salad - this one didn't stick around long but was nice, a salad of well-salted frisee, tossed with a tangy vinaigrette and some julienned preserved lemon, bits of bacon, and several nubs of fried sweetbreads, crispy on the outside and tender within. My kind of salad.

mussels - steamed with a spicy tomato harissa broth and served over sticky black rice. This boldly flavored dish was a carry-over from the Nemo menu, and is still good. It used to be a regular rotation item but I haven't seen it for a little while.

tuna tartare - Chef Schwartz has previously expressed his chagrin at the difficulty of taking this item off the menu even though he's not able to consistently locally source the tuna to be used for it. Tuna tartare is a ubiquitous dish these days but his is a nice version, paired with grapefruit and chile oil. Interesting that in the latest menu iteration, the original tuna tartare is gone, replaced with a yellowfin tuna crudo with preserved Meyer lemon and fresh hearts of palm.

tuna conserva - yellowfin tuna (brownie points for sustainability), presumably cooked low and slow in olive oil and then served cold in a 1/2 pint mason jar, along with toasts and accompaniments for some "DIY tuna salad" - aioli, capers, thinly sliced radish, finely diced preserved lemon. Like a good quality Spanish canned tuna, this is another item - like the roast chicken discussed below - where I suspect some inspiration has come from Zuni Cafe in San Francisco, which has for some time done a similar dish. (I should mention here that the Zuni Cafe Cookbook is one of my all-time favorites not just for the recipes but also for Judy Rodgers' wonderfully vivid, passionate and useful descriptions of cooking processes and concepts).

"buffalo" frog legs - little tiny frog legs, fried in a light-as-air tempura batter, and served with dipping bowls of a seriously fiery hot sauce and a cooling blue cheese sauce.

crispy grouper cheek - a tender nugget of meat from the "cheek" of the fish, given a crispy coating and served over lemon-infused fregola.

cero mackerel - a local fish which is not usually commercially fished, house-cured, and served with almonds and raisins and a fennel salad. I"m a fan of all the silver-skinned fish and enjoy seeing them put to good use. A more recent menu features a Spanish mackerel done two ways - one cured, the other grilled - and I'm looking forward to trying it.

yellowjack - only saw this dish once, a small filet quickly seared, topped with sea urchin roe, fresh lychee and served in a pool of dashi broth. This is about as "precious" as Chef Schwartz ever gets. While his food is usually more robust and straightforward, he is capable of successfully going elegant and delicate like this when the mood strikes him.

double-yolk egg - cooked in the wood-burning oven in a little ramekin with some melting cheese and roasted tomatoes. Outstanding when cooked right, but sometimes the wood-burning oven can be temperamental and this comes out under- or over-done.

rabbit pâté - a nice slab of house-made pâté, tasting more meaty than liver-y, and studded with pistachios. Usually served with some seasonal jam - may be a tomato jam, may be rhubarb, may be a pomelo mostarda. I actually prefer the rabbit pâté to the duck and foie gras terrine, which I found a little too tight-textured when I tried it once (but I'm always willing to try again).

chicken wings - not a fancy dish at all, the wings are doused with a Thai-style sweet chile sauce and served with a cool raita-like creamy cucumber sauce. More like bar food or "staff meal" than high dining, but for $8 that's nothing to complain about.

duck confit - MGF&D does a good confit, and the pairings change often. For a while this was done with a cauliflower mash and a pear & raisin chutney; more recently it gets a minneola glaze and is served with some frisee tossed with some spiced pumpkin seeds.

lamb-stuffed onion - a big fat Vidalia-style onion is stuffed with Moroccan-spiced ground lamb and roasted in the wood-burning oven and served over a bed of peppery arugula. A server suggested I peel off the charred outer layer of onion and cut up the rest and toss with the arugula like a salad, which worked out well, though this item is not one of my favorites.

porchetta di testa- a head cheese made with pork's head boned out, rolled and tied, and braised for a long time, then cooled, sliced thin, and served with some greens, thinly sliced radishes and capers. This was basically the recipe done by Chris Cosentino of Incanto in this video. The porchetta was more a textural experience than anything else, with each bite giving a little of the meat, the fat, the slightly crunchy ear. Chef Schwartz is an avid proponent of the nose-to-tail school of dining, and I recall one visit when he gleefully shared with us that they had a whole hog in the walk-in and were busily plotting everything the kitchen could make with it.

pork belly - one of the classic MGF&D dishes, a slab of pork belly is cooked slow till tender and then crisped on the outside, topped with some fresh kimchee, toasted peanuts and Paradise Farms pea shoots. A beautiful combination and possibly the greatest pork belly dish I've had. Also a Frod Jr. favorite.

crispy beef cheek - this was one of my favorites when they first opened up, a slab of tender cheek given a crispy coating, served over a bed of celery root puree, sauced with a chocolate reduction (not nearly as odd as it sounds), and plated with a mound of celery root salad for a nice tart contrast to the rich flavors of the beef, puree and sauce. This is another item that's gotten a recent update, with Chef Schwartz turning up the tart flavors even more by pairing with a mustard sauce and pickled onions and artichokes.

crispy pork cheek - another example of the crispy/tender salty/sweet thing, a pork cheek is braised down and then given a light breadcrumb coating to crisp the outside, served with a tangy BBQ sauce and a celeriac slaw. I've also seen a similar prep done with a pork short rib.

Fudge Farms pork shoulder - a different dish from the standard "large" Berkshire pork shoulder done with the parsley sauce and pickled onions described below, this one was slow-roasted till just about ready to fall apart, and served on top of a crouton to soak up the juices and topped with a fennel slaw. Melt-in-your-mouth tender, this was the dish that started my love affair with Fudge Farms pork.

Large and Extra-Large Dishes

At most restaurants that offer "small plates" I tend to gravitate towards those instead of the entree-sized dishes, both because they provide an opportunity to try more things and also because they tend to be more interesting. But there are several dishes at Michael's Genuine that belie this generalization.

kingfish - another of the mackerel family, this was cooked in the wood oven in a terra cotta cazuela along with some shrimp, mussels, calamari and chickpeas, bathed in a harissa-spiked tomato broth, and drizzled with aioli. A nice version of an under-utilized and sometimes difficult fish.

pumpkin swordfish - a local swordfish, grilled, and served over a vegetable ragout studded with tender cippoline onions, fennel, and artichokes, and drizzled with a vibrant saffron aioli. I've seen him do similar preparations with other fish include tilefish and golden trout.

Alaskan salmon - not local, but still a wonderful item when they're in season, I recall shortly after MGF&D opened having an Alaskan sockeye salmon steak (cut crosswise with the central bone intact rather than as a filet), a beautiful dark red, served over a flavorful potato, mushroom and fennel hash.

pork shoulder - a Berkshire pork shoulder is roasted till fall-apart tender, topped with some red pickled onions (making it reminiscent of a cochinita pibil), and the plate drizzled with a bright green, vividly flavored parsley sauce. The Anson Mills cheese grits which come with are just as good as the pork.

skirt steak - this one is a Frod Jr. favorite, a Harris Ranch steak is grilled and served over a potato, asparagus and fennel hash, accompanied with a brightly flavored herb salad and a black olive aioli.

pizza - cooked in the wood oven with toppings that change from week to week. An early iteration of the pizza featured shredded pork, sliced figs, caramelized onions and a sprinkle of cheese. More recently I had one with wilted stinging nettles. Savvy diners may notice that the pizza often is a vehicle for using up some other menu items (roasted pork, short rib), which I see as the mark of an efficient kitchen looking to avoid food waste.

whole "poulet rouge" chicken - I've only had the whole wood oven roasted chicken once and it was one of my favorite dining experiences ever. We sat at the kitchen bar, nursed a bottle of Oregon pinot noir, nibbled on some snacks, and waited (roughly an hour) while Michael tended to the bird in the wood-burning oven. When it came out, it was perfectly cooked and moist, dripping in its own juices, but with wonderfully crispy skin and a bit of smokiness from the oven. The bird is served with some plumped raisins, toasted pine nuts and a toss of arugula, and - if you wish - brought out whole to the plate. They'll happily portion it out for you, but then you'll miss the chance to pick at the carcass. Michael's recipe is basically a dead ringer for the famous roast chicken at Zuni Cafe. I happened to have a chance to try Michael's chicken and the Zuni chicken within a month of each other. My favorite? Michael's.

Vegetables

The more I try them, the more the vegetable sides become one of my favorite sections of the menu at Michael's Genuine.

brussels sprouts - so many people say they don't like brussels sprouts. I think they're just prepared wrong too often. Boiling or steaming just brings out the sulphurous odors - dry heat is the way to go, and Michael's, roasted in the wood-burning oven with cubes of juicy, salty pancetta, are delicious.

local green onions - I first saw these long fat spring onions at the local farmers' market last spring and within a week they were on the menu at MGF&D. Looking like fat scallions that are just starting to form a bulb onion at the base, these were wilted on the grill and served with an herb-infused provencal vinaigrette.

ramps - also quickly wilted, and served with a Vidalia onion coulis to give layers of onion flavor.

cauliflower - roasted in the wood oven and doused with a bright green parsley sauce. Simple and delicious, this is one of our favorites and I love to have leftovers for an omelette the next morning.

wood roasted carrots - big fat knobby carrots which I think came from Bee Heaven Farm, simply roasted in the wood oven to bring out their sweet earthy flavor.

Desserts

Shortly after he opened Michael's Genuine, Michael Schwartz succeeded in luring his fabulous pastry chef from the Nemo days, Hedy Goldsmith, back into the fold. Her desserts match Chef Schwartz's cooking - unfussy, homey, and delicious. The classic dessert at MGF&D is the chocolate cremoso, but we've also really enjoyed the lemon curd, also mentioned above, a peanut butter and banana panini that would have made Elvis happy, a saffron panna cotta, and a great selection of homemade ice creams. One evening we got a sampler and tried a salted caramel (fantastic - Mrs. F wanted a pint to take home), Mexican chocolate (loaded with cinnamon and chile spice), and kumquat creamsicle (a classic old school combination, made new with the tart pucker of the kumquats).

There's always a "cheese of the week" and they're often worth trying as well, which is what I'll sometimes do in lieu of dessert. Probably my favorite discovery was La Tur, a luscious Italian triple-cream cheese, which was plated very simply with a square of oozy honeycomb from local Paradise Farms.

Service at Michael's Genuine can be either outstanding or adventurous. There is a core group of veteran waitstaff who are consummate pros and an absolute pleasure to dine with, but there's simply not enough of them to handle the entire restaurant. For the remainder, there's unfortunately a lot of turnover, and while a few of them have stuck around and succeeded, there are usually always at least a few fresh faces. It's almost never a matter of bad attitude, just sometimes a lack of experience.

The wine list has always done a pretty good job of providing decent value, and of late has made some notable improvements. I've always felt that the list slanted too heavily toward California cabs and Bordeaux blends, which I don't see as the ideal match for MGF&D's food. The selection of pinot noirs in particular has been bolstered lately, but I'd still love to see more options from the Rhone and Spain, which I think would be a better complement to Michael's menu. There's also a somewhat unheralded (at least by me) list of more than 20 mostly craft beers, including a creamy, malty Old Speckled Hen pale ale we had one evening in lieu of wine.

Michael's Genuine has certainly not lacked for champions since it opened, with the New York Times' Frank Bruni naming it fourth last year in the solipsistic list of Top 10 New Restaurants Outside of New York and Gourmet magazine listing it in its Top Farm to Table Restaurants. Now a little more than two years old, it's refreshing and gratifying to see the restaurant is still regularly finding new and interesting things to put on the menu, still dedicated to local, sustainable and artisanal foods, and still absolutely at the top of its game.

Michael's Genuine Food & Drink
130 N.E. 40th Street
Miami, FL 33137
305.573.5550



^[1] Other than Hiro's Yakko-San, that is.

^[2] I happened to be in the restaurant last year on the weekend of the South Beach Wine & Food Festival when Alice Waters was paying a visit to the restaurant along with Jamie Oliver. I have never seen Chef Schwartz so nervous and giddy.

^[3]Personally I still fondly recall a stew of ears and trotters I had at El Meson de Candido in Segovia, but such things are not for everyone.

Sra. Martinez - Miami Design District

[sorry, this restaurant has closed]

I don't believe I've ever seen a restaurant come together quite as quickly as Sra. Martinez did. On October 6, 2008, Domo Japones, which had occupied the old Post Office Building in the Miami Design District for less than a year, shut down. The same day, it was announced that Michelle Bernstein (most recently famed for her eponymous restaurant Michy's on Biscayne Boulevard) would be opening a tapas bar in the space. I've always enjoyed Michelle Bernstein's cooking, back to the days when she was the chef at The Strand, one of the pioneers of the South Beach dining scene. The combination of her talents with a tapas bar format hit a real sweet spot for me (I am sort of a tapas fan), and this was an opening I was eagerly looking forward to.

Less than two months later - and just in time for Art Basel crowds - Sra. Martinez (the name a reference to Chef Bernstein's husband and partner David Martinez) was open for business. The refurbishment of the Domo Japones space (built in the 1920's and originally the Buena Vista Post Office) was done quickly but effectively, with the black & white Naomi Campbell photos swapped out for bullfighting posters, and the primary visual highlights being courtesy of some bright red Philippe Stark "Ghost" chairs and barstools. Most of the restaurant is open to a 2-story height, with the bottom floor taken up on one side by several large horseshoe-shaped booths, with more tables through the middle of the space and the opposite side providing about 15 bar seats, the space behind which is being used as the cold-prep station for the kitchen (which it later occurred to me must have been the sushi bar for the prior incarnation). A staircase ascends to a small upstairs loft, which has two long tables for bigger groups and a small bar (which happens to mix some pretty awesome cocktails, several involving house-made bitters and other intriguing ingredients like ham-infused bourbon). They make a mean Sazerac.

The menu [note: this is a very early iteration of the menu, which has - as is typical for M.B.'s restaurants - evolved and changed over time] clearly shows the influence of a recent trip to Spain. There's a healthy balance between traditional items like boquerones en escabeche, tortilla española, or pimientos de padron, and more contemporary creative items like a pancetta-wrapped rabbit loin with carrot-cumin sauce, sea urchin "sandwich," or crispy pork belly with a fennel-orange marmalade and "Benihana salad".

My first visit was the day after Sra. Martinez opened, yet remarkably the restaurant was running as smoothly as one that had been open for years. The waitstaff knew the menu, the service was efficient, and the kitchen was getting the food out timely (though we've always made clear when we're there that we're happy being served tapas style with dishes coming out as they're ready). We've been back several times, mostly with larger groups, with similar experiences (though our last visit, a final round arrived a good 20 minutes later than anything else, by which point most of our group had already stuffed themselves).

We've now worked our way through most of the menu at this point (in fact our last visit, with a group of ten, caused the kitchen to ask "Who ordered 'the menu'?"), and so I'll try to work my way through the dishes we've tried and identify those that have been my favorites.

crispy artichokes - elegant long-stemmed artichoke hearts, delicately fried with just a hint of a crispy bread crumb coating, served with an aioli dipping sauce brightened with a liberal dose of lemon. Have had these several times now and they're always good.

bacon wrapped dates - these seem to be the official snack of the Design District, with Sra. M, MGF&D and Pacific Time all having served their own variations. Sra. M's, like many of the dishes here, play on the salty-sweet thing, with a sweet date paired with salty bacon and a filling of Spanish blue cheese.

boquerones - traditional white Spanish anchovies marinated in vinegar. Nothing special, but good if you like such things. Me, I'm a big fan of the shiny-skinned fish.

pimientos de padron - another classic tapas bar item, these little green peppers - basically the same critter the Japanese call "shishito" - are quickly sauteed with olive oil over high heat till their skins blister, and sprinkled generously with sea salt, and have an herbaceous, smoky flavor. An added thrill is that roughly one in ten pack some serious spicy heat, so that eating a bowl of them is a bit like a culinary version of Russian Roulette. And this gives me an excuse to link to a Calvin Trillin piece on the peppers, which is always a good thing.

charred fava salad - this was a new item from my most recent visit and a nice one, the favas having their characteristic earthy flavor, and also a whiff of smoky spice (chipotle?). I preferred this to other salads I've had there, which were unmemorable.

croquetas - the filling of the croquetas has varied from visit to visit - sometimes wild mushrooms, more recently chorizo. These are very light in texture, but I've found the flavor of the fillings to be difficult to discern.

poached egg - I've seen this a couple different ways. The first time, it was poached then fried (a technique Jonathan Eismann uses at Pacific Time too) and served on a bed of crispy kale and serrano ham; the next visit, it was just a garden-variety, perfectly poached egg, over a nice hash of chorizo and potato. This one would surely please Jonathan Mardukus - [2:20 mark]. The Spaniards understand that eggs are delicious for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and Sra. M gets it too.

tortilla española - a somewhat small hockey puck sized portion of the classic Spanish omelette, but not too dried out like you often find it here in the States. Even better with some diced chorizo (what isn't?).

pan con tomate - a simple dish - just crusty bread rubbed with garlic and tomato and drizzled with olive oil - but one that can be wonderful when done right (like at Paco Meralgo in Bacelona). The bread was a weak link here, seemed like garden-variety Cuban bread that was too spongy and insipid, and not enough olive oil.

crispy eggplant - thin disks of eggplant are fried till crispy and drizzled with dark honey. A great combination, and one that sounds somewhat avant garde, but actually a fairly common Spanish tapa.

piquillo peppers - these smoky Spanish peppers with just a hint of piquancy are wonderful things, and they're served simply with a drizzle of good olive oil. A simple traditional tapa, good but nothing extraordinary.

patatas bravas - another traditional Spanish tapas item, typically cubes of potato are twice-fried and served dressed with a fiery tomato sauce, and often accompanied with an aioli as well. The first time I had these, the bravas sauce was too sweet, and the portion too dainty. Both issues were fixed on a subsequent visit, by which time these had become "untraditional" bravas with Peruvian dipping sauces. The tomato-based sauce was now happily fiery, and an aji amarillo sauce made for a nice alternative. I now understand the dish has been tweaked even further in the Peruvian direction, with potato skins subbing for the cubed potatoes and a salsa huancaina in the mix. This tilt towards Latin America seems to have generally become stronger over the few months since Sra. Martinez first opened.

prawns a la plancha - massive head-on "Madagascar prawns" were grilled head-on and whole, and served with cloves of "confit garlic" and a shmear of a smooth chimichurri sauce. I always love good head-on shrimp, but this dish seemed caught somewhere between a classic gambas a la plancha (simply grilled, often with nothing other than sea salt) and a gambas al ajillo (sauteed in olive oil and lots of garlic) and fell a bit short of either. I believe this has undergone some metamorphosis as the menu has been updated.

clams - steamed open with sherry, garlic, chiles and roasted tomatoes, I thought these were fantastic, juicy and loaded with flavor. Unfortunately, they are also off the menu, as M.B. said they weren't getting ordered often enough. What a shame. I hope they make a comeback.

white bean stew w/ duck & foie sausage - a great dish. Mammoth white beans (like the gigantic judion beans I recall seeing in Segovia) are served with big hunks of botifarra sausage made with duck and foie gras, all laced with a port reduction that gives the dish a hint of sweetness. M.B. gives full credit to the legendary Barcelona restaurant Cal Pep for the inspiration for this dish, though she self-deprecatingly says her version is not as good as the original.

garbanzos - the first couple times I had these, the beans were done with crumbled morcilla (blood sausage) and cubes of sauteed apple, a combination I quite liked. On my most recent visit, the recipe had changed, and they instead were flavored with an overpowering dose of orange. I liked the initial iteration much better.

sea urchin "sandwich" - another of my favorites, sea urchin roe, together with some soy-ginger butter, are pressed within some crusty bread, Cuban sandwich style. I usually don't like my uni messed with at all, but I thought the soy-ginger notes complimented and enhanced the salty, sweet, spicy flavors of the uni. On later visits the portion sizing of this seems to have been downscaled and it may not be the greatest value for the price.

calamari a la plancha - grilled calamari, served over a bed of arroz negro flavored and colored with squid ink and ringed with a circle of green herb oil.

pork belly - the pork belly is crispy outside, tender within, topped with a smidge of a not-too-sweet fennel orange marmalade, and accompanied with a "Benihana salad" (which is indeed much like its namesake). One of the standout dishes.

galbi pinchos - short ribs sliced thin across the bone, dim-sum style, marinated in a Korean style sweet soy sauce, and served with a kohlrabi "slaw" of thinly sliced and vinegared rounds of kohlrabi, reminiscent of a Korean banchan. A little chewy, but tasty.

rabo encendido - liked this one quite a bit, oxtails given a long braise, the meat then pulled and shredded and stacked onto little toasts. The meat was wonderfully tender and richly flavored, even if I missed the opportunity to gnaw on the ends of the bones.

rabbit loin - this is a dish I'd had as a special at Michy's previously, a loin of rabbit is wrapped in bacon and served with sauteed rounds of carrot, a carrot-cumin sauce, and cubes of panisse (chick-pea fries). One of the best rabbit preps I've ever had, and was just as good at Sra. M as it had been at Michy's. Unfortunately it was not on the menu for my last visit.

sweetbreads - Any sweetbread dish at Michy's is always one of the high points. Chef Bernstein has a complete mastery of the things, achieving a wonderfully light and crispy exterior while still preserving the ethereal, delicate fluffy interior, and I've had some fantastic pairings at Michy's. The initial incarnation of a sweetbread dish at Sra. M. was just as good for the prep of the sweetbreads themselves, but the pairing (a romesco sauce and a caperberry) was disappointingly bland. On my last visit, there was a new version, this one topped with a semi-sweet orange sauce and plated with some lettuce leaves for making sweetbread lettuce wraps. A vast improvement and a really nice twist.

marrow bones - a great ingredient but a flawed execution the time I tried them. Each order comes with 4 bones, the shanks split lengthwise in half and then crosswise into roughly 2-inch lengths so that the marrow is exposed. Unfortunately there was a lot of variation from one piece to the next so that one might be loaded with marrow and the other have almost none, and also there were little shards of bone which easily broke off. A shame, as I am a huge fan of roasted marrow and had a similar dish done just perfectly at Michy's on one visit (served there with a pear gremolata).

cheese plate - a simple presentation of three cheeses (a Manchego, a Mucria al Vino, and a Valdeon blue when we ordered it), each with a little dab of a different jam or marmalade to accompany it.

donuts - dulce de leche filled donuts, accompanied with a coffee granita (coffee and donuts!). The coffee granita was pleasantly strong and not too sweet.

goat cheese and honey - listed as a dessert but really more of a cheese course, a round of a really nice goat cheese (pale and creamy in the center, gooey and golden around the edges, with a soft white rind) is warmed, topped with a smear of honey and a sprinkle of fresh thyme leaves, served with olive oil crackers for spreading. I often love the combination of cheese and honey and this really worked for me.

torrejas - basically french toast for dessert, this tasted like it was made with a panettone-type bread, sweet and dense with hints of dried fruits. Since one of my favorite treats is to make french toast from panettone, this made me very happy.

greek yogurt ice cream - an interesting play between sweet and savory, with a very yogurt-y ice cream accompanied by a sweet tomato marmalade and another sweet syrupy component (reduced balsamic?).

There are a few entree-sized items on the menu - a steak, a fish, a chicken - but they seem to be there primarily to appease those folks who can't get into the tapas spirit. The one time I was with a group that ordered one of these, the fish, it was perfectly fine but completely unexciting. The lesson - stick with the tapas.

The wine list is exclusively Spanish and has a number of interesting items and some real bargains, including an Alto Moncayo Veraton (a modern-styled garnacha) very fairly priced at $55, and an eminently drinkable Borsao Compo de Borja garnacha/tempranillo blend for only $20. On another occasion I had a nice Rioja with some bottle age on it, a 2001 La Rioja Alta Viña Alberdi, for only a bit over 2x retail.

As often as not, Michelle Bernstein will be in the house making sure everything is running right (she regularly does double-duty here and at Michy's up Biscayne Blvd. the same night), though it's her former sous chef from Michy's, Berenice de Araujo, running the kitchen at Sra. Martinez. Portions can be on the small side, and prices have crept up a bit from when they first opened, with most items involving a protein around $15. Since a typical meal may be 3+ dishes it is certainly not a cheap meal, in contrast to the Spanish tapas bars it is patterned after. But it'll be a good meal, and the place also lends itself to having a little snack and a drink at the bar instead of a full-blown meal, perhaps even before a meal as you head off to one of the Design District's other eating establishments.

Sra. Martinez
4000 N.E. 2nd Ave.
Miami, FL
305-573-5474

Offal Strange

In a piece on Houston restaurant Feast, Frank Bruni writes:

Feast would, in fact, be a gamble anywhere in America, because the menu doesn’t just slip in a little tongue here, a little liver there. It’s a full-on, extended ode to offal that has no real peer in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and other major cities that pride themselves on their epicurean adventurousness.

Umm, perhaps maybe you've heard of some guy in San Francisco named Chris Cosentino - has a restaurant called Incanto, is so dedicated to offal he runs a website called Offal Good? No? How about Cochon in New Orleans, where at any given time you can have rabbit livers, boudin, pork cheeks, hogshead cheese and pig-ear salad?

Look, the restaurant sounds lovely, much like the culinary version of a St. John cover band (one of the chefs spent several years there, and even the website tries to imitate the retro-minimalist look and feel of that bastion of nose-to-tail eating), and I'm all in favor of paying attention to the nasty bits, but let's not get carried away. Especially when less than a third of the items on the current menu on Feast's website actually feature offal. It's not exactly like the trend has eluded Bruni's home town, either, where a place like Casa Mono likely has a comparable number and ratio of dishes using "spare parts" (pig's feet, lamb tongue, sweetbreads, foie, cockscombs, tripe, bone marrow, duck hearts, pork belly anyone?)

It Takes Guts

I'm not sure what it says about the current state of our foodways that a chef can solicit unpaid volunteers to work for free for five days carving up and prepping a melange of various bits of guts and make it sound like the the opportunity of a lifetime - but I think it's a good thing.

Chris Cosentino of Incanto in San Francisco is proposing to take in two volunteers (professional chefs only) to spend five days prepping for one of their head-to-tail dinners. What's in it for the volunteers? Well, you can learn what to do with the likes of goose intestines and beef hearts, for one. And you get both the cutesy "I [Heart] Offal" and the more visceral "Lips and Assholes" t-shirts. And you actually get to rest and dine on your own creations on the final night.

I regretted missing Incanto on my last visit to San Francisco, this sounds like my kind of food.