I noted in earlier posts the curious phenomenon of similar dishes multiplying like tribbles across menus throughout the country. Today, Food & Wine predicts that sea urchin will be the "Next It Sandwich," giving props to Michael White at the newly opened Marea, George Mendes at the newly opened Aldea, and El Quinto Pino, a tapas spot in Chelsea. One curious omission? Michelle Bernstein, who has had her uni sandwich (which was wowing folks at the James Beard Awards a couple months ago) on the menu at Sra. Martinez since it opened last December. At least the New York Times gave due credit when it ran a similar story last month, as did an earlier blogger's recounting of the genesis of the dish (sort of) at El Quinto Pino.
Not that the increasing prevalence of uni sandwiches is anything to complain about, of course.
Showing posts with label tapas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tapas. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Chef Allen's - North Miami Beach
[sorry, this restaurant has closed]Allen Susser was one of the original pioneers of what has been variously called the "Mango Gang" or "Floribbean" or "New Florida" cuisine back in the late 1980's, along with such illustrious names as Norman Van Aken, Douglas Rodriguez, Mark Militello and Jonathan Eismann. While each of his compadres has had restaurants come and go over the years, Chef Susser is now running on a 23-year stretch at his original location in North Miami Beach (n/k/a Aventura), Chef Allen's - a truly remarkable feat given the failure rate of most restaurants.
It had probably been close to a decade since I'd last been to Chef Allen's, and I'll confess that I didn't miss it that much. What had seemed creative 20 years ago instead just seemed old-hat and uninspired on my last couple visits. The restaurant, its menu, and its clientele all seemed somewhat dusty and dated. A rather formal atmosphere seemed stilted and out-of-place. Perhaps hearing the refrain of "What a drag it is getting old," about a year ago Chef Susser gave Chef Allen's a major makeover. The dining room was updated and made both more contemporary and more casual, and the menu was given a major tweak to become a "Modern Seafood Bistro." I figured it was time for a repeat visit.
Chef Susser has not abandoned the mango entirely. Indeed, with South Florida in the middle of mango season, they could be found literally everywhere: each table in the restaurant had as its centerpiece a fresh mango. And, among many clever marketing gimmicks, Chef Susser offers a free dinner for two to anyone who brings in a wheelbarrow full of mangos to the restaurant. Given what a prolific season we're having, I suspect that there have been several folks who have taken advantage of that offer.
But the menu is not as reliant on the tropical fruits that were one of the calling cards of the original "Mango Gang." Picking up on a few prevalent local trends, Chef Allen's now offers an extended selection of smaller dishes, some of which are "snack"-size and others more customary appetizer portions, with mains focusing on locally sourced sustainable seafood and steaks cooked on a wood-burning grill. For us, the most interesting sounding items all resided in the "starters" section of the menu, so that's where we stayed, ordering six items (ranging in price from $4 to $11) to share plus a vegetable side.
Devils on horseback (bacon-wrapped dates, a/k/a the Official Snack of the Design District) were wrapped with nice meaty bacon, and stuffed with Manchego cheese instead of blue as we've seen elsewhere (much to Mrs. F's satisfaction, as she doesn't like blue cheeses), and also used a fatter, plumper date than we've had in other iterations. Saffron arroncini were a very pleasant surprise, little balls of saffron-inflected risotto given a crispy coating and fried. These were smaller than most arroncini I've had (I'd say tater-tot size) which gave a nice ratio of crispy exterior to creamy rice interior; the accompanying tomato jam I found to be a little too sweet.
Caesar salad was prepared tableside in the traditional manner, a nice nostalgic touch, and a really good caesar salad to boot. The dressing was redolent with garlic, lemon and anchovy all happily competing for attention, and an untraditional addition of toasted sesame seeds contributed nice texture and flavor.[*]
A tuna poke (a traditional Hawaiian dish of cubed raw tuna somewhat similar to a ceviche), marinated with tangerine segments, soy, ginger, and mint, and sprinkled with wasabi-spiked caviar, was something of a disappointment, the cubes of tuna a little chewy, and the flavor of the citrus somewhat overwhelming. This one flop was made up for by the shrimp & grits "brûlée", a delicious dish even if it is completely unlike any lowcountry shrimp 'n' grits. Instead, wild Florida shrimp are paired with some creamy Anson Mills grits, which are supplemented with Manchego cheese, cubes of tomato, bacon lardons, and shallots, piled into a ramekin and then run under the broiler until it's toasty and browned on top. I'd swear there were some unadvertised bits of lobster meat in the mix as well. This was a delicious dish which alone was worth the trip (and definitely worth the $10 price).
| Shrimp & Grits Brulee, photo credit: Jacob Katel |
We also liked the Kyoto clam "hot pot," a generous portion for $10 of little, firm, meaty clams, steamed open in a broth of soy, sake, scallions and red peppers, with an unorthodox addition of sweet cooked bananas. Mrs. F liked everything about the dish but the bananas - they didn't offend my sensibilities, I'd even go so far as to say I liked them. If nothing else, I appreciate the boldness of the pairing. A side of a spinach fondue was too heavy on the cream and cheese, and too light on the spinach, to be considered a bona fide "vegetable side." Though it was good, it was perhaps overwhelmingly rich, though that didn't keep me from dunking bread even after all the spinach was gone.
Entrees mostly ranged from $20-30 but were a somewhat limited and - to us, at least - unexciting selection. While fish got an entire page of the menu, including a praise-worthy statement of commitment to sustainable fish and seafood, the offerings included only four fish options (snapper, yellowfin tuna, mahi mahi, and yellowtail), a fried calamari dish, a pasta dish featuring shrimp, and, perhaps most intriguing, a "surf & turf" with grilled shrimp and beef short ribs. The non-fish entrees also play it pretty close to the vest - skirt steak with chimichurri, filet with red wine demi-glace, burger, shortribs, pork chop, chicken paillard.
But that was OK, as our multitude of starters turned out to be plenty of food to make a meal, and is the way we often like to dine. And the price was certainly fair, with the food portion of our bill being under $60. Mrs. F vetoed dessert, which is too bad as I do have fond recollections of Chef Susser's "Kit Kats" dessert. The $25 corkage fee was money well spent, as the 2002 Hudelot-Noellat Chambolle-Musigny Les Charmes I brought was freaking awesome, if I may say so.
Aside from the recent menu overhaul, Chef Allen's does a good job of finding other ways to bring folks in. Throughout the summer they are offering free interactive cooking classes on Fridays from 6pm-7pm (conveniently before dinner time, you'll note), on Father's Day they're offering to let Dad cut his own steak to be grilled on their Lyonnaise wood-burning grill, and every Wednesday is "Wine Down Wednesday" with all bottles on the list offered at half price. You don't stick around for more than twenty years in the restaurant business without learning a few new tricks along the way, and it's reassuring to see that Chef Allen's keeps working on ways to keep things fresh.
Chef Allen's
19088 N.E. 29th Avenue
Aventura, FL 33180
305.935.2900
[*]OK, Miami restaurant historians: years ago (10+) there was, briefly, a restaurant on Lincoln Road called Lure which had sushi and an odd but good Asian/Mediterranean menu. They made one of the best caesar salads I've ever had, with a tahini-based dressing and tempura-fried anchovies. The only online reference I can find to it is in this article from 1997. Any idea who was behind the place?
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Eos - Downtown Miami
I may have come across as not so warm to Eos, the new restaurant in the Viceroy Hotel from the Michael Psilakis/Donatella Arpaia team. But, despite my mixed feelings about big hotel restaurants from out-of-town chefs, I was pretty excited by the preview menu I saw and was looking forward to trying it. We finally did so this weekend.
Actually, we started the evening at "Club 50," the lounge on the 50th floor of the Viceroy Hotel, which itself is just a small part of the Phillipe Starck designed Icon Brickell Tower development (the Viceroy's website actually says the club is for Icon members and hotel guests only - whoops!). The Kelly Wearstler-designed space is unique, combining 1930's era shapes with a 1970's era color palette (black and white marble floors, teal walls, lime green chairs) for a rather compelling Goldfinger-esque effect. There was a familiar face behind the bar - the former bartender from Sra. Martinez (and before that Michy's), whose name, I'm embarassed to admit, escapes me (my bar tab said "Freddy" but that doesn't sound right). I tried a "Viceroy Old Fashioned," a variation on the traditional drink made here with Ron Zacapa Centenario 23, a Guatemalan rum made with from a blend of 6 to 23 year old rums aged in former Bourbon, sherry and Pedro Ximenez barrels, along with a dash of simple syrup, bitters, and grapefruit and lime peels. It was a good drink, a little lighter on its feet than the traditional bourbon version. Mrs. F liked their take on a pisco sour.
The restaurant was somewhat challenging to locate. We went down to the 15th floor, and then had to pass through some unmarked black doors and around a hallway to find it (it may be easier if you go directly from another set of elevators from the hotel lobby). From the receptionist's desk, we wound around yet another hallway and eventually ended up in the restaurant, also done up in similar style by Kelly Wearstler with one wall of horseshoe banquettes and a few long rows of tables. By 8-9 o'clock the room was roughly half full (it's a pretty sizable space) and had a decent buzz without being terribly noisy.
The menu, created by New York wunderkind Michael Psilakis, is almost all small plates, priced mostly in a range of $10-15, which stay true to his reinvented contemporary Greek stylings. A good number of these are raw fish items with unusual pairings (many ambiguously labelled as "sushi/sashimi" - more on that below), supplemented by several vegetable items, and some cooked fish and meat dishes. There's also a short listing of larger fish and meat items which can be had as an entree or to split. Our waiter suggested ordering about 4 of the small dishes each for a meal or a couple and a larger item as an entree. We stuck with the small plates and had nairagi and salmon "sushi/sashimi", a botan ebi ceviche, a cheese plate, smoked octopus, lobster and uni risotto, and a spiedini sampler.
We weren't sure when we ordered the "sushi/sashimi" items whether this was intended as an "Option A and B" or a generic descriptor (we said "sushi" just to find out). After all, sushi really refers to rice (and more broadly to various items served atop rice), whereas sashimi is sliced raw fish sans rice. It turned out not to make a difference what we said, as each of these brought three strips of raw fish (no rice) bedecked with their unusual pairings. Chopsticks were brought out for eating these. The nairagi (a Hawaiian striped marlin, whose flesh has a whitish-pink hue) was very nice - fresh, a bit meaty and firm like a swordfish, and the pairing elements (pistachio, apricot and speck) worked nicely, the predominant one being the crisped-up speck.
The salmon, on the other hand, was an unmitigated disappointment - fishy and oversalted. I couldn't even tell you whether the unusual accompaniments of mastic (a resin derived from a Greek evergreen tree), rhubarb and pickled mushroom might have been successful, as the quality of the fish and overseasoning made it impossible to notice anything else.
The botan ebi (Japanese prawn) ceviche, spiked with cubes of papaya, was delicate and balanced, with the large dice of shrimp still tender, but not very exciting. The presentation, in a tubelike elongated glass bowl, was beautiful but did not completely distract from the fact that this was a rather parsimonious serving for $12.
The cheese plate which followed was decent but unexceptional. Three cheeses - a Cabrales blue, a Brunet (a nice creamy, oozy goat cheese), and one firmer cheese which I'm not now recalling - were plated with some membrillo, some macerated raisins, and pasteli (Greek sesame candy). This last was an unusual pairing, as its super-crunchy texture and tooth-sticking qualities didn't particularly seem a good match for the cheeses.
The smoked octopus came with a dice of pineapple and batonettes of sopressata, served over skordalia (a Greek garlic and walnut sauce). The octopus was tender and flavorful and the dish was an inspired combination. I am generally a sucker for the pairing of seafood and pork products, and this was a good one, with the pineapple and skordalia both providing nice complementary notes. I would have liked more of this - and indeed, the one skinny tentacle seemed a little dainty for the $13 price tag. For $4 more, the octopus dish at Michael's Genuine offers a serving nearly 2-3 times the size (given the difference in location, it would perhaps be unfair to point out that the great $9 grilled octopus app at Anise Taverna is also probably also about 3x the portion).
The lobster and sea urchin risotto which came next was the best thing we had all night. The waiter brought a rimmed plate, on which was a raw egg yolk, a couple "tongues" of uni, and a dollop of caviar. He made a little production of breaking up the egg yolk and uni with a spoon and then, from a small pot, dished over them a rich lobster risotto, mixing it all together at the table. The little production is not just for show, as it helped preserve the uni's delicate perfume and kept it from being completely overwhelmed and overcooked. This was a luxurious dish, with the egg yolk adding further richness to an already buttery risotto. The lobster - and there was quite a bit of it - was completely tender and perfectly cooked, also not an easy feat. At $16, this dish was a fantastic value, particularly compared to some of the other items we had (though Mrs. F still claims she can make a better risotto).
The spiedini "Mia Dona" brought pork involtini (stuffed with melting cheese), quail, sweetbreads, merguez sausage, and lamb tseftalia. The sausages were the real standouts here, both the spicy merguez and the more delicate but still robust tseftalia.
Despite my kvatching about value and portions on some of the items, we ended up eating a good amount of food for about $90 and did not leave hungry (though the desserts did not interest Mrs. F anyway). A couple other nice touches - some complimentary petit fours at the end of our meal (a little muffin-like cake, a coconut marshmallow, and a passionfruit jelly); and the valet parking is fully comped by the restaurant (one of the real drags of hotel dining is having to pay for parking). Service was friendly, our waiter was helpful in guiding us on how much to order, and they did a good job of grouping the courses to pace the meal appropriately. But there were some lapses. For instance, although we were sharing almost everything and the dishes were mostly presented as "small plates", we were never given any extra plates for sharing - even when the spiedini sampler was presented on a skinny wooden plank laid across the middle of the table.
One other real oddity is that there is basically no wine list to speak of. The menu lists about 5 each of whites and reds and a few bubblies, with prices by the glass and by the bottle. I asked for a wine list, and was told this was it. I'm all in favor of the "carefully selected" school of wine lists, but that's a little ridiculous. And, if I recall correctly, not a single Greek wine on the incredibly short list, despite tremendous improvements in the quality of Greek wines of late.
I appreciated the creative menu, I always enjoy the small dishes format, and some items - the nairagi, the smoked octopus, the lobster and uni risotto - were very good, but there were definitely some misses too. It was a place I wouldn't mind going back to, but don't know that I'd actively seek to return. Unfortunately, the overall experience did little to dissuade me of my concern that we are getting the "brand" but not the talent of the famous restaurants that are opening up satellite offices here in Miami. Michael Psilakis' Anthos is one of only two Michelin starred Greek restaurants in the world. Eos is not going to be the third.
Eos
Viceroy Hotel
485 Brickell Avenue
Miami, FL 33131
305.503.4400
Actually, we started the evening at "Club 50," the lounge on the 50th floor of the Viceroy Hotel, which itself is just a small part of the Phillipe Starck designed Icon Brickell Tower development (the Viceroy's website actually says the club is for Icon members and hotel guests only - whoops!). The Kelly Wearstler-designed space is unique, combining 1930's era shapes with a 1970's era color palette (black and white marble floors, teal walls, lime green chairs) for a rather compelling Goldfinger-esque effect. There was a familiar face behind the bar - the former bartender from Sra. Martinez (and before that Michy's), whose name, I'm embarassed to admit, escapes me (my bar tab said "Freddy" but that doesn't sound right). I tried a "Viceroy Old Fashioned," a variation on the traditional drink made here with Ron Zacapa Centenario 23, a Guatemalan rum made with from a blend of 6 to 23 year old rums aged in former Bourbon, sherry and Pedro Ximenez barrels, along with a dash of simple syrup, bitters, and grapefruit and lime peels. It was a good drink, a little lighter on its feet than the traditional bourbon version. Mrs. F liked their take on a pisco sour.
The restaurant was somewhat challenging to locate. We went down to the 15th floor, and then had to pass through some unmarked black doors and around a hallway to find it (it may be easier if you go directly from another set of elevators from the hotel lobby). From the receptionist's desk, we wound around yet another hallway and eventually ended up in the restaurant, also done up in similar style by Kelly Wearstler with one wall of horseshoe banquettes and a few long rows of tables. By 8-9 o'clock the room was roughly half full (it's a pretty sizable space) and had a decent buzz without being terribly noisy.
The menu, created by New York wunderkind Michael Psilakis, is almost all small plates, priced mostly in a range of $10-15, which stay true to his reinvented contemporary Greek stylings. A good number of these are raw fish items with unusual pairings (many ambiguously labelled as "sushi/sashimi" - more on that below), supplemented by several vegetable items, and some cooked fish and meat dishes. There's also a short listing of larger fish and meat items which can be had as an entree or to split. Our waiter suggested ordering about 4 of the small dishes each for a meal or a couple and a larger item as an entree. We stuck with the small plates and had nairagi and salmon "sushi/sashimi", a botan ebi ceviche, a cheese plate, smoked octopus, lobster and uni risotto, and a spiedini sampler.
We weren't sure when we ordered the "sushi/sashimi" items whether this was intended as an "Option A and B" or a generic descriptor (we said "sushi" just to find out). After all, sushi really refers to rice (and more broadly to various items served atop rice), whereas sashimi is sliced raw fish sans rice. It turned out not to make a difference what we said, as each of these brought three strips of raw fish (no rice) bedecked with their unusual pairings. Chopsticks were brought out for eating these. The nairagi (a Hawaiian striped marlin, whose flesh has a whitish-pink hue) was very nice - fresh, a bit meaty and firm like a swordfish, and the pairing elements (pistachio, apricot and speck) worked nicely, the predominant one being the crisped-up speck.
The salmon, on the other hand, was an unmitigated disappointment - fishy and oversalted. I couldn't even tell you whether the unusual accompaniments of mastic (a resin derived from a Greek evergreen tree), rhubarb and pickled mushroom might have been successful, as the quality of the fish and overseasoning made it impossible to notice anything else.
The botan ebi (Japanese prawn) ceviche, spiked with cubes of papaya, was delicate and balanced, with the large dice of shrimp still tender, but not very exciting. The presentation, in a tubelike elongated glass bowl, was beautiful but did not completely distract from the fact that this was a rather parsimonious serving for $12.
The cheese plate which followed was decent but unexceptional. Three cheeses - a Cabrales blue, a Brunet (a nice creamy, oozy goat cheese), and one firmer cheese which I'm not now recalling - were plated with some membrillo, some macerated raisins, and pasteli (Greek sesame candy). This last was an unusual pairing, as its super-crunchy texture and tooth-sticking qualities didn't particularly seem a good match for the cheeses.
The smoked octopus came with a dice of pineapple and batonettes of sopressata, served over skordalia (a Greek garlic and walnut sauce). The octopus was tender and flavorful and the dish was an inspired combination. I am generally a sucker for the pairing of seafood and pork products, and this was a good one, with the pineapple and skordalia both providing nice complementary notes. I would have liked more of this - and indeed, the one skinny tentacle seemed a little dainty for the $13 price tag. For $4 more, the octopus dish at Michael's Genuine offers a serving nearly 2-3 times the size (given the difference in location, it would perhaps be unfair to point out that the great $9 grilled octopus app at Anise Taverna is also probably also about 3x the portion).
The lobster and sea urchin risotto which came next was the best thing we had all night. The waiter brought a rimmed plate, on which was a raw egg yolk, a couple "tongues" of uni, and a dollop of caviar. He made a little production of breaking up the egg yolk and uni with a spoon and then, from a small pot, dished over them a rich lobster risotto, mixing it all together at the table. The little production is not just for show, as it helped preserve the uni's delicate perfume and kept it from being completely overwhelmed and overcooked. This was a luxurious dish, with the egg yolk adding further richness to an already buttery risotto. The lobster - and there was quite a bit of it - was completely tender and perfectly cooked, also not an easy feat. At $16, this dish was a fantastic value, particularly compared to some of the other items we had (though Mrs. F still claims she can make a better risotto).
The spiedini "Mia Dona" brought pork involtini (stuffed with melting cheese), quail, sweetbreads, merguez sausage, and lamb tseftalia. The sausages were the real standouts here, both the spicy merguez and the more delicate but still robust tseftalia.
Despite my kvatching about value and portions on some of the items, we ended up eating a good amount of food for about $90 and did not leave hungry (though the desserts did not interest Mrs. F anyway). A couple other nice touches - some complimentary petit fours at the end of our meal (a little muffin-like cake, a coconut marshmallow, and a passionfruit jelly); and the valet parking is fully comped by the restaurant (one of the real drags of hotel dining is having to pay for parking). Service was friendly, our waiter was helpful in guiding us on how much to order, and they did a good job of grouping the courses to pace the meal appropriately. But there were some lapses. For instance, although we were sharing almost everything and the dishes were mostly presented as "small plates", we were never given any extra plates for sharing - even when the spiedini sampler was presented on a skinny wooden plank laid across the middle of the table.
One other real oddity is that there is basically no wine list to speak of. The menu lists about 5 each of whites and reds and a few bubblies, with prices by the glass and by the bottle. I asked for a wine list, and was told this was it. I'm all in favor of the "carefully selected" school of wine lists, but that's a little ridiculous. And, if I recall correctly, not a single Greek wine on the incredibly short list, despite tremendous improvements in the quality of Greek wines of late.
I appreciated the creative menu, I always enjoy the small dishes format, and some items - the nairagi, the smoked octopus, the lobster and uni risotto - were very good, but there were definitely some misses too. It was a place I wouldn't mind going back to, but don't know that I'd actively seek to return. Unfortunately, the overall experience did little to dissuade me of my concern that we are getting the "brand" but not the talent of the famous restaurants that are opening up satellite offices here in Miami. Michael Psilakis' Anthos is one of only two Michelin starred Greek restaurants in the world. Eos is not going to be the third.
Eos
Viceroy Hotel
485 Brickell Avenue
Miami, FL 33131
305.503.4400
Friday, April 24, 2009
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
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
El Carajo International Tapas & Wine - Miami
One of my colleagues, after seeing the Robert Rodriguez movie "From Dusk Till Dawn," described the scene in the Mexican bar, when Santanico Pandemonium (Salma Hayek) is dancing and ultimately reveals herself and the other bar denizens to be vicious vampires,* as the most dramatic paradigm shift since the transition from black and white to color in "The Wizard of Oz." That might be a stretch. But there's a comparable, though much more pleasant, paradigm shift when you walk into the gas station on the corner of US1 and S.W. 17th Avenue. Seemingly just an everyday gas station (used to be a Citgo, think it's now BP), once you go past the sodas and beers and sundries, you'll discover in the back a remarkable little wine shop and tapas bar which goes by the (apparently laden with double-entendre in Spanish) name of El Carajo.The wall of wines lining the back holds a number of choices you'd never expect to find in a gas station. I just happened to be sitting last time in front of the Australia and South America sections, and glimpsed multiple different releases from Mollydooker, some Achaval-Ferrer Quimira, Montes Alpha Folly, and many other intriguing bottles. While the prices may not be the cheapest in town, here's a good deal - take anything off the wall, have it with your tapas, and you'll pay only $10 corkage.
The menu lists a surprisingly deep (for a gas station) selection of cold and hot tapas as well as paellas and more substantial entrees. I've stuck mostly with the tapas. On a recent visit I tried boquerones, very nice Spanish white anchovies in a pungent vinaigrette loaded with onion; fresh sardines, grilled and bathed in olive oil and lemon; and a tortilla de chorizo, a substantial slice for $4, redolent with the paprika-spiked sausage but a wee bit dry for my taste (though you rarely see here in the U.S. the more oozy tortillas you often find in Spain). On other occasions I've had their gambas al ajillo (decent), chistorras al vino (bright red little sausages cooked in wine, the wine and oil making a fantastic dipping sauce for their good bread), and a decent if somewhat oversalted caldo gallego.
When I first started to visit El Carajo, they used to have what I thought was possibly the finest tapa I'd ever eaten in South Florida - piquillo peppers stuffed with a bacalao mousse, lightly fried, and topped with a squid ink sauce. However, as a result of a chef change, the dish is now a shadow of its former self. When I last ordered it, the codfish stuffing was unpleasantly dry, and the sauce was just a nebbish red pepper sauce. This used to be a dish I'd actively pine for - it's now no longer worth ordering.
But there's still plenty else good to be had, somehow made all the more enjoyable by the incongruous location.
El Carajo International Tapas & Wine
2465 S.W. 17th Avenue
Miami, FL 33145
305.856.2424
*Now that I made you think of it, let me save you the effort: here's the trailer, and here's the dance scene in its entirety.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
IM Tapas - Naples
We had a quick hit-and-run visit to the west coast of Florida a few weeks ago and ended up at IM Tapas after being told there was an hour-long wait at USS Nemo (unbelievable how busy some places were - the Naples real estate market sure shows the state of the economy, but you'd never know it from some of the restaurants). The menu was a nice mix of straight-ahead old-school tapas and some newer more contemporary twists, including, in addition to the regular menu, a printed list of about 10-12 daily specials (which, somewhat disconcertingly, had no prices listed). We had Frod Jr. and Little Miss F in tow and collectively got to try several items.
beet salad - the now-classic pairing of roasted beets and goat cheese, enlivened here with a sprinkle of pine nuts and little bits of crispy serrano ham. Nice presentation too, with slices of beet layered with goat cheese and stacked impressively in a tower.
fabada - a classic bean stew, and a nice rendition here, with big fat white beans and a rich broth, studded with chunks of chorizo and morcilla.
fried calamari - one of Little Miss F's favorites, the calamari were generously dusted with what I believe was pimenton (Spanish smoked paprika) and served with a spicy tomato dipping sauce.
skewered pork - very juicy cubes of pork, very assertively spiced with Moorish spices; I'm often underhwelmed by meat-on-a-stick, but these were quite good.
zucchini blossoms - stuffed with goat cheese blended with minced serrano ham, these were perfectly fried and the mild chevre didn't overwhelm the delicate blossoms. Really well done.
chorizo in cider - another traditional item, little rounds of chorizo sausage cooked in cider with sweet caramelized onions, served bubbling in a hot cazuela. Another hit with Frod Jr. and Little Miss F.
stuffed piquillos - yet another classic tapa with a clever presentation, 3 piquillo peppers were balanced with their tips upward, stuffed with a bacalao mousse, the plate lined with two sauces, one a red pepper sauce, the other a vibrant translucent yellow, and tasting almost like a very loose, oily aioli. A well-done take on the classic.
cheese plate - we opted for a 5-cheese plate which arrived at the end of our meal as a dessert course (which was fine by us), and it was a very nice, authentically Spanish spread: tetilla (the "tit cheese," as the chef happily explained, due to the shape) which was wonderfully soft and creamy; garrotxa (a nice moderately firm goat cheese); majorero (an unusual, somewhat nutty goat cheese from goats that, according to the chef, eat only marjoram); a ball of soft cabrales (a blue that I often don't particularly like, but I enjoyed this one); and one I can't recall. They were served with a couple slices of membrillo (quince paste) and a couple rounds of bright red prickly pear - an interesting accompaniment.
The wine list includes lots of choices from more "exotic" regions of Spain. We had a bottle of a wine called "Oriol" from Vinyes del Aspres in the Ampurdan region of Spain which was a nice quaffer but seemed overpriced at around $50 (though I have no idea what this might retail for).
Indeed, if I had any complaint, it was with the pricing. With most of the tapas-type items being priced in the $15+ range, this can quickly become a pretty expensive meal. Our 5-course cheese plate was $32 (!!!). The wine list likewise, while featuring many of the "out-of-favor" regions that usually yield great bargains, had very few bargain-priced wines.
But the food was generally excellent, the menu has much of interest, and the chef is passionate and talented. Definitely something to look forward to for my next jaunt to Florida's other coast.
IM Tapas
965 4th Avenue North
Naples, FL 34102
239.403.8272
beet salad - the now-classic pairing of roasted beets and goat cheese, enlivened here with a sprinkle of pine nuts and little bits of crispy serrano ham. Nice presentation too, with slices of beet layered with goat cheese and stacked impressively in a tower.
fabada - a classic bean stew, and a nice rendition here, with big fat white beans and a rich broth, studded with chunks of chorizo and morcilla.
fried calamari - one of Little Miss F's favorites, the calamari were generously dusted with what I believe was pimenton (Spanish smoked paprika) and served with a spicy tomato dipping sauce.
skewered pork - very juicy cubes of pork, very assertively spiced with Moorish spices; I'm often underhwelmed by meat-on-a-stick, but these were quite good.
zucchini blossoms - stuffed with goat cheese blended with minced serrano ham, these were perfectly fried and the mild chevre didn't overwhelm the delicate blossoms. Really well done.
chorizo in cider - another traditional item, little rounds of chorizo sausage cooked in cider with sweet caramelized onions, served bubbling in a hot cazuela. Another hit with Frod Jr. and Little Miss F.
stuffed piquillos - yet another classic tapa with a clever presentation, 3 piquillo peppers were balanced with their tips upward, stuffed with a bacalao mousse, the plate lined with two sauces, one a red pepper sauce, the other a vibrant translucent yellow, and tasting almost like a very loose, oily aioli. A well-done take on the classic.
cheese plate - we opted for a 5-cheese plate which arrived at the end of our meal as a dessert course (which was fine by us), and it was a very nice, authentically Spanish spread: tetilla (the "tit cheese," as the chef happily explained, due to the shape) which was wonderfully soft and creamy; garrotxa (a nice moderately firm goat cheese); majorero (an unusual, somewhat nutty goat cheese from goats that, according to the chef, eat only marjoram); a ball of soft cabrales (a blue that I often don't particularly like, but I enjoyed this one); and one I can't recall. They were served with a couple slices of membrillo (quince paste) and a couple rounds of bright red prickly pear - an interesting accompaniment.
The wine list includes lots of choices from more "exotic" regions of Spain. We had a bottle of a wine called "Oriol" from Vinyes del Aspres in the Ampurdan region of Spain which was a nice quaffer but seemed overpriced at around $50 (though I have no idea what this might retail for).
Indeed, if I had any complaint, it was with the pricing. With most of the tapas-type items being priced in the $15+ range, this can quickly become a pretty expensive meal. Our 5-course cheese plate was $32 (!!!). The wine list likewise, while featuring many of the "out-of-favor" regions that usually yield great bargains, had very few bargain-priced wines.
But the food was generally excellent, the menu has much of interest, and the chef is passionate and talented. Definitely something to look forward to for my next jaunt to Florida's other coast.
IM Tapas
965 4th Avenue North
Naples, FL 34102
239.403.8272
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Alta Taberna Paco Meralgo - Barcelona
Paco Meralgo had a few things going for it before we'd even stepped through the door: (1) it was close to our hotel in the Eixample neighborhood; (2) it was open on Monday, when many restaurants in Spain are closed; and (3) its name appealed to my fondness for wordplay ("comer algo," hidden within "Paco Meralgo", means "to eat something").
The restaurant has a clever layout, basically mirror-imaged food bars on either side of a workspace for the staff, with one side being a smoking section and the other non-smoking. Each side has additional counter seating around the edges of the walls, with several small tables scattered throughout. The decor is simple and minimalist, with painted brick walls and blocky blond wood tables and stools. Indeed, the primary "decoration" is at the food bar itself, which houses a magnificent selection of seafood, including fantastically colorful bright red gambas on ice in a big bowl and lots of other little delicacies under a sushi-bar style glass countertop fridge, including beautiful scallops with their roe still attached, and some of the biggest oysters I've ever seen.
The menu (available in several languages) had a long list of mostly tapas-style options, with a strong focus on the seafood items decorating the bar. We started off with what was the best pan con tomate I've ever had. I know it seems almost silly to get excited over something so simple and ubiquitous - but this was great. The bread was crisp and toasty but still permeated with the juice of sweet ripe tomatoes, enhanced with an assertive but not overwhelming whiff of garlic, and generously drizzled with some really good olive oil. We accompanied that with a plate of some very nice jamon iberico.
Zucchini blossoms stuffed with mozzarella were nicely fried; though I enjoyed the gooey, stringy mozzarella, I usually prefer a lighter cheese with these so as not to overhwelm the delicate blossoms. The croquetas filled with fish and seafood also showed a deft hand at the fryer. The best thing we had, though, came from that ostentatious display of seafood at the bar. "Berberechos" translates as cockles, a small, round-shelled clam. Simply heated on the plancha and sprinkled with olive oil and a squeeze of lemon, these were absolutely delicious. They were fresh, briny, plump, and more tender than any other clam I've had.
We had a couple misses as well. The Catalan-style beans brought young favas, still in their fuzzy outer shell, cooked with bits of pork and a big slice of black sausage; I didn't love the texture of the beans, and an herbal presence (mint?) seemed out of place. A tortilla with artichoke, instead of being the thick frittata-like slab we'd anticipated, instead was a skinny, almost crepe-like omelette. We would have done better ordering the artichoke on its own, as we saw several people happily chomping on the fried artichokes.
We closed out with a classic, a crema catalana. Their version was happily creamy, dense and eggy, my only gripe being that the brûléed topping was perhaps taken just a bit too far and had a slightly charred taste to it.
This was a nice casual place that still obviously takes its food plenty seriously, which is a nice combination. I'd happily go back, especially to try more of those beautiful seafood options.
[I know, I know - there sure is a lot of talk about Spain here for a "Miami food blog." Only one more dispatch from Spain before we return to regularly scheduled programming.]
Paco Meralgo
Calle Muntaner 171
Barcelona 08036
94 430 90 27
The restaurant has a clever layout, basically mirror-imaged food bars on either side of a workspace for the staff, with one side being a smoking section and the other non-smoking. Each side has additional counter seating around the edges of the walls, with several small tables scattered throughout. The decor is simple and minimalist, with painted brick walls and blocky blond wood tables and stools. Indeed, the primary "decoration" is at the food bar itself, which houses a magnificent selection of seafood, including fantastically colorful bright red gambas on ice in a big bowl and lots of other little delicacies under a sushi-bar style glass countertop fridge, including beautiful scallops with their roe still attached, and some of the biggest oysters I've ever seen.
The menu (available in several languages) had a long list of mostly tapas-style options, with a strong focus on the seafood items decorating the bar. We started off with what was the best pan con tomate I've ever had. I know it seems almost silly to get excited over something so simple and ubiquitous - but this was great. The bread was crisp and toasty but still permeated with the juice of sweet ripe tomatoes, enhanced with an assertive but not overwhelming whiff of garlic, and generously drizzled with some really good olive oil. We accompanied that with a plate of some very nice jamon iberico.
Zucchini blossoms stuffed with mozzarella were nicely fried; though I enjoyed the gooey, stringy mozzarella, I usually prefer a lighter cheese with these so as not to overhwelm the delicate blossoms. The croquetas filled with fish and seafood also showed a deft hand at the fryer. The best thing we had, though, came from that ostentatious display of seafood at the bar. "Berberechos" translates as cockles, a small, round-shelled clam. Simply heated on the plancha and sprinkled with olive oil and a squeeze of lemon, these were absolutely delicious. They were fresh, briny, plump, and more tender than any other clam I've had.
We had a couple misses as well. The Catalan-style beans brought young favas, still in their fuzzy outer shell, cooked with bits of pork and a big slice of black sausage; I didn't love the texture of the beans, and an herbal presence (mint?) seemed out of place. A tortilla with artichoke, instead of being the thick frittata-like slab we'd anticipated, instead was a skinny, almost crepe-like omelette. We would have done better ordering the artichoke on its own, as we saw several people happily chomping on the fried artichokes.
We closed out with a classic, a crema catalana. Their version was happily creamy, dense and eggy, my only gripe being that the brûléed topping was perhaps taken just a bit too far and had a slightly charred taste to it.
This was a nice casual place that still obviously takes its food plenty seriously, which is a nice combination. I'd happily go back, especially to try more of those beautiful seafood options.
[I know, I know - there sure is a lot of talk about Spain here for a "Miami food blog." Only one more dispatch from Spain before we return to regularly scheduled programming.]
Paco Meralgo
Calle Muntaner 171
Barcelona 08036
94 430 90 27
Friday, March 27, 2009
Dos Palillos - Barcelona
After three great days in San Sebastian, we swung over to Barcelona for the final leg of our trip. Our first restaurant visit was to Dos Palillos. Dos Palillos is the creation of Albert Raurich, who from 1999 through 2007 was the chef de cuisine at El Bulli. Those expecting another temple of modern gastronomy or showcase of cutting edge cooking technology, however, might well be disappointed. At Dos Palillos, Raurich, along with head chef Takeshi Somekawa, instead explores - using mostly traditional cooking methods - the curious parallels and intersections between Spanish and Asian cuisines.
Dos Palillos is located down the incredibly narrow Carrer Elisabets in the funky El Raval neighborhood, on the ground floor of the Casa Camper hotel (a product of the Camper brand which sells moderately hip sneakers for what seem like incredibly high prices). The name - which means "two toothpicks" - is itself a play on those aforementioned commonalities, analogizing between the toothpicks commonly used for eating tapas and the chopsticks of Asian cuisine. Small portion sizes likewise bridge the two food cultures, the Spanish tapas being easily comparable to either the small dishes of a Japanese izakaya or Chinese dim sum, as does a respect and appreciation for prime raw ingredients. The restaurant's layout also plays on the Asian/Spanish theme, with the front area being a very typical (almost nondescript) looking Spanish bar, while after passing through a beaded curtain, the back room houses an Asian inspired food bar with open kitchen (which actually reminded me very much of a low-budget version of a L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon). I always like an open kitchen, and particularly enjoy the intimacy of this kind of layout, where the person who prepares your food is often the one to actually hand it to you.
It certainly seems to me that the Spanish-Asian mashup idea is gaining increasing traction in Spain, with Dos Palillos and Kabuki Wellington and Diverxo in Madrid (both of which we missed) as prominent examples. What's less clear to me is whether there's really anything so remarkable about it, as we in the U.S. are pretty accustomed to seeing these type of East-West hodge-podges (i.e., Asia de Cuba, Sushi Samba ... - and yes, you're certainly welcome to question whether it's being done well). But let's set aside that question for the moment, and focus on the most important question - how's the food? The menu on the Asian bar side offers a couple tasting menus at different price points for more extensive course offerings (I think in the more casual front bar you can order a la carte as well). The most expensive option was, I believe, €65 for about 15 courses. Here's the rundown.
[Sorry for the atrocious layout of this post - I'm working on fixing it. I've cut back on some of the pictures and added links to them instead. The full set of pictures can be found here on flickr].
wontons - crispy fried shells enclosing a fine mince of pork (I believe, memory is fading), generously sprinkled with pungent pepper. A great, addictive snack. Also served at the start of the meal were some vibrant magenta pickles, presumably colored with beet juice though I'm not sure what the pickles themselves were made from.
chicharrones - perhaps not what they were called on the menu, but these were perfectly fried strips of chicken skin, assertively spiced with curry powder. Even better than the wontons.
summer roll - again, perhaps not what it was called on the menu, though certainly what it reminded me of, a light rice paper wrap filled with vegetables, served cool, and topped with grapefruit segments, chili threads and tiny baby sprouts. You'll see a couple dipping sauces in the corner of the picture, one a ponzu, the other a fruitier orange-yuzu sauce. These were presented, almost Benihana-esque, at the beginning of the meal with appropriate dipping suggestions for some of the early courses.
sardine sunomono - a typical Japanese dish of vinegared fish and vegetables, done here with nice fat slabs of silver-skinned sardine, along with lightly pickled cauliflower, carrots, cucumber and topped with fresh kaiware (daikon sprout).
ankimo - one of the standout dishes of the night, perhaps in part because it's one of my favorite ingredients. Ankimo is monkfish liver, poached and chilled, and served here with a couple different kinds of seaweed (the dark green type being one I'm used to seeing in Japanese dishes, the red branched one more unusual for me), with a slightly sweet reduced soy sauce along with cubes of a jelled citrus sauce. Monkfish liver is sometimes called "foie gras of the sea," which might be a bit generous, but it does have something of that same richness and depth of flavor along with a bit of a seafood twang.
navajas - another standout, some of the smallest, most delicate razor clams I've ever seen are served cold with a Thai red curry sauce and flecks of sea beans and more colorful seaweed.
trout roe chawan mushi - a chawan mushi is a Japanese custard, with an incredibly delicate quivering texture, here infused with dashi flavors and topped with trout roe. A beautiful presentation, and the flavor and texture of the chawan mushi were wonderful. The combination with the trout roe could have been fantastic, but unfortunately the roe were dissatisfyingly firm in texture. They had very little give and were almost crunchy, a jarring contrast against the creamy chawan mushi. I think I would have preferred the more giving, liquid texture of a salmon roe to pair with the custard.
tempura tomato - simple but surprisingly good. Juicy, sweet cherry tomatoes are fried with a very thin tempura batter, and topped with a dab of wasabi. Just the slightest hint of crunch from the batter, followed by a gush of near-molten hot tomato, followed by the kick of the wasabi.
shiu mai - steamed dumplings, stuffed with minced pork and shrimp with a hint of foie gras, if I recall right. These were fine dumplings indeed.
tuna don - very lightly seared tuna belly (toro in Japanese, ventresca to the Spaniards) over sushi rice, served with sheets of nori and a dab of wasabi for some DIY maki. Nice rich fatty tuna.
gyoza - pan-fried pork dumplings, a/k/a postickers. Good but nothing particularly special about this iteration.
japoburger - a plump little miniburger, seared just rare, laid over some lightly pickled cucumbers for something of a banh mi effect.
verduras - stir-fried vegetables, a nice melange including baby bok choi, snow peas, baby corn, baby carrots, all in a light soy-based sauce, and flecked with little micro sprouts and flower petals. Decent but not very exciting.
chicken yakitori - the traditional Japanese skewered and grilled chicken, lightly brushed with a soy-sake-mirin sauce and sprinkled, I believe, with schichimi togarashi.
fruit salad - pieces of pineapple, mango, strawberry, melon, prune, goji berry, a cube of tofu-textured creamy coconut, macerated in a reduced anise-infused tea. Hey - is that a spherified something-or-other in the middle there? Nope - just a good old-fashioned lychee. The fruit salad was followed by a creamy yuzu ice cream, which just missed the mark for me.
Overall, while I enjoyed all of our meal, and a few items were truly excellent - the ankimo, the navajas, the tempura tomato in particular stand out - several others struck me as no more or less special than something I could get at my neighborhood izakaya (though in fairness, I happen to have an excellent izakaya pretty close to me despite the relative dearth of good Japanese food in Miami). There also wasn't all that much that really struck me as a real fusion or confluence of Asian and Spanish cookery - rather, this was pretty straight-ahead Chinese and Japanese for the most part. It's good eats, and I'd happily recommend it as a fun, satisfying, and fairly priced meal, but there's nothing particularly revolutionary going on here, which is something of a disappointment given the chef's resume.
I'm not sure how much to read into it, but it is interesting that both Raurich and Albert Adrià (creative director at El Bulli and brother of Ferran Adrià), who recently opened the relatively traditional tapas bar Inopia in Barcelona and even more recently announced he is leaving El Bulli, both appear to be retreating from the avant garde. One of the most remarkable things about reading A Day at El Bulli
(once you get past the overwhelmingly self-congratulatory tone) is the incredible focus on the methodology of creativity. There can be little doubt that the level of creativity and innovation expected must be phenomenally demanding and draining. Sometimes you just want to serve some good simple food. Though "simple" may be understating the level of quality and flavor that many of Dos Palillos' dishes acheive, there's nothing wrong with that either.
Dos Palillos
Carrer Elisabets 9
Barcelona 08001
93 304 05 13
Dos Palillos is located down the incredibly narrow Carrer Elisabets in the funky El Raval neighborhood, on the ground floor of the Casa Camper hotel (a product of the Camper brand which sells moderately hip sneakers for what seem like incredibly high prices). The name - which means "two toothpicks" - is itself a play on those aforementioned commonalities, analogizing between the toothpicks commonly used for eating tapas and the chopsticks of Asian cuisine. Small portion sizes likewise bridge the two food cultures, the Spanish tapas being easily comparable to either the small dishes of a Japanese izakaya or Chinese dim sum, as does a respect and appreciation for prime raw ingredients. The restaurant's layout also plays on the Asian/Spanish theme, with the front area being a very typical (almost nondescript) looking Spanish bar, while after passing through a beaded curtain, the back room houses an Asian inspired food bar with open kitchen (which actually reminded me very much of a low-budget version of a L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon). I always like an open kitchen, and particularly enjoy the intimacy of this kind of layout, where the person who prepares your food is often the one to actually hand it to you.
It certainly seems to me that the Spanish-Asian mashup idea is gaining increasing traction in Spain, with Dos Palillos and Kabuki Wellington and Diverxo in Madrid (both of which we missed) as prominent examples. What's less clear to me is whether there's really anything so remarkable about it, as we in the U.S. are pretty accustomed to seeing these type of East-West hodge-podges (i.e., Asia de Cuba, Sushi Samba ... - and yes, you're certainly welcome to question whether it's being done well). But let's set aside that question for the moment, and focus on the most important question - how's the food? The menu on the Asian bar side offers a couple tasting menus at different price points for more extensive course offerings (I think in the more casual front bar you can order a la carte as well). The most expensive option was, I believe, €65 for about 15 courses. Here's the rundown.
[Sorry for the atrocious layout of this post - I'm working on fixing it. I've cut back on some of the pictures and added links to them instead. The full set of pictures can be found here on flickr].
wontons - crispy fried shells enclosing a fine mince of pork (I believe, memory is fading), generously sprinkled with pungent pepper. A great, addictive snack. Also served at the start of the meal were some vibrant magenta pickles, presumably colored with beet juice though I'm not sure what the pickles themselves were made from.chicharrones - perhaps not what they were called on the menu, but these were perfectly fried strips of chicken skin, assertively spiced with curry powder. Even better than the wontons.
summer roll - again, perhaps not what it was called on the menu, though certainly what it reminded me of, a light rice paper wrap filled with vegetables, served cool, and topped with grapefruit segments, chili threads and tiny baby sprouts. You'll see a couple dipping sauces in the corner of the picture, one a ponzu, the other a fruitier orange-yuzu sauce. These were presented, almost Benihana-esque, at the beginning of the meal with appropriate dipping suggestions for some of the early courses.sardine sunomono - a typical Japanese dish of vinegared fish and vegetables, done here with nice fat slabs of silver-skinned sardine, along with lightly pickled cauliflower, carrots, cucumber and topped with fresh kaiware (daikon sprout).
ankimo - one of the standout dishes of the night, perhaps in part because it's one of my favorite ingredients. Ankimo is monkfish liver, poached and chilled, and served here with a couple different kinds of seaweed (the dark green type being one I'm used to seeing in Japanese dishes, the red branched one more unusual for me), with a slightly sweet reduced soy sauce along with cubes of a jelled citrus sauce. Monkfish liver is sometimes called "foie gras of the sea," which might be a bit generous, but it does have something of that same richness and depth of flavor along with a bit of a seafood twang.
navajas - another standout, some of the smallest, most delicate razor clams I've ever seen are served cold with a Thai red curry sauce and flecks of sea beans and more colorful seaweed.
trout roe chawan mushi - a chawan mushi is a Japanese custard, with an incredibly delicate quivering texture, here infused with dashi flavors and topped with trout roe. A beautiful presentation, and the flavor and texture of the chawan mushi were wonderful. The combination with the trout roe could have been fantastic, but unfortunately the roe were dissatisfyingly firm in texture. They had very little give and were almost crunchy, a jarring contrast against the creamy chawan mushi. I think I would have preferred the more giving, liquid texture of a salmon roe to pair with the custard.
tempura tomato - simple but surprisingly good. Juicy, sweet cherry tomatoes are fried with a very thin tempura batter, and topped with a dab of wasabi. Just the slightest hint of crunch from the batter, followed by a gush of near-molten hot tomato, followed by the kick of the wasabi.
shiu mai - steamed dumplings, stuffed with minced pork and shrimp with a hint of foie gras, if I recall right. These were fine dumplings indeed.tuna don - very lightly seared tuna belly (toro in Japanese, ventresca to the Spaniards) over sushi rice, served with sheets of nori and a dab of wasabi for some DIY maki. Nice rich fatty tuna.
gyoza - pan-fried pork dumplings, a/k/a postickers. Good but nothing particularly special about this iteration.japoburger - a plump little miniburger, seared just rare, laid over some lightly pickled cucumbers for something of a banh mi effect.
verduras - stir-fried vegetables, a nice melange including baby bok choi, snow peas, baby corn, baby carrots, all in a light soy-based sauce, and flecked with little micro sprouts and flower petals. Decent but not very exciting.chicken yakitori - the traditional Japanese skewered and grilled chicken, lightly brushed with a soy-sake-mirin sauce and sprinkled, I believe, with schichimi togarashi.
fruit salad - pieces of pineapple, mango, strawberry, melon, prune, goji berry, a cube of tofu-textured creamy coconut, macerated in a reduced anise-infused tea. Hey - is that a spherified something-or-other in the middle there? Nope - just a good old-fashioned lychee. The fruit salad was followed by a creamy yuzu ice cream, which just missed the mark for me.Overall, while I enjoyed all of our meal, and a few items were truly excellent - the ankimo, the navajas, the tempura tomato in particular stand out - several others struck me as no more or less special than something I could get at my neighborhood izakaya (though in fairness, I happen to have an excellent izakaya pretty close to me despite the relative dearth of good Japanese food in Miami). There also wasn't all that much that really struck me as a real fusion or confluence of Asian and Spanish cookery - rather, this was pretty straight-ahead Chinese and Japanese for the most part. It's good eats, and I'd happily recommend it as a fun, satisfying, and fairly priced meal, but there's nothing particularly revolutionary going on here, which is something of a disappointment given the chef's resume.
I'm not sure how much to read into it, but it is interesting that both Raurich and Albert Adrià (creative director at El Bulli and brother of Ferran Adrià), who recently opened the relatively traditional tapas bar Inopia in Barcelona and even more recently announced he is leaving El Bulli, both appear to be retreating from the avant garde. One of the most remarkable things about reading A Day at El Bulli
(once you get past the overwhelmingly self-congratulatory tone) is the incredible focus on the methodology of creativity. There can be little doubt that the level of creativity and innovation expected must be phenomenally demanding and draining. Sometimes you just want to serve some good simple food. Though "simple" may be understating the level of quality and flavor that many of Dos Palillos' dishes acheive, there's nothing wrong with that either.Dos Palillos
Carrer Elisabets 9
Barcelona 08001
93 304 05 13
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Pintxos in San Sebastian
From friends, tour guides, and food and travel TV shows, we'd been conditioned to believe that San Sebastian was a kind of culinary Wonderland, with more Michelin stars per capita than possibly anywhere else on earth, and tapas bars lining the streets with riotous displays, each trying to top the next. Well, unlike the South Florida real estate market, Bernie Madoff's rate of return, and many other things that sound too good to be true, San Sebastian really is everything people say it is.
In early March, it was still off-season in San Sebastian, and we were regularly deluged with rain and even hail. But it was easy to see why San Sebastian becomes one of the great playgrounds of all Europe in the more temperate months. Its setting on the Bay of Biscay, situated on two massive, impossibly perfectly curved arcs of beach (Zurriola to the east and La Concha to the west), with hills rising up around either side, is almost ridiculously picturesque. And the sheer abundance, quality and variety of the pintxos (the Basque variant on tapas) to be found in such a multitude of local bars is truly staggering indeed. It really is much like being in Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, but without the risk of blowing up into a gigantic blueberry like Violet Beauregard ("Stop. Don't.").
Though we had a couple high-end restaurant meals already booked before we came, we saved a couple days for sampling the pintxos of San Sebastian. It took us a little practice to navigate the etiquette of pintxos-eating. In some places you'd just ask for a plate and serve yourself, while in others the system was point and ask. Most bars have hot items that aren't displayed but are listed somewhere, usually on a board or occasionally on a menu, which have to be ordered. These were often some of the best items, notwithstanding the incredible displays of cold items laid out on the bars. For locating and researching these places, I found the website, Todopintxos, to be a very useful resource. The Hotel Villa Soro, about a 10-minute walk from the Barrio Gros, made a great home base for exploring San Sebastian.
The following are my notes from tours of the Parte Vieja (the old quarter, on the west side of town) and the Barrio Gros (newer part of town on the east side). There are literally dozens of places we did not get to, and it seems you could devote a happy lifetime to investigating each bar's specialties.
PARTE VIEJA
Bar Aralar - not particularly on any recommended list, this just happened to be open and in the right spot for us as the rain started coming down especially furiously. Yet it's a great example of what is so wonderful about San Sebastian. We were just looking for someplace to dry out for a couple minutes, ducked through the door, and were greeted with a tableau at the bar of maybe a couple dozen different brightly colored pintxos, a couple gleaming chrome beer taps, and a dozen hams hanging from the ceiling. The tuna-stuffed piquillo pepper was nice, as was a plump artichoke wrapped in bacon. A pintxo topped with a vibrant greenish white seafood spread tasted mostly of pickles, and I couldn't make out what else was in it. A very old-school place, where the bartender simply asks whether you want a small plate or a large plate so as to take items for yourself, and then charges on the honor system as to how many pintxos you had. Clearly a spot that has its regulars - it was amusing to watch as the bartender began to pour drinks for a few people as soon as they'd entered the door, before they'd uttered a word.
Gandarias Taberna - a warm pintxo of queso cabra wrapped with bacon was delicious; even better was one described as "milhojas de manitas y hongos", a layered concoction of shredded pigs' trotter meat and thin slivers of porcini mushroom. A brochette of cordero (lamb) was only OK, as was a pintxo topped with angulas (baby eels) and piquillo. They had a large selection of wines by the glass with all of them held in one of those high-tech Enomatic dispensers.
La Cepa - we caught the tortilla with bacalao as it was coming from the oven, and it was absolutely delicious. A little sampler of their chorizo was also excellent. The "gabilla," a croqueta type thing with big chunks of pork, serrano ham, and cheese, didn't do it for me. We should have taken the hint from the chorizo, as their specialty seems to be their Jabugo ham products.
La Cuchara de San Telmo - this place had been recommended by numerous sources and perhaps our expectations were too high, or perhaps we ordered poorly. It's a shoebox of a place, and difficult to find, with a barely discernable sign, and a street address on the "Plazuela del Valle Lersundi" which perhaps ought to be called a "Plazuelita" as it's not much more than a tiny indentation off Calle 31 de Agosto. Once inside there's a narrow, drafty bar area with room for about 8 place settings and at the back of the room a tiny, roughly 4'x8' kitchen. More contemporary in approach, everything is made to order. A canelon de morcilla was pretty good, the pasta filled with a rich oozy blood sausage, and the dish brightened up with a stripe of an herbaceous green sauce. The problem I had was that pretty much everything we ordered had almost the exact same presentation. The foie with manzana brought a seared hunk of foie gras served over a bed of apple puree, with again the same stripe of green sauce; and then a duck breast (slightly overcooked and tough) came over a bed of orange puree, with yet again the same green stripe of sauce. Any one of them individually I would have thought were good, but when ordered together gave the impression of a one-trick pony. Again, maybe just a case of poor ordering.
BARRIO GROS
Aloña Berri - perhaps in contast to La Cuchara de San Telmo, I thought Aloña Berri was absolutely everything it was cracked up to be. They describe themselves as "alta cocina en miniatura" and the description is apt. It seems almost absurd to call a one-bite item a "dish," but many of Aloña Berri's creations are so remarkably layered and architectural both in flavor and literal structure that it seems appropriate. These were some truly awe-inspiring and delicious things.
This is a pintxo that came in an Asian soup spoon, one bite, more than a half-dozen components. From bottom to top, a puddle of creamy confited bacalao, topped with a smooth eggplant puree, hollandaise sauce, quail egg, aioli, trout roe, crispy fried spinach leaf, and a sliver of fried purple potato. Beautiful and delicious.
This one was possibly even more impressive. Mackerel, stuffed with foie gras and glazed with what I believe was a pan sauce bolstered with some vinegar, on top of which is balanced a long sliver of fried leek, sprinkled upon which are various salty, sweet and other flavor components - green herb powder, demerara sugar, trout roe ... you fold the sliver of leek upon itself and eat the whole thing, getting the sensations of each of the powders as you find them. All of which is to say nothing of the combination of the rich oily mackerel with the rich oily foie, a great take on a mar y montaña similar to the combination of eel and foie you see in some higher-end Japanese restaurants these days.
Bar Bergara - Bergara is a much more straight-ahead kind of style than Aloña Berri but everything we had was quite good, including a pintxo topped with juicy sweet diced tomatoes and a scatter of slivered fried onions, another with a bacalao "meatball" and a similar topping of fried onions, and one topped with salad rusa, shredded hard-boiled egg and a shrimp on top.
Casa Senra - when you see more than a half dozen different croquetas listed on the menu, including with clams and green sauce and with chipirones (baby squid), the clear message is "Get the croquetas". By an accident of translation we got the morcilla croquetas rather than the almejas I had sought, but they were still very good, scooped using an ice cream scoop, lightly crispy outside, tender and oozy inside, studded with bits of sausage. I wasn't aiming for the croquetas de morcilla because we'd also ordered the "morcillitas," a skinny home-made blood sausage that was creamy and redolent with spice, served with a green garlic olive oil emulsion and piquillo peppers. A bocata of fried eggplant, sauteed onions, bacon and cheese was also very satisfying.
The amazing thing to me is that for every place we tried, there are probably a half dozen we missed. Even more amazing, for every pintxo we tried at each of those places, there were probably a dozen or more that we skipped. Consistent 12-13% return, year after year after year? Don't believe it. San Sebastian, culinary mecca? Believe it.
Bar Aralar
Calle Puerto 10
San Sebastian
943 42 63 78
Gandarias Taberna
Calle 31 de Agosto 23
San Sebastian
943 42 63 62
La Cepa
Calle 31 de Agosto 7
San Sebastian
943 42 63 94
La Cuchara de San Telmo
Plazuela del Valle Lersundi
San Sebastian
Aloña Berri
Calle Bermingham 24
San Sebastian
943 29 08 18
Bar Bergara
Calle General Artexte 8
San Sebastian
943 27 50 26
Casa Senra
Calle San Francisco 32
San Sebastian
943 29 38 19
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Madrid - Tapas and Such
Our first day in Madrid started propitiously. After arriving from Miami early in the morning, we swung by our hotel expecting to simply drop off our bags, and were instead told they would have a room available for us within a half hour (this at 9 a.m.). Early check-in is a much appreciated thing after an overnight flight. Indeed, pretty much everything was perfect at the Villa Real and we have generally had very good experiences with all of the Derby Hotels group.
After fortifying ourselves with some coffee and pan con tomate, and ogling the pastries in the window of this bakery that invariably draws a clutch of old ladies also ogling the pastries, we did some sightseeing and fortuitously (or so I would have Mrs. F believe) ended up around the Cava Baja for lunchtime. While a true tapas crawl requires some reserve and discretion, getting only a couple little bites at one place (hopefully the best it has to offer) before moving on to the next, frankly we were too tired and hungry to be so judicious. We settled in at the first promising place we saw for lunch, which happened to be Casa Lucas. We lucked out. Casa Lucas is a simple, modest-looking place with a small bar and about a half-dozen or so tables with blocky modern wood chairs scattered about. We sat down just before the lunch rush, which was a good thing as the place rapidly filled to standing-room-only (and barely that) as we ate. They offer a choice of several montaditos (which is what I've generally seen "things on bread" called, though didn't see the term used much in Madrid, where they were simply called "tapas" or occasionally "pinchos", a variation on the Basque "pintxo"), as well as a number of other prepared dishes served in larger "racion" portions.
We started with a couple each of their "Mancha" and "Madrid" pinchos, and followed with a racion of the "fardos de calamares." All were delicious. The "Mancha" was topped with a pisto (a/k/a ratatouille), along with a fried quail egg and a sprinkle of slivers of crispy bacon. The pisto was brightly flavored, sweet and rich with olive oil, and the whole combination worked wonderfully. The "Madrid," topped with a shmear of a sweet tomato jam and a tender, unctuous revuelto of eggs scrambled with morcilla and onions, was even better. The calamari dish, perhaps due to my extremely limited knowledge of Spanish, was not at all what I expected. For some reason I was anticipating something stuffed. Instead, what came out were several long strips of calamari, wrapped in the middle with a strip of bacon, the whole thing fried, served over a generous dollop of aioli, along with a couple quenelles of a black squid ink mousse and a drizzle of a bright green herb oil. (I later figured out that "fardos" means "bales"). The strips of calamari baled together almost looked like some sort of reconstructed squid, and this dish somehow managed to come off as refined and goofy at the same time. The calamari was very good, but the game-changing element was the squid ink mousse. Not sure what the mousse was constituted of, but it went beautifully with the crispy strips of squid. Of all the tapas places we noshed at in Madrid, this is the one that really stood out. If I had one complaint, it was that so many of their items were only available in "racion" portions (and priced accordingly), which limits the variety of things you can sample.
That evening, we stayed close to home base and meandered near the Plaza Santa Ana for dinner. Our options were somewhat limited as many places were closed Sunday evening. Of note - a nice montadito of foie gras and apple at Vinoteca Barbechera, and another of ventresca (tuna belly) and roasted peppers; patatas bravas and pimientos de padron at Las Bravas. We got a curious dose of "gringo treatment" at Las Bravas, where our server insisted on giving us fork and knife instead of the customary toothpicks for our bravas (even after asking!). It wasn't unfriendly at all, just peculiar. Anyway, I thought their bravas sauce was great, even though I prefer my potatoes crispier. I do love the places like this where they have their specialty, and you know what everyone is ordering as soon as they walk through the door. Perhaps they're getting something else as well, but you know they're getting those bravas. I also loved this painting prominently displayed there, so much so that I'm going to put it up again (besides, I've got no other Madrid food pix to post!):
Before moving on to my next post, I should also mention the rather awesome bocata de calamares at El Brillante, located right smack between the Museo Reina-Sofia and Atocha station. I know it's the tradition to get your calamari sandwich somewhere on Plaza Mayor, but I do enjoy the one at El Brillante.
Next up - dinner at Viridiana.
Casa Lucas
Calle Cava Baja 30
Madrid 28005
91 365 08 04
Vinoteca Barbechera
Calle del Principe 27*
Madrid 28039
91 523 78 04
Las Bravas
Calle Alvarez Gato 5
Madrid 28012
91 532 26 20
El Brillante
Plaza Emperador Carlos V 8
Madrid 28012
91 539 28 06
*I have seen several addresses listed online for this place. The street is in fact Calle del Principe. In any event, it's on the southeast corner of the Plaza Santa Ana.
After fortifying ourselves with some coffee and pan con tomate, and ogling the pastries in the window of this bakery that invariably draws a clutch of old ladies also ogling the pastries, we did some sightseeing and fortuitously (or so I would have Mrs. F believe) ended up around the Cava Baja for lunchtime. While a true tapas crawl requires some reserve and discretion, getting only a couple little bites at one place (hopefully the best it has to offer) before moving on to the next, frankly we were too tired and hungry to be so judicious. We settled in at the first promising place we saw for lunch, which happened to be Casa Lucas. We lucked out. Casa Lucas is a simple, modest-looking place with a small bar and about a half-dozen or so tables with blocky modern wood chairs scattered about. We sat down just before the lunch rush, which was a good thing as the place rapidly filled to standing-room-only (and barely that) as we ate. They offer a choice of several montaditos (which is what I've generally seen "things on bread" called, though didn't see the term used much in Madrid, where they were simply called "tapas" or occasionally "pinchos", a variation on the Basque "pintxo"), as well as a number of other prepared dishes served in larger "racion" portions.
We started with a couple each of their "Mancha" and "Madrid" pinchos, and followed with a racion of the "fardos de calamares." All were delicious. The "Mancha" was topped with a pisto (a/k/a ratatouille), along with a fried quail egg and a sprinkle of slivers of crispy bacon. The pisto was brightly flavored, sweet and rich with olive oil, and the whole combination worked wonderfully. The "Madrid," topped with a shmear of a sweet tomato jam and a tender, unctuous revuelto of eggs scrambled with morcilla and onions, was even better. The calamari dish, perhaps due to my extremely limited knowledge of Spanish, was not at all what I expected. For some reason I was anticipating something stuffed. Instead, what came out were several long strips of calamari, wrapped in the middle with a strip of bacon, the whole thing fried, served over a generous dollop of aioli, along with a couple quenelles of a black squid ink mousse and a drizzle of a bright green herb oil. (I later figured out that "fardos" means "bales"). The strips of calamari baled together almost looked like some sort of reconstructed squid, and this dish somehow managed to come off as refined and goofy at the same time. The calamari was very good, but the game-changing element was the squid ink mousse. Not sure what the mousse was constituted of, but it went beautifully with the crispy strips of squid. Of all the tapas places we noshed at in Madrid, this is the one that really stood out. If I had one complaint, it was that so many of their items were only available in "racion" portions (and priced accordingly), which limits the variety of things you can sample.
That evening, we stayed close to home base and meandered near the Plaza Santa Ana for dinner. Our options were somewhat limited as many places were closed Sunday evening. Of note - a nice montadito of foie gras and apple at Vinoteca Barbechera, and another of ventresca (tuna belly) and roasted peppers; patatas bravas and pimientos de padron at Las Bravas. We got a curious dose of "gringo treatment" at Las Bravas, where our server insisted on giving us fork and knife instead of the customary toothpicks for our bravas (even after asking!). It wasn't unfriendly at all, just peculiar. Anyway, I thought their bravas sauce was great, even though I prefer my potatoes crispier. I do love the places like this where they have their specialty, and you know what everyone is ordering as soon as they walk through the door. Perhaps they're getting something else as well, but you know they're getting those bravas. I also loved this painting prominently displayed there, so much so that I'm going to put it up again (besides, I've got no other Madrid food pix to post!):
Before moving on to my next post, I should also mention the rather awesome bocata de calamares at El Brillante, located right smack between the Museo Reina-Sofia and Atocha station. I know it's the tradition to get your calamari sandwich somewhere on Plaza Mayor, but I do enjoy the one at El Brillante.
Next up - dinner at Viridiana.
Casa Lucas
Calle Cava Baja 30
Madrid 28005
91 365 08 04
Vinoteca Barbechera
Calle del Principe 27*
Madrid 28039
91 523 78 04
Las Bravas
Calle Alvarez Gato 5
Madrid 28012
91 532 26 20
El Brillante
Plaza Emperador Carlos V 8
Madrid 28012
91 539 28 06
*I have seen several addresses listed online for this place. The street is in fact Calle del Principe. In any event, it's on the southeast corner of the Plaza Santa Ana.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Valentine's Dinner at Hiro's Yakko-San
Here is just one small reason why I love my wife. It's Valentine's Day, we have baby-sitting, and as we head out the door, the question is, "Where should we go?" After kicking around some options and even sidling into someplace that had a romantic Valentine's prix fixe menu, Mrs. F sets down her menu and says, "Let's go to Yakko-San." Let's indeed. Because a cozy spot at the bar and some Japanese tapas are all we need to have a wonderful night.
Hiro's Yakko-San is an izakaya-style restaurant in an unassuming strip-mall location in North Miami Beach. There's sushi-bar style seating with about a dozen seats, about 15-20 tables, and no real decoration to speak of unless you count a few TVs scattered around the place (usually showing whatever sporting event is in season). The menu lists something over 100 dishes, most various tapas-style small plates, plus there's always about a dozen or so daily specials and several fresh fish specials. There is sashimi (gloriously fresh) and onigiri but no nigiri, and no maki. If you want a deep-fried roll with four different kinds of fish and cream cheese, sorry, you'll have to go elsewhere (there's always Hiro's Sushi Express next door, take-out commodity sushi which is a different beast entirely).
Because most items are fairly modest portions and pretty reasonably priced, you can order several to assemble a meal. A snapshot from our "Valentine's Dinner" last night: tofu with kimchee, a great contrast between the cold, creamy tofu and the spicy, funky kimchee; negitoro tartare (a daily special), lush, rich toro diced with scallion, topped with a generous dollop of caviar, served over shiso leaves with strips of nori for wrapping up little DIY tartare tacos; grilled local shrimp (another special), served head-on, incredibly fresh, well-salted, needing nothing at all but a tiny squeeze of lemon (don't forget to suck on the heads); grilled half-dried squid, made even better with a dip in umami-rich Kewpie mayo spiced with togarashi (I love these things, the drying giving a concentrated flavor and a somewhat chewy, but not bouncy, texture); octopus nuta-ae, sliced thin in a way that somehow renders the octopus completely tender, served over chopped scallions and greens with a mustardy miso sauce; uni sashimi, a generous serving of at least a half-dozen sea urchin "tongues," with that wonderful briny essence-of-the-ocean-with-a-hint-of-sweet-apricot creaminess.
A perfect Valentines' night - they even gave Mrs. F a rose as we headed out.
Here's a longer list of some of the many things we've tried and enjoyed - this list was compiled over the course of a few years visiting, over that time some of these items have gone off the menu, and others that were specials have now found their way onto the regular menu - with stars on some of the favorites:
-spicy miso cod or sea bass*
-flash-fried bok choi*
-hamachi usuzukuri (very thin-sliced yellowtail sashimi, to which they'll add slivers of jalapeno and ponzu)
-kabocha tempura
-maitake mushroom tempura (sometimes on the specials)*
-hamachi kama (often a special - collar of a yellowtail broiled and served w/ ponzu; a little work, but worth it for the delicious meat)
-salmon kama & belly (occasional special - outrageously rich and fatty; you'll feel like a bear fattening up for winter)
- takoyaki! (octopus dumplings; and there's a waitress who always says it like this, with the exclamation point, whenever I order it)*
-nasu buto miso itame (sauteed pork w/ eggplant and miso)*
-spicy chile shrimp
-uni & ikura pasta
-fried chicken gizzards (not bad, but not sure what the point is)
-grilled pork belly (used to be a frequent special, now on the regular menu - little slivers, nice and crispy)
-sanma (like a big sardine, grilled whole including innards - sometimes a little dry but if you like strongly flavored silver-skinned fish like sardine or mackerel, etc. it's good)
-steak w/ garlic sauce
-tongue stew
- spicy manila clams (a semi-regular special)*
-grilled fiji shrimp (they haven't had these for a while, but when they are on the specials they are absolutely delicious)
-ikura onigiri (since they don't do regular sushi, this is as close as you can get - it's like a pyramid of sushi rice stuffed inside with salmon roe - or salmon or a couple other things - with a sheet of nori wrapped around it; almost as good are the little japanese pickles that come with it)
-salmon ocha zuke (over rice w/ green tea poured over it - very refreshing)* (no longer on the menu)
-okonomiyaki (they call it a japanese pizza - an odd omelette type concoction with cabbage, fish, fish flakes and mayo - really rich and an excellent late night munchie) (no longer on the regular menu)
-jack tataki
-jack nanbanzuke (sometime special - this was surprisingly good - jack, a somewhat strong-flavored fish, fried and served cold, sort of pickled with vinegar and peppers - almost exactly like a jamaican fish escovitch)
- kimpira gobo (sauteed burdock root)
- crispy fish & onion salad
- local octopus ceviche (occasional special)*
- black pork sausage (a favorite of our kids)
- motsuni (pork intestine stew, occasional special; not for everyone)*
It's always fun to watch the open kitchen, where 3-4 chefs make almost everything other than the fried or stewed items that come from a back kitchen. It was a beautiful thing to see one of the chefs start to slice a loin of tuna and then, amidst all the chaos of a busy kitchen and full house, just stare at it intently for a minute while assessing his plan of attack. Yakko-San is open late (2am weekdays, 3am Fri-Sat) and you will frequently find local chefs and other restaurant biz folks there late or on their off-nights.
UPDATED: Yakko-San has moved, note new address below. Also, to avoid confusion, note that there is another restaurant along the 163rd St. Causeway called "Hiro." That is not Hiro's Yakko-San and is not asssociated with Yakko-San. Yakko-San is in the Intracoastal Mall, just west of the bridge over to Sunny Isles, right next to the Old Navy store.
Hiro's Yakko-San
3881 NE 163rd St.
North Miami Beach, FL
305.947.0064
Hiro's Yakko-San is an izakaya-style restaurant in an unassuming strip-mall location in North Miami Beach. There's sushi-bar style seating with about a dozen seats, about 15-20 tables, and no real decoration to speak of unless you count a few TVs scattered around the place (usually showing whatever sporting event is in season). The menu lists something over 100 dishes, most various tapas-style small plates, plus there's always about a dozen or so daily specials and several fresh fish specials. There is sashimi (gloriously fresh) and onigiri but no nigiri, and no maki. If you want a deep-fried roll with four different kinds of fish and cream cheese, sorry, you'll have to go elsewhere (there's always Hiro's Sushi Express next door, take-out commodity sushi which is a different beast entirely).
Because most items are fairly modest portions and pretty reasonably priced, you can order several to assemble a meal. A snapshot from our "Valentine's Dinner" last night: tofu with kimchee, a great contrast between the cold, creamy tofu and the spicy, funky kimchee; negitoro tartare (a daily special), lush, rich toro diced with scallion, topped with a generous dollop of caviar, served over shiso leaves with strips of nori for wrapping up little DIY tartare tacos; grilled local shrimp (another special), served head-on, incredibly fresh, well-salted, needing nothing at all but a tiny squeeze of lemon (don't forget to suck on the heads); grilled half-dried squid, made even better with a dip in umami-rich Kewpie mayo spiced with togarashi (I love these things, the drying giving a concentrated flavor and a somewhat chewy, but not bouncy, texture); octopus nuta-ae, sliced thin in a way that somehow renders the octopus completely tender, served over chopped scallions and greens with a mustardy miso sauce; uni sashimi, a generous serving of at least a half-dozen sea urchin "tongues," with that wonderful briny essence-of-the-ocean-with-a-hint-of-sweet-apricot creaminess.
A perfect Valentines' night - they even gave Mrs. F a rose as we headed out.
Here's a longer list of some of the many things we've tried and enjoyed - this list was compiled over the course of a few years visiting, over that time some of these items have gone off the menu, and others that were specials have now found their way onto the regular menu - with stars on some of the favorites:
-spicy miso cod or sea bass*
-flash-fried bok choi*
-hamachi usuzukuri (very thin-sliced yellowtail sashimi, to which they'll add slivers of jalapeno and ponzu)
-kabocha tempura
-maitake mushroom tempura (sometimes on the specials)*
-hamachi kama (often a special - collar of a yellowtail broiled and served w/ ponzu; a little work, but worth it for the delicious meat)
-salmon kama & belly (occasional special - outrageously rich and fatty; you'll feel like a bear fattening up for winter)
- takoyaki! (octopus dumplings; and there's a waitress who always says it like this, with the exclamation point, whenever I order it)*
-nasu buto miso itame (sauteed pork w/ eggplant and miso)*
-spicy chile shrimp
-uni & ikura pasta
-fried chicken gizzards (not bad, but not sure what the point is)
-grilled pork belly (used to be a frequent special, now on the regular menu - little slivers, nice and crispy)
-sanma (like a big sardine, grilled whole including innards - sometimes a little dry but if you like strongly flavored silver-skinned fish like sardine or mackerel, etc. it's good)
-steak w/ garlic sauce
-tongue stew
- spicy manila clams (a semi-regular special)*
-grilled fiji shrimp (they haven't had these for a while, but when they are on the specials they are absolutely delicious)
-ikura onigiri (since they don't do regular sushi, this is as close as you can get - it's like a pyramid of sushi rice stuffed inside with salmon roe - or salmon or a couple other things - with a sheet of nori wrapped around it; almost as good are the little japanese pickles that come with it)
-salmon ocha zuke (over rice w/ green tea poured over it - very refreshing)* (no longer on the menu)
-okonomiyaki (they call it a japanese pizza - an odd omelette type concoction with cabbage, fish, fish flakes and mayo - really rich and an excellent late night munchie) (no longer on the regular menu)
-jack tataki
-jack nanbanzuke (sometime special - this was surprisingly good - jack, a somewhat strong-flavored fish, fried and served cold, sort of pickled with vinegar and peppers - almost exactly like a jamaican fish escovitch)
- kimpira gobo (sauteed burdock root)
- crispy fish & onion salad
- local octopus ceviche (occasional special)*
- black pork sausage (a favorite of our kids)
- motsuni (pork intestine stew, occasional special; not for everyone)*
It's always fun to watch the open kitchen, where 3-4 chefs make almost everything other than the fried or stewed items that come from a back kitchen. It was a beautiful thing to see one of the chefs start to slice a loin of tuna and then, amidst all the chaos of a busy kitchen and full house, just stare at it intently for a minute while assessing his plan of attack. Yakko-San is open late (2am weekdays, 3am Fri-Sat) and you will frequently find local chefs and other restaurant biz folks there late or on their off-nights.
UPDATED: Yakko-San has moved, note new address below. Also, to avoid confusion, note that there is another restaurant along the 163rd St. Causeway called "Hiro." That is not Hiro's Yakko-San and is not asssociated with Yakko-San. Yakko-San is in the Intracoastal Mall, just west of the bridge over to Sunny Isles, right next to the Old Navy store.
Hiro's Yakko-San
3881 NE 163rd St.
North Miami Beach, FL
305.947.0064
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