The Best Things I Ate in 2020 (Part 2)

My last post, Part 1 of The Best Things I Ate in 2020, began in a blissful time before a virus turned the world upside and vigorously shook it. Restaurant meals! Tasting menus! Travel! Things I always appreciated, but also kind of took for granted. Not any more. It's been a crazy, brutal year. In the restaurant world, there have been some unfortunate losses along the way, but I've actually been surprised and gratified by how many places have somehow been able to weather this long, extended storm. Part 2 of this list picks up in the early phases of the pandemic, when shutdown orders limited all restaurants to takeout and delivery only. 

pork chops and polenta @ home

With restaurants basically shut down, we found ourselves doing a lot more cooking at home. We also found ourselves with the opportunity to work with much better product than we were accustomed to, despite the shutdown. Restaurants started selling staples and straight-from-the-farm produce, restaurant suppliers started selling direct to individual customers, shops like Proper Sausages starting offering delivery options. The end result? A home-cooked dinner that takes a village: porchetta-spiced Proper pork chops rubbed with fennel, rosemary, garlic and lemon and dusted with fennel pollen, Moretti polenta from the Boia De larder cooked in mushroom broth, locally grown Paradise Farms oyster mushrooms via the All Day grocery, brined local tomatoes from Chef Jeremiah. I don't know that my cooking skills got any better, but the materials I could work with sure did.

Midday Snack - El Bagel (Upper Eastside)

After a very successful run of selling their excellent, chewy, crusty bagels at pop-ups and from a food truck for years, El Bagel took the big step of graduating to a brick and mortar location in the MiMo District – opening in early March, just in time for the shutdown. Rotten luck, but they executed their pivot quickly and effectively. They're now open Thursday through Monday from 8am to noon for takeout only, with all ordering done online and pickup times given via text notice. Between the easy ordering and geographical proximity, this has worked out incredibly conveniently for me: over the past nine months, my receipts indicate that Family Frod has consumed nearly twenty dozen El Bagel bagels.^[1] I usually just get a dozen plus some cream cheeses and lox, but occasionally I'll get one of their prepared sandwiches. My current favorite is this "Midday Snack," with lox cream cheese, thinly sliced ringlets of red onion, and chives, served open-faced as God intended, and best with an addition of smoked trout roe when available. (All my pictures from El Bagel).

pastrami sandwich - Hometown Barbecue (Allapattah)

I didn't need a pandemic to remind me how much I love sandwiches – I actually wrote on the subject late last year for Edible South Florida – but 2020 did turn out to be pretty sandwich-intensive. One of my favorites was this simple, perfect pastrami sandwich from Hometown Barbecue, which opened in Allapattah last fall. Don't try to trace the spiral path of a pastrami sandwich served at a Texas-style BBQ spot opened in a wholesale produce distribution center in Miami by a Brooklyn restaurateur. Just enjoy. (All my pictures from Hometown Barbecue).

(continued...)

The Best Things I Ate in 2020 (Part 1)

Well.

Every December when I do these "year in review" posts, I conclude with something my grandfather used to say: "Always better, never worse." Sorry, grandpa, but it didn't work this time. 2020 sucked. It's been a miserable year, for people who have lost their family members and friends, their health, their jobs, their businesses, their sense of security, their ability to enjoy companionship and community. It's been a year that's also brought into painful focus how race and class lead to fundamentally different experiences and outcomes in our country, and how hatred and intolerance are still alive and well. 2020 was worse, not better, in just about every way.

So it feels more than a little bit frivolous to be posting one of these "Best of 2020" posts in a year like this. And yet, if there's one thing we can all do right now, it's to support those people and businesses that we care about. The restaurant world I focus on here has had a particularly hard year, repeatedly whipsawed back and forth by closures and rule changes while getting little in the way of leadership or support from government at any level.^[1] The industry is a challenging one in the best of circumstances; over the past year, mere survival seems to me an incredible achievement. I've always admired the dedication, resiliency, resourcefulness and creativity of those who've devoted themselves to this craft, but especially now, as so many struggle to balance the safety and security of their teams, the comfort and experience of their customers, and the sustainability of their businesses.

So as weird as it may seem in this disaster of a year, it's also gratifying to be able to celebrate the work of those that amidst it all have provided so many of us some moments of joy. Here is the first of three installments of The Best Things I Ate in 2020.

Million Dollar Salad - Navé (Coconut Grove)

One of my favorite new restaurants of late 2019 was Navé, the Italian seafood themed next-door neighbor to Michael Beltran's Ariete which he opened with Justin Flit. Navé quickly became a regular multipurpose spot, good for a quick bite at the bar, a date night, or a get-together with friends. There were a lot of things I liked: the seafood towers, the snapper milanese, the pasta with bottarga, uni and cultured butter. But the one must-order every time I was there was the simple but pitch-perfect "Million Dollar Salad" with crisp, bright gem lettuce, fresh herbs, and a Sicilian pistachio vinaigrette. I'm thrilled that after going into pandemic hibernation, then periodically resurfacing for some "Navé Seafood Shack" pop-ups, Navé reopened earlier this month. (All my pictures from Navé).

Ankimo - The Den at Azabu (Miami Beach)

In the early part of the year, pre-shutdown, I had a couple very happy omakase sessions at The Den at Azabu – a solo visit in late January, and then a follow-up shortly after with a jealous Mrs. F. My first round was with chef Shingo Akikuni behind the counter; round two was with chef Yasu Tanaka. Both meals were outstanding. Maybe my favorite bite among many was this ankimo (monkfish liver): lush, silky, and fully deserving of its nickname as the "foie gras of the sea." The Den has reopened for dining and is also doing a take-out omakase (which makes an appearance later in this list) if, like me, you're not yet doing dine-in. And I'm excited to hear that Chef Akikuni is now at Hiden in Wynwood, which recently reopened and is also doing a take-out omakase for two. (All my pictures from The Den at Azabu).

Wagyu Beef Tartare - Eating House (Coral Gables)

It had been a minute since I'd last paid a visit to Giorgio Rapicavoli's Eating House in Coral Gables. But it felt like old times when I stopped by in February, taking a seat at the front bar counter, munching Sazon-spiced popcorn with an NBA game on the TV while waiting for my order, and eating tasty fun dishes like this wagyu beef tartare with shio koji, shallots, braised and pickled carrots, and lime zest, every bite bouncing with umami, depth, freshness and acidity. (All my pictures from Eating House).

(continued...)

favorite dishes of 2019: worldwide version

I made a decision this year to split my "favorite dishes" list between Miami and elsewhere. You can see the 25 best things I ate in Miami over here. This list (All lists! All the time! At least until the end of the year!) covers the best things I ate everywhere else in 2019.

We started the year in Marfa, Texas^[1] before taking a long drive to Austin, which is a really fun town where there's a taco truck, a BBQ place, a beer hall, and a live music venue on every block. There were brief visits to New York and San Francisco, and then a wonderful week in Italy (Rome and Venice, broken up by a day in Florence), where I practiced some immersion therapy to get over my biases against Italian food.^[2] Back to the Bay Area for a week. A long weekend in Los Angeles, making only the tiniest dent in the long list of places I want to visit in what may be the best eating town in the U.S. And finally, a late year return to N.Y. before the calendar flipped over.

charred cabbage, satsuma butter - Emmer & Rye (Austin)

Our first dinner in Austin was at chef Kevin Fink's Emmer & Rye, a place with a focus on heirloom grains (as the name suggests), local seasonal products, carts circling the dining room with little snacks a la State Bird Provisions, and generally speaking, some really creative stuff happening in the kitchen. I enjoyed everything, but especially this dish of charred cabbage, satsuma butter, trout roe and mustard greens. Savory, smoky, citrusy, and more, it was odd and delicious.

(See all my pictures from Emmer & Rye.)

(continued ...)

favorite dishes of 2019: miami version

More lists! I already spilled nearly 5,000 words in my last post recounting the decade of dining in Miami. I'll try not to do that for another ten years. But this one is an annual tradition: the best things I ate over the past year. I've always made clear that this in no way purports to be any sort of definitive "best of" type of list, but is based solely on my own personal experiences and as a result is heavily influenced by my own preferences and proclivities.^[1] Something new for 2019: rather than throw them all in a bucket together,^[2] I've made one list of the best things I ate in Miami, and another for the best things I ate everywhere else. These appear in chronological order.

unagi shirayaki - Hiden

For a while, Miami was behind the curve on the trend of high-end, omakase-only sushi dens that have overtaken New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. We're catching up with places like Hiden, which opened in mid-2018 but which I didn't manage to book until January of this year. Hiden is an intimate eight-seat sushi counter hidden away in a private room in the back of the Taco Stand in Wynwood, serving a chef's choice menu of about a dozen courses of sushi and other raw and cooked things for, as of press time, $170 before tax and tip. It was excellent when I visited with chef Tadashi Shiraishi running the show, but he left in a split with ownership the following month and I've not been back. My favorite bite among many very good ones was this unagi shirayaki (grilled freshwater eel), seasoned only with salt and a dab of fresh wasabi rather than the typical sweet tare.

(See all my pictures in this Hiden flickr set).

(continued ...)

best dishes of 2018 - part 3

herbed tostada - Willows Inn

We're already a few weeks deep into 2019, but I'm still writing 2018 on my blog posts. Here's the last round of my personal "best dishes of 2018," which starts at one of my favorite places on earth, then spends the rest of its time back here in sunny South Florida. You can read Part 1 and Part 2 here. Happy New Year, all!

smoked black cod doughnuts - Willows Inn

smoked sockeye salmon - Willows Inn

heirloom wheat bread, crab brain - Willows Inn

fruits and their leaves and kernels - Willows Inn

In late summer we made our third pilgrimage to Blaine Wetzel's Willows Inn on Lummi Island, a tiny speck on the map among the San Juan Islands off the coast of Washington State. Our first visit was almost exactly five years earlier, in 2013, and we fell in love – not just with the restaurant, which is wonderful, but with the idyllic, tranquil island itself. This latest meal was our best yet at Willows. (More pictures, of dinner and also of Lummi Island, in this Willows Inn flickr set).

It's unusual for a restaurant to have multiple "signature" dishes, but several from Willows Inn could easily be called that: the "tostada" crafted from a tempura-fried mustard leaf, smeared with an oyster and herb emulsion and festooned with everything fresh and blooming from the garden, a different burst of flavor in every bite; the puffy donuts stuffed with smoked black cod, sprinkled with sea salt and dried seaweed; the perfect smoked salmon, about which I said five years ago: "You realize: this is the best salmon you are ever going to eat in your life." I didn't consider at the time: you can always go back. This time was just maybe even better.

The other dishes pictured here reflect how Wetzel so effectively captures place and time, location and season. During our first two visits, a hearty bread course was one of the highlights, in large part because it came with a ramekin of rich, sticky chicken drippings for dipping. This time, instead of chicken drippings, there was a crab carapace – from nearby waters, of course^[1] – filled with bits of warm crabmeat covered in a thick blanket of creamy crab brains, with an intense but clean and pure taste of the sea. Frod Jr. told me months later he was still thinking about how good this was. Yup. Dessert was pretty magical too: an assortment of fruits captured at their peak of ripeness, paired up with something else from the same fruit: peaches and blackberries with ices made from their leaves, plums in a syrup of their kernels, obscenely fresh figs right off the tree with a fig leaf cream.

When I win the lottery – or maybe even if I don't – this is where you'll find me one day.

lobster thermidor - The Surf Club Restaurant

I might have ruffled a few feathers when I said in Eater that the biggest dining surprise of 2018 was how boring the menu was at The Surf Club Restaurant:

The space is gorgeous, the service is outstanding, the execution is precise, but the choices are just ... so ... dull. I get the whole “throwback” theme, and it provides some highlights (the Oysters Rockefeller are second only to Galatoire’s IMO, and I thought the Lobster Thermidor was great), and I like going there. But when I heard we were getting a Thomas Keller restaurant, and when he brought in a creative, talented chef like Manuel Echeverri, who was doing great things at Bazaar Mar, to run the kitchen – well, I was hoping for something more.

The truth is, I have ambivalent feelings about the Surf Club. I've thoroughly enjoyed my three visits there; just not so much for the food, which has been good, but not particularly memorable. I expected more things like the Lobster Thermidor, an Escoffier classic which frankly I'd never had a particularly good example of until this one. Instead of the typical stodgy spackle mounded into a lobster shell, this version held some surprises: a ragout of lobster meat and vegetables plus a thin sheet of crispy puff pastry concealed under a burnished blanket of cream and cheese, the perfume of tarragon wafting from within, all serving as the bed for a precisely cooked lobster tail, some preserved morels providing a rich, woodsy counterpoint which acted as a bridge for the aromatic red Burg that wine director Zach Gossard generously poured for me. More like this, please.

(continued ...)

best dishes of 2018: part 2

Though I'm not posting as frequently of late, I did at least manage to start my "best of 2018" list before 2019 actually started, which is better than I did last year (though I may not finish before the year comes to a close). You can read Part 1 here, where we left off in Los Angeles. We'll pick up here back in Miami before bouncing around some more, to the Hudson Valley, the Bay Area, Chicago, British Columbia, and Greece. As always, despite the title playing to the traditional year-end trope, there's no pretense here that this list represents the "best" of anything other than a compendium of personal favorites from the past year of dining, listed in roughly chronological order.

tarabagani kani miso yaki - Den at Azabu

2018 was the year the omakase sushi trend came to town. Though Naoe will celebrate a ten year anniversary in a few months, and there have always been a couple other places that will do an omakase if you know how to ask, until this past year Miami had no other dedicated omakase venues. That's changed with the addition of The Den at Azabu, from a group which opened first in Tokyo and then NYC before bringing their talents to South Beach, and Hiden (which is still on my to-do list, and booked for next month).

The Den is a private room at Azabu dedicated to omakase sushi service, seating about twelve total. With the minimalist aesthetic, pale wood surfaces, and dining counter surrounding the sushi chefs, it feels very much like the places we visited in Japan. And with a base price starting at $120 for about fourteen courses, it's a relative value. The fish and rice were all of good quality, but the standout item for me was one of the opening dishes which served as precursor to the sushi: tarabagani (king crab), grilled, the meat picked from the shell and served warm in a stone bowl, draped with a blanket of kani miso – crab "miso," which is a nice way of saying the crab's rich, creamy, deeply flavored guts.

hearth cooked beans, clams, grilled squid, sambal, bok choy - Fish & Game

More college tours with Little Miss F took us close enough to the Hudson Valley to justify a trip to a place I've long wanted to try: Zak Pelaccio's Fish & Game. I loved absolutely everything about it – the old brick building, the cozy dining room and bar/lounge area with fireplaces ablaze, Zak and his dog bounding through the restaurant toward the end of lunch service. All of the food was just delicious, including a crab omelet with chili crab sauce that hearkens back to Zak's Fatty Crab days. But my favorite was a dish of creamy, meaty beans cooked in the hearth, along with some plump little clams, bits of grilled squid, wispy bok choy leaves, and a hit of sambal. A wonderful dish and a wonderful place.

aburi miso onigiri with miso seasoned slow cooked kamo - Katsuya Fukushima

Back home in Miami, it was time for Duck Duck Goose, Chef Jeremiah Bullfrog's avian spin-off from P.I.G. (Pork Is Good), hosted at The Anderson. Jeremiah throws the best food parties in town, and D.D.G. was no exception. Some of South Florida's best chefs served some great dishes – gorgeous duck confit terrines with mushroom gelée from David Coupe and Josue Peña of Faena, Jeremiah's crispy tripe and duck wings with Szechuan chili oil, Itamae's arroz con pato maki, Babe Froman's duck sandwich in the style of a Philly / Italian roast pork sandwich were all standouts. But the best dish of the day – and one of my favorites of the year – came from an out-of-towner, Washington D.C.'s Katsuya Fukushima of Daikaya (and also a Cobaya alumnus, from Experiment #10 way back in 2010). He did these onigiri, stuffed with slow-cooked, miso-seasoned duck, then topped with a torched duck fat miso sauce. Obscenely rich in the best possible way.

Blossom Bluff Goldensweet apricot galette - Chez Panisse Café

June found us in the Bay Area for a visit with Frod Jr., where we paid homage to an institution: Chez Panisse. It had been two, possibly three, decades since I'd been. And guess what? It's still genuinely great.

If I told you that a rustic-looking place, with a charcoal grill and wood burning oven, serving food straight from the farms, fields and docks had just opened in the East Bay, you'd probably think it was right on trend. It's a testament to the restaurant's outsize influence; and, I suppose some would say, to the stagnancy of what's come to be known as "California Cuisine." There's a reason for the genre's staying power, though: when it's done right, it's still very good, especially in Northern California, which produces some of the greatest raw ingredients on the planet. And Chez Panisse is still doing it right.

Throughout dinner, I watched somewhat nervously as a galette out on that kitchen counter was gradually whittled down to only a couple slices. Fortunately there was still one remaining when we ordered dessert. A burnished, flaky crust was the vehicle for juicy, fragrant, bright-flavored apricots, paired simply with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. It was perfect. There seems to be a backlash these days against "name-checking" on menus; me, I'm happy to know that if I ever see Golden Sweet apricots from Blossom Bluff Orchards, I should buy as many as I can lay my hands on.

smoked duck magret, green plum, fennel + green almonds - Upland

Speaking of "California Cuisine" – Justin Smillie's Upland already made an appearance in Part 1 of this list for a dish he served at our Cobaya dinner. I was back again for more later – more and more frequently. There are several fixtures on the menu there that I crave regularly – the gem lettuce salad topped with ribbons of ricotta salata, the crispy duck wings with yuzu kosho, the wood-fired prawns, the bucatini cacio e pepe – but maybe the best thing I had was a wonderful dish that combined smoked duck breast, still shaded a rosy pink, with green plums, shaved fennel, green almonds, a sort of pesto sauce, and a generous pile of greens and herbs. This is what Smillie does so well at Upland, these dishes that taste like a garden but are still hearty, that look and eat so casual but are executed with refinement and touch.

(continued ...)

best dishes of 2018: part 1

This time last year, I felt out of touch with much of the local dining universe: 2017 was the year of the "to-do list" for me, during which the much-talked-about local openings outpaced even my appetite (or at least my schedule). But 2018 was the year of catching up, at least to some extent. After submitting my list of "Top Restaurant Newcomers" for Eater's annual year in review, I realized that several of them had actually opened late last year.^[1] Well, some of us just operate at a different pace.

Speaking of pace, the posting schedule here at FFT has undeniably slowed of late. Sometimes a lack of inspiration can be to blame, but that really wasn't the case during a year in which we ate quite well, both here at home in Miami and on visits to New York, L.A., Chicago, the Bay Area, the Pacific Northwest, and Greece. Short trips, often on short notice, meant fewer "trophy" dining opportunities, but still no shortage of good meals.

Of the 36 dishes I've put on this list, more than half were served here in South Florida. That's a big difference from years past, when usually only a third or so are locally grown. Unfortunately, several of those are from restaurants that no longer exist. Last year saw the demise of several places that were already fond favorites or rapidly joining that category: Proof, Gaijin by Cake, Shelley's, Wabi Sabi by Shuji.^[2] But all is not lost: Justin Flit, the talented chef from Proof, has been doing a pizza pop-up at Taurus in Coconut Grove, and has more things in the works with Ariete's Michael Beltran; Thongsodchareondee Phuket ("Chef Cake") still has the original Cake Thai on Biscayne Boulevard, recently opened a Thai street food stand in the 1-800-LUCKY food hall, and has all sorts of other things in the pipeline; Shelley's chef Cleophus Hethington is working on Ebi Chop Bar, which will focus on the foods of the African diaspora; I'm still crossing my fingers that Shuji Hiyakawa comes back from Japan to reopen Wabi Sabi.

Anyway, let's get to the good stuff. As always, despite the title, there's no pretense here that this list reflects the "best" of anything other than my personal favorites from a year of dining, listed chronologically.

dahi vada, avocado tuna bhel, pani puri - Ghee Indian Kitchen

I'd managed to eat Niven Patel's food several times before he'd opened either the first Ghee Indian Kitchen in Dadeland, or its sibling in the Design District, including via a Cobaya dinner he hosted at Rancho Patel last year. But it took me a little while to get to the restaurants. So Ghee – which opened down south a few months after our Cobaya event, and in the Design District in late 2017 – was on my "Top Restaurant Newcomers" list anyway. It's more than just a top newcomer. It's more than just the best Indian restaurant (for my money) in Miami. It's one of Miami's top restaurants, period.

The combination of Indian flavors with a real-deal farm-to-table ethos – the menu highlights an increasing number of items that come straight from the Rancho Patel farm Niven and his family run in Homestead – is on display in pretty much all the dishes. But I have a particular fondness for the chaats: boldly flavored, intriguingly textured, snack-y items like the pani puri, delicate, crispy little cups filled with sprouted moong beans, diced beets into which you spoon a spiced green juice, or the dahi vada, hearty lentil fritters doused with date chutney and yogurt, or the bhel puri bound with mashed avocado and topped with raw tuna.

potato darphin, Maine uni, jalapeño - Wildair

I did not spend nearly enough time in New York this past year. In fact, I was only in the city once, for an overnight business trip. That was enough time to pay my first, very belated, visit to Wildair, Fabian Von Hauske and Jeremiah Stone's delightful Lower East Side wine bar type spot, and to sample a signature dish. It's no wonder the potato darphin can never leave the menu. It starts with the platonic ideal of a McDonald's hash brown or a Channukah latke, depending on your point of reference: hot, crunchy, creamy all at once. That gets brushed with a thin veneer of spicy pickled jalapeño with a hit of citrus (yuzu kosho?). Then it's topped with a generous mound of silky, mildly briny Maine uni, served cold like the winter ocean, for some contrast against the hot potatoes. That's a great dish, even better with some funky pet-nat wine to accompany it.

fried chicken sandwich - Shelley's

Boy, did I ever have a crush on Shelley's. Chef Cleophus Hethington and barman Brian Griffiths were doing something pretty special in, of all places, sleepy South Miami: a quirky, seafood-centric menu, matched up with an equally eccentric selection of pre-batched or frozen cocktails. I was completely smitten, particularly by the fried chicken sandwich, which mostly played things straight but then threw a curve-ball with a funky fish sauce caramel.

She's relaxed and friendly, but she's serious about her cooking. Like her fried chicken sandwich, one of the best I've ever had. So crispy outside, so juicy inside, layered with pickle chips and fresh greens, on a squishy bun slathered with herb-flecked mayo. But what makes it special is a hit of Vietnamese style fish sauce caramel – a pungent, funky, salty-sweet burst of umami that you don't expect and that keeps drawing you back for more.

Shelley's, I miss you.

Florida bonito, soy, Hawaiian ginger, sea salt - Gaijin by Cake

Florida sardine with ginger and scallion- Gaijin by Cake

There was a brief, shining moment in time when Gaijin by Cake, Cake's short-lived izakaya in Midtown Miami, had the most interesting sushi bar in Miami. With a big assist from Denni Cha, who is now up in Orlando at a place called Sushi Pop, Cake was running a sushi menu that featured locally sourced fish and aging programs. Miami had never seen anything like this before. You can see the whole lineup from a March omakase dinner here, from which my favorites were a sashimi of local bonito – a fish you rarely see in restaurants because it tends to spoil quickly, but which has the deep meatiness of really good tuna – and a nigiri of local sardine topped with ginger and scallion, a fish that is typically only used for bait here, but which is absolutely delightful when properly cured.

(continued ...)

best dishes of 2017: part 3

We left off Part 2 of my "Best Dishes of 2017" (you can see Part 1 here too) in San Francisco. We stay in the Bay Area for Part 3 here, with a trip up to Healdsburg, then detour to Las Vegas, swing back to the east coast for a quick trip to Boston, then back home before ending the year in Santa Fe, New Mexico. As always, the "best" here is meaningless – this is just a compilation of some personal favorites from among several great meals over the course of the year.

mid summer in Sonoma - SingleThread

Our summer getaway found us on the West Coast, a trip which included a couple days in Healdsburg. The wine country in the northern reaches of Sonoma County is among my favorite places on earth, and now it has a restaurant to match the beauty and bounty of the area: Kyle Connaughton's SingleThread (see more pictures in this SingleThread Farm flickr set). SingleThread is about as fully realized a vision of the Japanese combination of kaiseki dining and ryokan as you'll find outside of Japan: a restaurant, supplied by its own nearby five-acre farm (run by spouse Katina Connaughton) plus contributions from neighboring farmers, fishermen and foragers, with a small, luxurious inn on premises (we regretfully didn’t stay at the inn, instead renting a house up the Russian River so we had room for the whole family and some friends).

This was, from start to finish, just a magical meal – refined and beautiful and flavorful, intimately expressive of season and place.

After a glass of bubbly and a platter of snacks on the rooftop garden terrace, we were brought back inside to the dining room and greeted with a spread that could do double duty as a centerpiece. There’s maybe a dozen different items laid out across the table, interspersed among an arrangement of branches and blooms. I won’t try to recount everything here, and in any event the contents vary from day to day and season to season like the "hassun" course of a kaiseki meal, but I particularly recall the cold slivers of geoduck in a neon peach-hued stone fruit gelee; a tart, bright, green tomato gazpacho; a creamy corn panna cotta with an accent mark of fermented cucumber; silky purple baby eggplant agebitashi with a sesame and plum curd; an intensely rich mousse of potato and salt cod; ripe, fat mulberries from nearby Middlteton Farm. And it's all as delicious as it is beautiful.

wild king salmon ibushi-gin - SingleThread

From an ornate tapestry of dishes to bare-bones simplicity: wild king salmon, caught in Half Moon Bay, smoked in an ibushi-gin (a type of donabe, or Japanese stone pot, which are something of an obsession at SingleThread), swimming in a vinaigrette of negi (Japanese scallion) bolstered with the magic of shio koji, garnished with a dollop of char roe and a tiara of finely slivered myoga (young ginger) and radish. When I had the smoked salmon at Willows Inn, I was pretty certain that would be the best salmon I'd ever eat in my life. Now I'm not so sure.

poached foie gras, tea of last year's tomatoes - SingleThread

So often, foie gras gets fruity accompaniments as a foil for its richness. Here, instead, Connaughton goes vegetal. A disk of poached foie, with a texture like cool butter, is awash in a "tea" of last year's tomatoes, plus an assortment of radishes and their greens in various forms: fresh, preserved, dried. The peppery crunch of the radishes does the same job without the usual cloying sweetness. And then another bit of magic comes from an aged sake poured with it – again, a far cry from the customary sweet Sauternes – which magically pulls it all together, one of the most memorable pairings of the whole year.

Sonoma grains, nettles, kasuzuke - SingleThread

I know, we're four deep into this list and we're still haven't left SingleThread. What can I say, it was pretty good. This bowl of Sonoma grains, bound in a luminous green nettle purée, garnished with kasuzuke pickled vegetables, a farro verde beignet, a bouquet of herbs, sprouts and petals from the garden, and a tableside drizzle of an intense aged rib cap jus (presumably a byproduct of the American wagyu served in the prior course), was served as the final savory item on the menu, in the same fashion that a rice dish usually acts as the anchor of a Japanese meal. It was incredibly gratifying and delicious, and felt like something of a summary and recapitulation of all that preceded it.

agedashi tofu - Aburiya Raku

In October, a conference brought me to Las Vegas, where I always find time to visit Aburiya Raku (read my thoughts and see more pictures in this Aburiya Raku flickr set). It's the first place I tried fresh, house-made tofu and it's still one of my favorite places to order it. The pro move is to go half-and-half: a half order of the "Raku's tofu," served cold with garnishes of katsuobushi, chopped chives, minced ginger, and green tea salt; and a half-order of the agedashi tofu, fried, doused in an enriched dashi broth bobbing with little mushrooms, and topped with a dollop of ikura, shredded nori and more chopped chives. It's so good.

(continued ...)

best dishes of 2017: part 2

We started last Friday with my "best dishes of 2017: part 1" – a compendium of personal favorites from the past year. We resume here with a highly pedigreed fried chicken sandwich, take quick treks through New York and Philadelphia, then detour back to Miami before swinging out to the west coast.

fried chicken cemita - La Pollita

La Pollita was a short-lived Mexican-themed pop-up run from a trailer in the Midtown Garden Center by Luciana Giangrandi and Alex Meyer, who had previously worked at such places as Eleven Madison Park, NoMad, Scarpetta and Animal (read my thoughts and see more pictures in this La Pollita flickr set). The trailer is gone but the duo still seem to be kicking around Miami – I'm looking forward to what's next from them.

They've got a short list of tacos, served on fresh tortillas pressed from masa supplied by Miami masa maestro Steve Santana (of Taquiza), and the cochinita pibil I tried was very good. But the standout item was the fried chicken cemita. A hot, crispy, juicy tranche of fried chicken. A crunchy, vinegar-laced, herb-flecked cabbage slaw. A dollop of mashed avocado for some richness. A creamy, mildly spicy Valentina aioli. A sesame-seed flecked bun with just the right heft: substantial enough to be a meaningful component of the sandwich composition and to keep everything together until the last bite; but not so much as to overwhelm the stars of the show. It is just about perfect.

sea urchin, chickpea hozon - Momofuku Ko

Hey, look, it's another great meal I never got around to writing about, at David Chang's Momofuku Ko, where the kitchen is run by Sean Gray (see more pictures in this Momofuku Ko flickr set). I never got to the original incarnation of Ko, legendary for its relatively affordable tasting menus, brutally uncomfortable stools, and impossible reservation system. In its newer digs down a tiny East Village street literally called "Extra Place," it retains some of its original punk sensibilities – the dining counter circling an open kitchen, the cooks presenting the dishes, the hip-hop soundtrack – but it's all pretty buffed and polished, kind of like a Gucci biker jacket.

The tasting menu still carries a couple of the original Ko classics – the "Ko egg" with caviar, crispy potatoes, onion soubise and sweet potato vinegar, the shaved frozen foie gras – but one of my favorites of the evening was a next generation Ko dish. It's deceptively simple: lobes of cold, sweet sea urchin, a scoop of chickpea hozon (a creamy, miso-like fermented paste), a drizzle of grassy olive oil. There's a subtle contrast of marine salty-sweet against earthy salty-sweet; of the delicately creamy texture of the uni against the thicker, peanut butter-y hozon, mirrored by the two orange shades on the plate. Pretty cool.

cherry blossom, amazake - Momofuku Ko

Another of my favorites at Ko was another deceptively simple composition: a dessert of cherry blossom dusted ice cream, served over creamy, sweet amazake (rice fermented with sake lees or koji), drizzled with a sauce of preserved cherries. It was simultaneously delicate but powerful, homey but elegant.

carrot crepe, littleneck clam, sunflower - Olmsted

Olmsted, Greg Baxtrom's Brooklyn restaurant with a backyard garden that does double-duty as a pre- and post-meal hangout spot, has been much talked about (see more pictures in this Olmsted flickr set). In a way, all the chatter possibly sets expectations a bit too high, for what is just a really fun, delicious, casual, cozy, clever, relatively affordable neighborhood spot run by someone with chops honed at Alinea, Blue Hill at Stone Barns, Per Se, and Arzak. The menu changes all the time – they were on a yakitori bender during our visit, while also serving Hyderabadi inspired duck chakna, truffle-dusted rutabaga "tagliatelle," and simple but delicious sauteed soft-shell crab with pickled peppers and ranch dressing  – but this one dish seems to have become a signature, and for good reason. A goldenrod hued carrot crepe serves as the platform for a salad of wispy slivers of multi-colored carrots, petals, sprouts, and sunflower seeds, concealing a rich clam and carrot stew underneath. It's unusual, unexpected, and delicious.

tout le lapin - Le Coucou

Daniel Rose's path was a somewhat unusual one. The Chicago native was inspired to move to Lyon to study cooking after taking classes at the American University in Paris. After years at the Institut Bocuse and apprenticeships around France, he opened his first restaurant – Spring – in Paris. It wasn't until a decade later that he returned to the States to open Le Coucou in New York with Stephen Starr (see more pictures in this Le Coucou flickr set). In a way, the place makes it feel like the last couple decades of dining history never happened. There are pressed white tablecloths and long wax tapers on the tables; the menu isn't a collage of small plates, but good old fashioned hors d'oeuvres, poissons et viandes (though a category of "gourmandises" features otherwise uncategorized indulgences like quennelles de brochet and veal tongue with caviar).

But the cooking is more precise, focused, bright and clean than the butter and cream laden juggernauts of the older era that Le Coucou otherwise invokes. And nowhere was that more evident than in a dish called "tout le lapin" (all the rabbit), a production which comes to the table in three different serving vessels (the picture here is better focused, but this one gives a view of the whole spread). The saddle is rolled and cooked and then sliced into rounds which are seared and browned, then napped with a loose sauce that takes the ferrous richness of rabbit offal, cuts it with an acidic vinaigrette, and brightens it with fresh mint. Alongside is a gratin dish of the rabbit's legs cooked down with soft, sweet onions. And finally, a pot au feu of the foreleg, in a golden broth bobbing with carrots and turnips. It's all wonderful.

(continued ...)

best dishes of 2017: part 1

I know, I know, you're supposed to do these "best of the year" wrap-ups before the year actually ends. Well, I'm just glad we've made it through to 2018, so I'm not going to sweat the timing all that much. Looking back, it was a somewhat odd year of eating for me. We traveled – London, Paris, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Santa Fe – but they were all mostly short jaunts, a few days here and there that were over almost as soon as they began. Meanwhile, I'm feeling increasingly out of touch with developments here at home; the list of new Miami restaurants I haven't yet tried grows longer and longer.

Sometimes that's purposeful: just because it's new doesn't necessarily mean it's interesting or good. Sometimes it's geographically driven: one of the more interesting phenomena of the past year, to me anyway, is the abundance of independent restaurants opening outside of the usual trifecta of Wynwood, South Beach and Brickell. I'm thinking of places like Ghee in Downtown Dadeland, No Name Chinese and Shelley's in South Miami, Doce Provisions and Ella's Oyster Bar in Little Havana, Sherwood's Bistro in Little Haiti, Finka Table and Tap and Amelia's 1931 out west. Some of those are easier for me to get to than others, but those I've gotten to have provided some of the most interesting eating of the past year. And sometimes, let's be honest, inertia sets in.

As always, despite that word "best," I make no pretense of this being any sort of objective listing, only my personal favorites of the places I had the good fortune to visit in 2017. They are not ranked, but rather are listed here in roughly chronological order. For ease of digestion, I'll be breaking this up into three parts.

cockles, pil pil sauce - Bazaar Mar

I wasn't sure Miami needed a second Bazaar restaurant from Chef José Andrés, but I'm glad we got another, and the seafood-focused menu at Bazaar Mar is sufficiently different from the original that they're both worthy of a visit (you can read my thoughts and see more pictures in this Bazaar Mar flickr set). There are lots of flashy, showy dishes there, but one of my favorites was one of the simplest.

The larger dishes on the menu tend to skew a bit more traditional, but that doesn't necessarily mean boring. I loved these little cockles, fresh from the tank, in a Basque-style pil pil sauce, an emulsion of garlic, parsley, olive oil and fish juices.

José Andrés' accomplishments this past year far transcend the restaurant world: through World Central Kitchen, he delivered over two million meals to over seventy locations in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria devastated the island. He also continues to run restaurants that make some great food. José for President!

khandvi - Ghee Rancho Patel Cobaya dinner

Chef Niven Patel of Ghee is making some of the most exciting food in Miami right now, and over the past year he's gone from doing pop-ups at his home in Homestead to opening two restaurants featuring his version of farm-to-table Indian cuisine. We got a taste back in March, shortly before his first spot in Downtown Dadeland opened (read my thoughts on our Cobaya Rancho Patel dinner and see more pictures in this Cobaya Rancho Patel flickr set).

A special treat: khandvi, or as our menu called them, "chickpea roll-ups." This was something I'd never tried before, and for good reason: Niven says you're unlikely to ever see these unless your mother or grandmother is making them, as getting the batter – a mixture of chickpea flour and yogurt or buttermilk – and texture right is a bit of alchemy that could keep molecular gastronomists busy for a while. I was glad someone knew how to do it: these light, fluffy crepes, reminiscent of Japanese tamagoyaki, and seasoned with toasted black mustard seeds, julienned cilantro and curry leaf, were absolutely delicious.

roast bone marrow - St. John Bread and Wine

February featured a whirlwind trip to London and Paris, three days in each, which included a visit to one of the culinary stations of the cross: Fergus Henderson's St. John restaurant (actually, its sibling, St. John Bread and Wine in Spitalfields) (read my thoughts and see more pictures in this St. John Bread and Wine flickr set).

Of course, you have to start with the roasted marrow bones – Henderson's most famous dish, one that has been lovingly duplicated countless times in countless restaurants around the world, one that Anthony Bourdain declared his "always and forever choice" for his Death Row meal. The formula is now well-known: roasted femur bones; toasted bread; a pile of parsley salad; a mound of coarse sea salt. Scoop the oozy marrow from the bone, spread on to the toast, dress with a sprinkle of salt and a pinch of the salad, and enjoy. I've had it dozens of times, but never until now the original. And yes, it's the best: the marrow at the magic borderline between solid and liquid, the acid and salt and herbaceous bite of the salad right on the edge of too aggressive without crossing the line, with just the right punch of caper and shallot. I can't say it better than Fergus himself:

"Do you recall eating Raisin Bran for breakfast? The raisin-to-bran-flake ratio was always a huge anxiety, to a point, sometimes, that one was tempted to add extra raisins, which inevitably resulted in too many raisins, and one lost that pleasure of discovering the occasional sweet chewiness in contrast to the branny crunch. When administering such things as capers, it is very good to remember Raisin Bran."

raw Orkney scallop, hazelnut, clementine, winter truffle - The Clove Club

Our dinner at The Clove Club, chef Isaac McHale's all-grown-up supper club in Shoreditch, was one of my favorites of the year; two dishes from that meal appear here (read my thoughts and see more pictures in this Clove Club flickr set).

In "The Physiology of Taste," Brillat-Savarin famously wrote, "The discovery of a new dish confers more happiness on humanity than the discovery of a new star." I can't say for certain that this is an entirely new dish; I can say it's the first time I've had this particular combination of raw scallop, slivered raw button mushrooms, crushed hazelnuts, clementine and black truffle, all assembled over a jet-black squid ink purée. The scallop itself – from fisheries in Orkney, in the outer northern reaches of Scotland – is beautifully plump and fresh and sweet. It's complemented by a fascinating interplay of earthy and nutty flavors, brightened just a hint by the citrus. Speaking for myself, anyway, it's a lot more exciting than the latest "cold brown dwarf."

rabbit, celeriac, smoked bacon, tarragon - The Clove Club

Tasting menus often tend to peter out (for me anyway) as you approach the "big protein" stage, with creativity and finesse giving way to a push for satiety. Not here. This rabbit dish is a tour de force, making use of all the animal in a variety of ways – a ballotine threaded with green leaves, a pinkish slice of loin, tiny chops from the ribs, a wee rabbit heart, a cromesqui of offal, pulled together with a bright green herb sauce redolent with tarragon, then finally drizzled tableside with a rabbit broth. Fantastic.

(continued ...)

best dishes of 2016: part 3

We're coming in for a landing here – the final segment of my Best Dishes of 2016 (you can read Part 1 and Part 2 here).

(You can see pictures of all of them in this Best Dishes of 2016 flickr set).

pan con tumaca - Alter

Let me start here with the kind of superlative I'm usually loathe to state: Brad Kilgore's Alter was my favorite restaurant of the year, and for my money, the best restaurant in Miami right now (read my thoughts and see all my pictures from Alter). Brad's cooking is creative, smart, beautiful, lush without being overly heavy, and most important of all, flat out delicious.

Now a year and a half in, he's not afraid to change things up either. The dishes that appear here were from the last lunch service at Alter on October 1 (partly a result, I have to imagine, of the attention drawn by Brad's newest project, Brava at the Arsht Center). Then last month, Alter quietly switched its dinner service to a predominantly tasting-menu format, with either a 5-course $69 or 7-course $89 options, and only a very abbreviated list of a la carte alternatives. And now another new piece, just added in the past few days: a more casual a la carte menu for the no-reservations outdoor bar area.

A recent twitter exchange hit on a nugget of truth: more often than not, when a dish is "revisited" or "reinvented" (or worse, "deconstructed"), the end result pales in comparison to the original.

The classic Spanish snack, pan con tumaca (a/k/a pan con tomate or pa amb tomàquet), is a simple thing: grilled or toasted bread, rubbed with raw garlic and tomato, drizzled with olive oil, and sprinkled with salt. And yet with the right ingredients – crusty bread, ripe juicy tomato, fruity peppery olive oil – it is magically good, and difficult to improve upon.

The version I had this weekend at Alter, though, manages it. A thin plank of sourdough, golden on its surface but with still a whisper of tenderness at its center. A daub of tomato butter, warmed with Aleppo pepper. Soft, crushed cherry tomatoes, bleeding their juices. Slivers of pickled garlic, as thin as Paulie cut in prison. Red vein sorrel – pretty, sure, but also providing a bit of grassy, tart contrast.

potato purée, smoked cod - Alter

The same lunch featured another successful "reinvention" – this incredibly luxurious version of brandade. The base of the dish was a rich, Robuchon-esque potato purée, enriched with local burrata (presumably from Mimmo's Mozzarella), and topped with flakes of silky smoked black cod, crisp puffed potatoes, and sweet-savory onion jam.

steelhead roe, maple cream, chive, crispy crepe - Willows Inn

One of my all-time favorite meals was a visit to Blaine Wetzel's Willows Inn, off the coast of Washington State on tiny Lummi Island. I was thrilled to have an opportunity to make a return visit in October (read my thoughts and see all my pictures from Willows Inn). Sometimes those magical experiences are like lightning in a bottle, never to be captured again. But the second time was every bit as good, maybe better, than the first. Wetzel is a special chef and this is a special place.

There's nothing particularly showy or ostentatious about chef Blaine Wetzel's cooking. Quite the opposite, he willingly sets his ego aside and let the ingredients take center stage. That's not to diminish the skill with which he handles the wonderful things he finds in this little corner of the world, but rather to say that he really knows how to tell a story of time and place through a meal, eschewing unnecessary embellishment in favor of clarity.

An old favorite: a fragile, crisp crepe shell encasing steelhead roe and a maple cream, capped with finely snipped chives on the ends. This is just perfect. 

smoked black cod doughnuts - Willows Inn

Followed by a new (for me), perfect bite: puffy, savory doughnuts, filled with silky smoked black cod, and sprinkled with sea salt and dried seaweed. I could eat a dozen of these.

herb tostada - Willows Inn

With the sun setting over the Rosario Strait outside, there was another burst of color at our table: what Wetzel calls an herb tostada. The "tostada" is a mustard green leaf, fried in a delicate tempura style batter. It's spread with an oyster and herb emulsion, and then then topped with an assortment of vividly flavored leaves and flowers: nasturtium, shiso, basil, mint, brassica flowers, and more. It's incredibly delicate but intensely flavored, with each bite yielding a different surprise. This is a beautiful, wonderful dish.

breakfast spread - Willows Inn

One final thought. If you go to Willows Inn, you'll likely stay at Willows Inn, and if you stay at Willows Inn, a word of advice: don't skip breakfast. It is outstanding. Served family style, the lineup varies from day to day. Ours started with some fresh, luridly magenta-hued plum juice, served in a coupe glass, followed by some local doughnut peaches with creamy fresh yogurt topped with toasted hazelnut butter. Then a really glorious breakfast smorgasbord: a runny soft boiled egg; a pile of buckwheat crepes; fat slices of gravlax with fresh farmer cheese; house-smoked bacon, pancetta, and an aged, spice-rubbed cheese; kale wilted in flaxseed oil with coarse salt; sweet plum jam, tangy late-season rhubarb compote, silky fig custard drizzled with honey; a fat slab of creamy butter. Assemble as you wish. I can't imagine a better send-off.

aji chopped with ginger and scallion - Myumi

Myumi is not your typical sushi bar (read my thoughts and see all my pictures from Myumi). In fact, it's a truck – a converted FedEx delivery truck, currently stationed in a lot in Wynwood. From that truck, they serve an omakase only (chef's choice) menu with only two choices: do you want to spend $40 or $60? The omakase-only format means they know exactly what they need to buy, so they buy some very good stuff: fish and shellfish straight in from Japan, uni and ikura from Alaska, tuna from Ecuador. Some items get just a brush of shoyu, others more elaborate garnishes.

Maybe my favorite bite from my last visit was this nigiri of aji, the pleasantly oily, fatty fishiness of the minced horse mackerel counterbalanced by the zing of ginger and scallion, then topped with toasted sesame seeds.

(continued ...)