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.

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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.

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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.

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