Willows Inn - Lummi Island, Washington

The first thing I notice upon arriving are the smells: the salt ocean air, fresh cut grass, a whiff of wood smoke. The ferry ride from the mainland takes only about ten minutes, but Lummi Island - the home of the Willows Inn - seems almost a world to itself. Lummi, about a dozen miles from end to end, is the easternmost of the San Juan Islands, an archipelago in the Strait of Juan de Fuca stretching between mainland Washington State and Vancouver Island. It's also one of the more beautiful places I've ever been.

We spent a couple days on Lummi Island before eating at Willows Inn, and I'm glad we did.^[1] We saw the reefnets where salmon are fished in the same way that Native Americans did it centuries ago.^[2] We caught (and released) a massive thirty pound lingcod. We kayaked along the island's coast, tasting bull kelp and sea lettuce we pulled right out of the water alongside our boats. After a little while, it starts to seem as if the entire landscape is edible: blackberry bushes flourish everywhere, salmon occasionally jump over the waves, their scales glinting silver in the light, deer and rabbits roam out of the woods at dusk.

It provided context. And perhaps more than anything else, Chef Blaine Wetzel's cooking is all about context.

The best meals not only nourish and satisfy; they tell a story. It doesn't need to be a complicated one - and indeed, when your mode of communication is a plate of food, it probably can't be. The story of Willows Inn is a simple one, eloquently told: "Here is where you are, right now."

This is the story of Willows Inn, and Lummi Island, on August 15, 2013.^[3]

(You can see all my pictures in this Willows Inn flickr set.)

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San Sebastian Pintxos - A Fuego Negro, La Cuchara de San Telmo

There are enough Michelin stars in and about San Sebastian to make up a constellation, but some of the best eating in this food mecca can be found in its many bars and their seemingly infinite selection of pintxos. We first visited San Sebastian about a year and a half ago, and sampled several excellent pintxos bars. We had the good fortune to be back in San Sebastian recently, and made return visits to several of those same bars, and some new ones as well.

Last year's post conveys my genuine awe at the culinary wonderland that San Sebastian is, and so I won't repeat myself here. I also won't dare try to recount each of the many morsels we sampled, which would be well nigh impossible. Rather, this is just a list of some of the highlights. Before diving in, though, a couple observations that are hopefully not duplicative of my comments from last year:

First, one of the things I found so remarkable is that even with the plethora of pintxos bars in the town - surely well more than a hundred over just a few square miles - it seems that virtually all of them have their regulars. We couldn't sit down in the homiest little hole in the wall for more than fifteen minutes without somebody showing up who the bartender knew (and usually also knew their drink order). Another thing I found interesting is that there is no firm division between "traditional" and "contemporary," at least as far as the customer base is concerned. Even in the most modern bars, serving the most contemporary, unusual bites, you would find bushy-moustached Basque old-timers enjoying a bite next to tattooed, serially-pierced hipsters. If the food is good, that's all that matters to these people - and most of the food is very, very good.

As I did last year, I'll divide my notes between the Parte Vieja (the "Old Town") on the west side of the Urumea River, and the more commercial Barrio Gros on the east side, running into the Zurriola beach. Our exploration of the Parte Vieja was somewhat limited this time around on account of the Bandera de la Concha, a very popular boat regatta which is apparently celebrated by massive crowds of sloppy drunk teenagers afterwards by crowding into the Parte Vieja, strewing about thousands of broken plastic drink cups, and urinating in the streets. Ah, to be young again ...

A Fuego Negro is a slick looking place done up mostly in shades of black and red which offered some of the most creative and delicious dishes we experienced on this trip. They feature both contemporary takes on some Spanish classics, as well as some more esoteric choices in miniature pintxo form. The menu starts with "Txupitos and Apertifs," clever combinations of a bite and a drink in one little item.

Here, "Fino & Ajo Ibérico" took the form of half-frozen "cloves" of ajo blanco, the classic Spanish garlic soup, with cubes of fino sherry gelée and a fine dice of apple.

"Salmorejo Txerry Sobre Migas Ibéricas," meanwhile, was served as a orb of the gazpacho-like soup, infused with sherry, in sorbet form, nestled in a little bed of bread crumbs, and sprinkled with a bit of pimenton. Both of these were wonderful, invigorating bites.

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Norman's 180 - Coral Gables

[sorry, this restaurant has closed]

I'm going to come right out and say it: I don't think I can be entirely objective about Chef Norman Van Aken's new restaurant, Norman's 180. Some of the reminiscing in my last post previewing the restaurant's opening might give some indication why. A dinner nearly twenty years ago at his South Beach restaurant A Mano was one of my first truly memorable meals. His "Feasts of Sunlight" cookbook, published in 1988, was one of the first cookbooks I recall cooking from. Very simply, Chef Van Aken's food has played a not-insignificant part in my personal culinary history.

In the interest of complete disclosure, I should also add that I've attended a (free) friends and family dinner as well as a (free) media preview event at the restaurant,^[1] and the chef and I have chatted at those events as well as chance encounters in local tapas bars. Since Norman's 180 officially opened, I've been back a few more times as a paying customer. But try as I might, I've been unable to do so without being "spotted," since Chef Van Aken seems to be working seven days a week. So take this all with as many grains of salt as you deem appropriate.

With that said: Norman's 180 is putting out some delicious, exciting food. It's not perfect. It's not as elegant an experience as the original Norman's in Coral Gables used to be. But it's fun and flavorful, and a welcome return for a South Florida legend.

I won't recite Chef Van Aken's whole biography here. Aside from being a famous chef, he's also a great storyteller, and his life stories are scattered all over his website, from his first gig as a long-haired line cook in 1971, to applying for a job with Charlie Trotter and being mistaken for a truck driver, to Louie's Backyard in Key West, to A Mano on South Beach. But South Floridians probably remember him most fondly for Norman's, his flagship restaurant on the quietest end of sleepy Almeria Avenue in Coral Gables. In its time, Norman's was one of the best restaurants Miami had ever seen, and before it closed almost exactly three years ago in May 2007, it was one of the last local bastions of true "fine dining" still around.

Things change. If you're a proud property owner in Miami, your house is worth about half of what it was worth in 2007. These are not the times for "fine dining." And so it was clearly time for Chef Van Aken to do something different. "Norman's 180" is not "Norman's," with a name that not only conveniently indicates the street address of the restaurant but also suggests a 180 degree turn from the past. Norman's 180 embodies all the current gestalt: it eschews white tablecloths for bare wood tables, it embraces the farm to table ethos, it exalts all that is porcine.

But it is also clearly a Norman Van Aken restaurant. In fact, it's a family venture, with son Justin Van Aken working side by side in the kitchen with the old man.^[2] Though he is best known for bringing classical technique to Caribbean flavors and ingredients as a prime instigator of the 1980's "Mango Gang," Chef Van Aken's food has always been globally influenced, willing to draw inspiration from Asia or Africa as readily as South America and the Caribbean if it tastes good. What twenty years ago was called "fusion cuisine" now ought really need no nametag. It's just food, and it's either tasty or not. The menu runs in several directions at once, and sometimes it gets lost amidst all the globe-trotting, but for the most part I've enjoyed the journey so far.

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elBulli - Roses, Spain - September 15, 2010

It seems not even remotely coincidental that if you draw a line between Figueres and Cadaqués, the sites of two museums dedicated to the life and work of Salvador Dalí, you will come very close to going right through elBulli. There is more than a bit of surrealism going on at Chef Ferran Adrià's famous gastronomical outpost next to Cala Montjoi, along the Costa Brava. The stripping of objects of their normal significance, the incongruous, dreamlike juxtapositions, the subversion of expectations, the quest for a more vivid, superior "reality" - I don't mean to dive right into the debate of food as art vs. craft, and maybe I'm disproprotionately influenced by our visit to the Dalí Theatre-Museum on our way out to elBulli, but the parallels seem ineluctable.

There has been so much said and written about elBulli that it is daunting to try to add something meaningful.^[1] A good place to start, which captures both the history and the current state of things, including the announcement earlier this year that the restaurant will be closing after next season, is Jay McInerney's recent piece in Vanity Fair, "It Was Delicious While It Lasted." But having been afforded the extraordinarily rare good fortune of securing a reservation there, I feel obligated to try.

It comes as no surprise to regular readers here that I am a committed advocate of contemporary cooking concepts and techniques like those that Chef Adrià has championed and sometimes even invented - not out of any loyalty to novelty for its own sake, but in the interest of good eating. A couple years ago, I said it this way:

As for my thinking generally about “molecular gastronomy” or “alta cocina” or “experimental cooking” or whatever you want to call it - I'm fascinated by the new techniques, love a clever presentation, am always open to new combinations of flavors, but in the end the ultimate test is, "Does it taste good?" In a truly successful dish, it goes beyond that - the technique or approach not only tastes good, but tastes BETTER than customary preps or ingredients. There’s an intellectual element to it, for sure – look, by the fact that we’re all here, reading [this], that tells you we’re probably thinking about food more, and perhaps more analytically, than the average bear – but in the end the clincher has got to be the pleasure of it.

Which puts me in a bit of a quandary when it comes to evaluating our dinner at elBulli. Because, having now had the opportunity to experience it first hand, it is abundantly clear that "delicious" is only one of many things that Ferran Adrià is looking to accomplish. This is food that looks to provoke, to confront, to test boundaries, and above all, to be like no other dining experience. It aims to be creative as much, if not more so, than to be delicious. In "A Day at El Bulli"^[2] it is explained:

Creativity is what keeps elBulli open.^[3] This is not only because it is central to the passion and commitment of every member of the team, but also because the creativity of the food is what makes people want to eat here. The restaurant is like a workshop where new dishes, concepts and techniques are developed and shared with the guests. Without an audience, the creations would have no meaning. The guests' enjoyment of the food is difficult to quantify because every person has their own views about cooking and the types of food they enjoy. Creativity, on the other hand, can be measured: it is possible to document a technique and to establish whether it is new. But to be truly creative, a dish must be interesting as well as new. The aim at elBulli is to create dishes and techniques that engage guests' sensory, emotional and intellectual facilities to the full, to surprise them and to encourage them to experience food in new and unexpected ways.

So do I judge by my own standards, or by those that the chef has set for himself? Perhaps let's table that question for now, have a run through the actual experience of our meal, and then see what answers present themselves.

The complete set of pictures from our meal is in this Flickr set: El Bulli - September 15, 2010.

The elBulli experience begins with the journey there, a journey that usually starts from the Costa Brava resort town of Roses and perhaps further encourages the surrealist analogies. Winding along the coast through rugged mountainous terrain, past vineyards, olive trees, and the relics of abandoned stone farmhouses, you begin to feel as if you are entering some dream world. A taxi is highly recommended. Also recommended: not arriving too early. The gates do not open until exactly 7:30pm, and if you arrive early for a 7:30 reservation, as we did, there's not much else to do but to kick pebbles.

Once those gates do open, a further dreamscape appears. The white-stuccoed, barrel-tile-roofed building that houses the restaurant and kitchen overlooks a small beach circled by rugged cliffs. The repetitive beat of the surf washing onto the beach can be clearly heard from the restaurant's terrace.

This is the menu that was posted in front of the restaurant on the day we were there. It is close, but not identical, to what we were actually served. After the meal we were given menus in English to take home.

After a tour of the (surprisingly small, extensively populated, and remarkably quiet) kitchen and the chance to meet Chef Adrià,^[4] we returned to the terrace to begin our meal. While sipping glasses of the house Cava (Agusti Torelló Gran Reserva), we were presented with a quick succession of "cocktails" and "snacks":

strawberry

René Magritte might say, "Ceci n'est pas une fraise." Rather, it is a representation of a strawberry, in semi-frozen form (frozen exterior giving way to a still-liquid center), infused with a bright sweet-sour strawberry flavor, bolstered with the bittersweet note of Campari - an edible cocktail.

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The Best Things I Ate in 2021 (Round 2)

I know, I know. It's already April. "What are you doing posting a 'Best of 2021' list now?" Look: time is just a social construct. Stay up late. Eat breakfast for dinner. Publish your "year in review" posts in April. It's all fine.

After more than a year of being homebound, we finally began traveling again last summer, so this list does venture outside of South Florida. But my primary purpose in doing these posts is to highlight the interesting things happening in the Miami dining world of late. Because if we're not going to toot our own horns, who else is going to do it for us?^[1] There's a mix here of some old favorites and some new additions; not an attempt at a comprehensive survey, since I don't get around much any more lately, but rather just a set of personal preferences and predilictions. (If you missed it, here's Part 1.)

passionfruit tiramisu - Lil Deb's Oasis (Hudson, NY)

You know what else is fine? This passionfruit tiramisu we had at Lil Deb's Oasis in Hudson, New York. In July 2021, we did our first traveling in over a year. And as if to show just how out of practice I was, I forgot to bring my real camera, meaning I had to rely entirely on my iPhone for the whole trip. So forgive the wonky colors here, which, in my defense, are largely due to the magenta disco lights that adorn the bar at Lil Deb's. What an absolutely delightful place: friendly and welcoming to everyone (their unofficial slogan – "If U Gay, Perfect" – was coopted from a homophobic Yelp review), with a relaxed but energized house party feel that is a model for how hospitality can be done well in these weird times. And some really delicious, sometimes a bit wacky, food. I loved everything – the oddly compelling cabbage salad over crushed avocado with little crispy bits on top, the fermented lentil dosa with wild mushrooms, the lamb skewers with salsa verde and a dusting of cacao – but especially this fluffy, tangy passionfruit tiramisu enrobed in ginger-y mascarpone and topped with crunchy buckwheat.

(More pics from Lil Deb's Oasis)

cornmeal buttermilk pancake - West Taghkanic Diner (Hudson, NY)

The Hudson Valley is also home to the West Taghkanic Diner, which Kristopher Schram took over after spending years at some of Copenhagen's top restaurants (Relae, Manfreds, Bæst). You'd never guess the chef's pedigree from a look at the place, which remains a faithfully preserved mid-century diner. And the menu doesn't hint at much either. But everything is pretty outrageously delicious: the WTD hash of house-smoked pastrami and bacon burnt ends topped with fried eggs and pickled onions, the avocado toast with fresh cheese and toasted seeds. That "under-promise, over-deliver" ethos is embodied in a simple cornmeal pancake – fluffy as a pillow, crowned with a generous pat of good salted butter melting into crisp, browned little crags and gullies on the surface.

(More pics from West Taghkanic Diner)

warm crab pimento cheese dip - The Maker Café (Hudson, NY)

The Maker is a posh, restored hotel right on Warren Street, Hudson's main drag. In their downstairs café, we had a few things that were perfectly OK, but one dish that I keep thinking about is this plate of warmed, melty pimento cheese dip, generously studded with sweet, tender crabmeat. I'm not saying this is on par with the "discovery of a star," as Brillat-Savarin would put it; I'm just saying it really hit the spot.

(More pics from The Maker Café)

Butcher's Feast - Cote (Miami Design District)

Back home, we finally made our way to one of the many new imports from N.Y. that opened in Miami over the past year: Cote. As one who cheers for the hometown teams, I admit to having an inherent bias against all out-of-towners. But Cote overcame my skepticism. The concept behind Cote is to merge the sensibilities of Korean barbecue with a classic American steakhouse. The execution is even greater than the sum of the parts. The space is a looker, with a magenta-lit alien-spaceship entranceway a la early Alinea, a circular bar that draws you like a magnet, gold-rimmed ceramic charcoal grills at every table, and some sort of turbocharged ventilation system that keeps everything from getting smoky. The service is dialed in like a Swiss watch, somehow omnipresent and unnoticeable at the same time, with someone always ready to turn something on the grill, check on your drinks, or replenish your banchan. And the "Butcher's Feast" ($58 per person when we were there, now up to $64 but still a solid value) is a pretty perfect meal: a nice assortment of banchan, a shredded scallion salad in gochujang vinaigrette that you will compulsively eat without regard for your breath afterwards, four different cuts of prime and American wagyu beef, two different stews, a puffy egg souffle, and soft serve with soy sauce caramel for dessert. This place is doing everything right.

(More pics from Cote)

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The Best Things I Ate in 2023 (Round 2)

February isn't too late for "year in review" posts, is it? Not too late for me, anyway. Round 1 of my favorite dishes of 2023 actually made it up within a week of the new year. This sequel has experienced some delays, but is now resuming regular service. In the first post, we ventured through Oakland, Scotland, London, Lisbon and Marrakech before finding our way back home. Here, we pick up where we left off back in Miami – with one of my favorite new local restaurants.

bluefin tuna tiradito - Maty's (Midtown Miami)

How gratifying was it to see a huge picture of this beautiful dish splashed across the landing page of New York Times' list of "America's Best Restaurants 2023"? This was the year the national media really caught wind of the great things the Chang Gang are doing down here, as I noted in Round 1 while singing the praises of Nando's spot, Itamae, It took me a few months after it opened to get to sister Val's new restaurant, Maty's, but by the time I visited it was absolutely firing on all cylinders. While Itamae skews more towards the Japanese influences on Peruvian cuisine, Maty's sticks with a more "traditional" repertoire - cebiches, tiraditos, jaleas and saltados feature prominently, but done in a finessed and contemporary way. 

scallop cebiche - Maty's (Midtown Miami)

Pretty much every dish felt like a highlight, but I was especially fond of that tiradito which made the NYT cover, of bluefin tuna in an aji limo leche de tigre with canary beans for some earthy grounding and beads of finger lime to provide a little extra acidic pop. Also, this cebiche of delicate scallops in a scotch bonnet leche de tigre with cilantro oil and coins of slivered grapes for a sweet-sour contrast. Great ingredients, lots of legumes and vegetables, and bright flavors that almost ripple with electric energy. This was one of the most exciting, invigorating meals I've had in a while. 

(More pics from Maty's)

tostada de anchos - Bar Gilda (Miami Beach)

Over the summer, chef Juan Garrido was popping up Mondays and Tuesdays at Tropezon on Española Way with a pintxos-themed menu called "Bar Gilda". The rotation would change a bit from week to week, featuring staples like the namesake gilda,^[1] tortilla española, patatas bravas, and bocatas de calamares, with occasional detours. I thoroughly enjoyed every single bite – especially these delightful toasts of Cantabrian anchovies, fancy butter, and a sharp, fresh parsley-garlic dressing, mounted over crisp puff-pastry crackers. A classic combination, and an ode to really good ingredients. Having now recalibrated my pintxos-meter with a visit to the motherland later in the year, I can say that this as close to a real-deal Basque pintxos bar as I've experienced in Miami.

(More pics from Bar Gilda)

le homard - L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon (Miami Design District)

It had been a minute since I'd last visited L'Atelier, the Joel Robuchon outpost in the Design District, and the only Florida restaurant which has been bestowed two stars in the Michelin Guide. The design of the Atelier restaurants is consistent throughout their locations around the globe, and for me anyway, there's still something slightly surreal about encountering the distinctive shining black, red, polished wood and gleaming chrome dining room and open kitchen here in Miami. There are a few ways to experience the Miami L'Atelier – the "Evolution" tasting menu, a shorter seasonal menu with a couple options for each round, some classic "specialties" that can be added on, and even a straight a la carte menu on weekdays. From an early fall seasonal menu, my favorite dish was this spiral agnolotti with lobster and chanterelle mushrooms, swimming in a rich, powerful lobster bisque.

Comparing the ratings of the Ateliers around the world is a curious exercise. The "flagship" Atelier in St. Germain, Paris has one star, as does a second location in Etoile, Paris as well as the Tokyo outpost. Meanwhile, the Miami Atelier has two stars, as do the ones in Geneva and Taipei. The Atelier in Hong Kong has three stars! The ones in London, Madrid and Dubai have none. What does it all mean? That you can get a better meal at an Atelier in Hong Kong or Miami than at one in Paris? That Michelin is grading on a curve when it awards stars in different cities? That maybe the stars are kind of arbitrary? Inquiring minds want to know!

(More pics from L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon)

akamutsu, buro - Mila Omakase (Miami Beach)

Miami has seen a boom in high-priced omakase venues over the past few years, and I am far from convinced that they all are capable of delivering on their sometimes vertigo-inducing tariffs.^[2] So I approached Mila Omakase with a healthy degree of skepticism. Also, Mila, the main restaurant in which it makes its home, seems like a douchebag magnet? But after clearing our way past the hostess stand and entering the insulated inner sanctum of the omakase room, where a cherry blossom tree overhangs the sushi counter, I was very pleasantly surprised. Chef Reiji Yoshizawa and his crew show some solid technique and use some very good ingredients, but what I was particularly enamored of were the occasional flashes of Filipino flavors that appear here and there (Chef Yoshizawa grew up in Manila). It showed up in one of the opening bites, a canape with creamy kinilaw flavors in a crispy round shell. And it came around again with a nigiri of lightly torched akamutsu^[3] topped with a daub of buro, a rich, funky fermented shrimp and rice paste, which nicely complemented the pleasingly fatty fish.

(More pics from Mila Omakase)

spiny lobster chawanmushi - EntreNos (Miami Shores)

Maybe the most exciting newcomer of the year for me is EntreNos, an extended pop-up at Tinta y Cafe in Miami Shores by chefs Evan Burgess and Osmel Gonzalez. The two chefs both did time at Michael Beltran's Ariete, and Evan's resume also includes Miami's late great Alter and Chicago's Boka restaurant group, while Osmel spent time on the west coast as sous chef at one of my favorite places, SingleThread in Healdsburg. Back home and together, they are focusing on local products through a short, tightly curated menu with a dedication and creativity I have rarely seen here. A crudo uses blue runner, a dark-fleshed local fish in the jack family used more often as bait than as dinner, but which when sourced and handled well, as here, is deliciously rich and meaty. Accompaniments include a carambola vinaigrette, local leaves and blooms, and another thing I've never seen done with a local product — mango "olives" made by brining young, unripe mangoes. Oysters from Sebastian Inlet are grilled and topped with brown butter chimichurri. Desserts include a tomme cheese panna cotta topped with a sorbet of sea grapes, a ubiquitous but rarely used local product. I've had a couple different variations of their chawanmushi – one with smoked grouper, and another, pictured here, with spiny lobster. A creamy, frothy onion foam blankets the egg custard, hiding nuggets of savory confited potatoes underneath. This simultaneously triggers memories of seafood chowder (lobster / cream / potato), tortilla española (egg / onion / potato), and maybe even carbonara with the smoked grouper version (smoked fish playing the role of bacon). Regardless of what associations you may draw, it is flat out delicious.

(More pics from EntreNos)

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The Best Things I Ate in 2021 (Round 1)

So.

The last post here was December 2020 when, with very mixed emotions, I continued the annual tradition of recapping the best things I ate over the past year. The exercise felt more than a bit frivolous in light of everything we'd gone through in 2020. And yet it also seemed important to recognize the contributions of those who helped make the year a little more bearable by feeding us and bringing us moments of joy, togetherness and satisfaction. In my lifetime, anyway, there had never been a more difficult time to run a restaurant, and I'm incredibly grateful to all who continued despite the mind-boggling challenges of navigating their way through it all.

Here we are again, another year gone by. Well, actually, another year and then some, since my calendar is telling me it's already April. And as strange as it sounds to say, 2021 was an incredibly active year for the Miami restaurant universe. There was a tidal wave of new openings from some of the city's most talented local chefs: Niven Patel opened Orno, Michael Beltran reopened Chug's as a full-scale sit-down diner, Sam Gorenstein opened Abbalé Telavivian Kitchen, José Mendin opened Casa Isola with Santo Agnello in the kitchen of the original Pubbelly space, Scott Linquist opened Serena and Como Como. (Let me pause to take a breath). Giorgio Rapicavoli opened Luca Osteria, Steve Santana opened Off Site, Henry Hane opened Jatto in the old Alter space, Pablo Zitzmann opened Zitz Sum. And there was another foreign invasion, with Major Food Group (the folks behind Carbone, Sadelle's, ZZ's, and HaSalon) seemingly taking over every space not already commandeered by Miami's Groot Hospitality (Swan, Strawberry Moon, Papi Steak, Sushi Fly Chicken).

That list of new openings is far from comprehensive. And ... um ... I've been to almost none of them. If you're looking for what's new and hot, you won't find it here, especially since I'm only now, four months into 2022, getting around to this post. But a little perspective can be a good thing. And speaking of perspective, a reminder that this is just my own personal, idiosyncratic compilation of the dishes that made me happy over the past year: the places that serve the kind of food I like to eat, that do things right. So here' s a recap of my favorites from 2021, and a look back on another weird year.

Pork Offal Congee - Mama Tofu Street Food (Davie)

For me, anyway, it simultaneously seems like forever and no time at all since those year-end 2020 posts, with most of 2021 feeling like another round in limbo. Despite my passion for the restaurant world,  I was very slow to make my way back. On March 11, 2020 I had dinner at Balloo (now gone and still sorely missed, though I hear great things about Timon's new spot The Katherine in Fort Lauderdale). It would be the last meal I ate at a restaurant – indoors or out – in 2020. In early January 2021, after getting vaccinated, I marked my return to restaurant dining with a visit to Mama Tofu Street Food in Davie. After contorting myself into one of their authentically Vietnamese street food style knee-height outdoor tables with footstools for seats, I settled into a warming, soothing bowl of pork offal congee, loaded with every part of the pig you can imagine. It was nice to be back.

Broward County's dining options are often looked down upon by Miamians (and sometimes by its own residents), but that's because folks are ignoring places like Mama Tofu, which serves a really curious and delicious assortment of Vietnamese street foods, many tofu-based as the name suggests but also lots of seafood and snail dishes lately. And just in this one shopping mall – centered around the Foodtown international supermarket, which is an experience in itself – there are a bunch more places worth checking out, like 545 Banh Mi Cafe, Pho 79, and the Hong Kong style Tasty Cafe.

Simit Sandwich - Mr. Mandolin (MiMo District)

We were still doing mostly takeout in early 2021, though, and Mr. Mandolin was a nice new addition to the roster when the folks from long-time Miami favorite Mandolin Aegean Bistro took over the restaurant space in the Vagabond Hotel on Biscayne Boulevard. The menu, crafted with the guidance of chef Roel Alcudia (who moved on to the Groot empire and now has headed back up to New York to work with Jonathan Waxman) is mostly a straightforward collection of kebabs and wraps and the like, but everything is well done, fresh and flavorful. I am especially a fan of this simit sandwich, which uses a delightfully crispy/chewy, sesame seed studded chickpea flour ring as the base for sucuk (a dried sausage), kefalograviera (a nutty, melty Greek cheese), arugula and sliced tomatoes.

Parker House Rolls - Sunny's Someday Steakhouse (Little River)

Mackerel Crudo - Sunny's Someday Steakhouse (Little River)

"Sunny's Someday Steakhouse" may be one of the all-time greatest Miami pandemic pivots. The folks from Jaguar Sun, a cozy cocktail bar downtown by barman Will Thompson and chef Carey Hynes, took over the "Lot 6" space in Little River. In the spacious outdoor venue with picnic tables under a sprawling banyan tree, and cooking entirely from an outdoor kitchen, they created a sort of reinvented steakhouse which was one of my favorite experiences of last year. Pitch-perfect cocktails, friendly and gracious service, and really excellent food. Yes, the steaks were great, but what I dream about are these fluffy Parker House rolls, which are a must-order on any visit. Another favorite: this crudo of spanking-fresh mackerel served in watermelon water with burnt serrano relish topped with basil leaves. After a hiatus, Sunny's is back at Little River (now going by the moniker "Sunny's Soonish Steakhouse," hinting at more developments coming soon) and on a recent visit was even better than ever.

(More pics from Sunny's Steakhouse)

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NAOE - Sunny Isles

What would you say if I told you there was a tiny place, in a little strip mall somewhere in Miami, that was turning out incredible, creative, beautiful Japanese dishes like nothing else you will find in this city? That they were flying in fish overnight from Japan or buying it that day from fishermen at Haulover Marina? That they did only an omakase menu, followed, if you're still hungry, by the chef's choice of beautifully pristine sushi until you say "uncle"?

No way?

NAOE.

A couple weeks ago while surfing OpenTable, I saw a new name on the list of restaurants. The description was intriguing:

Brand new to Sunny Isles Beach, Chef Kevin Cory specializes in natural Japanese Cuisine at NAOE. Every Wednesday through Sunday from 7pm - 1am, Chef Kevin Cory serves a unique Chef's Choice menu.

Looking over the website for NAOE, I learned that Chef Cory had trained in Japan at a traditional kaiseki restaurant, and returned to the States in 2001 where he took over the sushi bar at Siam River, a then-undistinguished Thai restaurant along the eastern stretch of the 163rd Street Causeway. Chef Cory's work with the sushi bar at Siam River earned him many fans, and apparently a couple years ago he got the ambition of running a place entirely his own. He opened NAOE about a month ago and it is undoubtedly one of the most unique restaurants I have eaten at in Miami.

It is a small but quietly elegant space, done mostly in shades of grey, brown and black with soft lights throughout (of course you have to recognize that I see nothing inelegant about an open kitchen literally stacked with shining stockpots, pans and steamers). There are 17 seats total, roughly half of which are at a beautiful blond wood bar which faces the open kitchen. The bar - made from hinoki wood, the same wood used for Japanese temples, this stuff sourced from Oregon - is sanded down with a small file every week. The entire restaurant staff consists of two people - Chef Cory (whose business card reads "executive chef, general manager & dishwasher") and Wendy Maharlika (that's who was listed on our receipt as "server", but her business card ought to read "maître d', hostess, sake sommelier, and public relations liaison"). We were the only ones there when we arrived around 9pm, but another couple came in shortly after. The location is a tiny little strip mall on the 163rd Street Causeway right before it connects with Collins Avenue on the beach side.^[1] You could easily drive by a dozen times without ever noticing it.

You are given a small menu, but there are no choices as to what food to order. Rather, there are about a half-dozen choices of sake, all produced by Chef Cory's family in Japan, including junmai (organic to boot), ginjo, and daiginjo styles. There's also Sapporo beer - on tap! - and a couple non-alcoholic choices, including one of our kids' favorites, Ramune soft drink. For the food, you must put yourself entirely in the chef's hands, with only an inquiry as to food allergies before he gets to work.

Given the minimal staffing, obviously the cooking is entirely a one-man show. We watched as Chef Cory began his prep, meticulously fileting a small locally sourced Spanish mackerel (a/k/a sawara) and then slicing and arranging small strips. As he continued his preparations, our anticipation began to build. I had initially anticipated a series of small dishes like a tasting menu, but instead they explained that the service is bento box style with all the dishes presented together.

After about 20-30 minutes - during which our hostess conscientiously made sure our sake glasses never went dry, gave us some of the backstory on herself and Chef Cory, and showed us the future plans they have for the restaurant space - we were presented with two covered wooden boxes which were simultaneously unveiled before us. Alongside was a small covered bowl of soup.

The contents were just magnificent, at least if you're an adventurous and open-minded eater. The bento was divided into four compartments:

• aji (horse mackerel), in a small bowl with a dab of wasabi paste (made not from the stuff in a tube but from freshly grated wasabi root supplemented with some horseradish), along with wasabi leaves and flowers. The aji's slight oiliness was nicely offset by the piquancy of the wasabi. The wasabi leaves and flowers - which I've never seen before - have the flavor of wasabi without the heat, providing a nice contrast and a texture similar to the smallest florets of broccoli rabe.
• home-made egg tofu, beautifully silky and rich like a custard, topped with an uni (sea urchin roe) sauce with a delicate, almost peachy flavor, and crowned with a nasturtium flower.
• a small little bowl carved from a turnip, filled with cubes of cooked turnip and rich, delicious ankimo (monkfish liver); alongside was a marinated whelk (sea snail), removed from its shell and then replaced for service, along with a small "cracker" of kohada (gizzard shad),^[2] basically the frame (bones and tail with a little bit of attached meat) quick-fried, the entire thing crispy and edible, together with a couple little dumplings of parsnip with potato and seaweed.
• a rice dish made with sardine and portobello mushroom, not at all overwhelmed by the sometimes strong taste of sardine, pleasantly dry and crispy and molded into the shape of a star or flower, and topped with slices of pickled daikon (daikon nukazuke, pickled in rice bran). Chef Cory is working on doing these in-house as well but they're not ready yet.

The soup was dashi-broth based but gelatinous and dense (thickened with kuzu) and carried the flavor of a cage-free chicken egg yolk that was poached in the broth (mine hardened to hard-boiled because I saved my soup for the end), and another tongue of uni floating within along with a fiddlehead fern.

The price for this fantastic little assemblage? $26.

After what we'd experienced so far I definitely wanted to try more. Chef Cory then moved us on to nigiri, serving two pieces at a time until we'd had enough. He started by first getting warm rice, and put some into a small wooden bowl with just enough for our service. We were started with salmon belly, a couple pieces for each of us cut from a beautiful slab of Scottish salmon which was immediately wrapped back up in plastic wrap and stowed away again in the fridge. The nigiri were quickly shaped with the warm rice, presented to each of us on small wooden boards, and given a delicate brushing of a shoyu-based sauce the chef has prepared himself to perfectly match the sushi. The salmon was wonderfully fresh and rich, and the contrast of the cool fish against the still-warm rice was just magnificent.

Knowing there was kohada in the house, I couldn't stop there. The next round of nigiri was the kohada, which Chef Cory brings in fresh from Japan and does a light vinegar cure himself in-house. The fish - which has beautiful silver skin speckled with black dots - was cut into strips and braided. One of my favorite things, and one that I've not been able to find elsewhere in Miami.

Next - and finally, for us, though I didn't really want to quit - was aori ika, a big squid brought in fresh (our hostess showed us a picture of the squid with its suckers still holding onto the cutting board). It is lightly salt-cured, with a small bed of finely shredded nori over the rice, and then the squid topped with a tiny yellow flower. Unlike any squid I've ever had before, this had a soft, almost creamy texture, rather than the bounciness you usually associate with squid.

Though we didn't try it during our visit, our hostess advised that Chef Cory does his own in-house "bbq" eel - unlike the pre-packaged eel you will find at most sushi places, he brings the eel in fresh and cooks it and makes his own sauce from scratch.

Everything we were served was elegant and beautiful, but most of all, delicious. The ingredient list here reads eerily like a list of my personal favorites (uni, ankimo, kohada, aji ...) but Mrs. F, who is not nearly as partial to these kinds of things as me, thoroughly enjoyed it as well. Chef Cory said that he tries to not give diners too much of a preview, so that they do not write off things before they've tried them.

This was, quite simply, one of the most unexpected and special dining experiences I've had in Miami in quite some time. The food was creative and delicious with adventurous and magnificently fresh ingredients. The chef and hostess were earnest, friendly, and absolutely charming. I enjoyed this so much, and was so pleasantly surprised, that I was afraid to go to sleep last night for fear that it would all turn out to just be a dream.

I will go back soon just to make sure.

Note: For pictures from a subsequent meal at NAOE, go here.

NAOE
175 Sunny Isles Boulevard
Sunny Isles Beach, FL 33160
305.947.6263
Wed-Sun 7pm - 1am^[3]

^[1] If it helps you get your bearings, it is right next door to the "Neptune Seafood Restauarant" - you can even sometimes hear the drumbeat of the Russian karaoke music through the walls.

^[2] I may have misheard this, as I've never seen kohada cooked before. The size was about right though.

^[3] Though the place is not busy (yet), I would highly recommend making reservations. Much of the food is made to order and with the one-man show in the kitchen, some advance notice will likely make for a much better dining experience.

Alinea - Chicago

The idea of dinner as spectacle is hardly a new one. In the Satyricon, Petronius recounts the (fictional) dinner of Trimalchio, featuring such delicacies as pea hen eggs filled with tiny songbirds, a hare with wings affixed to it to look like a pegasus, and a whole wild boar with baskets of dates hanging from its tusks, surrounded by pastry piglets and stuffed with live thrushes – preceded by a presentation of hunting-themed tapestries and a pack of hunting dogs traipsing through the dining room to set the mood.

Fast forward a couple thousand years, and recently Jeremiah Tower – one of the titans of the 1980's dining universe, who is returning to the business on a mission to resuscitate the Tavern on the Green – spoke with Andrew Friedman about the theater of dining at TOTG:

Friedman: When you say outrageous, what do you mean, for people who weren't there back in the day?
Tower: Oh, I mean, my God. Oversized chandeliers and didn't he put live animals at one point for some party? It reminded me of the Ritz, a nouveau riche version of the Ritz, where in the old days, a grand Duke wanted a winter scene so they flooded the basement and froze it and draped everything in ice. It was that kind of theater.
Friedman: What do you remember about the food at the old Tavern?
Tower: You know, I honestly don’t remember anything. I've been looking at old menus from the 1950s but I don’t think I ever looked at the plate. I was too busy looking at the decor and the action.

So in a sense, what Alinea is doing is nothing new. But few contemporary restaurants I've visited have the same dedication to the theater of dinner.

My first meal at Alinea was a long time ago, within a couple years of its opening. They were the heady days of foams and spheres and fluid gels – back when what is now inaptly named "modernist cuisine" went by the equally inapt "molecular gastronomy." On that first visit, we had bacon swinging on trapezes, bites perched on bobbing "antennae," and dishes nestled on pillows emitting flower-perfumed air. But perhaps the most striking oddity of it all was the somber, ramrod-stiff waitstaff. There was a huge disconnect between the playfulness coming out of Grant Achatz's kitchen and the solemnity of those who served it, as if the food wouldn't be taken seriously enough if they actually cracked a smile.

Achatz no longer needs to be concerned with being taken seriously: Alinea now has three Michelin stars, a No. 9 position on San Pellegrino's 50 Best Restaurants list, and multiple James Beard awards to vouch for that. And everyone's smiling.^[1]

(You can see all my pictures in this Alinea - October 2014 flickr set.)

I'd not been back to Alinea until last month,^[2] when the opportunity for a return visit fortuitously arose. The gap afforded an interesting time-lapse view of the restaurant's maturation. Many things that were still just in the concept stage at the time of my initial visit – reincorporating classical old-school dishes and table-side service, the now-famous dessert on the table – are now firmly entrenched in the repertoire.^[3] Dishes that were once emblematic of Alinea's cutting edge creativity – like the "hot potato cold potato" pictured above – are now signature dishes, evoking more nostalgia than awe (for a repeat visitor anyway).

There is also plenty that's new, and plenty that's still awe-inspiring. But what was most notable to me, given my peculiar perspective, is how the front of the house at Alinea has caught up with the back. This is now a fully realized experience where the food and the spectacle of its presentation are on equal footing. As to whether or not that's a good thing – I'll try to address after the recap of my recent visit.

It's hard to imagine a more traditional way to commence a meal than with caviar and champagne. It's hard to come up with a better one either. The accompaniments to the caviar here are customary ones, but of course transformed: a brioche foam, an egg yolk emulsion, a transparent gelée flavored with onion and capers. The osetra caviar itself was excellent, as was the Pierre Moncuit champagne.

Then the show really starts. Servers arrive wielding blocks of ice that are 1/25 size replicas of the iceberg that sunk the Titanic,^[4] strewn with a sort of reinvented seafood platter: a sphere of oyster liquor and mignonette sauce nestled in the oyster's shell; strips of chewy clam glazed with unagi sauce, served ishiyaki style on a hot rock; a sort of deconstructed miso soup with kombu and crumbles of miso and bonito; a sort of reconstructed tomato of fresh tuna; a shooter of Asian pear and yuzu juices dug right into the block of ice, with a fat glass straw planted in it (which, awkwardly, was too long to use without actually standing up at the table); and a cylindrical sea urchin cake, infused with vanilla, wrapped in nori, and topped with lemon zest and coarse salt, poised right between savory and sweet.

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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.)

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Cobaya Arson with Deme Lomas

Almost exactly four years ago, we did a Cobaya dinner with Chef Deme Lomas at Niu Kitchen, the small, Catalan inspired restaurant he opened with Karina Iglesias and Adam Hughes in 2014. Since that time, as Niu has continued to thrive, the team opened up Arson right down the block, a restaurant dedicated to cooking with live fire. We figured it was time for another round with Deme, and brought forty guinea pigs to Arson earlier this month.

(You can see all my pictures in this Cobaya Arson with Deme Lomas flickr set).

It was another great experience – interesting, delicious food all touched by the flames, with equally interesting, exciting wines supplied by Arson and Niu's wine director, GM and ringmaster, Karina Iglesias. Here's what we had:

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Best Dishes of 2012 (Part 1)

I had a couple of my best meals of 2011 during the last week of the year. Unfortunately, I'd posted my "Best Dishes of 2011" recap a week earlier, so none of them made the list. This year I also saved some of the best for last - but I've learned my lesson, and waited for the calendar to roll over before closing the bidding for 2012. And since they got left out last year, the last week of 2011 will be included this time instead.

My "Best Bites of 2010" list included fourteen dishes (even though I called it a Top 10 list). By the next year, the list had expanded to twenty. When I looked back on 2012, I came up with nearly fifty dishes that could be on the list. With a travel itinerary for the past year that included San Francisco, Hawaii, Las Vegas and Charleston,^[1] plus many Miami chefs and restaurants stepping up their games, I'm not surprised the list was so long.

Since I've got no editor here, my own use of the red pencil has been minimal: I've "pared" the list for 2012 down to 45, which I'll present here in three posts. These are not ranked, but instead are listed chronologically. I've included links to the restaurants as well as links to my posts on them, together with excerpts of my earlier comments on each.

(You can see all the pictures at once in this Best Dishes of 2012 flickr set)

Here's Part 1:

Chicken Oysters - é by José Andrés (Las Vegas) (my thoughts on é)

One of the joys of cooking a chicken is getting to pick at the best parts. The trilogy of "chef's treats" for me is the liver, the extra skin, and the chicken oysters tucked away along the backbone. This dish got two of the three: a sheet of crispy, well-seasoned chicken skin, with chicken oysters cooked in escabache, topped with a thyme "air." Just a magnificently delicious bite, one of my favorites of the meal.

Chickpea Stew - é by José Andrés (Las Vegas) (my thoughts on é)

[A] Chickpea Stew ... was another of my favorites of the night, and again, a dish that relied on no fancy ingredients. The tender "chickpeas" (actually puréed and spherified) floated on a silky, rich jamón ibérico broth (OK, maybe a little fancy), dotted with chorizo oil, parsley oil and olive oil. It was, at heart, a variation on the centuries-old "olla podrida" or "rotten pot," referenced as far back as Don Quixote. It was also a soulfully delicious dish, with a depth and resonance of flavor that belied the delicate presentation.

Kobe Beef Tendon Robata - Aburiya Raku (Las Vegas) (my thoughts on Raku)

One of my favorite single bites anywhere: Kobe beef tendon robata. Gelatinous, sticky, crispy on the edges, intensely meaty and rich. Great stuff.

MGF&D Bacon Pizza - Harry's Pizzeria (Miami Design District) (my thoughts on Harry's)

Purists who insist that pizza is simply about the perfect balance of dough, cheese and tomato will scoff, but the pizzas at Harry's are mostly about the toppings. That's not necessarily a bad thing, certainly not when you're talking about the MGF&D Bacon Pizza, topped with Michael's house-cured bacon, sliced fingerling potatoes, caramelized onions, gruyere cheese and fresh arugula. It's a perfectly balanced combination in its own way.

Heirloom Tomatoes - Eating House (Coral Gables) (my thoughts on Eating House)

The influences are as much Slow Food as Ideas in Food - lots of local ingredients, lots of creative preparations. A perfect example: local Homestead tomatoes. But instead of a typical salad, Rapicavaoli takes them to Thailand, with lime, ginger, fish sauce, peanuts, fresh herbs, nasturtium flowers, and frozen coconut milk. It's a perfect rendition of the flavors of Thailand in an unexpected format, the frozen coconut milk in particular lending an intriguing icy creaminess to the composition.

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neMesis Urban Bistro - Downtown Miami

I was sure I was going to hate neMesis Urban Bistro. The menu was precious, cutesy, and scattered - "heavenly guava cardamom dipping sauce," "Tuscan sushi," "cowardly (no nuts) pesto"? The chef, while professing a sense of humor, seemed awfully thin-skinned when the attempts at humor were directed the other way, banishing the Miami New Times' dining critic for poking fun of the restaurant's name.^[1] I was, in a word, dubious.

I was also wrong. Everything about neMesis is quirky - the capitalization of the name, the decoration, the dishes, the chef - but most of it is also quite delicious.

(You can see all my pictures in this neMesis Urban Bistro flickr set).

The chef is Micah Edelstein,^[2] and neMesis very clearly bears her imprint in just about every respect, right down to the front door, with an inscription that is more warning than welcome:

"Those lacking imagination and a sense of humor are not welcome at neMesis. Please return from whence you came, and do not darken our door again!"

The dining room is tiny (maybe 30 seats), and fittingly for a place that shares space with LegalArt (a non-profit organization that provides artists access to legal services), it abounds with artwork - a constellation of colorful parasols dangles upside down over the entranceway, a sculpture of men's ties juts out at rakish angles over the windows,^[3] large-scale photographic portraits hang throughout.

Chef Edelstein, when she's not in the open kitchen, is often at the tables, bringing out the dishes and telling the stories behind them. Those stories cover lots of territory, ranging from a South African family background to travels around the world to geographically untethered experiments like house-brewed coffee-infused beer (like many things here, surprisingly good). If you're lucky, you'll also be graced with the presence of her young daughter Matilda, and possibly even an art exhibition or magic show.

The menu is divided into "Sexy Nibbles," "Cool Couples," "Main Attractions," and "Happy Endings," and it pains me to write that almost as much as it pains the servers to recite it. But lets get past the preciosity and focus on what's on the plate.

Foccacia, topped with hibiscus-infused mascarpone cheese, caramelized shallots, and a sprinkle of black lava salt, is emblematic of Chef Edelstein's style. It sounds unlikely, it's all over the place at once, and it actually works. The foccacia itself is delightfully light and fluffy, the creamy mascarpone is given a subtle, zesty lift from the citrusy, floral hibiscus, with the jammy shallots providing a sweet/savory anchor. You've not experienced these flavors in this combination before, but it comes off as natural rather than forced, as if they were meant to be together.

Ditto for the duck potstickers with the aforementioned "heavenly guava cardamom dipping sauce." Like many things at neMesis, this reads sweet, but the finished dish is fairly well balanced. Other than in Indian cuisine, cardamom doesn't get invited to many parties, and when it shows up it can sometimes dominate the conversation. But here it's managed well, its bright, resinous, slightly medicinal flavor, in combination with the aromatic guava, cutting the richness of the braised duck filling.

The crispy, oven-baked vegetable samosas likewise get brightened up by a finely diced melon chutney. And those little yellow flowers are not mere decoration - the flowering tarragon provides another herbaceous, anise-y element to the plate.

The salad at neMesis changes from day to day depending on what ingredients are floating around the kitchen. On one occasion the tangle of greens and sprouts was studded with delicious lardons of house-made lamb bacon. More recently, it came with a sprinkle of garam masala spiced pecans, slivers of avocado and grapefruit, shards of aged parmesan cheese, a sour orange vinaigrette, and a couple vibrant red-orange pimentos biquinho, Brazilian peppers preserved in vinegar that pack lots of flavor and a little heat.

These unexpected bursts of flavor are characteristic of Chef Edelstein's cooking. She paints with a different spice palette than most of us are accustomed to. While some of it is pure creative whimsy, much appears to  derive from the flavors of South African cuisine, which itself is a hodge-podge of indigenous, Cape Dutch, Afrikaner, Indian, British and Portuguese influences.

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