Spain ... On the Road

Yup, just me, Batali, Bittman, Gwyneth, and Claudia Bassols (ahh...), driving around in fancy cars, blathering on endlessly and mindlessly, and occasionally having some tapas or something. OK, it's actually just me and Mrs. F, no fancy cars, and we'll spare you our mindless blather. But we will be doing some good eating in Spain and I will report back, though it may not be until our return. If I get the chance, I'll apologize to the King and Queen for Mario's linguistic foibles. When I return, I promise, in addition to reports from España, lots more Miami restaurant discussion, and less cursing and porn references. Adios amigos.

Hey Man Nice Shot

So only about a couple weeks into this endeavor, and I already find myself at a crossroads. To shoot or not to shoot? Every red-blooded eater loves them some food porn. I'll readily admit that among my favorite things about many of the blogs I follow are the pictures. And next week I'm off to Spain, the culinary equivalent of ... well, let's not play out the porn analogy any further.

And yet - there is a part of me that really wants to avoid becoming "that douchebag taking pictures of his food." It can annoy other diners. It can annoy chefs and other restaurant staff. Sometimes, there seems to be something of a self-righteous sense of entitlement that because you've mastered the rudiments of WordPress or TypePad or flickr, every restaurant should bend over backwards to let you snap away.* Somehow, nobody ever thinks they're "that guy" but rather they're all models of discretion and subtlety in their photojournalistic stylings.

Besides, it is no false modesty to say I have no photographic or general artistic skills whatsoever. I am capable of operating the most rudimentary functions of a point-n-click camera, but that's really about it. The results are rarely much to look at. Even were I to try to take some good food pix, the product would likely be amateurish at best and embarassing at worst (again, the porn analogy comes to mind).

But perhaps even more importantly, I'm concerned with the potential dissociative effect - the loss of the opportunity to actually experience, rather than merely critically observe and document, a meal. When a dish is brought out to me, I don't want my first reaction to be "Is the lighting right?" Despite my interest in chronicling great meals, I've always found it fairly easy to write something later by merely paying attention, sometimes taking a couple notes, and saving menus. A good meal usually provides both a visceral, hedonistic satisfaction and an intellectual satisfaction as well, though the weight of each type of reward varies considerably depending on the type of meal. I'm concerned that the addition of a camera into the equation has the potential to screw up that balance.

David Chang, who got some flak for banning photogrpahy at Momofuku Ko, said, "It's just food. Eat it." (There's some interesting comments from several other chefs and others in the same article.) Though I'm not sure it's quite that simple, I understand the sentiment.

Our lineup for Spain includes Viridiana and Goizeko Wellington (or possibly Kabuki Wellington, we'll see) in Madrid, Arzak, Akelare, and lots of pintxos in San Sebastian, and Dos Palillos (new restaurant from Albert Raurich, former El Bulli chef de cuisine) in Barcelona. Would I love to come back with hundreds of beautiful pictures of fantastic food? Sure. Will I do it? We'll see.

*This is not any sort of general knock on the site linked to, which I often find is a very good read.

spam sausage spam spam bacon spam tomato and miso

No, not that kind of spam - the kind that comes in a can. With 54 variations on miso soup, this sounds like the miso soup equivalent of the Monty Python Spam Skit, courtesy of Japanese Food Report. I learned to make good dashi from this site, so I bet the upcoming miso soup recipes won't be all bad. But if miso soup isn't your bag, you can always join the Spam Fan Club instead.

It Takes Guts

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

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

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

Locals Growing Beards?

My James Beard Cookbook is probably among the most tattered and splattered in my kitchen. For a long time, it served as my initial reference point for basic cooking - how best to cook a burger or a steak, what to do with green beans, and so on. His meatloaf recipe remains one of our favorites. Though a few years ago, the Foundation that bears his name nearly collapsed under a scandal over misuse of funds, it seems that they've done a good job of setting things right since, and their annual restaurant awards and nominations are always interesting to peruse. I referred briefly in another post to a local nominee for one of the regional James Beard Awards. Here is a complete list of the local products who are semifinalists:

Best New Restaurant (National) - Michelle Bernstein with Sra. Martinez. She's up against some tough competition, though, with Jose Andres' new leviathan, The Bazaar, Paul Liebrandt's Corton, David Chang's Momofuku Ko, Scott Conant's Scarpetta, and Laurent Gras' L20, among several others, all in the mix.

Outstanding Wine Service (National) - Palme d'Or in Coral Gables, and California Grill in Disney World's Contemporary Resort (OK, calling that "local" is a stretch, but I've included it mostly just because of the "Who knew?" reaction I had).

Outstanding Service (National) - Palme d'Or again. Anyone surprised there's not any South Beach nominees?

Best Chef (South) - Zach Bell of Cafe Boulud in Palm Beach, Edgar Leal of Cacao in Coral Gables, Dean James Max of 3030 Ocean in Fort Lauderdale, Douglas Rodriguez of Ola in Miami Beach, Philippe Ruiz of Palme d'Or in Coral Gables (yet again!), and Michael Schwartz of Michael's Genuine Food & Drink in Miami.

Thoughts:

• Palme d'Or? Three nominations? I'm not sure I even know anyone who's been. Guess I ought to try it.


• What would the oddsmakers say of MGF&D's chances for "Best Chef (South)"?


• If you're wondering why local darling Michelle Bernstein isn't among the nominees for "Best Chef (South)" category - she won the award last year.


• Not a single Florida nominee for the "Rising Star Chef of the Year" category - what to make of that?

South Beach Wine & Food Festival Recap

Other than taking my kids to a very silly "Kidz Cooking" demonstration with Giada DeLaurentiis a couple years ago (where they learned how to not complete a single dish in 45 minutes), I have generally steered clear of the South Beach Wine & Food Festival. Too many yahoos, too much bad wine, too expensive. Just for the price of one of the "Grand Tasting" events ($200+ a head), for instance, I can do some quite fine eating on my own, thank you, usually without being elbowed by a bunch of inebriated chuckleheads.

But it's still always fun to hear reports from the front. Here were some of my favorites: Mario Batali shouting down the noisy "weasel f---wads" at the Viva Espana dinner (and apparently playing some grab-ass with Jose Andres too), lots of coverage from Eater, lots of pix from New Times, Feedbag's weird crush on Rachael Ray (though his obsession is probably healtheir than this guy's), plus this nice little bit of gossip:

Item! Mr. Snitch tells me that a certain chef had quite a wake-up call when, after a night of carousing out on the town, he picked up a floozy and headed back to his hotel. The next morning, the befuddled toque, one of New York’s most lauded talents, found himself hungover, alone, naked, and without his phone or
any of his cash. It’s a jungle out there, chef! Watch out!

(sounds like any meal at Barton G).

Things I can happily live without: Paula Deen losing her pants (Stop Crack!), Sandra Lee's semi-homemade cocktails (replete with goofy silver-painted dudes standing like statues).

3030 Ocean - Fort Lauderdale

We don't eat much in Broward, but family was visiting in Boynton Beach and we needed to pick some middle ground to meet for dinner. I saw recently that Chef Dean James Max (that's a lot of first names, no?) of 3030 Ocean had been nominated for a James Beard Award, and its location was geographically desirable, so we figured it would be worth a try.

The restaurant is inside the Marriott Harbor Beach resort in Fort Lauderdale, and looks pretty much like every other semi-upscale hotel restaurant, the primary distinguishing characteristic being an overloud guitarist/singer serenading the room from the bar at the restaurant's entrance. Both the bar and the restaurant were fairly well packed when we were there on a Friday night.

The menu, on the other hand, is far from generic hotel restaurant fare. The story on 3030 Ocean is that they are dedicated to using fresh seafood and produce, with a focus on local purveyors. The menu is strongly oriented toward fish and seafood, but there's a good number of mammals available for the carnivores (including several nice porky products in the apps). When we visited, there were at least a dozen different piscine options, some local like pompano, red snapper, cobia, and wahoo, others exotic like walu (a/k/a escolar, a fish that should come with a warning on possible side effects) and monchong. I found it just slightly curious that despite the proclaimed focus on local and seasonal, roughly half of the fish on the menu appeared to come from places more than a thousand miles away, though the variety was appreciated.

We were a big group and I didn't get to stick a fork into everyone else's plates, so for the most part I can only describe the dishes I had. My starter was some thinly sliced smoked Benton's ham, draped over a salad of greens accompanied by slices of avocado and melon. The ham was magical stuff, the pairing with melon being a classic while the avocado played off its richness. What really made this pop with an assertively flavored basil-vanilla vinaigrette which worked perfectly with the other components. Clearly Chef Max is a fan of Benton's products, which make appearances in a few other appetizer items as well. Frod Jr. and Little Miss F also split a salad with culatello ham, burrata and heirloom tomatoes (FJ apparently taking the ham and LMF the cheese and tomaters).

While I was tempted by several of the fish offerings, I wound up picking a wild striped bass, something I've not seen on very many South Florida menus. The fish was paired with coins of slivered potatoes dressed in a mustard-y sauce, along with baby zucchini and maitake mushrooms. The surprising star here was the mushrooms, which had an incredible intensity of flavor. The zucchini also were very brightly flavored, not the usual non-descript baby vegetables on the plate for their cuteness rather than taste. The fish itself was actually somewhat disappointing. Though the fat tranche of fish was perfectly fresh, it was a bit mealy-textured, tending to shred rather than flake and the skin not quite as crispy as could be hoped. My taste of the red snapper - served over a boniato puree with grilled green onions and a carrot sauce - was much better, a very nice spanking fresh piece of fish. It was surprising to me for a place with such a particular focus on fresh fish that there was nothing at all available whole, with all the fish served as filets.

The wine list offered some good choices, though prices were a bit high (not a surprise for a hotel restaurant). A Leth Gruner Veltliner went great with the fish; I was less impressed with a Cloudline Pinot Noir. Both were running approximately 3x average retail prices.

This is true ingredient-driven cooking, but saying that should not undermine the chef's hand in things. Despite our proximity to water, it seems that sourcing great fresh fish is perversely difficult for many local chefs. Likewise, a dedication to using fresh local produce often shows in the brightness and depth of flavor of the finished dish. But to me, "ingredient-driven" doesn't mean simply buying something and throwing it on a plate (notwithstanding stories of the Zuni Cafe "$8 nectarine" - which actually turned out to be only $4.50, if that makes it any better). It means finding the best stuff you can, and then making the most of it. It seems at 3030 Ocean they agree.

edited to add - Chef Dean James "First Names Only" Max featured in New Times' Short Order today.

3030 Ocean
Marriott Harbor Beach
3030 Holiday Drive
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33316
954.765.3030
6pm - 10pm daily