Indian Palate - Coral Gables

[Sorry, this place has closed]

It's generally been a struggle to find good Indian food in Miami. Renaisa, off Biscayne Boulevard and 78th Street, was my go-to place for a while (for take-out - I couldn't bear to sit in the dingy space, which has now changed hands and been made much nicer as Anise Taverna, a Greek/Med restaurant from the folks who used to run Ouzo's), but then they moved north to Heelsha around 163rd St. and I haven't gotten up that way. I've had a couple better-than-decent meals at Mint Leaf in Coral Gables, but it's rather pricy. So when a new entry in the market made its appearance, I was excited to try Indian Palate, and made my way over this week for lunch.

While walking my way to the restaurant's location at the corner of Salzedo Street and Alcazar Avenue, it gradually dawned on me what used to be there - it's the old Le Festival space! But this will not be one of my interminable reminiscences about restaurants-gone-by, I promise. It's still got ivy covering the walls outside, but the interior has been redone with Indian paintings and decorations. Lunch is done buffet-style, with a few serving tables set up in one room opposite the dining room (which appears to only have a portion of the full space open for lunch).

The buffet offered about 3-4 vegetable dishes , about 5 various meat dishes, basmati rice, a couple breads (the baskets of which were not refreshed nearly often enough), as well as another table set up as a chaat bar and yet another laid out with simple salad stuff and about a half-dozen chutneys and pickles.

My favorite thing was the chaat bar. Chaats are Indian street food, various combinations of miscellaneous crispy bits, sauces and spices. Here, they offered little puffed rice balls, crispy shredded wheat, and big round wheat puffs,along with several various sauces for topping them, including creamy yogurt, another yogurt-based sauce spiked with mint, a tart tamarind sauce, and a moderately spicy tomato chutney, along with diced fresh tomato and mint. The effect of the combination, which you can doctor as you see fit, is much like a spicy, savory, crunchy breakfast cereal, and oddly compelling.

The buffet fare was decent but not exceptional. The vegetables included a saag paneer (creamy spinach with cubes of mild cheese), a mild mixed vegetable curry, and a potato dish; the meats included a chicken tikka masala, a stewed lamb dish (rogan josh?), another dish with ground lamb or beef, and mussels in a peanut sauce. It was all OK, but there was nothing that really stood out. It was as if the spice had been turned down on everything, which I think is a mistake. Though I understand that not everyone likes spicy food, there's a difference between spicy and highly spiced. Indian food need not (should not) always be spicy, but if it's not highly spiced, then what's the point? To me that's the heart of Indian cooking.

I have read that the Indian Palate chef came over from Vix at the Hotel Victor on South Beach, which makes a lot of sense. I only ate there once, but what made the most memorable impression - other than the astronomical prices - was a bread plate that featured several delicious Indian breads, and some very savory dips including a raita and some chutneys. Now, Indian Palate offers a fuller panoply of choices, and at a much more affordable cost - our lunch buffet was $13, a bargain all things considered. The dinner menu seems a bit more convoluted, with a bunch of different combination plates, but I like the idea, since it gives an opportunity to try a broader variety of dishes. Now if they could just turn up the spice dial some so you can better distinguish one from another.

Indian Palate
2120 Salzedo St.
Coral Gables, FL 33134
786.360.3664

Bulldog BBQ Redux - The Pros Check In

I gave my thoughts on Bulldog BBQ a couple months ago. Now, on the same day, the pros from Miami Herald and New Times check in. You'd think everyone had the same crib sheet.

• look - sleek and modern
• good - turkey chili, fried oyster app, burnt end beans
• bland - curiously under-flavored meats, cornbread and slaw
• not quite right - smoky, sour mac & cheese
• portions - large
• beers - lousy selection
• "hot chocolate puddin' cake" - molten chocolate cake in blue-collar drag
• bbq purists - don't bother
• verdict - still a decent meal, even if it ain't real 'cue.
  

What's That Growing in the Fridge?

I think the area of fermentation is an under-explored genre of food manipulation. At our recent visit to Akelaŕe, a dish described as "milk and grape, cheese and wine in parallel evolution" promised to explore the subject, but while the concept was there, I thought the execution was somewhat lacking.

I've always generally understood how the fermentation process works with wine, with yeast acting to convert the sugars in the grape juice into alcohol. I understood it less with regard to fermented vegetables (i.e., kim chee) and meats (i.e., sausages) until doing a little research. My naive understanding now is that it is in most respects essentially the same process, but instead of sugar converting to alcohol, it is the conversion of carbohydrates into lactic acid by means of beneficial bacteria. It is this lactic acid which both acts to preserve the foods and helps eliminate bad bacteria.

In any event, here's an interesting little interview with Sandor Katz, fermentation maven, on the topic of home fermentation, which in turn led me to his website, Wild Fermentation. I suspect I've had some unintentional home fermentation projects going on at one time or another - this suggests a more purposeful approach.

Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before

Big name N.Y. restaurateur opens fancy restaurant in great big new Miami hotel. First reported in MenuPages, now with more detail - and a preview menu (sorry - link appears to be screwed up) - from UrbanDaddy, Eos in the Viceroy Hotel, a product of restaurateur Donatella Arpaia with a menu from chef Michael Psilakis, will be doing a soft opening starting next Tuesday.

At least it's not a steakhouse.

Eos
485 Brickell Avenue
Miami, FL 33131
305.503.4400

Everything Old is New Again

When we were in Spain, I noted on more than one occasion how traditional dishes were the springboard for creative contemporary dishes - a new-age variant of a Gilda pintxo at Akelaŕe, an apertivo of puding de kabrarroka at Arzak. This is hardly a new idea. There's a long line of chefs who play with variations on classics. Here is just one local example from here in Miami - oeufs à la gelée, inspired by Fernand Point's Ma Gastronomie. The use of classic combinations in conjunction with contemporary techniques, or alternatively, classic presentations with untraditional ingredients, is often an effective way to mediate the tension between neophilia and neophobia* (or, to skip the fancy lingo, "I want something new" vs. "I want something familiar") inherent in any dining experience.

Indeed, there seems to be plenty of looking backwards these days, with Zagat sponsoring a series of "Vintage Dinners" - including this magnificent offering from Thomas Keller and Jonathan Benno of Per Se from a few months ago (salmon coulibiac; lobster thermidor; veal a la maintenon; grand kugelhof - we're going to party like it's 1899!).

But in a recent post on the new Atlantic Food Channel, Grant Achatz of Alinea (as usual) takes it to another level. In "New Fusion: Making Old Modern," instead of using old recipes as a jumping-off point for the use of new techniques, he talks instead about the incorporation of classic recipes, lock stock and barrel, into contemporary menus, for purposes of contrast and comparison:

Can the juxtaposition of modern and classic preparations within the same menu elevate each by giving a clearer perspective of evolution? Or does it show how little cooking has really changed? Can it fulfill different emotional aspects through the contrasts? Will people even notice? Is it a moment of gastronomic time travel?

Most of these questions probably can't be answered until it's experienced, but they are all good questions to be asking. I've generally always been of the belief that there's a lot less that separates the "modern" and the "classic" than many people seem to think, but perhaps that assumption is off the mark. Are we ready for a Quantum Leap dining experience? And how long until Michael Mina comes up with a "time travel trio"?

*Borrowing a concept from Michael Pollan's great book, "The Omnivore's Dilemma", and redeploying it in a slightly different context.

El Carajo International Tapas & Wine - Miami

One of my colleagues, after seeing the Robert Rodriguez movie "From Dusk Till Dawn," described the scene in the Mexican bar, when Santanico Pandemonium (Salma Hayek) is dancing and ultimately reveals herself and the other bar denizens to be vicious vampires,* as the most dramatic paradigm shift since the transition from black and white to color in "The Wizard of Oz." That might be a stretch. But there's a comparable, though much more pleasant, paradigm shift when you walk into the gas station on the corner of US1 and S.W. 17th Avenue. Seemingly just an everyday gas station (used to be a Citgo, think it's now BP), once you go past the sodas and beers and sundries, you'll discover in the back a remarkable little wine shop and tapas bar which goes by the (apparently laden with double-entendre in Spanish) name of El Carajo.

The wall of wines lining the back holds a number of choices you'd never expect to find in a gas station. I just happened to be sitting last time in front of the Australia and South America sections, and glimpsed multiple different releases from Mollydooker, some Achaval-Ferrer Quimira, Montes Alpha Folly, and many other intriguing bottles. While the prices may not be the cheapest in town, here's a good deal - take anything off the wall, have it with your tapas, and you'll pay only $10 corkage.

The menu lists a surprisingly deep (for a gas station) selection of cold and hot tapas as well as paellas and more substantial entrees. I've stuck mostly with the tapas. On a recent visit I tried boquerones, very nice Spanish white anchovies in a pungent vinaigrette loaded with onion; fresh sardines, grilled and bathed in olive oil and lemon; and a tortilla de chorizo, a substantial slice for $4, redolent with the paprika-spiked sausage but a wee bit dry for my taste (though you rarely see here in the U.S. the more oozy tortillas you often find in Spain). On other occasions I've had their gambas al ajillo (decent), chistorras al vino (bright red little sausages cooked in wine, the wine and oil making a fantastic dipping sauce for their good bread), and a decent if somewhat oversalted caldo gallego.

When I first started to visit El Carajo, they used to have what I thought was possibly the finest tapa I'd ever eaten in South Florida - piquillo peppers stuffed with a bacalao mousse, lightly fried, and topped with a squid ink sauce. However, as a result of a chef change, the dish is now a shadow of its former self. When I last ordered it, the codfish stuffing was unpleasantly dry, and the sauce was just a nebbish red pepper sauce. This used to be a dish I'd actively pine for - it's now no longer worth ordering.

But there's still plenty else good to be had, somehow made all the more enjoyable by the incongruous location.

El Carajo International Tapas & Wine
2465 S.W. 17th Avenue
Miami, FL 33145
305.856.2424



*Now that I made you think of it, let me save you the effort: here's the trailer, and here's the dance scene in its entirety.