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.

Sra. Martinez - Miami Design District

[sorry, this restaurant has closed]

I don't believe I've ever seen a restaurant come together quite as quickly as Sra. Martinez did. On October 6, 2008, Domo Japones, which had occupied the old Post Office Building in the Miami Design District for less than a year, shut down. The same day, it was announced that Michelle Bernstein (most recently famed for her eponymous restaurant Michy's on Biscayne Boulevard) would be opening a tapas bar in the space. I've always enjoyed Michelle Bernstein's cooking, back to the days when she was the chef at The Strand, one of the pioneers of the South Beach dining scene. The combination of her talents with a tapas bar format hit a real sweet spot for me (I am sort of a tapas fan), and this was an opening I was eagerly looking forward to.

Less than two months later - and just in time for Art Basel crowds - Sra. Martinez (the name a reference to Chef Bernstein's husband and partner David Martinez) was open for business. The refurbishment of the Domo Japones space (built in the 1920's and originally the Buena Vista Post Office) was done quickly but effectively, with the black & white Naomi Campbell photos swapped out for bullfighting posters, and the primary visual highlights being courtesy of some bright red Philippe Stark "Ghost" chairs and barstools. Most of the restaurant is open to a 2-story height, with the bottom floor taken up on one side by several large horseshoe-shaped booths, with more tables through the middle of the space and the opposite side providing about 15 bar seats, the space behind which is being used as the cold-prep station for the kitchen (which it later occurred to me must have been the sushi bar for the prior incarnation). A staircase ascends to a small upstairs loft, which has two long tables for bigger groups and a small bar (which happens to mix some pretty awesome cocktails, several involving house-made bitters and other intriguing ingredients like ham-infused bourbon). They make a mean Sazerac.

The menu [note: this is a very early iteration of the menu, which has - as is typical for M.B.'s restaurants - evolved and changed over time] clearly shows the influence of a recent trip to Spain. There's a healthy balance between traditional items like boquerones en escabeche, tortilla española, or pimientos de padron, and more contemporary creative items like a pancetta-wrapped rabbit loin with carrot-cumin sauce, sea urchin "sandwich," or crispy pork belly with a fennel-orange marmalade and "Benihana salad".

My first visit was the day after Sra. Martinez opened, yet remarkably the restaurant was running as smoothly as one that had been open for years. The waitstaff knew the menu, the service was efficient, and the kitchen was getting the food out timely (though we've always made clear when we're there that we're happy being served tapas style with dishes coming out as they're ready). We've been back several times, mostly with larger groups, with similar experiences (though our last visit, a final round arrived a good 20 minutes later than anything else, by which point most of our group had already stuffed themselves).

We've now worked our way through most of the menu at this point (in fact our last visit, with a group of ten, caused the kitchen to ask "Who ordered 'the menu'?"), and so I'll try to work my way through the dishes we've tried and identify those that have been my favorites.

crispy artichokes - elegant long-stemmed artichoke hearts, delicately fried with just a hint of a crispy bread crumb coating, served with an aioli dipping sauce brightened with a liberal dose of lemon. Have had these several times now and they're always good.

bacon wrapped dates - these seem to be the official snack of the Design District, with Sra. M, MGF&D and Pacific Time all having served their own variations. Sra. M's, like many of the dishes here, play on the salty-sweet thing, with a sweet date paired with salty bacon and a filling of Spanish blue cheese.

boquerones - traditional white Spanish anchovies marinated in vinegar. Nothing special, but good if you like such things. Me, I'm a big fan of the shiny-skinned fish.

pimientos de padron - another classic tapas bar item, these little green peppers - basically the same critter the Japanese call "shishito" - are quickly sauteed with olive oil over high heat till their skins blister, and sprinkled generously with sea salt, and have an herbaceous, smoky flavor. An added thrill is that roughly one in ten pack some serious spicy heat, so that eating a bowl of them is a bit like a culinary version of Russian Roulette. And this gives me an excuse to link to a Calvin Trillin piece on the peppers, which is always a good thing.

charred fava salad - this was a new item from my most recent visit and a nice one, the favas having their characteristic earthy flavor, and also a whiff of smoky spice (chipotle?). I preferred this to other salads I've had there, which were unmemorable.

croquetas - the filling of the croquetas has varied from visit to visit - sometimes wild mushrooms, more recently chorizo. These are very light in texture, but I've found the flavor of the fillings to be difficult to discern.

poached egg - I've seen this a couple different ways. The first time, it was poached then fried (a technique Jonathan Eismann uses at Pacific Time too) and served on a bed of crispy kale and serrano ham; the next visit, it was just a garden-variety, perfectly poached egg, over a nice hash of chorizo and potato. This one would surely please Jonathan Mardukus - [2:20 mark]. The Spaniards understand that eggs are delicious for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and Sra. M gets it too.

tortilla española - a somewhat small hockey puck sized portion of the classic Spanish omelette, but not too dried out like you often find it here in the States. Even better with some diced chorizo (what isn't?).

pan con tomate - a simple dish - just crusty bread rubbed with garlic and tomato and drizzled with olive oil - but one that can be wonderful when done right (like at Paco Meralgo in Bacelona). The bread was a weak link here, seemed like garden-variety Cuban bread that was too spongy and insipid, and not enough olive oil.

crispy eggplant - thin disks of eggplant are fried till crispy and drizzled with dark honey. A great combination, and one that sounds somewhat avant garde, but actually a fairly common Spanish tapa.

piquillo peppers - these smoky Spanish peppers with just a hint of piquancy are wonderful things, and they're served simply with a drizzle of good olive oil. A simple traditional tapa, good but nothing extraordinary.

patatas bravas - another traditional Spanish tapas item, typically cubes of potato are twice-fried and served dressed with a fiery tomato sauce, and often accompanied with an aioli as well. The first time I had these, the bravas sauce was too sweet, and the portion too dainty. Both issues were fixed on a subsequent visit, by which time these had become "untraditional" bravas with Peruvian dipping sauces. The tomato-based sauce was now happily fiery, and an aji amarillo sauce made for a nice alternative. I now understand the dish has been tweaked even further in the Peruvian direction, with potato skins subbing for the cubed potatoes and a salsa huancaina in the mix. This tilt towards Latin America seems to have generally become stronger over the few months since Sra. Martinez first opened.

prawns a la plancha - massive head-on "Madagascar prawns" were grilled head-on and whole, and served with cloves of "confit garlic" and a shmear of a smooth chimichurri sauce. I always love good head-on shrimp, but this dish seemed caught somewhere between a classic gambas a la plancha (simply grilled, often with nothing other than sea salt) and a gambas al ajillo (sauteed in olive oil and lots of garlic) and fell a bit short of either. I believe this has undergone some metamorphosis as the menu has been updated.

clams - steamed open with sherry, garlic, chiles and roasted tomatoes, I thought these were fantastic, juicy and loaded with flavor. Unfortunately, they are also off the menu, as M.B. said they weren't getting ordered often enough. What a shame. I hope they make a comeback.

white bean stew w/ duck & foie sausage - a great dish. Mammoth white beans (like the gigantic judion beans I recall seeing in Segovia) are served with big hunks of botifarra sausage made with duck and foie gras, all laced with a port reduction that gives the dish a hint of sweetness. M.B. gives full credit to the legendary Barcelona restaurant Cal Pep for the inspiration for this dish, though she self-deprecatingly says her version is not as good as the original.

garbanzos - the first couple times I had these, the beans were done with crumbled morcilla (blood sausage) and cubes of sauteed apple, a combination I quite liked. On my most recent visit, the recipe had changed, and they instead were flavored with an overpowering dose of orange. I liked the initial iteration much better.

sea urchin "sandwich" - another of my favorites, sea urchin roe, together with some soy-ginger butter, are pressed within some crusty bread, Cuban sandwich style. I usually don't like my uni messed with at all, but I thought the soy-ginger notes complimented and enhanced the salty, sweet, spicy flavors of the uni. On later visits the portion sizing of this seems to have been downscaled and it may not be the greatest value for the price.

calamari a la plancha - grilled calamari, served over a bed of arroz negro flavored and colored with squid ink and ringed with a circle of green herb oil.

pork belly - the pork belly is crispy outside, tender within, topped with a smidge of a not-too-sweet fennel orange marmalade, and accompanied with a "Benihana salad" (which is indeed much like its namesake). One of the standout dishes.

galbi pinchos - short ribs sliced thin across the bone, dim-sum style, marinated in a Korean style sweet soy sauce, and served with a kohlrabi "slaw" of thinly sliced and vinegared rounds of kohlrabi, reminiscent of a Korean banchan. A little chewy, but tasty.

rabo encendido - liked this one quite a bit, oxtails given a long braise, the meat then pulled and shredded and stacked onto little toasts. The meat was wonderfully tender and richly flavored, even if I missed the opportunity to gnaw on the ends of the bones.

rabbit loin - this is a dish I'd had as a special at Michy's previously, a loin of rabbit is wrapped in bacon and served with sauteed rounds of carrot, a carrot-cumin sauce, and cubes of panisse (chick-pea fries). One of the best rabbit preps I've ever had, and was just as good at Sra. M as it had been at Michy's. Unfortunately it was not on the menu for my last visit.

sweetbreads - Any sweetbread dish at Michy's is always one of the high points. Chef Bernstein has a complete mastery of the things, achieving a wonderfully light and crispy exterior while still preserving the ethereal, delicate fluffy interior, and I've had some fantastic pairings at Michy's. The initial incarnation of a sweetbread dish at Sra. M. was just as good for the prep of the sweetbreads themselves, but the pairing (a romesco sauce and a caperberry) was disappointingly bland. On my last visit, there was a new version, this one topped with a semi-sweet orange sauce and plated with some lettuce leaves for making sweetbread lettuce wraps. A vast improvement and a really nice twist.

marrow bones - a great ingredient but a flawed execution the time I tried them. Each order comes with 4 bones, the shanks split lengthwise in half and then crosswise into roughly 2-inch lengths so that the marrow is exposed. Unfortunately there was a lot of variation from one piece to the next so that one might be loaded with marrow and the other have almost none, and also there were little shards of bone which easily broke off. A shame, as I am a huge fan of roasted marrow and had a similar dish done just perfectly at Michy's on one visit (served there with a pear gremolata).

cheese plate - a simple presentation of three cheeses (a Manchego, a Mucria al Vino, and a Valdeon blue when we ordered it), each with a little dab of a different jam or marmalade to accompany it.

donuts - dulce de leche filled donuts, accompanied with a coffee granita (coffee and donuts!). The coffee granita was pleasantly strong and not too sweet.

goat cheese and honey - listed as a dessert but really more of a cheese course, a round of a really nice goat cheese (pale and creamy in the center, gooey and golden around the edges, with a soft white rind) is warmed, topped with a smear of honey and a sprinkle of fresh thyme leaves, served with olive oil crackers for spreading. I often love the combination of cheese and honey and this really worked for me.

torrejas - basically french toast for dessert, this tasted like it was made with a panettone-type bread, sweet and dense with hints of dried fruits. Since one of my favorite treats is to make french toast from panettone, this made me very happy.

greek yogurt ice cream - an interesting play between sweet and savory, with a very yogurt-y ice cream accompanied by a sweet tomato marmalade and another sweet syrupy component (reduced balsamic?).

There are a few entree-sized items on the menu - a steak, a fish, a chicken - but they seem to be there primarily to appease those folks who can't get into the tapas spirit. The one time I was with a group that ordered one of these, the fish, it was perfectly fine but completely unexciting. The lesson - stick with the tapas.

The wine list is exclusively Spanish and has a number of interesting items and some real bargains, including an Alto Moncayo Veraton (a modern-styled garnacha) very fairly priced at $55, and an eminently drinkable Borsao Compo de Borja garnacha/tempranillo blend for only $20. On another occasion I had a nice Rioja with some bottle age on it, a 2001 La Rioja Alta Viña Alberdi, for only a bit over 2x retail.

As often as not, Michelle Bernstein will be in the house making sure everything is running right (she regularly does double-duty here and at Michy's up Biscayne Blvd. the same night), though it's her former sous chef from Michy's, Berenice de Araujo, running the kitchen at Sra. Martinez. Portions can be on the small side, and prices have crept up a bit from when they first opened, with most items involving a protein around $15. Since a typical meal may be 3+ dishes it is certainly not a cheap meal, in contrast to the Spanish tapas bars it is patterned after. But it'll be a good meal, and the place also lends itself to having a little snack and a drink at the bar instead of a full-blown meal, perhaps even before a meal as you head off to one of the Design District's other eating establishments.

Sra. Martinez
4000 N.E. 2nd Ave.
Miami, FL
305-573-5474

La Cofradia Ceviche Bar Menu Preview

La Cofradia opened in Coral Gables in late 2005. Its Nuevo-Peruvian food was often pretty good, but the clubby-looking restaurant with an odd long narrow layout - and the high prices - seemed to keep it from ever getting much traction. About a month ago, La Cofradia closed its doors and filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Almost immediately after doing so, though, it asked to dismiss the bankruptcy case, and signs appeared in the window announcing the impending opening of "La Cofradia Ceviche Bar" in early May. A new menu has now been posted outside, of which I have a couple terrible photos. (Silly me - I now see that they've updated the website with the new menu as well).

The quick recap: the food has gotten much simpler, with a fairly straight-ahead listing of about a half-dozen ceviches, tiraditos, and various combinations thereof (all priced around $13-15); several salads and cooked apps, including some traditional Peruvian causas, and a great pork and grapes dish which is a carry-over from the original menu; saltados (stir-fry?) with your choice of protein; and a number of other entrees all priced under $25. Plus daily lunch specials for $13.50. I often complain about "dumbing down," but if it helps a restaurant survive, in these times I suppose that's the name of the game. It'll be interesting to see if it works for this new incaranation of La Cofradia.

La Cofradia
160 Andalusia Avenue
Coral Gables, FL 33134
305.914.1300

Cinco de MiMo on BiBo

On May 2, the Biscayne Boulevard Historic District is playing host for the "Cinco de MiMo" festival. Several local restaurants and shops will be participating, with street performers, live music in the afternoon from the Almost Blues Band and Somebody's Mama, and restaurants offering "tastes" for $2 - $5. A "Pink Pooch Parade & Contest" is also in the works.

Participating restaurants (working north to south) include:

Anise Waterfront Taverna - 620 NE 78th St.
Red Light - 7700 Biscayne Boulevard
Ver Daddy's Taco Shop - 7501 Biscyane Boulevard
Le Cafe Bistro - 7295 Biscayne Boulevard
Che Sopranos - 7251 Biscayne Boulevard
Moshi Moshi - 7232 Biscayne Boulevard
Moonchine Asian Bistro - 7100 Biscayne Boulevard
Casa Toscana - 7001 Biscayne Boulevard
Michy's - 6927 Biscayne Boulevard
Wine 69 - 6909 Biscayne Boulevard
UVA 69 - 6900 Biscayne Boulevard
Kingdom - 6708 Biscayne Boulevard