The Heart Has its Rieslings*

I'll confess I'm not usually a big white wine drinker. But - if I may borrow from the Most Interesting Man in the World - when I do drink white wine, I often prefer Riesling. Somewhat intimidating because of the variety of styles and the difficult-to-decipher German labeling system, Rieslings nonetheless have the capacity for complex hedonistic flavors, while also often having an excellent balance of fruit and acid to make for effective food pairings.

If you're not a big Riesling drinker - or if you are, and are just looking for another excuse - next week is the time to try one, as Wines of Germany and Destination Riesling team up for Riesling Week May 18-24. Restaurants and retailers will be featuring German, Austrian and Alsatian Rieslings with by-the-glass tastings, food and wine pairings, and wine flights. Participating Miami restaurants include Azul, Bourbon Steak, Brosia, Café Sambal, Emeril's, M-Bar, Michael’s Genuine Food & Drink, Michy's, Oceanaire, OLA, Ortanique, and Palme d’Or; and retailers include Sunset Corners, W Wine Boutique, and Wine 69.


*With all due credit to Randall Grahm of Bonny Doon Vineyard for that pun.

La Cofradia Ceviche Bar - Coral Gables

[sorry, this restaurant has closed]

A few weeks ago I gave a preview of the new menu at La Cofradia Ceviche Bar, the reincarnation of a former upscale Peruvian restaurant which closed down a couple months ago. I paid a lunch visit last week on the first day of their reopening to see what was new.

The layout of the space has been reconfigured some, with a few tall tables and barstools in the entranceway along with a new (?) bar. White tablecloths are gone in favor of bare wood tables, though the place still retains many of the upscale trappings from its original incarnation and has a slick (but not uncomfortable) modern look to it. It does feel a little more welcoming and it seems they're trying to make the new bar area in front more of a focal point.

The menu is, as noted earlier, in many ways just a simplified version of its predecessor. There are a few options for ceviches and tiraditos, about a half dozen other appetizer options, about 10 entree choices (some of which, like the sauteed shrimp with tacu tacu, I recall from the original menu), mostly priced in the $15-20 range at lunch and $17-25 for dinner (dinner also adds several saltados or stir fries for $17-22), and daily lunch specials for around $14-15.

Ceviches are offered in four styles: (1) a mix of fish, shrimp and octopus marinated in the traditional citrusy "leche de tigre"; (2) white fish marinated and supplemented with aji amarillo chile; (3) mixed seafood enhanced with red rocoto chile; and (4) tuna done in an Asian style with soy, ginger and sesame oil. You can also get tiradito (thinly sliced fish instead of diced) done in any of the same styles. We got a sampler of all four (for $15; individual ceviches range between $11-$14) and the serving size of each was a bit dainty (three of us splitting it had to be pretty timid in serving ourselves so as not to hog all of one) though collectively it was a decent portion. My favorite, somewhat surprisingly to me, was the Asian style, which came with a little seaweed salad as an accompaniment. A slab of sweet potato and some choclo, more traditional accompaniments, came with the others.

I also tried a shrimp causa appetizer, a traditional Peruvian dish of a round disk of cold mashed potatoes flavored subtly with aji amarillo, topped with cooked shrimp, cubes of avocado and a drizzle of Russian dressing. I know - sounds odd. And maybe it is, a little bit, but it's cool and refreshing while also substantial and filling. La Cofradia's version was decent but not revelatory.

Some of the entrees on the lunch menu are available in half portions, and a half portion of the arroz negro (for $10) worked out just right after an appetizer. The rice, colored and flavored with squid ink, was fairly generously studded with calamari rings and scallops, but it lacked the real depth of seafood flavor that this dish has when done really well (as it is at Francesco, also in the Gables), and the calamari was just a touch rubbery. I've heard it said calamari should be cooked for 2 minutes or 2 hours, and this seemed to be caught somewhere in between.

Given that we were there for literally the first service since they had reopened, it's really not fair to judge the service at all. Our food was just a bit slow coming out but the restaurant staff was acutely aware of it, and plied us with complimentary pisco sours while we waited. It was thoughtful but unnecessary, as the wait time really was not bad considering, and overall service was quite solicitous.

I am mostly a luncher in the Gables and remain concerned that though the food was good, La Cofradia's prices are still too high to be competitive in the current market. They've taken some steps to simplify the menu and make the venue more welcoming, both of which they've succeeded at. But despite offering one daily lunch special for around $15, most entrees still hover closer to the $20 price point. Add a ceviche or an app and you've quickly got a $30+ lunch.

It would seem the most natural point of comparison would be Francesco, the Peruvian stalwart of the Gables, and indeed it seems La Cofradia's prices would compare favorably to Francesco's online menu. But the comparison that instead occurs to me is La Cofradia's neighbor Por Fin across the street. Por Fin has done an excellent job of catering to the Gables lunch crowd, with a lunch special menu that offers a wide range of apps and entrees for a combined price of $19.50-$23.50. Por Fin, whose food I think has improved since they first opened, merits its own post (it is coming), and I think places like La Cofradia ought to be paying attention to what they're doing right.

La Cofradia Ceviche Bar
160 Andalusia Avenue
Coral Gables, FL 33134
305.914.1300

Cracking the Codes - Further Thoughts

There was a further thought on the issue of blogger ethics codes which I was going to include in my initial post on the subject, but decided not to. Coincidentally, it just happened to present itself again today. The question is whether this is just a blogger issue, or whether (as I think most people assume) print journalists are adhering to the standards described in these codes, and whether it's legitimate to expect them to.

Word out of Chicago is that Esquire restaurant writer John Mariani is making the rounds. Indeed, somehow it's common knowledge (to MenuPages Chicago, at least) where he's dining before he even arrives. MP Chicago gives a link that may help explain its Nostradamus-like ability to foretell the future, a story from a few years ago indicating that Mariani had sent a four-page list of requests to a restaurant he was about to visit, including requests to be comped for "everything from cab fare to his hotel bill." A later story in the L.A. Times took Mariani to task for non-disclosure of non-anonymous, comped meals.

Mariani still is apparently far from inconspicious. Here's something of a play-by-play of his current Chicago visit:

Not exactly the best example of following the American Food Journalists' Critics' Guidelines. But my point here is not to single out John Mariani. Though this may be a somewhat extreme example, it seems that often these rules can be honored more in the breach than in the observance even by "professional" journalists. Read this Wall Street Journal story on the Miami satellite restaurants of Scott Conant's Scarpetta and Alfred Portale's Gotham Steak in the Fontainebleau Resort and tell me if you think there's any chance the author paid more than one visit to either restaurant. Admittedly it's a bit of a fluff piece, and the writer did have the good sense to venture beyond the NY outposts and pay a visit to local product Michy's, so I'm not all that troubled (though it is curious that the local consensus seems to be that Scarpetta's getting it right and Gotham's got issues, and the writer had it contrariwise). This local review of a newly opened Italian restaurant, I Corsini, although it makes parenthetical mention of a second visit (in which the only dish described is referred to as "perfectly cooked" and "savory"), takes so much joy in describing the service and kitchen snafus from the first visit that it's completely lost in the shuffle. Was the service equally abysmal on the second visit? Is it fair to judge a restaurant based on "one appetizer, one pasta, two entrees, and one dessert"? Maybe so. Additional comments on the place seem to indicate the review was pretty much on target.

Particularly with newspapers cutting back on budgets and facing increasing competition from online media, it may be unrealistic to expect all of these rules to be honored by the traditional media outlets as well. Which really matter, and which can be compromised? The funny thing is, if I read enough of their work, it's always been pretty easy for me to figure out the reviewers I trust.

Cracking the Codes

A couple weeks ago, a proposed "Food Blog Code of Ethics," followed shortly by some Reviewers' Guidelines from the same site, got quite a bit of play. Much of it is actually duplicative of what's in the Association of Food Journalists' Food Critic's Guidelines, though perhaps a "lite" version. Being a conscientious type, I spent a good bit of time thinking these things over. There are some good if not particularly revolutionary ideas in there - be accountable; be civil; reveal biases and comps; don't plagiarize; be fair to new restaurants. There are some others that may not work for every situation - don't post anonymously;^[1] try to visit more than once before posting;^[2] wait at least a month before reviewing a place.

Caught somewhat asleep at the switch, eGullet chimed in several days later with the assertion that they'd actually been hard at work on this for years, linking back to a thread from late 2007 which started with the prospect of a "list of guidelines" for posters, and quickly degenerated into a classic example of the meta-discussion to which the intertubes are prone, fading off into oblivion (with no guidelines) more than a year ago. The proposed eGullet code which emerged a week ago is not too dissimilar, though with more of a focus on site maintenance issues and less on aping the AFJ's guidelines. Meanwhile, the eGullet proposal prompted this rather pointed and ad hominem response from another website.

After much deliberation, I'm staying out of the fray. I operate by some simple rules:

• Be honest.
• Don't be a douche.

If that's a "code," then so be it.

^[1]This would appear to be a fairly loose rule, given this exception: "Even if we choose to write anonymously for our own personal or professional safety, we will not post anything that we wouldn’t feel comfortable putting our name on and owning up to." I'm good with that.

^[2]Again, this one seems to have been softened from the initial draft, now acknowledging "We realize that this is an ideal. Some people are writing about restaurants that they go to in their travels, and most of us don’t have the money to go to places more than once (and find it especially hard to cough up the extra dough if a place stinks the first time we go). If you only go to a restaurant once, just say so."

How to Win Friends and Influence People

While it's nice to hear that chef Jason Hall of Eos, the new Michael Psilakis / Donatella Arpaia venture in the Viceroy Hotel in Miami, is excited over some funky Sardinian goat cheese aged in a suckling goat's stomach that they're putting on the menu, locals may be less pleased to hear his thoughts on Miami:

I don’t really like Miami that much. It’s OK to visit for SOBE but I want to get back to New York.

Well, thanks for visiting anyway. Not exactly the kind of stuff that disabuses me of my perception on the influx of out-of-town chefs to Miami.