A Dining List for 2010

In case you were wondering where to eat tomorrow ... the James Beard Foundation restaurant and chef awards were announced tonight. First and foremost, a hearty congratulations to local product Michael Schwartz, who won Best Chef South for his work at Michael's Genuine Food & Drink. It is a well-deserved honor for one of Miami's real gems.

The rest of the winners:

• Marea (New York City) - Best New Restaurant
• Tom Colicchio (Craft, NY) - Outstanding Chef Award
• Nicole Plue (Redd, Yountville CA) - Outstanding Pastry Chef Award
• Daniel (New York) - Outstanding Restaurant Award
• Keith McNally (Balthazar, Lucky Strike, Minetta Tavern, Morandi, Pastis, Pravda, Shiller's Liquor Bar, New York City) - Outstanding Restaurateur Award
• Alinea (Chicago) - Outstanding Service Award
• John and Doug Shafer (Shafer Vineyards) - Outstanding Wine and Spirits Professional Award
• Jean Georges (New York) - Outstanding Wine Service
• Timothy Hollingsworth (French Laundry, Yountville CA) - Rising Star Chef of the Year
• Koren Grieveson (Avec, Chicago) - Best Chef Great Lakes
• Jeff Michaud (Osteria, Philadephia) - Best Chef Mid-Atlantic
• Alexander Roberts (Restaurant Alma, Minneapolis) - Best Chef Midwest
• Daniel Humm (Eleven Madison Park) - Best Chef New York City
• Clark Frasier and Mark Gaier (Arrows, Ogunquit, ME) - Best Chef Northeast
• Jason Wilson (Crush, Seattle) - Best Chef Northwest
• David Kinch (Manresa, Los Gatos CA) - Best Chef Pacific
• Michael Schwartz (Michael's Genuine Food & Drink, Miami) - Best Chef South
• Sean Brock (McCrady's, Charleston SC) - Best Chef Southeast
• Claude Le Tohic (Joël Robuchon, Las Vegas) - Best Chef Southwest

Not a bad "Where should I go for dinner?" list.

May Days

Much going on this month, here are several food-related events and specials coming up:

May 5 (Cinco de Mayo)

Mercadito in Midtown Miami (3252 NE 1st. Ave. Miami) will be mixing up a new drink in honor of Cinco de Mayo, the "Vato Loco," a tequila-based cocktail "so ridiculously hot and addictively delicious" that a signed waiver is required. They will also have a mariachi band and are unveiling a new outdoor bar for the occasion. Festivities start at 9pm.

Rosa Mexicano (900 S. Miami Ave. Miami) is also getting into the spirit and will be open till midnight, with live music and masks and beads for their guests (wait - is it Cinco de Mayo or Mardi Gras?)

Salsa Fiesta (2929 Biscayne Boulevard Miami) will be having live music, 2-for-1 margaritas and cervezas, free chips and salsa with any drink order, and 2-for-1 burritos all day long from 11am-11pm.

Sushi Maki (locations in Coral Gables, Brickell, South Miami and Palmetto Bay) is dubbing May 5 "Sushi de Mayo" and offering a $5 "Fiesta Menu," including "signature" sushi rolls, "chef bites" and sake cocktails and beers from 5pm-9pm.

May 9 (Mother's Day)

Altamare (1233 Lincoln Road Miami Beach) is adding a couple items to the menu on Sunday for mom: a Raw Taster with scallop ceviche, tuna tartare, Kumamoto oyster and sheepshead carpaccio, with a Borek Farms heirloom tomato sorbet; and for dessert, a pistachio creme brulée with lemon sorbet and lemon shortbread. Open for dinner 5pm-11pm.

Area 31 (270 Biscayne Blvd. Way Miami) in the Epic Hotel is doing a brunch buffet featuring all of the standards as well as some its local seafood specialties, including a raw bar and ceviche bar, and grilled swordfish with a Homestead tomato salad. $55pp ($22 for ages 6-15), 12-3pm.

BLT Steak (1440 Ocean Drive Miami Beach) has picked out some blackboard dinner specials especially for mom, including a "surf n turf" with tuna crudo, foie gras terrine, candied grapefruit and citrus gastrique, or a pan roasted local grouper with spicy fava bean puree, preserved Meyer lemon, honshimeji mushrooms and oyster sabayon. Open for dinner 5pm-11pm and also for brunch 11am-3pm.

Gibraltar in Grove Isle (4 Grove Isle Drive Miami) is doing a full-blown brunch buffet in the dining room or on the outdoor patio for $75pp ($35 for ages 5-12) from 11am-3pm.

The Grill on the Alley (19501 Biscayne Blvd. Aventura) is offering an a la carte brunch with most items between $8 and $14, and cocktails for $6, 11:30am-3pm.

Or you can take mom to the Meat Market (915 Lincoln Road Miami Beach) (that doesn't sound right) which will be offering an a la carte menu with items like a wagyu meatloaf en croute or coffee and ancho crusted ribeye with eggs, skillet potatoes and peppers. Plus unlimited mimosas or bellinis for an extra $15. 11am-4pm.

Mercadito, apparently sufficiently recovered from the "ridiculously hot and addictively delicious" Vato Loco, will be doing a "Mamacita's Day Brunch" from 11:30am-5pm for $28pp, including a cocktail ($20 for ages 5-12, excluding cocktail but including a non-alcoholic drink).

Neomi's in the Trump International Beach Resort (18001 Collins Ave. Sunny Isles Beach) is offering a Mothers' Day Brunch that includes, in addition to your usual suspects, a paella valenciana, a children's buffet, a "kiddie fondue" with chocolate covered strawberries and bananas (and, most likely, children), plus a complimentary family portrait ($60pp, $20 for ages 6-12, 11am-3pm).

The Setai (2001 Collins Ave. Miami Beach) will be serving up a Mother's Day jazz brunch, featuring items both Eastern and Western, as well as a Russian Standard Bloody Mary bar and endless Taittinger champagne, for $85pp 11:30am-3pm.

Talavera (2299 Ponce de Leon Blvd. Coral Gables) will be doing a brunch service for Mother's Day with items such as Huevos Divorciados (poached eggs over a hand-made tortilla with red and green salsas), Chilaquiles Verdes, and a Breakfast Huarache (corn masa topped with black beans, salsa verde, goat cheese, and eggs scrambled with chorizo). Prices from $8-$12.

Talula (210 23rd St. Miami Beach) will be offering its Grand Buffet Brunch, along with some chef's specials created especially for Mother's Day, from 10am-3pm Sunday.

Wish (801 Collins Ave. Miami Beach) wishes mom a happy mother's day with a special $55 menu or a la carte selections at dinner from 6pm-10:30pm.

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Marcel Vigneron: Molecular Gastronomist and Time Traveler?

In an interview with LA Weekly, Marcel "Wolverine" Vigneron, contestant on Top Chef Season 2 and now, apparently, chef at an L.A. restaurant called Bar210, claims to have taught himself spherification sometime in or before 2001:

MV: ... I taught myself spherification in a garage in New York while I was getting my associates degree. I called elBulli before I'd even been there and got on the line and asked them for a sample packet of chemicals. And they mailed me the chemicals.

SI: You can do that? You can get those through the mail?

MV: Yeah, no problem. This was totally pre-9/11. They sent me little gram bags of each one, all labeled. So I was doing research online and found Ferran's recipe for apple caviar and bought a little digital gram scale and was trying to make it. I remember me and my friends we made coffee caviar, and we were like blown away. We were like, Oh this is the coolest thing.

Which is pretty remarkable, considering that spherification wasn't introduced as a technique at elBulli until 2003. In any event, forgive me if I'm not too impressed: if you ask me, any idiot with the right supplies and a recipe can pull off spherification.

"Cobaya in the Night Kitchen" at Sakaya Kitchen

"Did you ever hear of Micky, how he heard a racket in the night and shouted and fell through the dark..."

Forty guinea pigs were making a racket in the night at Sakaya Kitchen this past Saturday for our latest Cobaya dinner. There were a few reasons we decided to do a midnight dinner. First, we just wanted to do something different. Second, Sakaya's chef, Richard Hales, is working pretty much non-stop during regular hours, with Sakaya being open 11am - 10pm 7 days a week. Third, Sakaya may eventually be rolling out a late night service, so this was something of a dry run. Those who notice the posting schedule here know I'm usually up then anway, but I'm apparently not the only night owl: I was thrilled - and once again, grateful and humbled - that when a post went up on the Cobaya board which basically said nothing more than: "Midnight. Saturday April 24. $55," 60+ people said "Yes!"

We weren't able to accomodate all who wanted to come, but we did have our largest dinner yet. After a little game of musical chairs - we had to split one long communal table in two to squeeze everyone in - we sat down to seven courses at CobSakaya Kitchen.

I've seen all sorts of different menu formats, but this was the first one that had both footnotes^[a] and relationship advice ("Dessert!?...Go home and have sex like the old days instead of blogging about food..."). I won't share with you how that dessert suggestion worked out, but I'll happily tell you about the rest of the meal. If you can't read that scratchy picture above, here is the menu:

"Cobaya in the Night Kitchen @Sak^[1]aya Kitchen"

 April 24, 2010 Midnight

What you may already know...

Papa's Shrimp & Pork Filipino Egg Rolls, Fuji Vinegar

Pork Butt, House Cured & Roasted Boston Butt, House Pickle, Ssamjang Sweet Chili

Some new stuff for Cobaya...

Garlic'd Laughing Bird Shrimp, Chive Flower Soba Noodles

Bucket of Korean Fried Sweetbreads & Spicy Frog Legs, Local Baby Cucumber Blossom

"Chim Quay" Quail, Pig Skin "Tsitsaron," Chinese Broccoli

"Nuoc Mau" Pork Belly, Roasted Local Baby Carrots, Crispy Bone Marrow, Coconut Rice

Dessert!?...Go home and have sex like the old days instead of blogging about food...

Blue Point Oyster^[2]
Pajeon

Menardies^[3]

Wife Hales' Chocolate Chocolate Cookie Bag

^[1]Cobaya Kitchen
^[2]An aphrodisiac is a substance that increases sexual desire
^[3]Postcoital

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D. Rodriguez - South Beach

It was with some dismay that I realized recently that it was more than twenty years ago that I first experienced Chef Douglas Rodriguez's cooking, when he was at a little place called Wet Paint Café that was one of the first signs of life on Lincoln Road in the late 1980's.^[1]

Since then, Chef Rodriguez has gone through a number of other projects. First was Yuca,^[2] where he was one of the pioneers of bringing contemporary, upscale flare to classic Latin American flavors, along with other kitchen luminaries such as Norman Van Aken and Cindy Hutson. After about five years, he packed his bags and headed for the bright lights of New York City, where he opened Patria, followed by a couple other restaurants, and further expansion to Philadelphia (Alma de Cuba).

But Chef Rodriguez eventually made his way back home to Miami. Around 2003 he opened Ola in a refurbished standalone 2-story building on Biscayne Boulevard in what is now called the "Upper East Side."^[3] I loved that space, but Ola was not long for the Boulevard,and within a couple years had made its way back across Biscayne Bay to South Beach, first at the Savoy Hotel and then to its current spot in the Sanctuary hotel. It seems the expansion bug has bitten again, as Chef Rodriguez recently opened a new restaurant, D. Rodriguez, in the Astor Hotel on South Beach, and an Ola Cuban is in the works for Gulfstream Village in Hallandale.

Where Ola's menu looks all over Latin America and the Caribbean for inspiration, D. Rodriguez stays more closely to a Cuban theme. For me, this is something of a mixed bag. Candidly, I don't find Cuban cuisine to be the most exciting of those that our southerly neighbors have to offer. It's good, it's satisfying, but rarely is it transcendent. Could Chef Rodriguez make it so?

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