And Back Again

Ten days in Maine. So what have I learned?

While other areas along the Eastern seaboard contemplate five-year lobstering moratoriums due to depleted fisheries, Maine has an abundance, likely largely due to forward-thinking, stock-preserving industry self-regulation which has been incorporated into state law since 1933. Healthy supply and lower demand due to the economy have driven prices down: Maine lobster retails for as low as $3.99 a pound - good for consumers, tough for lobsterers. This is actually an improvement for the industry from last year, when prices were so low, and tempers so high, that some lobsterers resorted to gunfire to settle disputes over rules both written and unwritten. Even if not priced like a luxury item, it still tastes like one.

The whole farm-to-table (or ocean-to-table) thing has taken hold quite nicely in Maine. Indeed, one gets the sense that it's not seen so much as a current trend as just the way things always were and continue to be done. Aside from the ubiquitous lobster, wild blueberries and "native" sweet corn dotted both roadside stands and menus throughout our travels along the coast. We ate at multiple places that literally had their own farms supplying produce, and of course there are still lobster docks where the buggers go pretty much straight from the boat to the boiling pot. Though I suspect eating seasonally and locally may be a lot more interesting this time of year than the dead of winter.

That kind of tradition and independence manifests in other ways too. Maine turned out to be quite an off the grid experience, as cellphone reception apparently is considered to be highly overrated by the locals, the 3G variety basically unheard of, and wi-fi networks functioning, as often as not, about as effectively as they would have been a hundred years ago when the places we were staying in were built.

Some of the more memorable tastes from our trip: blueberry-blackberry shortbread with sweet corn ice cream at Fore Street in Portland; the fries at Duckfat; Pemaquid Point oysters, on the half shell at Street and Company, wood oven roasted with chanterelles, corn and coriander butter at Primo in Rockland; tomatoes from the Squire Tarbox Organic Farm; a whoopie pie at Moody's Diner; General Tso's sweetbreads with ramen noodles and bacon dashi at The Edge in Lincolnville; Thai chili ice cream from Mount Desert Island Ice Cream. More details to come - I've got my work cut out for me.

On Vacation

Off to Maine for a little vacation. Portland, ME looks to be turning into a pretty food-centric town, some interesting stuff going on there. Fore Street is on the agenda, hopefully a stop at DuckFat, with a few others on the list too, plus maybe a trip out on a lobster boat. A couple days at an inn and organic farm near Wiscasset, likely some lobsters on the dock in Boothbay Harbor, then off to Camden, with a side trip to Primo in Rockland. Mrs. F also has fond memories of Moody's Diner in Waldoboro from a meal there about fifteen years ago. Then off to Bar Harbor for a few days. Do we follow in the President's footsteps to Havana and Mount Desert Island Ice Cream (a/k/a "Black Power Ice Cream")? Which is more implausible: black militants in Maine, or good Cuban food?

Suggestions welcomed.

Norman's 180 - Coral Gables

[sorry, this restaurant has closed]

I'm going to come right out and say it: I don't think I can be entirely objective about Chef Norman Van Aken's new restaurant, Norman's 180. Some of the reminiscing in my last post previewing the restaurant's opening might give some indication why. A dinner nearly twenty years ago at his South Beach restaurant A Mano was one of my first truly memorable meals. His "Feasts of Sunlight" cookbook, published in 1988, was one of the first cookbooks I recall cooking from. Very simply, Chef Van Aken's food has played a not-insignificant part in my personal culinary history.

In the interest of complete disclosure, I should also add that I've attended a (free) friends and family dinner as well as a (free) media preview event at the restaurant,^[1] and the chef and I have chatted at those events as well as chance encounters in local tapas bars. Since Norman's 180 officially opened, I've been back a few more times as a paying customer. But try as I might, I've been unable to do so without being "spotted," since Chef Van Aken seems to be working seven days a week. So take this all with as many grains of salt as you deem appropriate.

With that said: Norman's 180 is putting out some delicious, exciting food. It's not perfect. It's not as elegant an experience as the original Norman's in Coral Gables used to be. But it's fun and flavorful, and a welcome return for a South Florida legend.

I won't recite Chef Van Aken's whole biography here. Aside from being a famous chef, he's also a great storyteller, and his life stories are scattered all over his website, from his first gig as a long-haired line cook in 1971, to applying for a job with Charlie Trotter and being mistaken for a truck driver, to Louie's Backyard in Key West, to A Mano on South Beach. But South Floridians probably remember him most fondly for Norman's, his flagship restaurant on the quietest end of sleepy Almeria Avenue in Coral Gables. In its time, Norman's was one of the best restaurants Miami had ever seen, and before it closed almost exactly three years ago in May 2007, it was one of the last local bastions of true "fine dining" still around.

Things change. If you're a proud property owner in Miami, your house is worth about half of what it was worth in 2007. These are not the times for "fine dining." And so it was clearly time for Chef Van Aken to do something different. "Norman's 180" is not "Norman's," with a name that not only conveniently indicates the street address of the restaurant but also suggests a 180 degree turn from the past. Norman's 180 embodies all the current gestalt: it eschews white tablecloths for bare wood tables, it embraces the farm to table ethos, it exalts all that is porcine.

But it is also clearly a Norman Van Aken restaurant. In fact, it's a family venture, with son Justin Van Aken working side by side in the kitchen with the old man.^[2] Though he is best known for bringing classical technique to Caribbean flavors and ingredients as a prime instigator of the 1980's "Mango Gang," Chef Van Aken's food has always been globally influenced, willing to draw inspiration from Asia or Africa as readily as South America and the Caribbean if it tastes good. What twenty years ago was called "fusion cuisine" now ought really need no nametag. It's just food, and it's either tasty or not. The menu runs in several directions at once, and sometimes it gets lost amidst all the globe-trotting, but for the most part I've enjoyed the journey so far.

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Spiceonomics 101

As mentioned peripherally in my last post, it's become increasingly common practice to kvatch about Miami Spice season, and to bemoan the absence of "values" among the $35, 3-course offerings. I'll be the last person to defend the ubiquity of the "Spice Trifecta" (farmed Atlantic salmon, chicken breast, churrasco); but I'm equally underwhelmed by complaints about restaurants not offering their "signature dishes" as part of the Spice menu, or the suggestion that restaurants are generally raking in money through their Spice deals.

As to the latter issue, it's one that Lee Klein of New Times seems to be pushing in his latest Spice post, "Five Annoying Things About Today's Herald Story on Miami Spice." Among other things, he points out that Florida restaurant sales totaled $27 billion last year, a statistic that prompts him to ask: "You kinda have to feel sorry for this industry, right?" It goes from there to a brief rant that restaurants whose non-Spice price points average higher than the typical Spice bill have an "effete, elitist, could-care-less-about-locals" attitude.

This faux populism is really rather unbecoming, particularly from someone who just recently praised a restaurant with $17-23 appetizers and $40-50 entrées.^[1] The implicit suggestion that restaurants are getting rich off your precious $35 seems an unlikely premise, particularly for restaurants where the average bill is usually higher.

Let's do some math. I've never run a restaurant, so my assumptions here do not come from experience but rather from some haphazardly researched educated guesses based on reported industry averages. Nonetheless, the information I came across was reasonably consistent. Let's assume that at the typical full-service restaurant, food cost averages around 30%. That means that if the average bill per person is $50, the restaurant's food cost for those items is around $15.^[2] So where does the other $35 go? Mostly payroll, then rent, utilities, insurance, maintenance, marketing, financing costs, tattoos, recreational drugs, and ideally, some profit. With a little more guesswork, it's reasonable to hypothesize that the average profit margin (pre-tax) is around 5%. So out of that $50 bill, the restaurant is actually making ... $2.50. And that's for a successful, profitable restaurant.^[3]

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(Miami) Spice of Life

Yes, it's that time of year again - when diners go off in search of the elusive $35 dinner that does not involve the same boring roll call of chicken paillard, farmed salmon, and churrasco, served by sneering waitstaff who seem less than eager to get into the spirit. Or, to look at it another way, the season when line cooks go slowly insane, chanting "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" as they crank out the same couple of dishes over and over again, while the owners calculate food costs down to the penny in the hope they're at least coming out even, and servers put up with customers expecting to be treated like royalty for their meager $5 per person tip. Ahh, Miami Spice time!

We've been through this before here, but I'll briefly repeat my basic rules for navigating Miami Spice season: (1) there's no reason to bother with restaurants where a $35 menu is not a meaningful discount from their regular prices (though, of course, go to them if you like them; just don't do so because they're offering a Miami Spice menu); (2) the infamous chicken breast/farmed salmon/churrasco (or substitute short rib) "trifecta" is usually a tell; and (3) look for food that actually interests you. If a restaurant doesn't excite you the other 11 months of the year, it is unlikely there's going to be something really inspiring on their Spice menu. I like to see it as a chance to try some places, both new and old, that may not be in your "regular rotation," with limited financial commitment.

There's been some good Miami Spice chatter on the interwebs already, with New Times' Short Order playing "Deal or No Deal,"^[1] and MRPR's highly amusing and mostly on-target "Open Letter on the Eve of Miami Spice."^[2] So with that said, and with the disclaimer that I've not yet tried any of these menus nor indeed all of these restaurants, here are some Spice menus that looked intriguing to me. I may not have listed all the items, but have linked to each of the menus so you can peruse yourself; and keep in mind as well that many places change their Spice menus regularly, if for no other reason than to keep their line cooks from hurting themselves or others.

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Fin - Miami Design District

[Sorry, this place has closed]

I've come to realize that I am susceptible to the power of self-suggestion. When I was planning our upcoming trip to Spain, all I wanted to eat was Spanish food. We decided to take the kids to Maine next month, and all of a sudden I had hankerings for fresh, simple seafood. That's pretty much the mission statement of Fin, Chef Jonathan Eismann's latest restaurant to open in the Design District, which is where we ended up for dinner earlier this week. It was exactly what I was looking for.

We actually got something of a preview for Fin several months ago, when Chef Eismann used the space to host one of our Cobaya dinners back in December. It quietly opened for real about a month ago, occupying a small enclosed nook in the corner of Q American Barbecue on the west end of the Design District along Miami Avenue. Keeping track of Chef Eismann's restaurants has required a scorecard lately: through some wheeling and dealing with restaurateur Jeffrey Chodorow, his flagship Pacific Time has now closed, and after the summer is to become El Scorpion (the Mexican restaurant Chodorow opened up on South Beach just south of 5th Street); and the El Scorpion space on South Beach is going to become a second Q American Barbecue. Meanwhile, PizzaVolante is still cranking out good pies across the street from the original Q, which is staying put in its Miami Avenue location (which is the old Sheba spot, for those with a memory that goes back more than a year or two).^[1]

Though Q is right next door, Fin feels like a different world, done up like an idealized Cape Cod bungalow with wide wood planks on the floor, simple wood and white-washed furnishings, soft blue and white stripes up the walls. It's small and intimate, probably seating no more than about 25-35 people at full capacity.

The menu is small too, featuring a very abbreviated selection of mostly fish and seafood that apparently will be constantly rotating, depending on what Chef Eismann sources at any particular time. And I do mean short: maybe five appetizers, about the same number of entrées, all almost exclusively piscine, some vegetable sides to choose from, a few desserts.

Dinners start with a complimentary amuse, this time a small bowl of popcorn shrimp (for those who miss Pacific Time, you will be reminded of the hot and sour shrimp snack) with a spicy remoulade, along with a tall shot of a tomato-lobster gazpacho (nice, bright and balanced tomato flavor, though the lobster got lost in the mix). From there, I led off with a half-dozen oysters on the half-shell (Wellfleets? I forget), served simply with a wedge of lemon, some Tabasco, and a simple mignonette. These were some of the best oysters I've had locally, expertly shucked, fresh, briny and clean-tasting.

Mrs. F started with a corn chowder, which curiously did not include any seafood, but which was still loaded with flavor and precisely seasoned. Another carry-over for Pacific Time fans is a variation on the grouper cheeks with red curry and bananas, which here showed up on the Fin menu with shrimp.

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