The Ravenous Pig - Winter Park, FL

Ever since rave reviews began appearing a couple years ago on Chowhound, I've been meaning to get to The Ravenous Pig in Winter Park, just outside of Orlando, Florida. It sounded like my kind of place: it's got "Pig" in the name, it styles itself as an "American Gastropub," its menu shows a strong focus on locally sourced product and in-house charcuterie - what's not to like? It took a while for the stars to align, but they finally did a couple weeks ago as we took a two-day jaunt up to Orlando before New Years'. All the raves proved completely justified: this is a place that does what it sets out to do exceptionally well.

The Ravenous Pig doesn't really look all that much like a pub, rather more like a tony suburban restaurant: lots of burnished wood, brick walls, and taupe fabrics. There is indeed a lively bar as you walk in, though, with overflow perching itself around a long bar-height table. A second dining room is more civilized and peaceful, with an assortment of booths and tables. Winter Park is apparently far enough away from the amusement park tourist magnets that the crowd seemed to be made up much more of locals than out-of-towners. And the menu holds pretty true to the "gastropub" concept. It's an assembly of mostly hearty, straightforward dishes, using carefully selected ingredients and prepared with panache. Much of the produce comes from local farms, many meat products are cured in-house.

We were torn on whether to start with the house-made soft pretzels or the gruyere biscuits, and so opted for both. The pretzels were good - toasty, with a litle bit of crispy bite to the outside while still pleasingly chewy within, and served with a grainy mustard and a tallegio-porter fondue for dipping. But they were outshined by the biscuits, warm and perfectly flaky, with a nice whiff of salty, nutty gruyere, almost like cheese gougeres. The smoked sea salt butter that came with them was a superfluous but welcome addition. Salads include a "Farmer" or a "Gatherer" - the former turned out to be a frisée aux lardons in drag, with some sprightly bitter greens tossed with house-smoked bacon and a Caesar vinaigrette, crowned with a perfectly poached egg and a dusting of grated parmesan cheese. It was, according to Mrs. F, the best frisée aux lardons she's ever had, and that is not a short list.

There was a charcuterie plate, all house-made, and really quite impressive. It featured several different thinly sliced cured meats - a soppressata, a coppa, a salami redolent with spiced orange - as well as a nice rich country pork terrine, topped with some stout-macerated cherries. The plate was rounded out by a couple different cheeses (one a rich triple-cream, the other not quite as memorable), some nice mustard, pungent house-made pickles, and grilled bread draped with melted lardo. It was all very well done, nearly on the same level as the boucherie plate I'd had at Cochon in New Orleans.

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PubBelly - South Beach

PubBelly styles itself an "Asian inspired gastropub," but I'm not convinced that's entirely on the mark.  With its semi-open kitchen, a menu dominated by small plates, and an overt pork-centricism, PubBelly's Western influences seem much more Iberian than Anglican in derivation. If anything, PubBelly strikes me less like an English gastropub, and more like a well-mixed mashup of a Spanish tapas bar and a Japanese izakaya - which, it should go without saying, is far from a complaint.

PubBelly also claims to be the first of its type in Miami, and I'm even more certain that's not the case. As has been noted here seemingly ad infinitum, the contemporary casual Asian meme has clearly taken hold in Miami, and did so well before PubBelly opened its doors around Thanksgiving. But I've also said that I think there's plenty of room in this particular sandbox, provided the food is done well and there's something to distinguish one place from another. And happily, that's mostly the case with PubBelly.

The smallish room is centered around a long communal table, on either side of which are scattered several 4-tops. There is more seating at stools lined up around a small bar which doubles as a cooking station. Brick walls and rough wood furnishings that look like they could have come out of an Ikea catalog give something of a D.I.Y. aesthetic. The soundtrack is primarily 90s and early 21st century alt.rock - Oasis and New Pornographers figured prominently on my last visit, turned up perhaps a notch louder than would invite any intimate conversation. It's a tight, noisy, friendly place, where everyone seems to know each other - and if they don't, are still often happy to talk, particularly about whatever you just ordered. It was also fairly crawling with restaurant industry folk when I popped in recently on a Sunday evening.

They're coming to sample from a menu that features mostly small plates - about a dozen or so cooked items, supplemented with a selection of raw and cured items from land and sea, a handful of vegetable dishes, rounded out by a few larger noodle and rice bowls and a short list of large plates. It's a diverse lineup which appears to be changing, around the edges, anyway, on a pretty regular basis. At least three or four dishes had come and gone or metamorphosized between my two visits, only a couple weeks apart.

The name and the pig head logo are good hints to what this place is about: pork belly, the newly fashionable cut, makes appearances in multiple dishes. Indeed, if you should wish, you could easily craft a "7 Courses of Pork Belly" variation on the traditional Vietnamese "Bò 7 Món," or 7 Courses of Beef: start with some pork belly rillettes, followed by pork belly dumplings, then perhaps the pork belly with butterscotch and pumpkin, a McBelly sandwich, a bowl of ramen garnished with pork belly and shoulder, a side of mofongo with pork belly, and finish up with the soft-serve ice cream with brownie and bacon crumbles. This is a menu that really puts the slogan "Everything's Better with Bacon" to the test.

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2010 by the Numbers

I remember, back when I used to have more functioning brain cells than I do now, how much I used to enjoy reading the "Harper's Index" that was in every issue of the lefty-leaning Harper's magazine. As a final sendoff to 2010, here's my take on the year just past in the same format, except I may have made up at least 50% of the statistics in this list (including that one):

Food For Thought's Index

South Florida restaurants (or food trucks) written up in FFT in 2010: 38^[1]

Non-South Florida restaurants written up in FFT in 2010: 18^[2]

Cobaya - Gourmet Guinea Pig dinners written up in FFT in 2010: 7

Number of dinner experiences in 2010 I enjoyed more than III Forks: 364

Number of contemporary Asian restaurants opened in Miami in 2010: 9^[3]

Percentage of restaurants opened in Miami in 2010 that are contemporary Asian restaurants: 79%

Number of steakhouses opened in Miami in 2009: 8^[4]

Number of steakhouses opened in Miami in 2010: 3^[5]

Number of seafood restaurants opened in Miami in 2010: 6^[6]

Number of big-name outsiders to open restaurants in Miami in 2009: 11^[7]

Number of big-name outsiders to open restaurants in Miami in 2010: 3^[8]

Number of South Florida food trucks on Twitter in December 2009: 2^[9]

Number of South Florida food trucks on Twitter in December 2010: 35

Percentage of South Florida food truck menus featuring burgers and/or tacos: 90%

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Ten Best Bites of 2010

As the year winds its way to a close, we all partake in various traditions: it may be latkes and sufganiyot for Channukah, a Christmas ham or a feast of seven fishes (or the Jewish custom of going out for Chinese on Christmas), perhaps the New Years' traditions of cotechino and lentils or Hoppin' John. Here in the blogosphere, the traditional way to recognize the end of the year is to make lists. Since I resolved last year to actually do my "year in review" list before the calendar turned over, here are my "Ten Best Bites" of 2010, in no particular order, with some thoughts and pictures from the past year:

1. Gambas de Palamós at Asador Etxebarri (writeup here). Simply the best prawns I've ever eaten:

Gambas de Palamós

There is so little going on here - prawns, salt, smoke, heat - and yet absolutely nothing else could make this any better. The tail was perfectly cooked, simultaneously tender, meaty, salty and sweet. And the juices from sucking the heads, enhanced by a smoky grace note, were just fantastic: nectar of Poseidon, if you will. A reference point dish.

2. Morcilla and Egg at Chef Jeremiah's gastroPod (P.I.G. event, writeup here). This isn't on the menu of the gastroPod (though you will find some other great things, like their banh mi trotter tacos or the Chinito Cubano sandwich), but if you go to one of Chef Jeremiah's special events like P.I.G. ("Pig Is Good"), you might find something like it:

Morcilla and Egg

"Morcilla and Egg" featured house-made morcilla, or pork blood sausage, crowned with a 63º egg and a sprinkle of crispy bread crumbs. I happen to be a huge morcilla fan and this was just one of the best bites I've had in some time. This was more pudding than sausage in texture (and indeed "blood pudding" or "black pudding" are common variants on the name), creamy and rich and well-spiced, with the egg offering another welcome layer of richness.

3. Scottish Salmon Belly Nigiri at Naoe (writeup here). The contents of the bento box at Naoe change all the time, and the selection of nigiri varies depending on what's fresh and seasonal, but the omakase procession almost always starts with this silky, marbled, luscious salmon belly which will make you forget toro long enough for the bluefin tuna stock to replenish itself.

4. (tie) Scallop Crudo, Tripe with Kimchi at Sugarcane Raw Bar Grill (writeup here). You didn't really think I was going to limit myself to ten dishes here, did you? If so, you forget: I have no editor. The scallop crudo at Sugarcane combines unlikely items - a slice of fresh sea scallop, draped over a button of crisp, tart apple, a sliver of jalapeño, a bit of earthy black truffle, a squeeze of lime - hitting your taste buds from all different angles but to surprisingly elegant effect. The tripe with kimchi is not as subtle but just as good: the tripe nice and crispy on the exterior (braised then deep-fried?), over a bed of fresh, spicy kimchi-ed brussels sprouts and carrots. Neither of these items were on the menu when I first wrote about Sugarcane, and that signifies something: this is a place that has continued to improve, and get more interesting, over the past year since it opened.


Tripe with Kimchi (photo via Jacob Katel)

5. (tie) Ham and Ginger Canapé, Endive in Papillote 50%, Ankimo Cracker at elBulli (writeup here). With 40+ courses, it's unrealistic to expect me to limit myself to one choice from our meal at elBulli. The truth was, there were many items at elBulli that I found more interesting, or thought-provoking, than delicious. But these three hit all the right spots:

Ham and Ginger Canapé

As if to stretch the note out for one more bar, another ham dish followed: this canapé of ham and ginger, a glass-like ginger-infused cracker with a bit of fatty, translucent ham perched on top, both with a candied quality to them, melting together to the point that it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began. And absolutely delicious to boot, one of the most hedonistically pleasurable bites of the meal.

Endive in Papillote 50%

Our server first presented an envelope of charred paper. Then, (using some rather unwieldy long chopsticks/tongs), this was flipped and unfolded, revealing a row of baby endive heads, lined up like sardines, interspersed with walnuts. These were napped with a creamy walnut sauce, then topped with a generous dollop of glistening olive oil caviar. Half the endives were fully tender and entirely cooked through, while the other half were only partially cooked and still retained a bit of snap. Especially at points where the paper had charred, the smoky flavor had permeated its way into the endive, as had the perfume of the bay leaf which had been tucked into the package. The dish did a wonderful job of bringing out multiple flavors and textures from a simple vegetable.

Ankimo Cracker

This was another of the most hedonistically pleasing dishes of the evening: an almost translucently thin cracker, topped with a thin tranche of ankimo (monkfish liver), with dabs of creamy coconut, jellied ginger, and a bit of wasabi. I'm already a fan of ankimo (often referred to as "foie gras of the seas"), and this was a preparation that elevated an already wonderful product.

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