State of the Union (of Miami Dining)

I'd been a bit despondent of late over the closing of a couple of my more favorite Miami restaurants. It is, of course, a known fact that the restaurant business is a brutally difficult one. Restaurants - even successful ones - don't live forever, and relatively few have the staying power to last more than a few years.^[1] But that still doesn't keep me from becoming attached, especially to places that do things right.

Sustain, in Midtown Miami, was one of those places for me. It wasn't the best restaurant in Miami; it wasn't even the best of the farm-to-table, sustainable-sourcing themed restaurants in Miami (Michael's Genuine remains the category-killer of that genre).^[2] But it was a good restaurant. The menu balanced the accessible (fried chicken, burger, pizza, all done quite well) with the exotic (roasted marrow bones with pineapple jam, turnip "carpaccio"). The execution was solid and improved with just about every visit. The staff was friendly and knowledgeable, the cocktails were outstanding, the wine list assembled by Daniel Toral offered some of the best sub-$50 selections in town, the music was great. The Sunday brunch they rolled out shortly before closing was becoming a regular ritual for us. It was the kind of place I could go to the bar and grab a snack, or bring a group of family and friends, and everyone would leave happy. And yet Sustain was - well, unsustainable.^[3]

Michelle Bernstein's Sra. Martinez in the Design District was another place that kind of broke my heart a little when I heard it was closing. We were at Sra. Martinez the night after it opened in December 2008 for Mrs. F's birthday, and we were there again the night before it closed earlier this month. Both were outstanding meals, and we had many more in between. There is a long list of dishes from Sra. M that I will pine for if they don't resurface somewhere else: the crispy artichokes with lemon aioli, the eggplant drizzled with honey, the duck and foie gras butifarra sausage with gigante beans, the marrow bones with eel and apples, the egg yolk "carpaccio." But Chef Bernstein has always understood the magpie-like nature of the Miami dining market, the constant attraction to the latest shiny object, and I don't see the Sra. M closing - after a 3 1/2 year run - as a failure so much as a step towards yet another reinvention. Still, I will miss it.

Since I started writing this blog 3 1/2 years ago, I've been feeling increasingly positive about Miami's dining "scene." Though still prone to either chasing the latest trend (food trucks, Momofukian Asian mash-ups) or sticking with the tried and true (steakhouse, generic Italian), the restaurant population these days overall is much more diverse, much more open to creativity, than when I started keeping track.^[4] Yet I was still led to wonder: were these closures just the usual market forces at work, or the sign of something bigger? So my co-conspirators in the Cobaya underground dining group, Chowfather, Steve BM, and I gassed up the Cobaya Bus and took it out for a spin to assess the state of Miami dining.^[5]

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I don't care if Monday's blue ...

Miami is not exactly at its most charming in the summmer: the constant 90°+ heat and sweltering humidity can wear just about anyone down. But for those of us who stick it out year round here, there are at least a few good things about summer. There's mango season, for one. And there are the dining specials, designed to bring the locals out from their air-conditioned caves until the tourists come back in the fall.

We're still a month away from Miami Spice season, but there are already enough restaurant specials to fill out nearly the full week of dining. Consider:

Monday - It's not quite every week, but Sugarcane Raw Bar Grill has been using Monday nights to host a "Dinner with Friends" series of guest chef events. Chef Timon Balloo has already teamed up with Jamie DeRosa (Tudor House), Paula DaSilva (1500°), Lee Schrager (SoBeWFF), David Bracha (River Oyster Bar), Dean Max (3030 Ocean), and Dena Marino (MC Kitchen). Coming up next: Cesar Zapata (The Federal) on Monday July 23, and Clay Conley (Buccan) on Monday August 27. Reservations open up on the 10th of each month, priced at $110 including beverage pairings. For more info, email Sugarcane.

Sugarcane Raw Bar Grill
3252 N.E. 1st Ave., Miami
786.369.0353

Tuesday - Every Tuesday through the summer, it's "Bourbon, Beer and Q" night at The Dutch. Each week they will be featuring a different genre of BBQ, with a spread of several mains and sides for a fixed price of $30 (excl. tax, tip and beverages), plus $3 PBR tallboys and $22 pitchers of cocktails. This coming Tuesday, July 3, is Memphis-style, with dry-rubbed baby-back ribs, whole roasted and smoked BBQ turkey breast, and BBQ spaghetti with pork shoulder,^[1] plus fried pickles, corn on the cob, and brown sugar sweet potatoes. Every week will bring a different style, with St. Louis, Carolinas, and Korean in the pipeline.

The Dutch
2201 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach
305.938.3111

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Cobaya "Dunch" with Chef Micah Edelstein

Many people probably think it's just a gimmick that we refer to our Cobaya events as "experiments." But we really do push chefs to push themselves. This is not simply an excuse to trot out the same old dishes in a fixed price, tasting menu format. If there's one "rule," it's that it has to be an off-menu experience.

What diners may not fully appreciate is that oftentimes, this means they're getting a dish that the chef not only has never served before - sometimes they've never even made it before. And since we're rarely working with chefs who have the opportunity or budget to do a full dry run in advance, often these really are experiments of a sort, and the diners really are the guinea pigs.

That was undoubtedly the case with our most recent Cobaya event, a late brunch ("Dunch") with Chef Micah Edelstein of neMesis Urban Bistro in downtown Miami. Which, to me, makes the meal she put together all the more remarkable.

(You can see all my pictures in this Cobaya "Dunch" at neMesis flickr set)

We wanted to do it on Sunday, when we could take over neMesis' cozy dining room, and that quickly turned to thoughts of brunch. Brunch became "Dunch" (dinner / lunch) when we proposed a noon-ish start time, to which Micah responded "I don't get up before noon on Sunday!" Though we didn't start until 3pm, I suspect she had to rise a little earlier than usual anyway.

The menus on the tables were actually the final iteration of sketches Chef Edelstein prepared both to brainstorm dishes and game-plan their preparation, an interesting insight into both the creative and logistical processes of putting together the meal. Afterwards, she shared with me some earlier versions, which showed how some dishes changed and evolved, and also how each of the components was highlighted or crossed off as it was prepared. I'll show each course here with both the sketch and the final realization.

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