Help Kickstart Zak the Baker's Wynwood Bakery and Café

There are few things as elemental as bread. And yet there are few things as hard to find in Miami as a great loaf of bread. For me, that changed when I discovered Zak the Baker. For the past couple years, Zak the Baker (a/k/a Zak Stern) has been making beautifully simple natural leaven country bread. I got turned on to Zak's bread via Chef Michelle Bernstein, who has been serving it at her restaurant, Michy's. I rejoiced when my CSA farmer, Muriel Olivares of Little River Market Garden, started selling it on Saturdays at the Upper Eastside Farmers Market at Legion Park on Biscayne Boulevard. His bread is almost intensely crusty, its interior crumb is pocked with big airy holes, its flavor is hearty and rich. His bread has character, maybe even - dare I say it - soul.

(You can read more about Zak and his backstory in this feature in Edible South Florida, or this profile in Miami New Times).

For me, these are the kinds of things that elevate a food community: the folks who dedicate themselves to a particular craft, who focus on making one thing as best as they possibly can. Miami has plenty of glitzy restaurants with multi-million dollar investments behind them. It is still very much a work in progress when it comes to the network of farmers, bakers, butchers and fishmongers who can supply both restaurants and individuals with great products.

Sometimes, your community is what you make it. Here is one of those opportunities.

After spending a couple years gradually building up his business, working out of a variety of makeshift facilities, usually from early evening until late the next morning, Zak is making a big leap: he will be opening a bakery, retail outlet and café in Wynwood. And he's using Kickstarter to raise some of the capital needed to open the place. I said it a few weeks ago when I made my pledge:

Miami: if you want nice things, support them. Like Zak The Baker: Wynwood Bakery & Cafe on @Kickstarter http://t.co/xYLgjWMF2U
— Frodnesor (@frodnesor) March 21, 2014

With a week to go, Zak is more than 75% of the way to the additional $30,000 he is hoping to fund through Kickstarter. I don't normally use this platform for these kinds of purposes, but I'm doing so now: please help.

For a little insight, I dropped by the space yesterday to talk to Zak about what he envisions. Unfortunately, I didn't record our conversation or take notes, so this is more in the nature of loose impressions than an interview, but here is what I learned:

(continued ...)

"frying wizard" | Mikawa Zezankyo - みかわ是山居 - Tokyo

We ate our share of sushi while in Japan, but sushi is not the be all and end all of Japanese cuisine. While planning our trip, several smart people told us we needed to, among other things, fit in at least one tempura meal while we were there. And just a couple weeks before we left, the New York Times ran a piece on one of Tokyo's high-end tempura temples, noting that such places are virtually nonexistent in the U.S.

It's not that you can't find tempura in the States; indeed, many Japanese restaurants here try to do a little bit of everything, folding tempura, sushi, yakitori, ramen, soba and stir-fries all into the same menu.^[1] But Japan is a place where specialists thrive. And at several restaurants in Japan, the art of tempura frying is treated with the same reverence and respect as we typically see only devoted to sushi. To experience it, we opted for Mikawa Zezankyo, a small place in a quiet neighborhood fairly close by the beautiful Kiyosumi Garden.

(You can see all my pictures in this Mikawa Zezankyo flickr set.)

Mikawa Zezankyo is in some ways a faithfully traditional place: you remove your shoes before being seated in one of the nine spots that surround the counter, and the menu – with ink-brushed calligraphy and illustrations – largely consists of the same kinds of "Edomae-tempura" items that would have been served a hundred years ago. But it is also quirkily individualistic: the chef apparently has a penchant for fedoras, which appear in various guises throughout the restaurant, including the massive brass exhaust fan over the cooking area.

The restaurant appears to be a three-person operation: Chef Tetsuya Saotome tends to the actual frying, as an assistant readies each course, and a server circulates behind the guests pouring drinks, clearing plates, and periodically swapping out the paper on which each item is deposited after it emerges from the bubbling oil. The first of these - all served one by one in an omakase style procession – is a plump ebi (shrimp), whose thin sheen of crispy batter only barely obscures its bright orange stripes. The chef recommends dipping in nothing but salt for this first bite, and he's right: its flavor is pure, clean and sweet, its texture still tender and supple once the delicate tempura casing is breached.

A second one follows, so you can also try the shrimp with the light, translucent soy and dashi dipping sauce bolstered with grated daikon oroshi. I had always been puzzled by the custom of serving tempura with a watery dipping sauce. Why go through all the trouble of creating this crispy exterior if you're going to just dunk it and make it all soggy? But here, anyway, the tempura coating still maintained some of its crunch even after being run through the dipping sauce, providing a further contrast of textures. Next, my favorite part, the shrimp's heads, crispy bites bursting with oceanic goodness.

(continued ...)

"through the narrow door" | Sushi Yoshitake - 鮨よしたけ - Tokyo

Perhaps it was over-ambitious to have made a dinner reservation for the evening of our arrival in Tokyo, after about seventeen hours of travel. But it seemed foolish to miss any opportunity. As it turned out, we had just enough time to retrieve our bags from the airport carousel, hop on the train, transfer to the subway, get lost in the Shinbashi Station, find our way (with some assistance) to the hotel, check in, drop our bags, splash some water on our faces, and hail a taxi to Sushi Yoshitake in nearby Ginza.

When we arrived, our driver pointed up to make sure we understood that the restaurant was on the third floor of what appeared to be a nondescript office building. After exiting the elevator, we spotted the kanji that matched the picture our hotel concierge had provided us, fumbled with the door,^[1] and then nearly stumbled right on top of six diners seated along a wooden counter in a room smaller than many walk-in closets. A hostess politely shooed us back outside, then directed us across the landing to what appeared to be a cupboard built into the wall. We assumed she was going to put our coats away there. Instead, she opened the door and beckoned us inside.

We stepped through the narrow door, crouched into a tight passageway, and emerged into an even smaller room - if the first one was a walk-in closet, this was a broom closet - which was our private little sushi den for the evening. So this is what a Michelin three-star restaurant looks like in Tokyo.

(You can see all my pictures in this Sushi Yoshitake flickr set).

The chef,^[2] in halting English, asked if we had any dietary restrictions. "We eat everything." That was put to the test immediately. The first course, our first bite in Japan, was a chawanmushi topped with fugu shirako. I fully processed these words^[3] only after having taken a couple bites. "Fugu" is pufferfish - potentially lethally poisonous if prepared improperly. "Shirako" is milt or "soft roe," i.e., the fish's, er, laden male genitalia. The shirako is one of the most sought-after delicacies from the fugu fish, and February, it turns out, is high season for both fugu and shirako in Japan.^[4]

Blistered from a quick sear on the grill, the shirako was warm, creamy and subtly oceanic, its texture and flavor nearly blending into the silky, dashi-inflected custard on which it rested - a warming welcome on a cold evening. It was neither as gross as you might think nor, frankly, so delicious as to warrant risking death.^[5]

Several rounds of sashimi followed. Octopus, cut in big blocks, had three distinct textures - the thin membrane and suckers with an almost crispy pellicle, beneath which a delicate, gelatinous layer surrounded the main part of the tentacle, which was tender with just a bit of pleasing chew to it. Next, stacked slivers of pink-hued amadei (tilefish), just the skin seared, were served with a soy sauce infused with the fish's bones.

(continued ...)