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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Goes Around ... Comes Around: Spanish Edition

We periodically devote our attention here to the task of tracing how food ideas and trends migrate their way from restaurant to restaurant. As we noted way back when,^[1] sometimes the phenomenon is the result of "homage" or "inspiration;" sometimes it's "copying" or "plagiarizing," the lines between which are not always easily drawn. Every once in a while it may actually be a case of genuinely spontaneous independent creation.

Often, what prompts these reveries is the audacity of a chef who claims to have "invented" a dish. Almost invariably, such braggadocio is unwarranted. There is, in fact, very little that is truly new under the sun, and very few culinary creations can legitimately claim to be so completely untethered to what came before as to constitute an "invention."

That apparently doesn't stop Chef Alex Raij: ["Alex Raij on Copycats and Surviving in New York."]

I'll bet I'd really like Chef Alex Raij's food. For several years now, she's put together menus of pretty authentically Spanish tapas dishes for New York restaurants, first at Tia Pol, then El Quinto Pino, then plumbed more deeply the depths of Basque cookery with Txikito, and most recently opened La Vara, which explores the even more esoteric Moorish-Jewish-Spanish food connection. I love all that stuff, and by most accounts, she does it very well.

So why the compulsion to shit-talk other chefs? In the recent Eater piece, Chef Raij simultaneously (1) claims "first" for several dishes; and (2) complains that several other chefs (specifically, Ken Oringer of Boston's Toro, coming soon to NY, and Miami's Michelle Bernstein) have "stolen" dishes, either from her or others. Specifically:

You say that before you opened Tia Pol, no one was doing certain things that are now common.

No one was doing a current expression of tapas. I wanted to dispense with all the Spanish dishes that were on every menu. No one was doing patatas bravas or shishito peppers. Nobody was making bikini sandwiches or pintxos morunos. No one was eating romesco sauce. I'm resentful, in some ways, but not regretful.

...

What bothers me is when people get called innovative when they've taken someone else's idea. Toro is coming to New York, but he straight-up took the uni panini from us. I know he took it, and he knows he took it. It's one of the few original things I've created in my life.

...

Michelle Bernstein took that Bar Mut dish and then got called a creative genius by Frank Bruni.

...

What bothers me is when people don't credit where they took it from. When we borrow something, we give credit and name the restaurants we love in the menu.

Let's take each of those in turn.


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Animal Pizzeria

Not long after Chef Michael Schwartz opened up Harry's Pizzeria, he started putting the space to use for more than just baking pies. In a twist on the "pop-up" genre that is the restaurant industry's latest trend, Schwartz has brought in chefs from around the country to cook for an evening in his little pizza parlor. In November 2011 Harry's held its first pop-up dinner with Gabrielle Hamilton of New York's Prune. Since then, Harry's has played host to a distinguished list of visiting talent: Jonathan Waxman, Marc Vetri, Jonathon Sawyer, and Kevin Sbraga. Last night, it was chefs Vinny Dotolo and Jon Shook, of Los Angeles' Animal and Son of a Gun, who took over the restaurant for the night.

Some folks may know Shook and Dotolo from their successful L.A. restaurants. Some may remember back to their short-lived stint on the Food Network with "Two Dudes Catering." Though I didn't know it at the time, I've actually been eating their food since even before then - they both cut their teeth at the Strand here in Miami Beach (now long gone) more than a decade ago, back when a young Michelle Bernstein was the chef and I was taking Mrs. F there for date nights.

Though Dotolo and Shook had not crossed paths with Michael Schwartz back in the day, they'd become acquainted more recently on the charity circuit, and - lucky for us here in Miami - came back home to put together a dinner at Harry's.

(You can see all my pictures in this Animal Pizzeria flickr set).

Some passed appetizers started things off, including these kumamoto oysters. A cucumber and serrano chile gelee provided a great balance of cool and heat to set off the briny pop of the oysters. Crostini topped with sautéed porcini mushrooms and a rich truffle fondue offered a more earthy starting point for the meal.

Though I enjoy it, often fish crudo seems like a "throwaway" of a dish - fish, oil, salt, citrus, done. Too easy. So this was actually a pleasant surprise: mild, faintly sweet slices of triggerfish swam in a colatura vinaigrette with that unique umami zap fish sauce provides of intense flavor without heaviness. Fresh basil and mint, chopped peanuts, and crispy fried shallots pulled things further in a Thai direction, with a little something different in each bite.^[1] I might have worried that the fermented fish funk of the colatura would be a bad pairing with the fresh raw fish, but I loved the combination.

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Cobaya Carmellini (a/k/a Cobaya Goes Dutch)

We've actually been in talks for this Cobaya dinner since last October, before Chef Andrew Carmellini opened his Miami outpost of The Dutch. Of course, Carmellini has had some other stuff on his plate - opening the Miami restaurant, running Locanda Verde and The Dutch in New York, publishing a new cookbook, "American Flavor," to name a few. But the stars finally aligned last week, when Carmellini and his Miami crew, including Chef de Cuisine Conor Hanlon and Pastry Chef Joshua Gripper, put together a fantastic-looking menu for thirty guinea pigs.

I say fantastic "looking" because, sadly, I had to miss this one due to work-related travel. But I did stop by before the dinner and Chef Carmellini was gracious enough to give me a tour of the kitchen to see what was in progress. The theme carrying through several of these dishes was "The Whole Damn Thing!" - turbot cooked whole (innards and all, if he stuck with the plan as of around 4pm the afternoon of the dinner), with a sauce made from the bones; a fifty pound pig from Hialeah, prepared about a half-dozen ways. And though I didn't get to taste any of it, I got a good look at what I missed out on from the folks who were there.

It's the first Cobaya dinner I've missed, and it sure looks like a great one. It's also my first time trying to recap a meal I didn't eat.

Here's Chef Carmellini providing a greeting to the diners, the menu, and below, pictures from some of the folks who were at the dinner. (Video courtesy of Ethan Shapiro, pictures via Chowfather, Allison Riley a/k/a Y'All Taste This, and Andrew Carmellini). My usual descriptive flourishes will be missing - wish I could tell you about it..

Lemon Arrancini, Caviar, Creme Fraiche

Watermelon, Cobia, Spicy Yuzu

Bulgogi Tartare, Jae's Kimchi, Lettuce

Duck Foie Gras Meatball, Celery, Cherry Mustard

Bluepoint Oyster, Cucumber Shiso Granite

Lake Meadow Egg, Smoked Sable, Trout Roe

Gnocchi di Patate Primavera con Funghi e Piselli

Turbot Cuit Entier Sur L'Os Aux Saveurs Marocaine

Whole Hog Cooked in a Variety of Ways with Condiments

Crispy Testa with Gribiche

Smoked Ribs Glazed in Cider

Pastrami-Brined Belly

Alsatian-Style Shoulder with Mustard

Brown Sugar-Cured Hams

Crispy Pig Ears, Swank Farms Arugula, Meyer Lemon

Natural Jus

Conor's Pickle Pots

Pickled Bread & Butter, Michael Borek's Farm Field Tomatoes

Pickled Ramp Relish

Grilled Georgia Peaches

Mom's Collards

Weinkraut MSG Style

Mustards

Rainier Cherry Consommé, Manhattan Granita

Croque en Bouche Royal

Ice Creams, Sorbets, Sauces, Cookies, Candies, Chocolates

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The Frod Burger at Blue Collar

The month of May, according to authoritative source "A Hamburger Today," is "National Burger Month." To celebrate the auspicious occasion, Blue Collar Restaurant has been running burger specials every week inspired by local food writers, including - yes - yours truly. I'll admit: it is difficult to resist the allure of having a menu item named after you.

Blue Collar, by way of quick background, is a casual comfort food kind of place run by Chef Daniel Serfer, a Chef Allen alum. Opened around the beginning of the year, it's tucked into the small nook in the Biscayne Inn that used to house the now-defunct American Noodle Bar. I've not written about it yet but have been in several times.

Blue Collar's burger creations thus far have included the Chowfather Burger, topped with their "Big Ragout," latkes, bacon and a fried egg, the Fat Girl Hedonist Burger with chorizo, fried shallots, smoked gouda and chipotle mayo, and the Food-E Burger (a/k/a the Breakfast Burger), with Canadian bacon, an egg, maple mustard, and a side of cheese grits.

Now, behold the Frod Burger:

My particular version was loosely inspired by the outstanding burger served at Le Pigeon in Portland, Oregon.^[1] It includes slow-cooked, golden, caramelized onions, sharp cheddar cheese, an iceberg lettuce "slaw," and a smear of a a ruddy piquillo pepper aioli for good measure.

All of Blue Collar's burgers use a patty fashioned from prime dry-aged NY strip, a pretty luxurious grind for a pretty casual place. They also now all come housed in a "Portugese muffin," which may be a close to perfect vehicle for a burger. It's like the love child of an English muffin and brioche, tender but still having enough heft to hold up to a juicy burger, while not taking up nearly as much space as a brioche bun and distracting from the burger itself. Chef Serfer was awfully excited to get these in, and after trying it, I can begin to understand.

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Pubbelly Sushi - Miami Beach

When the gang behind Pubbelly first announced that their expansion plans included a sushi bar, I'll admit I was more than a bit dubious. I like Pubbelly's mashup of Asian, gastropub, and Spanish stylings, but when it comes to sushi I'm something of a purist. I want great fresh seafood, properly cooked and seasoned rice, and really, that's it. Those goofy "specialty" rolls, stuffed with cream cheese, deep fried and drenched in cloyingly sweet "eel sauce," are just not for me. And when you start going cross-cultural with it, you quickly run the risk of turning into something truly frightful like Guy Fieri's sushi-bbq abomination, Tex Wasabi's.^[1] These are dangerous waters.

But I'm also willing to engage in some culinary "suspension of disbelief," at least once. And even though it is not remotely the kind of sushi bar I'd regularly patronize, I nonetheless find myself regularly patronizing Pubbelly Sushi.

Like its parent, Pubbelly Sushi is a tight, cozy space - brick walls, exposed ductwork, loud alt.rock, mismatched wood furnishings, and about 6-8 seats at a bar along the back. The primary feature of the menu is a list of about ten "Pubbelly Rolls," many sounding much like those overwrought concoctions I usually avoid. But the menu is also populated with about an equal number of izakaya-like "Snacks," a selection of various things packed into "New England Style Rolls," several robata grilled items, a few composed "Pubbelly Sashimi" dishes, various sides, as well as a somewhat abbreviated selection of basic sushi and sashimi (you can also, if you choose, order just about any of the Americanized canon of "California Rolls" or "Dragon Rolls" that is to your liking).

(You can see all my pictures in this Pubbelly Sushi flickr set - apologies for the wonky lighting).

It surely says something that I went in a complete skeptic and came out a fan. It helped to start with the shishito peppers from the "Snacks" section. My first visit, the blistered peppers were served with an unlikely combination of raita, pine nuts, and roasted peppers. It was the kind of combination that makes no sense until you try it, at which time everything just clicks. On a subsequent visit, these were instead served with miso and pistachios, which was almost as good.

I passed up the "Pubbelly Sashimi" dish that combined bigeye tuna with burrata cheese and tomato, but I did sample the Japanese madai snapper, paired with yuzu, mandarin, serrano chile and aji jus. That's a pretty long and strongly flavored list of ingredients for a pretty delicate fish. And while I can't exactly say that it brought out, rather than obscured, any hidden nuance in the madai, it was a pleasingly bold combination of flavors, more in the neighborhood of a Peruvian tiradito than anything else.

These kinds of cross-cultural tendencies manifest themselves throughout the menu, and happen to result in some of the best dishes. Another was the tostones with ceviche, a Caribbean direction this time, the crispy, salty disks of fried plantain both foil and vehicle for a small glass jar's worth of hamachi ceviche, its flavors tugged gently back toward Asia with soy, ginger and yuzu.

So far, so good. So how about those "Pubbelly Rolls"?

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The Return of Naoe - Downtown Miami

When I wrote about my first experience of stumbling upon Naoe, I described it as seeming almost like a dream: a tiny 17-seat jewel-box of a restaurant serving a bento box of gorgeous Japanese dishes followed by a procession of pristine nigiri, all entirely "omakase" or chef's choice. But it was real, and I went back several more times just to make sure. (You can find recaps of some subsequent meals here, here and here.)

In December, Naoe had to vacate its Sunny Isles space when the landlord hatched other plans for it. They closed up shop and began work on a new space on Brickell Key, adjacent to downtown Miami. The new venue reopened last week, and I made my first visit this past Thursday - exactly three years after my first post on Naoe.

I'm not usually a superstitious person, but I do worry that a place can lose its "mojo" when it moves locations.^[1] Any such worries about Naoe were absolved by my visit to Naoe on Brickell Key.

Walking into the new space was again something like a dream: it looks almost like a mirror image of the original spot in Sunny Isles. It has the same smooth hinoki wood bar stretching in front of the open kitchen; it has the same austere grey-brown tones throughout the dining room; it has the same pinpoint halogens which literally put the spotlight on the food. There's actually less seating than there was in the original spot, and Chef Kevin Cory will only be serving eight diners per service.^[2]

There have been some other minor tweaks. Instead of the $26 bento box followed by nigiri priced by the piece, Naoe now offers an $85 omakase menu that includes both the bento box and eight pieces of nigiri. Additional rounds (either repeat visits to items served earlier or, possibly, some different items) can then be added a la carte. Though bargain-hunters might rue the loss of the $26 bento, I have trouble believing anyone ever went to Naoe without sampling some sushi as well. If they did, they were missing out.

(You can see all my pictures in this Naoe April 26, 2012 flickr set).

The food is every bit as good as it ever was:

Bento box with sashimi of cobia and scallop mantle, with Japanese seaweed, shiso and freshly grated wasabi; tsubugai (whelk, or sea snail); fried whiting; wilted mizuna; tofu with uni sauce and walnuts; sardine and portobello mushroom rice with daikon nukazuke.^[3] A bowl of miso soup with puréed corn was served alongside.

Salmon belly nigiri. Always the first nigiri served at Naoe. Perenially one of my favorite bites.

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The Federal Food Drink and Provisions - Miami

I first came across the dynamic duo of Aniece Meinhold and Cesar Zapata during what turned out to be a short-lived stint at Blue Piano. A charming little wine bar down the street from the Design District, it had occasional live music and an eclectic selection of wines and beers (courtesy of Aniece, who ran front of house) and small, tapas-style bites (courtesy of Cesar, who ran the kitchen). The food was simple but sometimes surprisingly creative, with a selection of charcuterie and cheeses rounded out by things like the "McLovin," an English muffin filled with chistorra sausage, melted cheese, chipotle cream, and a fried egg, with chicharrones on the side for good measure.

There was a rift with ownership, and in August, Cesar and Aniece left the Blue Piano. Shortly afterwards, they popped up again with Phuc Yea!, a modern Vietnamese pop-up restaurant downtown. I had several excellent meals at Phuc Yea!, and was sorry to see it go after its three-month run.

Aniece and Cesar quickly resurfaced, this time with their very own full-blown restaurant, The Federal. Joining them this time around is Alejandro Ortiz, an industry vet who previously worked as sommelier in some of Miami's top restaurants. In a departure from the Southeast Asian flavors of Phuc Yea!, the Federal returns closer to home. Styling itself a "Modern American Tavern," both the venue and menu have something of a gastropub feel to them: simple, rustic, but done with flair and style.

(You can see all my pictures in this The Federal flickr set or click on any picture to see it larger.)

What started as a nondescript strip mall space^[1] now has real personality and warmth, mixing old-timey cabinetry, a patchwork of wallpaper, odd bits of taxidermy and other bric-a-brac. Mismatched serving pieces range from pewter plateware to repurposed Shoney's Blue Plate Special dishes; Ball jars serve as candle-holders. You can eat at the bar, covered with salvaged wood planks and lined with old leather belts; at one of several tables inside, including a picnic bench set up for larger groups or banquettes tucked cozily under the windows; or outside on a makeshift patio, which does the best it can with the vista of a parking lot overlooking Biscayne Boulevard. The place now has the same instantly nostalgic feel as an Instagram photo.^[2]

The Federal's menu is broken up primarily into "Bits," "Starts," and "Big'Uns." It nods to nostalgia as well - biscuits and gravy, sausage and mash, fisherman's stew - but is by no means rigorously old-fashioned or traditional.

The first item on the list of "Bits," their biscuits, brushed with honey and topped with a crust of cheddar cheese, skew closer to the dense crumble of a scone than to the cloud-like fluffiness of puff pastry, though that's not a criticism, just a description.

One of my favorite starters was a crudo of scallops, sliced thin and macerated in a reduced blood orange glaze, scattered with slivered watermelon radishes, tiny greens, smoked trout roe and BBQ potato chips. It's an unusual-sounding combination which would seem to run the risk of overwhelming the scallops, but managed to achieve a successful balance of sweet-sour-smoky-briney flavors. It's also light enough to leave you plenty of room for the "Big'Uns" that follow.

Buffalo Style Pig Wings, meanwhile, are quite a bit more than a "Bit." A clever piece of butchery and marketing, these "wings" are actually a cut of the rear shank of the pig, trimmed to provide a plump knob of pork attached to the fibula bone. Braised til tender, fried til crisp on the outside, a couple of these then get some classic "Buffalo" flavors - infused with some hot sauce somewhere along the way, served over a blue cheese mousse, topped with julienned strips of pickled carrot and celery. Do it right and it's hard to go wrong with these flavors, and these are indeed done right. But this is also a substantial enough dish that you might find your appetite sated rather than piqued once you get to your main course.

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Sustainable Cobaya

Sometimes even we're surprised.

When we plan these Cobaya dinners, we purposefully keep the "marching orders" to the chefs minimal: basically, be creative, and do something you don't normally get to do. Often we'll kick around ideas, we might see preview menus, but not always. Sometimes we have only a rough sketch of what to expect, and sometimes we go in completely blind.

When we sat down to talk with Chef Alejandro Piñero and Manager Jonathan Lazar of Sustain Restaurant + Bar in Midtown Miami, they said they were thinking of doing a Southern Italian inspired menu. Though Sustain is known mostly for its focus on fresh, local, and - yes - sustainable ingredients, this didn't come as a complete surprise to me. Before Sustain, Chef Piñero spent five years as sous chef at Casa Tua and then took over as chef de cuisine at Fratelli Lyon, so Italian is clearly in his repertoire. We invited them to run with the idea, and that was the extent of what we knew.

I expected Sicilian and Sardinian flavors, I expected some modern and some old-school techniques, I expected some great wine pairings from sommelier Daniel Toral. Even I didn't expect a roasted goat's head.

Here is the full menu (you can see all my pictures in this Sustainable Cobaya flickr set, or click on any picture to view a larger version):

L'Apertivo

Arancia Rossa e Averna

Gamberi

Lardo e Ricci di Mare

Andrea Franchetti "Guardiola" Etna, Sicily 2010

Seppie

"Oliva" e Frissée

Tenuta delle Terre Nere Etna, Sicily 2010

Malloreddus

Ragu di Cinghiale

Arianna Occhipinti "SP68" Vittoria, Sicily 2010

Testa di Capra Arrosto

Cerevella di Capra, Patate e Cavolo Nero

Andrea Franchetti "Passopisciaro" Etna, Sicily 2008

Pannacotta al Cardomomo

Arancia Rossa, Torta all'Olio d'Oliva

Sebadas

Miele Sardo e Sorbetto al Latte di Mandorle

I am generally terrible with foreign languages, but have a savant-like ability to read menus. So it was fun to watch some at our table struggle to translate our menu, particularly as they got to the fifth course.

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Harding Dinner Series with Chef Jeremiah

It's only going to be around for a week, so I've moved my writeup of the first "Harding Dinner Series" with Chef Jeremiah to the front of the queue. As I mentioned here earlier, the original Chow Down Grill in Surfside is being converted into Josh's Deli & Appetizing during the day, and a pop-up dinner venue for visiting chefs in the evenings. The first guest chef is Jeremiah Bullfrog (of the gastroPod and also a two time Cobaya veteran) and several of us got a preview dinner^[1] on Wednesday. It bears repeating once more:

There are some genuinely interesting and exciting things going on in Miami's dining scene right now.

The format of this dinner was a lot tighter, more focused than the sprawling 17-courser Jeremiah did for his last Cobaya: seven courses plus a cocktail to start. But the style and spirit was very much the same - playful, but with a serious focus on maximizing depth of flavor.

(You can see all my pictures in this Harding Dinner Series flickr set).

You want local flavor? How about the "Instagram"? Not a popular new photo app, this was the other kind of gram. But the fine white powder in this baggie, unlike many others commonly seen in Miami, was only baking powder, which reacted with the acid in the drink (Bombay gin and lemon) to make for a fizzy, frothy cocktail. It's the same chemical reaction that powered the volcano you made for fourth grade science fair.

beet composition

The first course, a "Beet Composition," was like a terrarium:^[2] inside a glass jar were beets in various forms - salt roasted garnet beets, sous-vide candy-cane beets, ribbons of pickled red and golden beets, magenta-stemmed micro beet greens, plus bits of creamy cheese, all nestled in a black sesame "soil." Not merely a presentation ploy, this had great vivid flavors, ranging from the more deep roasty notes to brightly acidic pickled notes.

duck pastrami

The next course was one of the best things I've eaten this year. Jeremiah' s duck pastrami was cured  in salt, sugar and pink salt for about five days, then thin shavings of the duck were plated on a long communal plank^[3] with brussels sprout "kraut" and a spiced pumpernickel streusel. It was just a perfect combination of flavors: the duck, meaty and fatty; the sprouts, bright, vegetal and tart; the streusel providing an earthy, spicy anchor for it all. Great stuff.

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Gavage

Gavage: it's not just for ducks. We will get back to the usual business of writing about actual dining experiences shortly, but in the meantime there is a fantastic, if slightly daunting, list of culinary events in Miami over the next couple weeks that may result in engorged livers:

Monday March 26 - Cobaya Experiment #23 - already sold out, but waitlist requests still being taken.

Tuesday March 27 - Michael Mina wine dinner at Bourbon Steak. Chef Mina himself is in town, the wines are from Fairchild Estate (Paul Hobbs is the consulting winemaker), and a four-course menu, inclusive of wine, tax and tip, is $200/pp. For reservations call 786-279-6600 or email smills@turnberryislemiami.com.

Thursday March 29 - Support two great organizations at once - Common Threads and LegalArt - by going to Pairings, an event to benefit both organizations, with food from Chow Down Grill, the gastroPod, and Mad Max Jack's and artworks on display from several of LegalArt's resident artists. 7pm-10pm, tickets are $25 in advance, $40 at the door, more details here.

Friday March 30 - Harding Dinner Series with Chef Jeremiah at Chow Down Grill / Josh's Deli Surfside kicks off. I've already mentioned this here before, but it's worth mentioning again. The pop-up is running through April 5, and the best opportunities to get a spot may be during the weekday seatings April 3-5. Seats are $79/pp all inclusive. More info, including the number to call for reservations, here.

But wait, there more!

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Harding Dinner Series Pop-Up at Chow Down Grill Surfside

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A couple weeks ago when I wrote about Eating House, I noted that:

There are some genuinely interesting and exciting things going on in Miami's dining scene right now.

The momentum continues. News recently came out that the original Chow Down Grill location in Surfside - since supplemented with a second location in South Beach - is being converted into a Jewish-style deli during the day, and a pop-up dinner venue in the evenings. The first guest chef to take over the site will be Jeremiah Bullfrog, who, aside from running the gastroPod truck, has also been responsible for a couple of our Cobaya "underground" dinners and contributed behind the scenes to several more.

If you're interested - and you should be - go here for more information here about the Harding Dinner Series, which starts on March 30 and runs, for right now, through April 5, including dates, prices, and the number to call for reservations.

For a glimpse of some of Jeremiah's earlier Cobaya and other dinners, check these posts: CobayaJeremiah (flickr set), Cobaya Experiment #2, 2.5 (flickr set), and Notorious P.I.G. (flickr set). I'm going to miss having Chow Down so close to home for me, but I'm looking forward to what's coming - both the deli and the pop-up.

Vote or Die(t)

We've been sticking to the restaurant write-ups for the most part here at FFT, but every once in a while things come up that seem worth passing along. Fresh on the heels of some local recognition in the form of several 2012 James Beard Award semifinalists^[1] - Yardbird for Best New Restaurant, Hedy Goldsmith (Michael's Genuine) for Outstanding Pastry Chef, Jarrod Verbiak (DB Bistro Moderne) for Rising Star Chef of the Year, and Clay Conley (Buccan), Paula DaSilva (1500°), Jeff McInnis (Yardbird), and Jose Mendin (Pubbelly) for Best Chef: South - Food & Wine magazine is opening its annual "Best New Chef" listings up to the riff-raff. A hundred chefs from among ten different "regions"^[2] are up for selection by popular vote as "The People's Best New Chef."

As one who labors for recognition of the local talent when it's warranted, I encourage you to make your own opinion known. The South Florida candidates are:

• Kevin Cory (Naoe) - read my thoughts on Naoe.
• Jeff McInnis (Yardbird) - read my thoughts on Yardbird.
• Jose Mendin and Sergio Navarro (Pubbelly) - read my thoughts on Pubbelly.
• Horacio Rivadero (The Dining Room) - need to try.
• Simon Stojanovic (Altamare) - read my thoughts on Altamare.

You can vote here: Food & Wine People's Best New Chef : Gulf Coast Chefs

While we're at it, a question for you readers. Lately I've focused my energies here on restaurant write-ups, rather than "news," openings, events and the like.^[3] Candidly, I figure most everyone that's reading this particular niche publication is already on the same mailing lists as me, and you're either getting the same e-mail blasts or are reading about them somewhere else shortly afterwards. Even if you're not scouring Eater Miami and Short Order yourself, you can always check the "Blogosphere" columns on the right-hand side of FFT and read the same exact fluff stuff that I'm reading. Or, if you're the kind of person who gets all your political news from The Daily Show - like me - you can get your food news in funny and easily digestible weekly doses over at Miami Restaurant Power Rankings.

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Eating House - Coral Gables

A month ago I had no idea who Giorgio Rapicavoli was. It had been a couple years, and a couple chefs, since I'd been to the Angler's Resort where he was last working. I can't stand watching "Chopped," the Food Network cooking competition show where chefs with varying degrees of skill are asked to prepare dishes from mystery baskets of ridiculously incongruous and often unappetizing ingredients; so the fact that he had won an episode did nothing to put him on my radar.

But then I caught word that he was opening a pop-up restaurant to be called Eating House in a hole-in-the-wall café on the outskirts of Coral Gables. And then I took a look at his preview menu. It read like no other menu I've seen in Miami, all sorts of unexpected combinations and flavors.

I went to Eating House a week after they opened at the beginning of the month. I've already been back twice in as many weeks. I know who Giorgio Rapicavoli is now. And at risk of hyperbole, I will say this: at Eating House, he's putting out some of the most exciting food I've had in Miami in some time.

Tuesday through Sunday nights, Eating House takes over Café Ponce, a non-descript breakfast and lunch place near the corner of Ponce de Leon Boulevard and 8th Street. What atmosphere there is - and there's not much - is contributed by some graffiti artworks hanging on the walls and a soundtrack dominated by '90s hip-hop. But it's a pop-up, the point is the food not the decor. Service is also a minimalist but efficient affair - if it's not general manager Alex Casanova, as often as not it'll be Chef Rapicavoli himself bringing your food to the table.

(You can see all my pictures in this Eating House flickr set or click on any picture to enlarge).

The menu is tight as a Snoop Dogg blunt - typically ten items, mostly "small plate" sized, plus a few dessert options. It's changed around the edges each time I've been in, with dishes coming and going or morphing from one visit to the next. The influences are as much Slow Food as Ideas in Food - lots of local ingredients, lots of creative preparations.

A perfect example: local Homestead tomatoes. But instead of a typical salad, Rapicavaoli takes them to Thailand, with lime, ginger, fish sauce, peanuts, fresh herbs, nasturtium flowers, and frozen coconut milk. It's a perfect rendition of the flavors of Thailand in an unexpected format, the frozen coconut milk in particular lending an intriguing icy creaminess to the composition.^[1]

Even better - indeed, one of best dishes I've had in recent memory - were the baby eggplants, topped with a banana miso, vanilla salt, yuzu kosho, sesame seeds and baby greens. Here, the starting point was a classic - nasu dengaku, or Japanese miso-glazed eggplant - but with multiple added layers of complexity. The banana and miso echo back to each other in both texture and flavor, a salty-sweet creamy richness, while the yuzu kosho adds the bright contrast of both citrus and spice, and yet another note brought in by the vanilla salt. This is really virtuoso stuff.

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"The List" - Where to Eat in Miami

I'm often asked "What are the best places to eat in Miami?" It's a fair question, given that it's kind of the primary subject matter of this blog. And yet I rarely have an immediate answer. Instead, I'll typically pose a number of follow-up questions in response: What kind of food do you like? What neighborhood? What price range? Are you a  local, or a visitor looking for "local flavor"?

I've always struggled to name "favorites" because my own answers depend on many of the same questions, my mood, my appetites any given day. But I do, of course, find myself going back to the same places, and recommending the same places, fairly frequently. So why not make a list?

This list is driven by other considerations as well. The blog format generally is a good thing - easy to use as a writer, easy to access as a reader - but it puts an undue emphasis on recency. Except for a few posts which seem to have some SEO traction (the "Best Cuban Sandwiches in Miami" post is perennially popular), most of what gets read is the most current posts. That's not necessarily the easiest way to find the most interesting, or the best, restaurants I've written about over the past three years (Food For Thought just had its three-year anniversary earlier this week). There's a "Restaurant Row" column of every place that's been covered on FFT, but it's entirely unfiltered and there are now nearly a hundred South Florida restaurants and food trucks on that list.

When I've gone to visit other cities, I've often wished that the local food writers would do something similar to whittle down their own lists. So this is my version: "The List - Where to Eat in Miami".

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CSA Week 12 and its Uses

Last week brought more of these gorgeous, slender, colorful baby eggplants in our CSA shares from Little River Market Garden. Every time we get these I've been meaning to try to duplicate the wood-oven roasted eggplant dish that's often on the menu at Michael's Genuine, and finally got around to it.

Lacking a wood-burning oven, instead I salted the eggplants, rubbed them with olive oil, and then grilled them on a cast-iron grill pan. Meanwhile, I warmed some more olive oil in another pan and toasted some pine nuts in the oil, then warmed and plumped some black raisins. I found fresh garbanzo beans at Whole Foods and those (plucked from their pods and blanched for a few minutes in boiling water) also went into the pan. I dolloped the plate with thick Greek yogurt, laid over the pine nuts, raisins and garbanzos along with the grilled eggplant, and then sprinkled everything with smoked salt and ras al hanout.

It may be one of the best things I've ever made from our vegetable shares. Go do this.

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neMesis Urban Bistro - Downtown Miami

I was sure I was going to hate neMesis Urban Bistro. The menu was precious, cutesy, and scattered - "heavenly guava cardamom dipping sauce," "Tuscan sushi," "cowardly (no nuts) pesto"? The chef, while professing a sense of humor, seemed awfully thin-skinned when the attempts at humor were directed the other way, banishing the Miami New Times' dining critic for poking fun of the restaurant's name.^[1] I was, in a word, dubious.

I was also wrong. Everything about neMesis is quirky - the capitalization of the name, the decoration, the dishes, the chef - but most of it is also quite delicious.

(You can see all my pictures in this neMesis Urban Bistro flickr set).

The chef is Micah Edelstein,^[2] and neMesis very clearly bears her imprint in just about every respect, right down to the front door, with an inscription that is more warning than welcome:

"Those lacking imagination and a sense of humor are not welcome at neMesis. Please return from whence you came, and do not darken our door again!"

The dining room is tiny (maybe 30 seats), and fittingly for a place that shares space with LegalArt (a non-profit organization that provides artists access to legal services), it abounds with artwork - a constellation of colorful parasols dangles upside down over the entranceway, a sculpture of men's ties juts out at rakish angles over the windows,^[3] large-scale photographic portraits hang throughout.

Chef Edelstein, when she's not in the open kitchen, is often at the tables, bringing out the dishes and telling the stories behind them. Those stories cover lots of territory, ranging from a South African family background to travels around the world to geographically untethered experiments like house-brewed coffee-infused beer (like many things here, surprisingly good). If you're lucky, you'll also be graced with the presence of her young daughter Matilda, and possibly even an art exhibition or magic show.

The menu is divided into "Sexy Nibbles," "Cool Couples," "Main Attractions," and "Happy Endings," and it pains me to write that almost as much as it pains the servers to recite it. But lets get past the preciosity and focus on what's on the plate.

Foccacia, topped with hibiscus-infused mascarpone cheese, caramelized shallots, and a sprinkle of black lava salt, is emblematic of Chef Edelstein's style. It sounds unlikely, it's all over the place at once, and it actually works. The foccacia itself is delightfully light and fluffy, the creamy mascarpone is given a subtle, zesty lift from the citrusy, floral hibiscus, with the jammy shallots providing a sweet/savory anchor. You've not experienced these flavors in this combination before, but it comes off as natural rather than forced, as if they were meant to be together.

Ditto for the duck potstickers with the aforementioned "heavenly guava cardamom dipping sauce." Like many things at neMesis, this reads sweet, but the finished dish is fairly well balanced. Other than in Indian cuisine, cardamom doesn't get invited to many parties, and when it shows up it can sometimes dominate the conversation. But here it's managed well, its bright, resinous, slightly medicinal flavor, in combination with the aromatic guava, cutting the richness of the braised duck filling.

The crispy, oven-baked vegetable samosas likewise get brightened up by a finely diced melon chutney. And those little yellow flowers are not mere decoration - the flowering tarragon provides another herbaceous, anise-y element to the plate.

The salad at neMesis changes from day to day depending on what ingredients are floating around the kitchen. On one occasion the tangle of greens and sprouts was studded with delicious lardons of house-made lamb bacon. More recently, it came with a sprinkle of garam masala spiced pecans, slivers of avocado and grapefruit, shards of aged parmesan cheese, a sour orange vinaigrette, and a couple vibrant red-orange pimentos biquinho, Brazilian peppers preserved in vinegar that pack lots of flavor and a little heat.

These unexpected bursts of flavor are characteristic of Chef Edelstein's cooking. She paints with a different spice palette than most of us are accustomed to. While some of it is pure creative whimsy, much appears to  derive from the flavors of South African cuisine, which itself is a hodge-podge of indigenous, Cape Dutch, Afrikaner, Indian, British and Portuguese influences.

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School of Cobaya - Chef Michael Bloise

We had been looking to set up a Cobaya dinner with Chef Michael Bloise since his days at the now-closed American Noodle Bar. He was clearly someone with talent and skills - he took over the kitchen at Wish^[1] after Chef E. Michael Reidt left for California, and in 2008 was recognized as a StarChefs Rising Star - but only had limited outlets for his creativity with A.N.B.'s noodle-centric menu, even though it showed in his daily specials like pork belly with melons or tuna ribs. Bloise left A.N.B. and it closed not much later; he resurfaced at Sushi Samba Dromo shortly thereafter, where we were finally able to put something together.

There's no rule when we do our Cobaya dinners that the chef must come up with a "theme." The only rules are that the chef can make whatever s/he wants to cook, and the guinea pigs must show up ready to try it. Sometimes there is a theme - Chef Daniel Ramos did seven continents in seven courses, Chef Jeremiah's last dinner was loosely inspired by a recent visit to Noma - but the primary goal is that the food is creative and inspired. Chef Bloise, professing that he "couldn't do" the kind of high-end food we'd had at our last Cobaya dinner (I call bullshit - he did plenty of high-level stuff at Wish - but if he didn't want to do that style of cooking, that's fine), opted to tie his dinner together with a theme, and he went the nostalgia route: "School Lunch."^[2] It turned out to be one of the most conceptually integrated - and one of the most fun - Cobaya dinners we've had.

(You can see all my pictures in this School of Cobaya flickr set; apologies for the lousy picture quality).

The menu was printed on a sheet of notebook paper and it fully played out the theme: a juice box, "Lunchables," and tacos, followed by "The Tray," complete with mystery meat, corn dogs, tater tots, and a pudding cup.^[3] I've noted recently how one of the potential downfalls of what Ferran Adrià called "techno-emotional" cuisine is that if you don't recognize the reference points, you won't connect to the food in the way that's intended. This was a menu that would make perfect sense to most people who grew up eating American cafeteria lunches - and might be utterly baffling otherwise.

Our first course fully resembled a typical school lunch: a brown bag and a juice box. In my school, though, the juice boxes weren't filled with an unfiltered apple juice cocktail spiked with acai vodka and vanilla, which Bloise cleverly managed to get into the box and reseal it so we could still poke our straws through the top and squeeze. In the brown bag - along with a note from "Mom" - was a "Lunchables" box, sealed in plastic, complete with ham, cheese and crackers.^[4]

Of course, this wasn't an actual Lunchables (those got consumed by the staff earlier in the week so Chef Bloise could reuse the containers - probably not the highlight of staff meal at Sushi Samba). Instead, it included a house-made rabbit ham and truffled mozzarella cheese, both designed for stacking on house-made manchego-thyme crackers. These made for a perfectly good snack, but the real thrill was in the presentation, which was uncannily effective in bringing laughs and smiles to the tables.

Everybody loves Taco Day at the school cafeteria. Taco Day with Chef Bloise is even better with his Taco Belly Trio, each tucked into a puffy, crisp fried shell. Lush tuna belly was done somewhat poke-style, in a large dice mixed with soy and garlic and some butter for some added richness. Pork belly was done "A.N.B." style, cured, slow-braised, then crisped, and paired with melon, the acidic funk of nuoc cham, and Thai basil. Lamb belly, possibly the best of all, was prepared in a similar manner to the pork belly, then matched with blood orange and mint.

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