Miami Food Blog

The Burger Beast plotting world domination.

​What's a four-pound burger to a monster? Nothin'. Who can pick a restaurant up by its fry chimney and shake out all its fast food through the drive thru window and into their mouth? The Burger Beast. Who else do you know that can scare a bull into pushing his cow girlfriend into a blazing fire just because the Burger Beast feels like eating some fresh BBQ? Nobody.

The Burger Beast comes from a long line of carnivores whose teeth display traits for flesh tearing and bone crunching. As a human, so do you vegetarian, might as well accept it, embrace it, and head up to Quickies Burgers & Wings in Hollywood (1000 South State Road 7) this Saturday to see the Burger Beast tackle a four-pound burger, and then try to eat it. Here's what the Beast himself had to say about it....

"I been training a lot this week....eating and eating to expand my stomach."

The Beast will also have his personal film crew there. That's because he just scored a deal with Generation ñ, a Latino broadband network where you can also find our friends Sound Theory Live, for his own show. The Burger Beast says:

Jackie Sayet

Victors and spoils: Trophy tchotchkies as colorful as their owners get carted around the competitive BBQ circuit and have the scuff marks to prove it.

​This past Sunday, I joined foodie friends and bloggers Steve, Paula, and David on a tiny trek to Homestead for a taste of America -- and what could be more U, S of A than barbecued pig, funnel cake and roasted corn vendors, and cowboy and tchotchke stalls of all kinds?

Now mind you, I know it sounds like fun and games, but the annual event brings serious competition between the "Ribbers," with a horde of trophies at stake to add to their overflowing and quite colorful collections. Also, it's even a more imposing challenge for attendees, who must attempt - as any respectable rib eater would - to sample as much diverse 'cue as possible in mere hours.

All I will say is thank god my seasoned company (I was the only newbie to Ribfest) had a plan of attack!  Divide and conquer (always a good idea in most situations) by splitting up and bringing back our spoils to a picnic table to share and compare. Brilliant. I recorded the experience on my food blog, Kitchen Interviews.  Here is the event, in pictures. 

via Wikicommons

Behold! The Grandeur!

​As Morrissey said, "Meat is Murder." Tasty, tasty murder.

And as we all now, in the beginning, after God warmed up by making man and woman, he set his sights on creating a truly perfect creature--the pig. For what part of the Great and Holy Pig is not tasty?

Hoofs? Tasty. Tail? Tasty. Nose? Tasty.

If the finger-wagging, Vegan Right-wing is correct and humans were not meant to barbecue ribs, roast pork chops, and fry bacon, then why did God make these things so goddamn delicious? The defense rests.

At least we know Harvey's by the Bay (6445 NE 7th Ave, Miami) has our backs--and our baby-backs--because Sunday, November 22 between 3:15 - 8 p.m. they're hosting PIG - Pig is Good.

If you've been to Harvey's, you know the drinks are cheap and the inside/outside space is indeed spacious. A perfect venue for an all-afternoon BBQ prepared by Chef Jeremiah Bullfrog (Rick Ross's personal chef - no joke), who promises to utilize all the delicious parts of our favorite animal. You can also expect a live acoustic set from Afrobeta, along with Elastic Bond, Uncle Scotchy and DJs Christian and Libran from Electric Porkchop. Call 954-394-2763 or visit harveysbythebay.com for prices, etc.

Photo by Jacob Katel

Setai Mixologist Paul Sevigny.

​Hold on to your curly little tails, folks. It's no secret that pork flavors have somehow made their way into the world of trendy cocktails (still haven't tried a Bacontini or Bacon Bloody Mary?), so perhaps it was just a matter of time before the essence of our favorite squealers found The Setai's Bar & Courtyard, The Grill and The Restaurant.

Mixologist Paul Sevigny, the mastermind behind the new cocktail menu, already gave Miami New Times' Jacob Katel a step-by-step prep show for his Saigon Gimlet and Aviation, But now it's time for the real meaty stuff: the Hickory Old Fashioned and Asian Picnic. Both feature an intriguing combination of citrus and pork. Hickory has bacon- and sage-infused Wild Turkey Bourbon, honey syrup, and orange bitter, and is garnished with a flamed orange peel. The Asian Picnic offers smoked pork belly-infused Jack Daniels Bourbon, chile syrup, compressed watermelon, citrus, and shiso.

Jackie Sayet

Bringing home the Sir Francis Bacon.

​Everyone's buzzing on bacon.  Drinkable (like in the case of "Bakon" vodka) and munchable, is there ever an occasion when getting some belly in your belly is not ok?

My Achilles' heel is particularly, and often, pierced in Hedy Goldsmith's pastry station at Michael's Genuine Food & Drink, where fatty slabs become confectionery c... well...  you can fill in the alliterative blank. 

Jackie Sayet

Candied bacon-studded maple ice cream with pecans? Yes, please.

​The other day a pretty package of peanut brittle arrived, laced with pig.  Soon mere crystalline crumbs were left.

The offending product is Sir Francis Bacon Peanut Brittle.  First, you'll get smoke.  A lot of it.  Crunch some more, and warm brown sugar sweetness floods your mouth. To finish, nuts and butter.

Recently written up by the New York Times, it will get your dentist's panties in a bunch but is worth every last finger wave. 

Sir Francis Bacon Peanut Brittle, 3 oz. box, 3 boxes per order ($17.95) or 8 oz. box ($15.95) available for purchase online.   

Jackie Sayet

More light than night for this little piggy

​It's official. As of last Sunday (August 30,) the Au Pied de Cochon outpost on South Beach is the only one company-wide unable to sustain a 24 hour business.

According to the general manager, the restaurant was unable to secure late night authorization for its liquor license and found that staying open in the wee hours was no longer financially viable for the business without alcohol sales. 

Au Pied will now focus on its lunch and dinner service. 

Short Order thinks management should also pay attention to its website, where the 24/7 message goes unchanged.

New hours are as follows:
Mon - Fri, 11:30 a.m. - 5 p.m.  (lunch)
Mon - Wed and Sun, 5 p.m. - midnight, and Thurs - Sat, 5 p.m. - 2 a.m. (dinner)
Sun, 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. (brunch)

It's unclear at the moment why Au Pied has been unable to secure late night hours for its license, but the attempt is apparently ongoing.   Time will tell if its traditional hours will return.

Au Pied de Cochon
81 Washington Ave
Miami, FL 33139-7323
(305) 674-1844

Jackie Sayet

This clean plate club always chips in, even with the dirty work

Takepart.org

Mystery meat

When Martha Stewart tweets, we best listen up.  She recently mentioned a screening she arranged for employees of a documentary that we just had to see. 

The film is called Food, Inc. and reveals what we eat, how it's produced and how it's consumed.  It's hitting the silver screen nationwide on June 12, and as of last night, Magnolia Pictures scored placement at South Beach's Regal Cinemas on Lincoln Road -- check it out on June 19.

Industry experts like Michael Pollan (who I'm sure you went to see at his appearance the other week at Books & Books for The Omnivore's Dilemma) and forward thinking social entrepreneurs including Stonyfield Farms' Gary Hirschberg and Polyface Farms' Joe Salatin, make cameos. 

Next week we will speak to filmmaker Robert Kenner about how he exposes the nasty underbelly of our nation's food industry where corporate profit is rules at the expense of health.  It's gonna get ugly, but sometimes that's what it takes to jolt us out of complacence to action.

Michelle Hudgins

image via Riverfront Times

Peeps' Last Meal

Ingredients: "Everything but the squeal"

Here's where Italy meets Philly meets the tropics: at Caffe Luna Rosa in Delray Beach you'll dine on homemade breads, handmade pasta, and veal chop Milanese at outdoor tables just a hop from the beach. Somehow that salt air is all the seasoning chef Ernesto di Blasi's Northern Italian specialties need. The gang at Luna Rosa are sticklers for quality: meat and poultry is natural and hormone free; tomatoes are the real San Marzano deal; hamburger is ground fresh daily in the kitchen; they even roast their own coffee beans! And they're as obsessive about breakfast, brunch, and lunch as they are about dinner. There isn't a pleasanter place to dig into your first meal of the day, from the overstuffed omelets and eggs Benedict to cinnamon swirl French toast, and if there's another restaurant in South Florida serving Philadelphia scrapple and pork roll we have yet to find it (if you don't know what's in it, don't ask, just eat). Even the creamed chipped beef on toast - a meal our servicemen used to fondly call SOS -- is a delicious exercise in nostalgia. 34 S Ocean Blvd Delray Beach, FL 33483 561-274-9404

Untwist those panties: Bacon is good for you!

1. Chocolate
Two words: Flavonoids. Antioxidants. Dark chocolate, more than 70 percent cocoa, has both of them, and they destroy evil free radicals, lower blood pressure, and balance hormones. The folks at Galler Chocolate, a candymaker from Belgium, will be happy to consult with you about the optimal mix for good health and a sin-free soul. Check out their tin of 70 percent cat's tongues or a tube of truffles. Give up instead: Both diet and regular soda, which contributes to obesity and shortens your life span.

Galler Chocolate, 920 E. Las Olas Blvd., Fort Lauderdale
954-523-9690
Also: There's not a good reason on Earth to give up the chocolate raspberry or French chocolate cupcakes, made with artisinal ingredients, at Lola's Cupcakery:
Lola's Cupcakery
1523 E. Las Olas Blvd., Fort Lauderdale
954-530-3153

2. Lobster
It may taste like a decadent luxury, but lobster is good for you. And this year, the prices on Maine lobster have come down significantly enough that you needn't suffer a moment's guilt eating it -- some reports put the price per pound at the equivalent of sliced turkey. Lobster is full of omega 3s, it's high in protein and low in fat, and it's low on the food chain, so it doesn't contain more than trace amounts of mercury. Best of all, lobster trapping is very easy on the environment. Give up instead: Tuna, which is severely overfished.
Where to get it:
Two 1 1/4 pound Maine lobsters are on sale for $51.95 (a $20 savings) at lobstergram.com. I've also had good luck ordering live lobsters from Legalseafoods.com. Patriot Lobster sells 1-pound "culls" that have lost one claw for a bargain rate of $9 each not including shipping.
Pop's Fish Market in Deerfield Beach has Florida lobster tails for $28.99 a pound and live Maine lobsters for $11.99 for a 1 1/4 lb. lobster, $13.99 for anything above that. Call them at 954-427-3331.
 
3. Caviar
No need to ever suffer another sleepless night over the endangered Russian sturgeon -- farmed sturgeon caviar is now widely available, and there's also a color palette of nonsturgeon caviar that's nearly as silky, salty, and luxurious as the real thing. Check out the caviar menu at Marky's in Miami: They've got farmed osetra from France, Italy, Uruguay and the U.S. from about $55 an ounce. Give up instead: Russian wild beluga. Nasty.

4. Bacon
That most misunderstood of foods, bacon, it turns out, is even better for you than eating vegetables. Just kidding. But anybody who'd even think of going 40 days bacon-free is a total masochist. The good news is that now you can buy bacon from humanely raised heritage breeds that is not only miles better than the old grocery-store Oscar Meyer but also helps preserve rare breeds from extinction -- and just generally makes the world a jollier, more delicious place in which to unravel our mortal coil. At Heritage Foods USA, six pounds of Edwards Heritage Berkshire Bacon will set you back $85, but that's enough to last even a serious baconophile until well after the Lenten period ends. The Pig Next Door also has a heritage-bacon-of-the-month club: a pound a month plus tasting notes for six months is $149 plus shipping. Give up instead: One meal at a mediocre restaurant.

5. Foie Gras
Probably the most controversial food in the world, despised by PETA, beloved of chefs and gourmets. But New York chef Dan Barber went to visit the Spanish Farm Pateria de Sousa and learned that it's indeed possible to produce foie gras "naturally" by letting geese gorge the way they always have in the wild, seasonally. Farming this way eliminates the need for gavage (force feeding). Judging from Barber's video, these fowl live in a birdly paradise so wonderful that geese flying over readily land and join them, increasing the flock naturally. The Spanish foie gras isn't available locally yet, but if you love the stuff, lobby your favorite chef to see if he or she can source it. Give up instead: foie gras produced by gavage until the humane version becomes available.

Totally uncensored, sorta...

meadowlandsparkinglot

The Jabaconageburger with cheese, a cheeseburger topped with sausage and bacon and sandwiched between two Jamaican beef patties. Urg.

Food porn is all the rage these days. There are entire sites devoted to the obscene pleasures of voyeuristic foodie-ism, and they're growing in number each day. Just this week, food writer and chef Anthony Bourdain explored the subject on a special episode of his Travel Channel series No Reservations, complete with over-the-top camera angles and plenty of double-entendre about cream sauces and long, hard sausages. But the latest food porn craze is a website that revels so desperately in absurd gluttony while simultaneously mocking it that it's hard to look at it and not come away with coronary blockage. It is, the aptly-named, This is Why You're Fat.

Today's pic -- that disgusting concoction of Jamaican beef patties and cheeseburger you see above -- is just the tip of the iceberg. Spend a couple minutes on the site sampling such goodies as "the garbage pile" and (appearing on Short Order before) "the bacon double fatty melt," and your self-loathing just builds and builds. I mean, do we really need to be this self-destructive? What's next, a website for children of divorce entitled "You Are The Reason Mommy Left Daddy"? A montage of depressing photos for people on suicide watch called "It Feels Like Heaven Once All That Evil Finally Seeps Out of Your Wrists"? I'm not so sure it's really all that healthy and empowering to embrace all the terrible addictions in my life -- I already spend too much time guzzling beer like a 50-year-old NASCAR fan and supplementing my World of Warcraft addiction with a blog roll the size of Perez Hilton's ego. I frankly don't think I can take much more of this! If only I had something that would instantly make the pain go away... say, like a bacon shell taco! Oh sweet relief!

Every once in a while, someone comes along that pushes boundaries, that doesn't let words like "no" or "impossible" cross their lips. A Hamburger Today's Adam Kuban is one such pioneer. When they said creating the ultimate bacon sandwich couldn't be done, he didn't budge. No, he ventured into the unknown, with little regard for his own safety, and produced this: the bacon hamburger fatty melt. It's a bacon cheeseburger, who's delicious content is housed between two bacon-stuffed grilled cheese sandwiches. And I want one. I don't know what I'd do with it - eat it, I presume, but more likely build an altar an worship it like a Carpathian deity -- but I want one. (Note: Don't scroll down the page unless your heart is strong enough to see -- dun, dun, dun -- the DOUBLE BACON FATTY MELT. You've been warned)

-- John Linn