Miami Food Blog

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Architect Malcolm Berg with some pointers, via @normanvanaken

Blueprints and drawings for Norman's 180, Norman Van Aken's forthcoming Coral Gables restaurant slated to open at 180 Aragon in the Colonnade Hotel in November, are now on his architect's website. 

At first glance, the design itself will be a social lubricant, featuring elements conducive to sharing and interaction among diners, such as communal tables and a long bar, a focal point snaking through the main dining room.

Malcolm Berg, of Edge of Architecture, is behind the design and has worked with hospitality clients the likes of the Ritz Carlton and Marriott.

Another addition to the Gables may very well be Van Aken himself, who currently resides in Key West and lived in Pinecrest during his Norman's (on Almeria Ave) days.  He has his eyes on downtown Gables this time around.

Jacob Katel

Spray-on hydration.

Au Pied De Cochon

The restaurant's namesake, roasted pig's trotter

Move over Les Halles, brasserie Au Pied de Cochon is now serving up a taste of the old world, south of 5th Street. 

The restaurant dates back 60 years to its original location in the Les Halles district of Paris, unlike that area's eponymous, Bourdain-adorned chain which you may be surprised to know is 100% made in the U.S. of A. 

French-born exec chef Didier Lailheugue executes a menu heavy on the classics like croque monsieur (lunch only,) French onion soup gratinée, and escargots de Bourgogne in their shell with parsley butter sauce.  Yummy, but how disappointed we were at Short Order to find out from the kitchen that the "assorted matured cheese selection" imported from France is pasteurized!  Any lover of cheese knows that it is in fact legal to import unpasteurized, as long as the product is more than 60 days old. 

Jackie Sayet

The commuter-friendly 'grab and go' counter is the first of its kind for Publix in Miami

(To the tune of Adam Sandler's Lunch Lady Land)

Open up at 6 a.m.
Got on my sage green polo
Served croquetas de jamon
Con un poco de amor
Got no clue why we sell gallon jugs of milk
Just know everything's doing fine
Down here at the Publix Cafe stand

Jackie Sayet

Ma..ri...a!

Yes I wear this net on my head
Porque food safety standards apply
I wear these clear disposable gloves
It's all for your peace of mind
You want your morning joe and tostada
But there's no reason to bark
Everybody gets their comida
Down here at the Publix Cafe stand

Jackie Sayet

Sandwiches are most popular for lunch, but wraps, sushi and salad are also available

Cafe con leche, cafe con leche, cafe con leche, cafe con leche
fruit salad, fruit salad, fruit salad, fruit salad
Cafe con leche, cafe con leche
Fruit salad, fruit salad
Pan Cubano
Pastelito, past', pastelito
Pastelito, past', pastelito
Pastelito, past', pastelito
Pastelito, past', pastelito

Jackie Sayet

Value meal

Jacob Katel

Cheeseburgers At The Bayside Grill

Construction on Northeast Second Avenue in Miami Shores has jack-hammered just about every biz on the street, which is now a collection of For Rent signs along with a bank, a Subway and not much more. 

The Village Cafe, with its weekend music, fine wine and pretty good food, was a casualty. It already had problems. A former owner was whacked for coke. But it survived that.

And as of three weeks ago, this nabe fave has again shown resilience, rising above its Scarface-style past to reopen under new ownership, former GM Massimo Delucca (also of Tiramesu on Lincoln Road,) and Ray and Sandra Perez.

Continental cuisine from chef Adam Holm includes wraps and sandwiches for lunch, with a more upscale dinner menu that includes pizzas, pastas, meats (including New York strip, fillet minion) and fish.

They're in the process of building a website where you'll be able to find the menu in the future, but for now, you got the number here first folks (the old ones are still in all the listings...)  Give 'em a buzz for more information.

The Village Cafe
9540 NE 2nd Ave
(305) 759-2211
Mon - Sat 11:30 a.m. - 10 p.m. and Sun 10 a.m. - 10 p.m. (brunch till 2:30 p.m.) 

Hakkasan, a Michelin-starred Chinese restaurant with locations in London and Istanbul, held quite an opening bash Saturday night at the Fontainebleau. Three quick impressions:

1. The decor, much like the Hakkasan in London, is exotic, romantic, stunning -- long, creatively lighted bar and a series of small dining sections illuminated by lanterns and separated by moucharabieh (screens) of ebony-tinted walnut, intricate lacquered latticework, and hand-carved decorative teak panels.

2. Distinctive cocktails, including the signature Hakka -- a blend of vodka, Kubota sake, lychee juice, lime, coconut, and fresh passion fruit. Dee-lish.

3. If the cuisine at the party is any indication (and of course it is), Hakkasan is going to be an invaluable addition to our dining scene. A few of the passed snacks snatched: shrimp on garlic toast, duck egg rolls, braised short ribs (amazing), assorted steamed dumplings of astonishing delicacy, and Peking duck carved and rolled into mini-pancakes with celery, scallion, hoisin, and beluga caviar.

Alan Yau is the restaurateur behind Hakkasan; helming Miami's kitchen is chef Wen Ten Sian, formerly of My Humble House restaurant in Beijing. Chef Wen will execute Yau's traditional Cantonese classics and house specialties "reinterpreted for a contemporary palate." Menu highlights will include stir-fry rib-eye black pepper beef, crispy duck salad, tea-smoked jasmine chicken, and roasted silver cod in Chinese honey and champagne. Wines are globally sourced and categorized into Purity, Terroir, and Curious Vines.
 
Hakkasan is open daily for dinner starting at 6 p.m. If you like Chinese food, call now -- like right away -- for reservations: 786-276-1388.

When you think about it, Mizner Park is sort of like an overstuffed, smothered burrito. There are all the fancy Boca ladies sporting expensive jewelry - they're the cheese. There are the teenage children of wealth driving around in cars worth more than the valets who park them make in two years - they're the sour cream. There are the plastic surgery disasters, the retired trust funders, and the proletariat interlopers, who come only to get into heated class battles with the rest of the denizens of Mizner (I bore witness to a particularly ugly display in the main parking garage just the other day) - these people are the rice and beans. But then there are the restaurant workers, a largely ethnic bunch who pour themselves in to the inner workings of Mizner and upscale strip malls like it all over South Florida. They are the meat.

Mizner's latest addition, the "high-end casual" chain Mexican concept Uncle Julio's opening Tuesday afternoon, is, if anything, an worthy experiment to see if this sopping, bursting burrito is ready to eat itself.

Note to Plat Bleu: This is what bistro food looks like.

Hungering for some hearty bistro fare, I had a friend call (on behalf of my wife and I) to request reservations at Plat Bleu in the Delano Hotel. Word came back that reservations weren't taken, and that the restaurant was located on the right side of the indoor and outdoor sections of what was formerly part of the Blue Door restaurant. When we arrived at 8:30, which was early for a late night spot like this, there was nobody sitting on either side of the indoor room, so we requested an outdoor table. A hostess told us to head there and we'd be seated, but once outside a manager told us all outdoor tables were reserved for Blue Door. So we went back inside, this time being informed that Plat Bleu's outdoor tables were at the far end of the pool area. Off we wandered -- not an especially short stroll -- until reaching the dining area. There we stood for some time, trying in vain to get someone's attention; finally I approached a waitress to ask if the section was for Plat Bleu. No, she said, only the pool menu was served there. When we returned to the reception podium, a different manager  proved extremely gracious in seating us on the left side of the outdoor terrace and bringing us menus. But the bistro proved elusive in yet another way: While Plat Bleu's bill of fare contained a torchon of foie gras and a couple of other token French-inspired offerings, most items were variations on Blue Door's Mediterranean menu, including some of the very same dishes. I wasn't in the mood for this type of cuisine, so we got up to leave. On our way out, the manager came over to see what was up. We told her that, no hard feelings, but we'd been expecting escargot and onion soup and stuff like that; she explained that there was in fact onion soup, but it didn't get served until 2:00 a.m. As she related this to us, her facial expression let on that we were, perhaps, not the only customers thus far confused. We politely declined her proposal to have the kitchen prepare us onion soup, as well as a generous follow-up offer for drinks on the house, but she handled the situation as well as a manager possibly could. We managed to squeeze into a couple of seats at OLA's bar a few blocks away and shared a few small plates. It wasn't bistro food, but it was very tasty -- and more important, just what we expected. 

Daily Bread Pinecrest from MiamiNewTimesBlogs on Vimeo.

The Daily Bread Middle East Market has stood at the same location in Pinecrest since 1978. It was opened by husband and wife team Toufic and Rima Mazzawi and is now run by their sons Shaddy and Nicolas. The Daily Bread specializes in foods from the Middle East, Greece and India. They have a market featuring fine ingredients and freshly prepared cold foods, a deli for sandwiches, salads and platters, and even hookahs and tobacco "for those trendy kids that are into that." The Daily Bread Pinecrest also has

Psssst....Drink Me!

It isn't often that we New Timesers get a bottle of $200 whiskey in the mail. We did, not long ago, thanks to the folks at Canadian Club, which is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year with the release of a primo 30-year-old, 80-proof, white-oak-barrel-aged blended whiskey retailing for a cool two bills. That's priced well beyond the reach of even the most profligate New Times lushes; our admin assistant was obliged to hide the booze behind her desk, well beyond the reach of  sticky fingers, until we could get around to a proper tasting.

But at a recent staff meeting, we broke into the bottle, or at least Bob Norman did; Norman was so physically agitated by the sight of that black box with its fancy closure and the gold CC logo just sitting there that we had to wrestle it away from him just to snap the picture at left. In Norman's good opinion, whiskey is made to be drunk, not fondled and stared at. I guess old Hiram Walker would second that, and so would Don Draper, who drinks Canadian Club on the show Mad Men.

Hey Bob, over here!

Norman and the rest of our high-macho crew also pooh-poohed the notion that a splash of H20 added to this fine old brew would "open it up." They poured liberal shots and drank it straight. Over on the femme-gay side of the table, we added a little water and found the instruction sound: Give your whiskey a splash and it evens out the last edges, so your drink gives up its perfumes and complexities.

But both girls and boys agreed: This was the best whiskey we'd  tasted since that bottle of 30-year-old single-malt McCallam we drank back in '85. It's excessively smooth, sweet, and buttery, with a finish that lasts and lasts: a bit of oak (but not too much), a hint of butterscotch, something floral, like violets. And it leaves a serious afterglow: Once we'd polished off 3/4 of the bottle, you could say our staff meeting got right lively.

I conducted a blind tasting at home with the bit of drink I had left, lining up the 30-year-old CC against a 10-year-old Canadian Club reserve (retail around $30)  and a glass of Glenfiddich 12-year-old single malt (retail around $25). The 30-year-old cleaned their clocks in taste, fragrance, and finish -- it tasted almost like a good cognac. The CC 10 was close in color -- a rich, deep amber -- but was slightly more bitter and ragged when sipped. Both CCs are definitively better with about 3 tablespoons of water added. Glenfiddich doesn't improve at all with water, and it's really a different animal: lighter in color and fruitier.

Final report: Only 3,000 bottles of the 30-year CC were produced, and it's hard to find at this point (try ordering it here.) It would definitely be worth both the search and the price as a gift for a whiskey connoisseur, but I wouldn't waste it on anybody else: In their cups, most people wouldn't have the patience to dig for esoteric flavors or even care much about how smooth it is. And as a side note, I totally dig CC's new advertising campaign: "Your Mom Wasn't Your Dad's First," and would only like to add that he wasn't hers either, you chump.

But I actually prefer this slightly altered version of the ad:

You wonder how a tiny, nine-table, family run Armenian cafe could survive two years on the fringes of Boca Raton's ritzy Mizner Park: But order a plate of Boca Skewers' falafel, and you'll get the picture. These crunchy little balls of fried, spiced chickpeas may be served on a plastic plate with paper napkins, but there's no doubt they're made from scratch by a cook whose family has refined the recipe over generations. At Boca Skewers the falafel are served with a "secret sauce" made from yogurt, garlic, and spices. The small, reasonably priced Mediterranean menu ranges from grilled lamb kebabs ($16.99) crosshatched with char -- rich, tender, and long marinated -- to chicken soltani, smoky organic eggplant stew ($11.99), and kafte kebabs ($12.99) of ground beef pressed and grilled on a skewer, all accompanied by a side of lentil-flecked rice sweetened with a touch of sugar. You've seen these appetizers, pita sandwiches, and salads on other menus: stuffed grape leaves, baba ghannouj, kibbeh, spinach pie, salads flecked with mint and parsley, but rarely prepared with such care. There's lots to wow vegetarians. And the Armenian families you'll find eating here aren't complaining. Open for lunch and dinner. Boca Skewers 130 NE 2nd Street (in Mizner Plaza). Boca Raton 561-347-9961.