Miami Food Blog

Photo by Carlos Miller/NBCMiami.com

McFlood. Can you blame me for not heading over MacArthur to snap my own pics?

When things got a little more wet and wild than usual on South Beach this weekend, some restaurants rose to the occasion thanks to lucky locations, while others were bogged down in high waters.  And the Miami Twittersphere tweeted both real and rumor.

The Shore Club's Nobu was said to have taken on two feet of water, and the roof incident at the Fontainebleau rendered Blade Sushi soggy, even "destroyed" according to some tweet accounts. 

But a little torrential rain didn't keep the fine dining set from taking a dip in haute cuisine.  All dressed up with nowhere to go, some headed to high and dry BLT Steak at The Betsy Hotel.

"We actually were very pleased, since a lot of people ended up coming over to us when their reservations were cancelled at other restaurants," said manager Vanessa Vannaier on Saturday.  "We had about 20 come over from other places, a decent amount considering the circumstances."

As of Saturday, the Fontainebleau spa as well as some clubs, bars, and restaurants were fully operational at normal business hours, including Blade.  Lovely, another quick fix construction job.  And just in time for hurricane season!

A phone call to Sosta on Lincoln Road revealed perseverance and optimism through trying circumstances.

"We were 80 percent down, but blessed to be farther up on the road so we didn't take in any water damage," said GM Selchuk Once.  "People started to show up after 10:30 p.m.  I'll take the 20 percent, considering the circumstances.  My servers couldn't make it in, so the managers and captains ran the restaurant. One even took three hours to get here from Collins in the 100's, but he got here. It's extremely tough to be open, but the restaurant depends on us so we did the best we could."

"I'm new to Miami weather," he added. "People are telling me this is only a sneak preview. I can't imagine what's to come."

Yeah, you and the rest of us, Selchuk.  Pray the city gets its act together before the feature presentation.

John Linn

This filet's seen better days.

I fancy myself an intrepid cook, one who strives to try out new ingredients and push my own boundaries on a regular basis. Every so often, I'll pick some dish I've never made before -- flour tortillas, berry sabayon, cote du boeuf -- and I'll set out to do it with a confidence in my abilities that perhaps borders on hubris. Well, a couple of weeks ago, hubris struck an awful blow as I managed to turn three whole, fresh Florida pompano into cat food. Before you ask: No, I was not making cat food.

Actually, I was making pan-seared pompano fillets with mango beurre blanc. Unfortunately, most of my $40 worth of fish never made it to that stage. We don't need to dwell too much on the how or the why; let's just say I had neither the tools nor the abilities to properly fillet the thin little buggers. I grew pretty frustrated, and I may have destroyed a couple of kitchen utensils in the process. But really, all was not lost. I decided to roast one of them whole, and it came out OK, and a couple of my fillets turned out decently enough. Still, I ended up with a whole load of mangled pompano that I couldn't bear to just throw away.

So I ended up roasting said pompano shreds, then pulsing them in the FP with some spices and folding in some whipping cream. And just like that: pompano mousse. I then sliced up some French bread, brushed with olive oil, and popped it the toaster for some cheap crostini. Top those with the mousse, a bit of that mango beurre blanc that wasn't going anywhere, some capers, slices of grape tomato, and a little olive oil, and voila: Dinner was saved.

John Linn

 It wasn't the finest thing I've ever made, but it did the trick. And it also proved a point -- sometimes your game plan just doesn't work out when you're cooking things you've never tried before. So you've got to adapt.

Anyone else had a cooking experience go catastrophic? How'd you recover?

Cheech And Chong Drink Bongwater from Miami New Times on Vimeo.

Cheech and Chong are great Americans, even though they are Mexican and Canadian. They performed at the South Beach Comedy Festival 2009 and I caught up with them backstage to ask food questions for Short Order. They told me about pussy, Little Haiti brown weed, white people, eating roaches, and drinking bong water. Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong are funny dudes.

I've just finished reading Steve Dublanica's new bestseller, Waiter Rant. Dublanica made his name by blogging about his experiences at an unnamed, upscale Italian bistro in Manhattan, apparently to the delight of a million readers -- the site was such a success he got a book deal out of it ("Kitchen Confidential" for the front of the house.) Dublanica doesn't have Anthony Bourdain's talent as a writer, and the book is only intermittently amusing, but one thing he does brilliantly is describe how hideously some customers can behave in a restaurant, as if all rules of social decorum evaporated at the coat check. As an appendix, he gives 40 tips for being a halfway decent customer when you're dining out instead of acting like a raving asswipe, and I think it would behoove all of us to remember a few of them.

Whoa, here's a new one for me. After a luscious dinner at Michael's Genuine Food & Drink last month, our delicious waiter handed us his business card and urged us to request, next time we booked, specifically that he wait on us.

I have no problem with starting a fan club right now for Scott Fuller -- he was great. He knew the menu up and down, sideways and reversed; he was there when we needed him and absent when we didn't. Best, he had a totally relaxed way about him that made being served a pleasure. More or less a walking definition of hospitality. Since I probably won't get back to Michael's anytime soon I'm willing to share. Book him, folks!

- Gail Shepherd

At one Palm Beach restaurant, that dirty martini might be REALLY dirty

I'm about to lose one of my best sources for insider restaurant dish -- a friend of mine is retiring, at least temporarily, from her job as a server to get married.

But she's stored up enough tales of woe to keep me busy while she's on hiatus. Like the one about a well-known Palm Beach Italian restaurant that, as long as she worked there, recycled the complementary olives picked over by patrons. Servers would pluck out the gnawed-on pits from Table A and just pitch those babies back into the bin for the next unsuspecting customer to gnosh on at Table B.