best dishes of 2017: part 3

We left off Part 2 of my "Best Dishes of 2017" (you can see Part 1 here too) in San Francisco. We stay in the Bay Area for Part 3 here, with a trip up to Healdsburg, then detour to Las Vegas, swing back to the east coast for a quick trip to Boston, then back home before ending the year in Santa Fe, New Mexico. As always, the "best" here is meaningless – this is just a compilation of some personal favorites from among several great meals over the course of the year.

mid summer in Sonoma - SingleThread

Our summer getaway found us on the West Coast, a trip which included a couple days in Healdsburg. The wine country in the northern reaches of Sonoma County is among my favorite places on earth, and now it has a restaurant to match the beauty and bounty of the area: Kyle Connaughton's SingleThread (see more pictures in this SingleThread Farm flickr set). SingleThread is about as fully realized a vision of the Japanese combination of kaiseki dining and ryokan as you'll find outside of Japan: a restaurant, supplied by its own nearby five-acre farm (run by spouse Katina Connaughton) plus contributions from neighboring farmers, fishermen and foragers, with a small, luxurious inn on premises (we regretfully didn’t stay at the inn, instead renting a house up the Russian River so we had room for the whole family and some friends).

This was, from start to finish, just a magical meal – refined and beautiful and flavorful, intimately expressive of season and place.

After a glass of bubbly and a platter of snacks on the rooftop garden terrace, we were brought back inside to the dining room and greeted with a spread that could do double duty as a centerpiece. There’s maybe a dozen different items laid out across the table, interspersed among an arrangement of branches and blooms. I won’t try to recount everything here, and in any event the contents vary from day to day and season to season like the "hassun" course of a kaiseki meal, but I particularly recall the cold slivers of geoduck in a neon peach-hued stone fruit gelee; a tart, bright, green tomato gazpacho; a creamy corn panna cotta with an accent mark of fermented cucumber; silky purple baby eggplant agebitashi with a sesame and plum curd; an intensely rich mousse of potato and salt cod; ripe, fat mulberries from nearby Middlteton Farm. And it's all as delicious as it is beautiful.

wild king salmon ibushi-gin - SingleThread

From an ornate tapestry of dishes to bare-bones simplicity: wild king salmon, caught in Half Moon Bay, smoked in an ibushi-gin (a type of donabe, or Japanese stone pot, which are something of an obsession at SingleThread), swimming in a vinaigrette of negi (Japanese scallion) bolstered with the magic of shio koji, garnished with a dollop of char roe and a tiara of finely slivered myoga (young ginger) and radish. When I had the smoked salmon at Willows Inn, I was pretty certain that would be the best salmon I'd ever eat in my life. Now I'm not so sure.

poached foie gras, tea of last year's tomatoes - SingleThread

So often, foie gras gets fruity accompaniments as a foil for its richness. Here, instead, Connaughton goes vegetal. A disk of poached foie, with a texture like cool butter, is awash in a "tea" of last year's tomatoes, plus an assortment of radishes and their greens in various forms: fresh, preserved, dried. The peppery crunch of the radishes does the same job without the usual cloying sweetness. And then another bit of magic comes from an aged sake poured with it – again, a far cry from the customary sweet Sauternes – which magically pulls it all together, one of the most memorable pairings of the whole year.

Sonoma grains, nettles, kasuzuke - SingleThread

I know, we're four deep into this list and we're still haven't left SingleThread. What can I say, it was pretty good. This bowl of Sonoma grains, bound in a luminous green nettle purée, garnished with kasuzuke pickled vegetables, a farro verde beignet, a bouquet of herbs, sprouts and petals from the garden, and a tableside drizzle of an intense aged rib cap jus (presumably a byproduct of the American wagyu served in the prior course), was served as the final savory item on the menu, in the same fashion that a rice dish usually acts as the anchor of a Japanese meal. It was incredibly gratifying and delicious, and felt like something of a summary and recapitulation of all that preceded it.

agedashi tofu - Aburiya Raku

In October, a conference brought me to Las Vegas, where I always find time to visit Aburiya Raku (read my thoughts and see more pictures in this Aburiya Raku flickr set). It's the first place I tried fresh, house-made tofu and it's still one of my favorite places to order it. The pro move is to go half-and-half: a half order of the "Raku's tofu," served cold with garnishes of katsuobushi, chopped chives, minced ginger, and green tea salt; and a half-order of the agedashi tofu, fried, doused in an enriched dashi broth bobbing with little mushrooms, and topped with a dollop of ikura, shredded nori and more chopped chives. It's so good.

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Pintxos in San Sebastian

From friends, tour guides, and food and travel TV shows, we'd been conditioned to believe that San Sebastian was a kind of culinary Wonderland, with more Michelin stars per capita than possibly anywhere else on earth, and tapas bars lining the streets with riotous displays, each trying to top the next. Well, unlike the South Florida real estate market, Bernie Madoff's rate of return, and many other things that sound too good to be true, San Sebastian really is everything people say it is.

In early March, it was still off-season in San Sebastian, and we were regularly deluged with rain and even hail. But it was easy to see why San Sebastian becomes one of the great playgrounds of all Europe in the more temperate months. Its setting on the Bay of Biscay, situated on two massive, impossibly perfectly curved arcs of beach (Zurriola to the east and La Concha to the west), with hills rising up around either side, is almost ridiculously picturesque. And the sheer abundance, quality and variety of the pintxos (the Basque variant on tapas) to be found in such a multitude of local bars is truly staggering indeed. It really is much like being in Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, but without the risk of blowing up into a gigantic blueberry like Violet Beauregard ("Stop. Don't.").

Though we had a couple high-end restaurant meals already booked before we came, we saved a couple days for sampling the pintxos of San Sebastian. It took us a little practice to navigate the etiquette of pintxos-eating. In some places you'd just ask for a plate and serve yourself, while in others the system was point and ask. Most bars have hot items that aren't displayed but are listed somewhere, usually on a board or occasionally on a menu, which have to be ordered. These were often some of the best items, notwithstanding the incredible displays of cold items laid out on the bars. For locating and researching these places, I found the website, Todopintxos, to be a very useful resource. The Hotel Villa Soro, about a 10-minute walk from the Barrio Gros, made a great home base for exploring San Sebastian.

The following are my notes from tours of the Parte Vieja (the old quarter, on the west side of town) and the Barrio Gros (newer part of town on the east side). There are literally dozens of places we did not get to, and it seems you could devote a happy lifetime to investigating each bar's specialties.

PARTE VIEJA

Bar Aralar - not particularly on any recommended list, this just happened to be open and in the right spot for us as the rain started coming down especially furiously. Yet it's a great example of what is so wonderful about San Sebastian. We were just looking for someplace to dry out for a couple minutes, ducked through the door, and were greeted with a tableau at the bar of maybe a couple dozen different brightly colored pintxos, a couple gleaming chrome beer taps, and a dozen hams hanging from the ceiling. The tuna-stuffed piquillo pepper was nice, as was a plump artichoke wrapped in bacon. A pintxo topped with a vibrant greenish white seafood spread tasted mostly of pickles, and I couldn't make out what else was in it. A very old-school place, where the bartender simply asks whether you want a small plate or a large plate so as to take items for yourself, and then charges on the honor system as to how many pintxos you had. Clearly a spot that has its regulars - it was amusing to watch as the bartender began to pour drinks for a few people as soon as they'd entered the door, before they'd uttered a word.

Gandarias Taberna - a warm pintxo of queso cabra wrapped with bacon was delicious; even better was one described as "milhojas de manitas y hongos", a layered concoction of shredded pigs' trotter meat and thin slivers of porcini mushroom. A brochette of cordero (lamb) was only OK, as was a pintxo topped with angulas (baby eels) and piquillo. They had a large selection of wines by the glass with all of them held in one of those high-tech Enomatic dispensers.

La Cepa - we caught the tortilla with bacalao as it was coming from the oven, and it was absolutely delicious. A little sampler of their chorizo was also excellent. The "gabilla," a croqueta type thing with big chunks of pork, serrano ham, and cheese, didn't do it for me. We should have taken the hint from the chorizo, as their specialty seems to be their Jabugo ham products.

La Cuchara de San Telmo - this place had been recommended by numerous sources and perhaps our expectations were too high, or perhaps we ordered poorly. It's a shoebox of a place, and difficult to find, with a barely discernable sign, and a street address on the "Plazuela del Valle Lersundi" which perhaps ought to be called a "Plazuelita" as it's not much more than a tiny indentation off Calle 31 de Agosto. Once inside there's a narrow, drafty bar area with room for about 8 place settings and at the back of the room a tiny, roughly 4'x8' kitchen. More contemporary in approach, everything is made to order. A canelon de morcilla was pretty good, the pasta filled with a rich oozy blood sausage, and the dish brightened up with a stripe of an herbaceous green sauce. The problem I had was that pretty much everything we ordered had almost the exact same presentation. The foie with manzana brought a seared hunk of foie gras served over a bed of apple puree, with again the same stripe of green sauce; and then a duck breast (slightly overcooked and tough) came over a bed of orange puree, with yet again the same green stripe of sauce. Any one of them individually I would have thought were good, but when ordered together gave the impression of a one-trick pony. Again, maybe just a case of poor ordering.

BARRIO GROS

Aloña Berri - perhaps in contast to La Cuchara de San Telmo, I thought Aloña Berri was absolutely everything it was cracked up to be. They describe themselves as "alta cocina en miniatura" and the description is apt. It seems almost absurd to call a one-bite item a "dish," but many of Aloña Berri's creations are so remarkably layered and architectural both in flavor and literal structure that it seems appropriate. These were some truly awe-inspiring and delicious things.

This is a pintxo that came in an Asian soup spoon, one bite, more than a half-dozen components. From bottom to top, a puddle of creamy confited bacalao, topped with a smooth eggplant puree, hollandaise sauce, quail egg, aioli, trout roe, crispy fried spinach leaf, and a sliver of fried purple potato. Beautiful and delicious.


This one was possibly even more impressive. Mackerel, stuffed with foie gras and glazed with what I believe was a pan sauce bolstered with some vinegar, on top of which is balanced a long sliver of fried leek, sprinkled upon which are various salty, sweet and other flavor components - green herb powder, demerara sugar, trout roe ... you fold the sliver of leek upon itself and eat the whole thing, getting the sensations of each of the powders as you find them. All of which is to say nothing of the combination of the rich oily mackerel with the rich oily foie, a great take on a mar y montaña similar to the combination of eel and foie you see in some higher-end Japanese restaurants these days.

Bar Bergara - Bergara is a much more straight-ahead kind of style than Aloña Berri but everything we had was quite good, including a pintxo topped with juicy sweet diced tomatoes and a scatter of slivered fried onions, another with a bacalao "meatball" and a similar topping of fried onions, and one topped with salad rusa, shredded hard-boiled egg and a shrimp on top.

Casa Senra - when you see more than a half dozen different croquetas listed on the menu, including with clams and green sauce and with chipirones (baby squid), the clear message is "Get the croquetas". By an accident of translation we got the morcilla croquetas rather than the almejas I had sought, but they were still very good, scooped using an ice cream scoop, lightly crispy outside, tender and oozy inside, studded with bits of sausage. I wasn't aiming for the croquetas de morcilla because we'd also ordered the "morcillitas," a skinny home-made blood sausage that was creamy and redolent with spice, served with a green garlic olive oil emulsion and piquillo peppers. A bocata of fried eggplant, sauteed onions, bacon and cheese was also very satisfying.

The amazing thing to me is that for every place we tried, there are probably a half dozen we missed. Even more amazing, for every pintxo we tried at each of those places, there were probably a dozen or more that we skipped. Consistent 12-13% return, year after year after year? Don't believe it. San Sebastian, culinary mecca? Believe it.

Bar Aralar
Calle Puerto 10
San Sebastian
943 42 63 78

Gandarias Taberna
Calle 31 de Agosto 23
San Sebastian
943 42 63 62

La Cepa
Calle 31 de Agosto 7
San Sebastian
943 42 63 94

La Cuchara de San Telmo
Plazuela del Valle Lersundi
San Sebastian

Aloña Berri
Calle Bermingham 24
San Sebastian
943 29 08 18

Bar Bergara
Calle General Artexte 8
San Sebastian
943 27 50 26

Casa Senra
Calle San Francisco 32
San Sebastian
943 29 38 19

first thoughts: Plant Food + Wine - Miami (Wynwood)

Skeptical. Doubtful. Dubious. Let's just say I wasn't really so sure that I'd enjoy a restaurant committed to an entirely vegan, raw menu. It's not that I'm opposed to vegetables – I love them. But as an unrepentant omnivore who cares about flavor first and foremost, I'm wary of any dogma that would keep huge categories of delicious edible things off my plate, and even more suspicious of the notion that none of the things on that plate should be cooked.

But that's the thinking behind Plant Food + Wine, Chef Matthew Kenney's new restaurant in Miami's Edgewater neighborhood.^[1] Kenney is a chef and "lifestyle" guru who also runs The Gothic in Belfast, Maine as well as another Plant Food + Wine in Venice, California. He has published several books and hosts "Culinary Academies" to teach plant-based cooking techniques, all under the tagline of "crafting the future of food."

Pleasantly surprised. That's how I felt after my first meal at Plant. Despite an entirely vegan menu where no food is heated beyond 110° (and maybe even in some instances because of that commitment), the food at Plant was mostly quite delicious. Somewhat uncharacteristically for a restaurant that is in a sense defined by what it chooses not to serve, there's as much attention paid to flavor and presentation as there is to principle. And that's a welcome distinction.^[2]

(You can see all my pictures in this Plant Food + Wine flickr set).

The place itself is a stunner. It's on a gigantic lot with a sprawling patio bisected by a blue-lit wading pool, surrounded by towering date palms. There's as much seating outside on the deck as there is inside the dining room, which feels open and breezy thanks to its double-height ceiling, bright white open kitchen,^[3] and retracting glass doors that open the indoor and outdoor spaces up to each other.

The menu features several smaller items "for the table," followed by about eight "small plates" and around the same number of "mains," with most smaller plates priced in the low teens and larger plates hovering around the $20 mark. We ordered a couple of items from each section of the menu.

I've often puzzled over why so much plant-based food feels like penance. Vegetables can be so bright and colorful, yet so much vegan food – all the "field roasts" and "chik'n" and their ilk – looks like processed pet food. That's not the case at Plant, where vegetables are rightly celebrated.

Kimchi dumplings feature bright green translucent wrappers wrapped around a nutty filling, with even brighter beet-dyed magenta swooshes adorning the plate. I’ve gradually come around to Gael Greene’s conclusion that most foams are “insipid,” but here's one that actually tastes pointedly of ginger and contributes a nice accent to the dish. Banh mi lettuce wraps, another item "for the table," actually use deep-green collards for their casing, which are filled with a smoked chili-almond pate, crunchy napa cabbage, and slivers of pickled daikon radish and red peppers.

A sunflower caesar salad uses both crunchy romaine and peppery arugula, dressed in a thick sunflower seed dressing with a rich, tahini-like flavor.^[4] Sunflower seeds play the role of croutons; briny capers even more effectively play the role of the traditional anchovies. It happens to be a great salad, mixing both bright and deep flavors and a bunch of nice textures.

A small plate of romanesco cauliflower, lightly cooked to soften its raw edge, is tossed with a tangy salsa verde, served over a rich toasted pepita cream, and laced with ribbons of preserved lime. More good flavors: but I wished it had been given another pinch of salt and that the preserved lime had more prominence.

The MK Bowl pictured at the top is listed in the “mains” – and I have to confess that while I have no opposition to salads generally, I often struggle to think of them as a main course to a meal. But this achieved a certain substantiality, combining delicate lettuces with heartier shaved root vegetables, creamy avocado, fresh sprouts, grassy carrot greens, and crunchy hemp seeds, all lightly bound with a tangy, savory lemongrass tahini dressing. I might have wished for the sunflower-chia seed “croutons” to have more crunch, instead of the texture of wet paper, but everything else here worked.

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2010 by the Numbers

I remember, back when I used to have more functioning brain cells than I do now, how much I used to enjoy reading the "Harper's Index" that was in every issue of the lefty-leaning Harper's magazine. As a final sendoff to 2010, here's my take on the year just past in the same format, except I may have made up at least 50% of the statistics in this list (including that one):

Food For Thought's Index

South Florida restaurants (or food trucks) written up in FFT in 2010: 38^[1]

Non-South Florida restaurants written up in FFT in 2010: 18^[2]

Cobaya - Gourmet Guinea Pig dinners written up in FFT in 2010: 7

Number of dinner experiences in 2010 I enjoyed more than III Forks: 364

Number of contemporary Asian restaurants opened in Miami in 2010: 9^[3]

Percentage of restaurants opened in Miami in 2010 that are contemporary Asian restaurants: 79%

Number of steakhouses opened in Miami in 2009: 8^[4]

Number of steakhouses opened in Miami in 2010: 3^[5]

Number of seafood restaurants opened in Miami in 2010: 6^[6]

Number of big-name outsiders to open restaurants in Miami in 2009: 11^[7]

Number of big-name outsiders to open restaurants in Miami in 2010: 3^[8]

Number of South Florida food trucks on Twitter in December 2009: 2^[9]

Number of South Florida food trucks on Twitter in December 2010: 35

Percentage of South Florida food truck menus featuring burgers and/or tacos: 90%

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BlackBrick (a/k/a Midtown Chinese) - Midtown Miami

"I'm an unpure purist, something like that." - Keith Richards

"Authentic" is a word I try to avoid. I'm just not convinced it means an awful lot. Too often, it's thrown about by one-upping blowhards trying to bolster their own credibility ("I spent a weekend in Cabo so I know all about 'authentic' Mexican tacos."). Even for those with more serious intentions, the definition of "authenticity" is elusive, for reasons I've kicked around before. The executive summary: "So many cuisines, even in their 'native' forms, are capable of so many infinite variations, and so many 'traditional' dishes are actually themselves the result of historical cross-cultural mash-ups that would today go by the sobriquet of 'fusion' dishes, that labeling any one particular iteration as 'authentic' is a fool's errand."

"Delicious" is another word I try to avoid. Like "authentic," I'm just not convinced it means much. Unlike "authentic," everyone knows the definition: "this food is good." But it doesn't tell you what is good about it, or why it's good. That unfocused vagueness is why "delicious" is on many food writers' (and editors') lists of banned words.

I'm not going to tell you the food at BlackBrick, Richard Hales' new Chinese restaurant in Midtown Miami, is "authentic." But I will tell you it is "delicious." And I'll do my best to tell you why.^[1]

Miami has long been a Chinese food desert. For decades, the Canton chain – a paradigm of mediocrity – somehow managed to be the standard-bearer. Tropical Chinese stands out, but only as a big fish in a little pond. Hakkasan offers a much more refined experience, and their dim sum is excellent, but the price to value (and excitement) ratio of most of the rest of the Hakkasan experience is out of whack. A host of other contenders – Chef Philip Ho, Chu's Kitchen – come and go, with all the stability of Miley Cyrus. Unlike West Coast meccas like Los Angeles, the Bay Area and Vancouver, we seem to lack the populations to support a thriving Chinese restaurant market. And the waves of hyper-regional Chinese restaurants that New York has enjoyed – Sichuan, Shaanxi, Dongbei, Hunan, Yunnan and more, in addition to the more ubiquitous Cantonese – never really made their way here.

(You can see all my pictures in this BlackBrick - Midtown Miami flickr set).

I suspect Richard Hales felt much the same way. And whether because he saw a market opportunity, or just pined to eat better Chinese food and found nobody else making it, he decided to do what he could to change it. BlackBrick, a self-described "passion project," is the result.^[2]

Hales' first project as chef/owner was the fast-casual, pan-Asian Sakaya Kitchen, which opened about four years ago. Serving pork buns and Korean chicken wings may not have been an entirely original notion,^[3] but Sakaya distinguished itself by focusing on quality ingredients (local and organic whenever possible), fresh preparations, and bold flavors, especially the smoky heat of Korean kochujang that weaves through several dishes.

BlackBrick in some ways follows a similar model, though the service is sit-down style, and the flavor profiles look to China's Sichuan province, among other places, for spicy inspiration. Indeed, if you grab a spot at the counter in front of the open kitchen, you may periodically be inundated by billowing clouds of chili-infused smoke emanating from the wok station.

You can start with something simple and invigorating, like these chicken thighs doused in a spicy chili oil and Chinkiang vinegar, then showered with slivered green onions, cilantro, peanuts and sesame seeds. The poached chicken is served cold with its slippery skin intact, the mild, tender meat a foil for the double dose of spice and sour from the chili oil and black rice vinegar.

"Ma La." These are two more words you're going to want to know. They mean "numbing" and "hot," and their combination – in the form of Sichuan peppercorn (which causes a tingly, numbing sensation) and dried chilies – produces a compulsively tasty, "hurts so good" reaction. It's what makes BlackBrick's "Numbing and Hot Chinese Spare Ribs" so flavorful, the meaty riblets served crusted with dry spice along with wok-sauteed onions, jalapeños and bell peppers.

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é by José Andrés - Las Vegas

If Ferran Adrià is thought of by many as the great inventor of contemporary Spanish cuisine, than José Andrés is surely its great ambassador. Where Adrià, chef of the now-closed el Bulli, has dedicated his culinary career to the relentless pursuit of creativity and creation, Andrés (who trained with Adrià at el Bulli) has been equally dedicated to the promotion of both traditional and contemporary Spanish cooking in the U.S., and has perhaps achieved more recognition and success in doing so than any other chef of the past twenty years.

Andrés opened Jaleo, a tapas bar and restaurant offering a wide range of traditional Spanish regional dishes, in Washington DC in 1993. Before the decade had closed, he was recognized as a James Beard Rising Star Chef, followed in 2003 with an award for Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic. That same year, he opened minibar, which showcased some of the products of the culinary revolution that was overtaking Spain, spearheaded by Adrià and others.

The format of minibar was unique. Described as a "restaurant within a restaurant," physically it was really nothing more than a six-seat sushi bar tucked into a corner of an upper floor of his Café Atlántico restaurant, with a few kitchen tools (circulator, blender, fryer, a couple portable burners) jerry-rigged behind it.^[1] The menu of 25+ small dishes, many of which were one- or two-bite "munchies" or "snacks," was undoubtedly inspired by the sprawling tasting menus of el Bulli. So were many of the dishes themselves, some of which had direct antecedents in Adrià's work. But the "minibar" format also brought another intriguing element - interactivity, with two chefs working directly in front of the diners to do the final preparation and plating of the dishes. With only six seats and only two seatings a night, minibar is perennially one of the toughest reservations to score in DC.

Since opening minibar, Andrés has expanded the geographic scope of his ambassadorship, moving into Los Angeles with The Bazaar in 2008, and into Las Vegas in 2010 with a branch of Jaleo along with China Poblano, both in the Cosmopolitan resort. Also tucked away within Jaleo is é: an 8-seat "restaurant within a restaurant" featuring only a set degustation menu, very much along the same lines as minibar. Virtually nothing is done to promote é: there's just a one-page website listing an email address for reservation requests; it's not even listed on the website of the parent company for Andrés' ventures, Think Food Group. But it's definitely worth knowing about.^[2]

(You can see all my pictures in this é by José Andrés flickr set).

Unlike minibar, where you're literally sitting in a corner of the main dining area, é gets its own private room within Jaleo. The centerpiece is the kitchen bar, a rounded arc with eight seats circled around an open "kitchen" (though it's really more plating than cooking that goes on here).^[3] The effect is decidedly theatrical, and the sense of having stepped into the middle of some sort of performance is enhanced by a space that feels more theater set than dining room, walls lined with card catalog drawers and various knick-knacks. A team of three chefs performs final preparations and plates each of the dishes, which are then handed directly to the diners.^[4]

Much of the cooking at é is what got called, until recently, "molecular gastronomy," and now seems to have taken on the sobriquet of "modernist cuisine." In other words, there's liquid nitrogen, and foams, and lots of other textural transformations at work. I'll circle back to the issue of whether, as some might claim, this style of cooking is already passé in light of the advent of what gets called the "New Naturalism."^[5] I bring it up here only to note that the interactivity and intimacy has an interesting effect: the ability of the diners to see the preparations, hear the story behind each dish as it's presented, and ask questions of the chefs, creates a connection to the food that might not be otherwise established in the same way. It won't necessarily make a dish taste any better, but I think it demystifies food that some find alienating and inaccessible, without taking away any of the novelty of its presentation.

We visited é in late December and they were serving a special holiday menu loaded with luxury ingredients (and priced quite a bit more than the "regular" menu), so the meal you see here may not be entirely representative. Even so, some of my favorite dishes were those with the humblest components.

The meal started, as good meals often do, with a cocktail: a "Gin and Tonic," to be precise. With evaporating liquid nitrogen billowing across the workspace, one of the chefs prepared a gin sorbet a la minute, which was then topped with a tonic froth and a grating of fresh citrus zest - a refreshing rearrangement of the traditional drink.

A collection of little snacks followed.

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P.I.G. 6 [Pork Is Good] - a celebration of all things pig orchestrated by Chef Jeremiah

I'm not usually a big fan of the typical food events where a bunch of restaurants set up stations and everyone lines up to taste a bunch of tepid – usually boring – bites. "P.I.G." (i.e., "Pork Is Good"), which Chef Jeremiah Bullfrog of the gastroPod has now orchestrated for six years running, defies those generally low expectations. In fact, it's one of my favorite Miami food events of the year.

This all started back in 2009 when Jeremiah rounded up a small group of people at Harvey's by the Bay (a bar in an American Legion outpost which backs on to Biscayne Bay) and served them some chicharrones, smoked pork butt char siu bao, and a whole pig rolled porchetta style and roasted in a caja china (all the pics here; you can also see pics from P.I.G. #2, P.I.G. #4, and P.I.G. #5 – I clearly didn't read the Book of Armaments for the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch since I missed #3).

In the years since then, he's made it a collaborative thing, rounding up some of the best chefs in town and some from more far-flung locales, all to riff like on the theme of pig like some culinary supergroup. This year featured some of my favorite folks: Roel Alcudia (now consulting at Fooq's), Aaron Brooks from Edge, Will Crandall from Izzy's, Todd Erickson from Haven, Kurtis Jantz of the Trump Miami, Bradley Kilgore from Alter, Brian Mullins from Ms. Cheezious, Mike Pirolo from Macchialina and Bazi, Patrick Rebholz from Quality Meats, Steve Santana from Taquiza, and James Strine from Café Boulud in Palm Beach, plus special appearances by charcuterie wizards Craig Deihl from Charleston's Cypress and Kyle Foster (Colt & Gray and Rebel in Denver, and formerly Talula here in Miami), plus desserts from Josh Gripper of The Dutch and Giselle Pinto from Sugar Yummy Mama.

Somehow, this event just has good karma: the weather always holds up, there's always a crowd but it never feels crowded, there's no lineups with everyone elbowing each other to get to the food, the drinks flow freely, the chefs all bring their "A" game, and everyone has a good time. In more than three hours I still didn't make my way around to try everything, but here are some highlights (you can see all my pictures in this P.I.G. 6 flickr set):

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The Best Things I Ate in 2023 (Round 1)

"Year in Review" and "Best ..." posts are tired and lazy. I know. But in their (my) defense, they're also an opportunity for some reflection and perspective, a change of pace from the ephemeral but unrelenting blare of most food media these days. When writing these posts, I'm not just trying to tick off some boxes – there's some thought that goes into deciding what dishes really brought the most pleasure and inspiration over the past year, and effort in trying to find words that capture what was special about them, occasionally even some consideration of how they might fit into some grander scheme. Plus, once a year seems to be about the pace I'm capable of maintaining here at FFT these days.

2023 was a big year for Miami dining, as far as recognition beyond our borders. Bon Appetit magazine pronounced Miami its "Food City of the Year," and followed up by naming Val Chang's new Peruvian restaurant, Maty's, one of its Best New Restaurants of 2023. The New York Times included Maty's, along with Smoke & Dough, among its Best Restaurants of 2023 (with a huge splash shot of Maty's tuna tiradito on the cover). Esquire magazine followed suit, including Maty's and Niven Patel's new Erba in its 50 Best New Restaurants. Val and brother Nando (soon to be reopening Itamae as an omakase counter inside Maty's) were both among Food & Wine magazine's Best New Chefs. And for whatever it might mean, Miami entered its second year of being a Michelin-rated town, with one addition (Tambourine Room) to the ten one-stars selected last year, and everyone else retaining their stars (including two-starred L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon).

That kind of attention draws a lot of big-money operators. Major Food Group started with a Carbone clone in South Beach in early 2021, and soon two hands may not be enough to count all their Miami restaurants. Clubster David Grutman (LIV) has become a restaurateur, with over a half-dozen venues under the umbrella of Groot Hospitality, including a team-up with Tao Group on the new Casadonna. Stephen Starr and Keith McNally opened a recreation of their New York faux-French bistro Pastis in Wynwood. Thomas Keller opened a Bouchon Bistro in Coral Gables. Chicago group Lettuce Entertain You opened the Mediterranean Aba in Bal Harbour. Toronto's INK Entertainment Group (which also runs Byblos) opened the Mediterranean Amal in Coconut Grove. Everyone and their brother opened a Mediterranean restaurant with a two-syllable name containing at least one, and preferably two, soft-a sounds in it, this past year.^[1] Then their cousin opened an omakase counter with a $200+ price point.^[2]

But that's not remotely the most interesting segment of the Miami dining universe these days. For me, anyway, what is most exciting to see is the resurgence of small, adventurous restaurants that don't fit into any particular mold. And not just the spots that have (justifiably) gotten so much media attention recently, like Maty's and Erba and Boia De, but pop-ups like Spanish-Japanese QP Tapas, locally-focused EntreNos, pintxos-themed Bar Gilda, Southern brunch specialist Rosie's, and pop-up-turned-permanent Vietnamese gem Tam Tam, plus quirky spots like New Schnitzel House, and Lion and the Rambler, and Aitor Berasaluze's new Edan Bistro in North Miami. Can we swap out some of the "clubstaurants" for more of these? What is the exchange rate?

As is usually the case, I'm way behind the curve. Between travel and returns to old favorites, I made it to about twenty new restaurants in Miami over the past year. Yet the "to-do" list – which is not everything that has opened, only those that actually look interesting to me – still grows ever longer. Roughly half of the dishes on this year's list are locally grown; the rest come from a variety of places we were lucky enough to visit in 2023: Northern California, England, Scotland, Lisbon, Marrakech and Spain.^[3] (You want itineraries? I've got itineraries.)

Without further ado ...

ugly mushroom pasta - Pomet (Oakland)

Early in the year we did an all-East Bay trip to Northern California, making the Moxy in Oakland our base camp and only passing through San Francisco to get to and from the airport. This is not one of those "San Francisco has become a cesspool" screeds (not that Oakland is spared from that stuff), but rather a recognition that some really interesting creative stuff is happening on the other side of the Bay Bridge (also Frod Jr.'s in Oakland). We had a great meal at Pomet, which turns the farm-to-table trope on its head: the restaurant was started by Aomboon Deasy, who runs K&J Orchards and wanted a place to highlight their fantastic produce. She recruited chef Alan Hsu to do the cooking and the results are pretty wonderful, highlighted by this "ugly mushroom" filled pasta smothered in an assortment of trumpets and other mushrooms and some Shared Cultures mirepoix miso butter. An umami bomb in a silky, delicate package. 

(More pics from Pomet)

Hong Kong egg tart - Snail Bar x Gizela Ho (Rich Table) (Oakland)

Our weekend visit to Oakland happily coincided with a pop-up dinner with Gizela Ho, CDC of San Francisco's Rich Table, at the culinarily overachieving wine bar Snail Bar. My favorite thing on the night's menu were these decadent egg tarts, flavored with chamomile and hazelnut oil, topped with oscetra caviar, and adorned with a garland of marigold petals – a traditional dish twisted in the service of new flavors. What is maybe most refreshing about the wave of new spots in the East Bay – like Pomet, Snail Bar, Day Trip, Burdell, Lion Dance Cafe – is that they aim for a more casual vibe and lower price point than the high-end temples of gastronomy that have become increasingly common in S.F., while still maintaining the focus on interesting, delicious cooking with high-quality ingredients.

(More pics from Snail Bar x Gisela Ho)

Pintxo Matrimonio, Txangurro - Jaguar Sun x Ernesto's (Miami)

Back home, but sticking with the pop-up theme: early in the year, Carey Hynes and Will Thompson of Jaguar Sun did a great series of collaboration dinners at Understory in Little River. The couple I made it to were both great experiences – a seafood-themed one with Ben Sukle of Oberlin in Providence, R.I.^[4], and this Basque-themed one with Ryan Bartlow of N.Y.'s Ernesto's. There were lots of good things this night, including gambas de Palamos and a rice with rabbit, mushrooms and truffles, but what really resonated for me was this very traditional pintxos platter: a "matrimonio" of black and white anchovies over a puff pastry baton, and a "txangurro" tart filled with sweet, tender blue crab cooked with a sofrito of tomato and onion. These were every bit the equal of the pintxos we had during our end-of-year trip to San Sebastian.

(More pics from Jaguar Sun x Ernesto's)

Celeriac, Brown Crab & Apple - Inver (Strathlachlan, Scotland)

Some meals are inseparable from the environment in which they are served. Sometimes it's because the kitchen is dedicated to sourcing from surrounding lands and waters, creating a literal connection to the environment. Sometimes it's because the locale itself is so special that it is indelibly attached to the experience. And sometimes it's both. Inver Restaurant & Rooms, in Strathlachlan, Scotland, is one of those that fits both descriptions. Our drive to Inver, situated along the Loch Fyne a couple hours west of Glasgow, proceeded along an increasingly narrow road that at one point became so wee I wasn't sure I hadn't somehow detoured onto a hiking path. Upon arriving, we found ourselves at the foot of a marsh, gazing out onto the water with the ruins of the old Castle Lachlan in the distance. What a setting.

Lodging is provided in very comfortable, contemporary bothies along the marsh; dinner is served in a spare, simple house at the end of the path. It is all exceedingly local and exceedingly delicious, like this dish with a sort of mille-feuille of celery root topped by a rich mousse of brown crab, batons of celery root and apple alongside. I could have just as easily gone with maybe the most humble, straightforward dish I was served all year: a cup of a frothy bread and butter broth with an incredibly deep, savory flavor.

You can find tasting menus stuffed with foie gras, caviar, and wagyu in just about any metropolitan city, and so many of them are going to feel exactly like each other no matter where they are. You can find roughly a dozen omakase venues just in Miami which serve fish and seafood shipped direct from the Japanese markets. What is truly rare, and special, is the meal you simply cannot get anywhere else. This is the kind of restaurant experience I'm increasingly drawn to: a place with a sense of *place*.  

(More pics from Inver)

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best dishes of 2017: part 2

We started last Friday with my "best dishes of 2017: part 1" – a compendium of personal favorites from the past year. We resume here with a highly pedigreed fried chicken sandwich, take quick treks through New York and Philadelphia, then detour back to Miami before swinging out to the west coast.

fried chicken cemita - La Pollita

La Pollita was a short-lived Mexican-themed pop-up run from a trailer in the Midtown Garden Center by Luciana Giangrandi and Alex Meyer, who had previously worked at such places as Eleven Madison Park, NoMad, Scarpetta and Animal (read my thoughts and see more pictures in this La Pollita flickr set). The trailer is gone but the duo still seem to be kicking around Miami – I'm looking forward to what's next from them.

They've got a short list of tacos, served on fresh tortillas pressed from masa supplied by Miami masa maestro Steve Santana (of Taquiza), and the cochinita pibil I tried was very good. But the standout item was the fried chicken cemita. A hot, crispy, juicy tranche of fried chicken. A crunchy, vinegar-laced, herb-flecked cabbage slaw. A dollop of mashed avocado for some richness. A creamy, mildly spicy Valentina aioli. A sesame-seed flecked bun with just the right heft: substantial enough to be a meaningful component of the sandwich composition and to keep everything together until the last bite; but not so much as to overwhelm the stars of the show. It is just about perfect.

sea urchin, chickpea hozon - Momofuku Ko

Hey, look, it's another great meal I never got around to writing about, at David Chang's Momofuku Ko, where the kitchen is run by Sean Gray (see more pictures in this Momofuku Ko flickr set). I never got to the original incarnation of Ko, legendary for its relatively affordable tasting menus, brutally uncomfortable stools, and impossible reservation system. In its newer digs down a tiny East Village street literally called "Extra Place," it retains some of its original punk sensibilities – the dining counter circling an open kitchen, the cooks presenting the dishes, the hip-hop soundtrack – but it's all pretty buffed and polished, kind of like a Gucci biker jacket.

The tasting menu still carries a couple of the original Ko classics – the "Ko egg" with caviar, crispy potatoes, onion soubise and sweet potato vinegar, the shaved frozen foie gras – but one of my favorites of the evening was a next generation Ko dish. It's deceptively simple: lobes of cold, sweet sea urchin, a scoop of chickpea hozon (a creamy, miso-like fermented paste), a drizzle of grassy olive oil. There's a subtle contrast of marine salty-sweet against earthy salty-sweet; of the delicately creamy texture of the uni against the thicker, peanut butter-y hozon, mirrored by the two orange shades on the plate. Pretty cool.

cherry blossom, amazake - Momofuku Ko

Another of my favorites at Ko was another deceptively simple composition: a dessert of cherry blossom dusted ice cream, served over creamy, sweet amazake (rice fermented with sake lees or koji), drizzled with a sauce of preserved cherries. It was simultaneously delicate but powerful, homey but elegant.

carrot crepe, littleneck clam, sunflower - Olmsted

Olmsted, Greg Baxtrom's Brooklyn restaurant with a backyard garden that does double-duty as a pre- and post-meal hangout spot, has been much talked about (see more pictures in this Olmsted flickr set). In a way, all the chatter possibly sets expectations a bit too high, for what is just a really fun, delicious, casual, cozy, clever, relatively affordable neighborhood spot run by someone with chops honed at Alinea, Blue Hill at Stone Barns, Per Se, and Arzak. The menu changes all the time – they were on a yakitori bender during our visit, while also serving Hyderabadi inspired duck chakna, truffle-dusted rutabaga "tagliatelle," and simple but delicious sauteed soft-shell crab with pickled peppers and ranch dressing  – but this one dish seems to have become a signature, and for good reason. A goldenrod hued carrot crepe serves as the platform for a salad of wispy slivers of multi-colored carrots, petals, sprouts, and sunflower seeds, concealing a rich clam and carrot stew underneath. It's unusual, unexpected, and delicious.

tout le lapin - Le Coucou

Daniel Rose's path was a somewhat unusual one. The Chicago native was inspired to move to Lyon to study cooking after taking classes at the American University in Paris. After years at the Institut Bocuse and apprenticeships around France, he opened his first restaurant – Spring – in Paris. It wasn't until a decade later that he returned to the States to open Le Coucou in New York with Stephen Starr (see more pictures in this Le Coucou flickr set). In a way, the place makes it feel like the last couple decades of dining history never happened. There are pressed white tablecloths and long wax tapers on the tables; the menu isn't a collage of small plates, but good old fashioned hors d'oeuvres, poissons et viandes (though a category of "gourmandises" features otherwise uncategorized indulgences like quennelles de brochet and veal tongue with caviar).

But the cooking is more precise, focused, bright and clean than the butter and cream laden juggernauts of the older era that Le Coucou otherwise invokes. And nowhere was that more evident than in a dish called "tout le lapin" (all the rabbit), a production which comes to the table in three different serving vessels (the picture here is better focused, but this one gives a view of the whole spread). The saddle is rolled and cooked and then sliced into rounds which are seared and browned, then napped with a loose sauce that takes the ferrous richness of rabbit offal, cuts it with an acidic vinaigrette, and brightens it with fresh mint. Alongside is a gratin dish of the rabbit's legs cooked down with soft, sweet onions. And finally, a pot au feu of the foreleg, in a golden broth bobbing with carrots and turnips. It's all wonderful.

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The Best Things I Ate in 2020 (Part 2)

My last post, Part 1 of The Best Things I Ate in 2020, began in a blissful time before a virus turned the world upside and vigorously shook it. Restaurant meals! Tasting menus! Travel! Things I always appreciated, but also kind of took for granted. Not any more. It's been a crazy, brutal year. In the restaurant world, there have been some unfortunate losses along the way, but I've actually been surprised and gratified by how many places have somehow been able to weather this long, extended storm. Part 2 of this list picks up in the early phases of the pandemic, when shutdown orders limited all restaurants to takeout and delivery only. 

pork chops and polenta @ home

With restaurants basically shut down, we found ourselves doing a lot more cooking at home. We also found ourselves with the opportunity to work with much better product than we were accustomed to, despite the shutdown. Restaurants started selling staples and straight-from-the-farm produce, restaurant suppliers started selling direct to individual customers, shops like Proper Sausages starting offering delivery options. The end result? A home-cooked dinner that takes a village: porchetta-spiced Proper pork chops rubbed with fennel, rosemary, garlic and lemon and dusted with fennel pollen, Moretti polenta from the Boia De larder cooked in mushroom broth, locally grown Paradise Farms oyster mushrooms via the All Day grocery, brined local tomatoes from Chef Jeremiah. I don't know that my cooking skills got any better, but the materials I could work with sure did.

Midday Snack - El Bagel (Upper Eastside)

After a very successful run of selling their excellent, chewy, crusty bagels at pop-ups and from a food truck for years, El Bagel took the big step of graduating to a brick and mortar location in the MiMo District – opening in early March, just in time for the shutdown. Rotten luck, but they executed their pivot quickly and effectively. They're now open Thursday through Monday from 8am to noon for takeout only, with all ordering done online and pickup times given via text notice. Between the easy ordering and geographical proximity, this has worked out incredibly conveniently for me: over the past nine months, my receipts indicate that Family Frod has consumed nearly twenty dozen El Bagel bagels.^[1] I usually just get a dozen plus some cream cheeses and lox, but occasionally I'll get one of their prepared sandwiches. My current favorite is this "Midday Snack," with lox cream cheese, thinly sliced ringlets of red onion, and chives, served open-faced as God intended, and best with an addition of smoked trout roe when available. (All my pictures from El Bagel).

pastrami sandwich - Hometown Barbecue (Allapattah)

I didn't need a pandemic to remind me how much I love sandwiches – I actually wrote on the subject late last year for Edible South Florida – but 2020 did turn out to be pretty sandwich-intensive. One of my favorites was this simple, perfect pastrami sandwich from Hometown Barbecue, which opened in Allapattah last fall. Don't try to trace the spiral path of a pastrami sandwich served at a Texas-style BBQ spot opened in a wholesale produce distribution center in Miami by a Brooklyn restaurateur. Just enjoy. (All my pictures from Hometown Barbecue).

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McCrady's - Charleston, South Carolina

For at least a couple years, I've been building a proposed itinerary for what I call the Grand Southern Dining Tour. At its most elaborate, it would go up Florida's east coast en route to Charleston, South Carolina,^[1] keep going to Raleigh, North Carolina,^[2] then possibly head further north to Richmond, Virginia^[3] before detouring west to Louisville, Kentucky,^[4] then work back the long way to South Florida by way of Nashville, Tennessee,^[5] Asheville, North Carolina^[6] and Atlanta, Georgia.^[7]

Of course, that's never going to actually happen. I just don't have the time to devote to such a lengthy dining and driving agenda. But maybe it can be done in bits and pieces. My first step in that direction was a short visit to Charleston before the New Year, and the first reservation I booked was at McCrady's.

If you've paid any attention to the national food media the past few years, it is extremely unlikely that you've not heard of McCrady's and its master of ceremonies, Sean Brock. More than any other chef, he's been the face and voice of the "New South," what Josh Ozersky, with his knack for coining a phrase, dubbed "Lardcore" cooking, bringing modernist sensibilities and techniques to traditional Southern ingredients.

But what makes Brock's cooking so special is not that he understands how to use xanthan gum and liquid nitrogen. It's that he understands how to do something truly special with food: make it tell a story. At McCrady's, and perhaps even more so at his newer restaurant, Husk, he weaves a tale of the South Carolina low-country and the surrounding areas: the history, the traditions, the products of the land and sea.

(You can see all my pictures in this McCrady's flickr set, or click on any picture to enlarge.)

Part of what makes that story so compelling is how deeply Brock has ingrained himself into its telling: he raises his own pigs and cures his own hams. He farms some of the produce that is used in his restaurants. He's a dedicated seed saver who has personally helped preserve heirloom varietals that are part of the South's culinary heritage. He literally has a cornucopia of local products tattooed on his arm. But it would all just be a history lesson but for the fact that Brock's food is also flat out delicious.

We visited both McCrady's and Husk on our four-day Charleston visit. I was glad we did. Though they both bear Brock's indelible imprint, they are different restaurants: Husk somewhat more strictly faithful to the Southern idiom, McCrady's less constrained to the genre.

Here is the tasting menu we had in late December at McCrady's, in a warm, inviting dining room imbued with the glow of a crackling fireplace:

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best dishes of 2018 - part 3

herbed tostada - Willows Inn

We're already a few weeks deep into 2019, but I'm still writing 2018 on my blog posts. Here's the last round of my personal "best dishes of 2018," which starts at one of my favorite places on earth, then spends the rest of its time back here in sunny South Florida. You can read Part 1 and Part 2 here. Happy New Year, all!

smoked black cod doughnuts - Willows Inn

smoked sockeye salmon - Willows Inn

heirloom wheat bread, crab brain - Willows Inn

fruits and their leaves and kernels - Willows Inn

In late summer we made our third pilgrimage to Blaine Wetzel's Willows Inn on Lummi Island, a tiny speck on the map among the San Juan Islands off the coast of Washington State. Our first visit was almost exactly five years earlier, in 2013, and we fell in love – not just with the restaurant, which is wonderful, but with the idyllic, tranquil island itself. This latest meal was our best yet at Willows. (More pictures, of dinner and also of Lummi Island, in this Willows Inn flickr set).

It's unusual for a restaurant to have multiple "signature" dishes, but several from Willows Inn could easily be called that: the "tostada" crafted from a tempura-fried mustard leaf, smeared with an oyster and herb emulsion and festooned with everything fresh and blooming from the garden, a different burst of flavor in every bite; the puffy donuts stuffed with smoked black cod, sprinkled with sea salt and dried seaweed; the perfect smoked salmon, about which I said five years ago: "You realize: this is the best salmon you are ever going to eat in your life." I didn't consider at the time: you can always go back. This time was just maybe even better.

The other dishes pictured here reflect how Wetzel so effectively captures place and time, location and season. During our first two visits, a hearty bread course was one of the highlights, in large part because it came with a ramekin of rich, sticky chicken drippings for dipping. This time, instead of chicken drippings, there was a crab carapace – from nearby waters, of course^[1] – filled with bits of warm crabmeat covered in a thick blanket of creamy crab brains, with an intense but clean and pure taste of the sea. Frod Jr. told me months later he was still thinking about how good this was. Yup. Dessert was pretty magical too: an assortment of fruits captured at their peak of ripeness, paired up with something else from the same fruit: peaches and blackberries with ices made from their leaves, plums in a syrup of their kernels, obscenely fresh figs right off the tree with a fig leaf cream.

When I win the lottery – or maybe even if I don't – this is where you'll find me one day.

lobster thermidor - The Surf Club Restaurant

I might have ruffled a few feathers when I said in Eater that the biggest dining surprise of 2018 was how boring the menu was at The Surf Club Restaurant:

The space is gorgeous, the service is outstanding, the execution is precise, but the choices are just ... so ... dull. I get the whole “throwback” theme, and it provides some highlights (the Oysters Rockefeller are second only to Galatoire’s IMO, and I thought the Lobster Thermidor was great), and I like going there. But when I heard we were getting a Thomas Keller restaurant, and when he brought in a creative, talented chef like Manuel Echeverri, who was doing great things at Bazaar Mar, to run the kitchen – well, I was hoping for something more.

The truth is, I have ambivalent feelings about the Surf Club. I've thoroughly enjoyed my three visits there; just not so much for the food, which has been good, but not particularly memorable. I expected more things like the Lobster Thermidor, an Escoffier classic which frankly I'd never had a particularly good example of until this one. Instead of the typical stodgy spackle mounded into a lobster shell, this version held some surprises: a ragout of lobster meat and vegetables plus a thin sheet of crispy puff pastry concealed under a burnished blanket of cream and cheese, the perfume of tarragon wafting from within, all serving as the bed for a precisely cooked lobster tail, some preserved morels providing a rich, woodsy counterpoint which acted as a bridge for the aromatic red Burg that wine director Zach Gossard generously poured for me. More like this, please.

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