Cobaya Obra with Chef Carlos Garcia

For years, Chef Carlos Garcia ran what was generally regarded as one of the top dining destinations in Latin America in his hometown of Caracas, Venezuela. Between 2013-2016, his restaurant Alto was a regular on the Pellegrino "Latin America's 50 Best Restaurants" list. But Venezuela, wracked by political and economic strife, has been a challenging place to live, much less run a restaurant. Like many others fortunate enough to have the opportunity, Garcia found a second home here in Miami, opening a restaurant in Brickell, Obra Kitchen Table, last year.

Despite everything happening at home, Garcia has managed to keep Alto open while running Obra here – no easy feat amidst protests, government clampdowns, and food shortages. He also helps operate Barriga Llena Corazón Contento (Full Belly Happy Heart), an organization that supplies free meals to children in Venezuela, and Recipes for Change, which teams up local chefs, farmers and others to serve people in need here in South Florida. Somewhere in there, he found time to put on a dinner for Cobaya, gathering thirty diners around the counter at Obra for a seven-course dinner.^[1]

(You can see all my pictures in this Cobaya Obra with Chef Carlos Garcia flickr set).

I really love the layout at Obra, where there's a smattering of tables in front, but the bulk of the seating is at a long, three-sided counter that surrounds the open kitchen, a variation on the sort of horseshoe type counter you would find in old diners like S&S.

Chef Garcia started the meal with some snacks: a puffy arepita topped with sea urchin and guasacaca sauce (a Venezuelan staple that I think of as either a salsa verde bolstered with avocado, or a very loose guacamole), and some feathery, crisp chicharrones for scooping up a cauliflower cream enriched with a generous dollop of trout roe. A great start.

To follow, a whole Japanese eggplant (here's where you can make an entirely appropriate use of the 🍆 emoji), basted in beet juice and red wine before being roasted until it's all supple and silky inside. The menu listed this as "eggplant + goat cheese + red wine," but those toasts were instead topped with foie gras butter – a substitution I fully support. While foie often gets matched up with sweet, fruity flavors, I really enjoy when it gets to play with more savory, vegetal elements.

Chef Garcia called his tostone a "toast/ton," which he then topped with ribbons of fresh raw tuna, avocado, jalapeño, and a spicy guava sauce.

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first thoughts: Nisei | Brickell (Miami)

It's been quiet here at FFT, which is partly just the result of lots of other stuff going on; but it's also a sign that there's not been anything in the Miami food world that's gotten me excited enough to post. Happily, the latter of those issues got fixed this weekend.

The fix was a dinner at "Nisei," a pop-up dinner series which is taking up residence for a couple evening weekends at B Bistro + Bakery^[1] in Brickell. It's the product of chef Fernando Chang, who had previously worked at 26 Sushi & Tapas in Surfside, together with Eric Saltzman (formerly of Taquiza and now at Dizengoff),^[2] and features an omakase menu of Nikkei dishes fusing Peruvian and Japanese flavors. While this style of cooking is nothing new in Peru, where Japanese culinary influences have long held sway, Nisei's menu brought some smart new ideas and really nice execution, particularly considering our visit was on only the second night of service.

(You can see all my pictures in this Nisei - Miami (Brickell) flickr set).

The meal starts in mostly Peruvian territory: a ceviche of fresh locally caught grouper, marinated in lime juice and bright, spicy aji limo,^[3] and flecked with slivered purple onions and cilantro. It's easy to find ceviche in Miami – it's not nearly as easy to find one this fresh and clean.

The next dish nods to both Peru and Japan: the fried shiso leaf is an item you'll find at Japanese tempura houses, but the sandy texture of the crisp fried shell is borrowed from jalea, a classic Peruvian fried seafood dish. The leaf practically dissolves in one bite and a shatter of crumbs, and is served with a sauce that melds sarza criolla (an onion-forward salsa) and aji amarillo. It's good, but what I really want is for them to sandwich some uni in between a couple shiso leaves and then fry it (like so).

The next dish, maguro don, makes it all the way over to Japan, with a stop-off in Korea. Ribbons of lean tuna are mounted on a sheet of soft nori, nestled over short grain rice and kimuchi (an unfermented Japanese style kimchi), amped up with the rippling heat of Peruvian rocoto chile (Peru's not been abandoned entirely) and then rounded out with a bit of honey.

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first thoughts: Dashi | Miami River

Last month, I had the good fortune to be invited to an event at the Japanese Consulate in Miami, extolling the virtues of washoku, or the traditional cuisine of Japan. The event was hosted by the gracious consul general, Ken Okaniwa, but the headliner was chef Shuji Hiyakawa, who provided a live-action sushi-making display.

I had a feeling we were in good hands when Chef Hiyakawa started with the preparation of the rice, noting how every component is essential to the finished product: the blend of two vinegars he uses to season the rice, the wooden bowl in which it's prepared, which retains the right amount of heat and absorbs the right amount of excess liquid, the manner in which it's mixed, so that all the grains are seasoned, and neither too starchy nor too loose.

With the rice made, he went on to break down an entire loin of bluefin tuna. Given the depleted state of the species, I really would have preferred to see just about anything else on the cutting board. I suppose between its immense popularity in Japan, and its increasing popularity here in the U.S., and many diners' lack of understanding of the different cuts sourced from the same fish – the fattiest o-toro, the medium-fatty chu-toro, and the lean maguro – I understand why they would choose this for the demo. But particularly given the traditional washoku theme, I would have been grateful for a presentation on the virtues of the many other varieties of fish and seafood that can be made into sushi. After all, the bluefin obsession is actually a relatively recent thing – in Japan, it was mostly thought of as a trash fish until the 1970's (for further reading: "From Cat Food to Sushi Counter: the Strange Rise of the Bluefin Tuna," which is mostly based on  Trevor Corson's book, "The Story of Sushi").

Nonetheless, it was an informative demonstration, and even better, was followed by an assortment of prepared dishes, which were accompanied by more than a dozen Japanese sakes, none of which are currently available for distribution in the U.S.

(More pictures from the event in this Culinary Secrets of Traditional Washoku flickr set).

As it turns out, this would not be the only opportunity to try Chef Hiyakawa's handiwork; he was only weeks away from opening his own restaurant in Miami. The chef, who hails from Fukuoka, Japan (where his father had a noodle shop), came to the U.S. to work for Masaharu Morimoto at his flagship Philadelphia restaurant, where he was executive sushi chef for several years. More recently, he wound his way to South Florida, until recently working as executive sushi chef at Kuro in the Hard Rock. He's now running his own place, Dashi, in a space inside the River Yacht Club.

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

While his demo at the Japanese Consulate may have focused on traditional Japanese cuisine, Chef Hiyakawa's restaurant bridges old and new. In addition to nearly two dozen sushi and sashimi options, the menu includes prepared dishes that are both traditional (wagyu beef sukiyaki) and contemporary (white fish tiradito with sudachi juice and olive oil).

We sampled a couple of these prepared dishes while awaiting our sushi order. A salad of cha-soba (green tea noodles) was speckled with edamame, batons of asparagus, and slivers of shiitake mushroom steeped in soy sauce, all napped in a lightweight but umami-loaded variation of the restaurant's namesake dashi broth. A "House Poke Salad" was a rather un-poke-like but tasty combination of cubed tuna, tomatoes, avocado, cucumbers, and micro-greens in a ginger and miso dressing. It was a pretty sparse plate to bear a $25 price tag.

Mrs. F and I ordered an assortment of sushi which was presented all at once (pictured at top). Our order included kinmedai (golden eye snapper), madai (sea bream), hamachi (amberjack a/k/a yellowtail), aji (horse mackerel), shima aji (striped horse mackerel), masu kunsei (smoked sea trout), sake (salmon), botan ebi (sweet shrimp), ika (squid), anago (sea eel) and tamago (omelet). You see? There are a million wonderful things in the sea to eat other than bluefin tuna.

There were a few things I really liked about this.

First, Dashi's rice is indeed very good: well seasoned but not overwhelmingly so, with each grain distinct on your tongue, neither dry nor overly moist and clumpy. This was all the more impressive given that an order of this size, served all at once, necessarily has to sit for a time as each piece is being assembled (more on that later). Second, each piece was already brushed with nikiri, a glaze usually made of some combination of soy sauce, mirin, dashi and sake. Our server actually discouraged the use of a soy sauce dipping bowl at the table, as each piece had already been properly seasoned. Some also had been given a little extra garnish – a daub of miso on the salmon, freshly grated ginger on the aji, a shiso leaf tucked under the ika and a sprinkle of black salt on top. And finally, the fish – much of which is flown in from Japan, with its particular provenance listed on the menu (hamachi from Kyushu, kinmedai from Chiba, shima aji from Wakayama) – was very good.

A couple pieces of our order – the uni and the ikura, both from Hokkaido – were served separately in little bowls, with a small mound of rice, a sheet of nori, and the neta, almost like a free-form nigiri or a miniature donburi. This was kind of perfect, as I often treat these as my "dessert," and they were a couple of the best bites of the evening,

It's not Naoe level quality, but Dashi is probably close to on par with what I've had at Makoto or Myumi. Prices are steep, even more so than Makoto, which ain't cheap: other than the tamago on the low end and Hokkaido uni on the high end, our order ran between $7-10 per piece, compared to mostly $5-7 per piece at Makoto. They have a nice selection of sakes and Japanese beers to accompany your dinner, as well as some Japanese inspired cocktails.

Dashi's location, as a sort of restaurant-inside-a-restaurant within the River Yacht Club,^[1] is itself a draw, with a vista that looks across the Miami River in one direction towards downtown and in the other towards Brickell, including the recently re-lit "Miami Line" designed by artist Rockne Krebs which stretches along the Metrorail bridge. Unfortunately, there is one glaring omission from the design of the restaurant, which otherwise is a pretty slick and scenic indoor-outdoor space: there's no sushi bar. And not to sound like a prima donna, but this is very nearly a deal-breaker for me. If you want good sushi, there's simply no substitute for being right at the counter, with each piece passed across to you as it's made. The rice can be packed looser, the neta doesn't sit and dry out as other pieces are made; it's just impossible to duplicate that when you're making a dozen pieces at a time which sit for several minutes before they get to the table.^[2]

But the combination of good food and a waterfront view is surprisingly elusive in Miami; it's a combination Dashi achieves, if you're willing to take the view as a trade-off for the absence of a sushi bar, and pay a premium for it.

Dashi
401 SW 3rd Avenue, Miami, Florida
786.870.5304

^[1] This is an intriguing piece of property, situated on the Brickell side of the Miami River nearly underneath I-95 and next to Jose Marti Park.The main restaurant there apparently has a "rotating chefs-in-residence" program, though what I mostly noticed while walking through to Dashi was the "untz untz" music and what appeared to be a session of Advanced White People Dancing Badly on the outdoor dance floor.

^[2] Of course, the converse isn't necessarily true either: everything can get screwed up even when you're right at the sushi bar. A few weeks ago I visited another recently opened Miami sushi den, which had a beautiful 8-seat sushi counter manned by five hard-working sushi chefs. It also had one of the most interesting and exotic selections of fish that I've seen offered in Miami. Unfortunately, the rice was so bad – dry, under-seasoned, stiff – and much of the fish was also so dried out and consequently lacking flavor, that I'm reluctant to even give the place a second try. It's a shame, because it was an ambitious and exciting assortment that otherwise would be right in my sweet spot.

Cobaya SoBeWFF 2017 with Chefs Brad Kilgore, Jeremiah Stone, Fabian Von Hauske and Jean-Luc Royere

It was a little more than five years ago that we did a Cobaya dinner at Azul restaurant in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel which included a special guest: Andrew Zimmern of the TV show Bizarre Foods, who ended up featuring the dinner on the show.There was another special attendee that night, but he wasn't very well known at the time, and he wasn't in the dining room – he was in the kitchen. Joel Huff's sous chef at Azul was Bradley Kilgore, who had come to Miami to work at Azul after spending time with some of Chicago's finest: Alinea, Laurent Gras's L2O, Boka.

Brad was actually part of what drew us to Azul in the first place, with his online updates of what was happening in the kitchen. Zimmern has a pretty keen eye for talent too, and even though Brad was third in command in that kitchen, by the end of the night Zimmern had bestowed a nickname on him: "Wall Street," for the Gordon Gekko-esque slicked-back look he sported at the time.

Eager to see what Brad could do on his own, several months later a few of us organized a one-off dinner at Azul where we gave him free rein. He killed it – his "anatomy of a suckling pig" remains a benchmark for me when it comes to nose-to-tail utilization. Shortly afterwards, his career path took him away from Azul: a brief gig as head chef at a tough location on Key Biscayne, then to a much better gig at the St. Regis Bal Harbour for Jean-Georges Vongerichten's J&G Grill, then, nearly two years ago, to open his own place in Wynwood: Alter.

Brad Kilgore a/k/a "Wall Street" circa 2012

At Alter, all of his potential has been fully realized. The food is some of the best I've ever eaten in Miami, and recognition has been both voluminous and well-deserved: last year Brad was named one of Food & Wine magazine's Best New Chefs; and his restaurant, Alter, was a semifinalist for the James Beard Foundation Best New Restaurant award (a national category), and was included in Eater's list of the 21 Best New Restaurants in America.

Jeremiah Stone and Brad Kilgore, circa 2017

So for the third Cobaya dinner we've done in conjunction with the South Beach Wine and Food Festival, we orchestrated something of a reunion, bringing Brad back to Azul to cook for an evening. Kilgore looked pretty comfortable back in the kitchen where it all started for him in Miami, and even slicked his hair back for the occasion.

Joining him were the Mandarin's head chef, Jean-Luc Royere, and a couple New York City chefs whose careers have followed a very similar trajectory of late: Jeremiah Stone and Fabian Von Hauske, of Contra and Wildair.

Stone and Von Hauske were also included in that 2016 F&W list of Best New Chefs; their new restaurant, Wildair, was a Beard Best New Restaurant finalist, and was on that same Eater Best New Restaurants list (their first restaurant, Contra, was on the list in 2014 when it opened as well).^[1] Kindred spirits.

(You can see all my pictures from the dinner in this Cobaya SOBEWFF 2017 flickr set).

Each of the teams contributed one of the passed appetizers which made their way around the room as guests arrived. From Royere, tranches of tuna cured in kombu and wrapped in fragrant shiso leaves, concealing tiny finger lime sacs that provide a citric pop as you chew. From Kilgore, a spoon of greenish-hued olive oil "snow," garnished with green apple, a sliver of serrano chili, and a dollop of caviar – a lot of flavor in one bite.^[2] And from Stone and Von Hauske, a local specialty – stone crab claws – garnished in an unorthodox way, with smoked pepper and feathery flakes of chicharrones.^[3]



Once everyone was settled into their tables, dinner got started with Stone's course: raw shrimp and lobster, hidden away under a mosaic of thinly sliced butternut squash and sage leaves. It was an odd dish, and I say that with a fondness for odd things. The seafood was sweet and soft and fatty, the squash – still raw, or if cooked, just barely – was firm and earthy, and the sage's strong, camphor aroma cut its way through every bite.

Brad followed with a super-soigne version of an izakaya staple: kama, or fish collar. Here, he used kanpachi, a smaller variety of amberjack, which he smoked and flavored with koji miso (Brad told me it was quite a process to gather enough collars for the 80+ covers at our dinner). The collar meat may be the most lush and fatty on the fish, and here it came out all supple and silky, like a cross between smoked sable and Nobu's famous miso cod. Even better, he topped each plate with a big, puffy black truffle cracker, made with tapioca and a pound of Urbani truffles. I was dubious that the flavor would carry through in that format, but I guess it works out just fine if you use enough truffles. It was a great dish.

Royere's Azul crew had been tending to slabs of beef on Korin binchotan charcoal grills for a good part of the evening, and we finally got to see the result. Fat, crimson slices of lush Japanese A5 wagyu beef were anointed with a miso bordelaise, and plated with roasted maitake mushrooms, a purée of golden caramelized onions, and a light smoked potato espuma. My only disappointment was that after a week of eating while on vacation (we got back from Paris the night before the dinner), I lacked the appetite to finish it.

Dessert was turned over to Fabian Von Hauske, who handles the pastry chef responsibilities at Contra and Wildair. Like Stone's course, this was odd, in a good way: halved grapes and a sweet-tart grape soup (not quite viscous or sweet enough to be called a syrup), with a dollop of a rich, pink-hued coconut and grape semifreddo, simultaneously fruity and creamy and tart, dappled with some olive oil for a little extra richness.

There was something particularly fitting about having Brad back in the kitchen at Azul, where he started in Miami and where Cobaya had its fifteen minutes as well (OK, not quite that, maybe ten minutes of airtime). The only one missing was Zimmern (who cooked for our first two Cobaya / SOBEWFF collaborations), though he made his own visit to Alter a couple weeks later.

It was even better to have the wonderfully creative talents of Jeremiah Stone and Fabian Von Hauske sharing that kitchen, along with our gracious host, Jean-Luc Royere, and the rest of his crew at Azul (some of whom, at least in the front of  house, were veterans of our Cobaya dinner from five years ago). Thanks as well to Jeffrey Stambor, director of winemaking at Beaulieu Vineyards, who supplied the pairings for the evening, to the crew at SOBEWFF, and as always, to the guinea pigs whose interest and support make these kind of events possible.

^[1] We were supposed to have Curtis Duffy of Chicago's Grace as well, but he backed out.

^[2] In a nod to the great Quince iPad Plate Kerfuffle of Late 2016, these spoons were served from iPads which had a rotating display of logos from SoBeWFF and the chefs' restaurants.

^[3] The printed menu also listed sumac crackers with blood and Flagsheep cheese, which sounds awesome, but either I missed them or they never made it out.

first thoughts: Bazaar Mar | Brickell (Miami)

It occurred to me that I've been to an awful lot of José Andrés' restaurants: minibar many years ago, back when it was a jerry-rigged six-seat counter in the middle of Café Atlantico, not a Michelin two-star restaurant; Jaleo in D.C., é and China Poblano in Las Vegas, Bazaar here in Miami Beach. This revelation was prompted when our waiter at Bazaar Mar, his latest in the SLS Brickell hotel, asked that routine question, "Have you eaten here before?" and then followed up by asking if we've eaten at any of José's other restaurants.^[1]

One of the challenges of expanding a restaurant empire – especially when you're adding another outlet in the same territory – is coming up with different concepts so you're not just cannibalizing your own business. But Andrés never seems to be lacking for ideas, with more than a dozen different restaurants under his ThinkFoodGroup umbrella. So I was somewhat surprised that when Andrés announced his second Miami restaurant, it was "Bazaar Mar," when he already has The Bazaar ten miles away in South Beach.

But with my "Brickell Aversion," surely I of all people ought to recognize that Brickell and South Beach can be entirely separate worlds these days. And while there is some overlap between the two places, there's actually enough distinguishing them that you could eat at Bazaar one night and Bazaar Mar the next and have entirely different meals.

(You can see all my pictures in this Bazaar Mar - Miami flickr set).

As the name indicates, Bazaar Mar has a seafood focus, and if the name didn't clue you in, the decor will. The entire space is covered in bright white tiles painted with blue nautical motifs of sailors and mermaids and sea monsters. A few gigantic horned fish heads – I'm guessing these are designed by Mikel Urmeneta, who also did the bulls' heads in Bazaar – are mounted around the dining room. The somewhat odd layout effectively has two dining rooms – one wide-open space in front, another more cloistered space in back, each of which has a raw bar counter and a view of the open kitchen at the pivot point between them. A tank loaded with live seafood runs in front of the kitchen. To the right of the entrance, a cozy bar is done up in the same nautical motifs but with a dramatic black and gold color scheme. It's a nice place to pre-game for your meal with an "Ultimate Gin and Tonic" or a liquid nitrogen frozen caipirinha slushie.

The menu can be fairly daunting, with somewhere around sixty items all told. Most of these are small plates, though, some of them just one- or two-biters, so you easily get four or five dishes per person and sample a wide cross-section. Here's how we navigated our first visit:

To start, a little tribute to Andrés' most influential mentor, Ferran Adrià – Adrià's signature spherified olives, the little gushers marinated in olive oil spiked with citrus zest and piparra peppers.

Once, I somehow got invited to some sort of fashion event at The Bazaar on South Beach. It was not exactly a crowd that was focused on the food. So while they milled about admiring each other's clothes and sniffing the air, I perched myself next to a counter where a guy was carving slices from a leg of jamón ibérico and dolloping them with osetra caviar to make what's known as a "José Taco." I must have eaten a dozen of those things. For Bazaar Mar, José has created a variation on the theme, with slices of lightly cured hamachi brushed with ibérico ham fat, topped with osetra caviar, minced ginger and sesame seeds, all cradled on a sheet of crispy seaweed.

These smoked salmon macarons, with dilled cream cheese and a couple pearls of salmon roe on top, an amuse bouche from the kitchen, were perfectly executed and delicious. There were every bit as good when our server brought us a couple more toward the end of our meal. I expect they're going to find their way onto the menu and stay there.

Atop that whimsical octopus pedestal pictured at the top is a "California Funnel Cake" – a little fried cake of seaweed-infused batter topped with crabmeat, avocado, cucumber and tobiko, like a reconfigured California roll. A word of caution: this is much smaller than it appears in pictures, and at $13, may seem like a lot to pay for two bites.^[2]

Our server encouraged us to try the ceviche with a fresh catch of yellow jack, an upgrade over the cobia on the menu, and it was good advice. The meaty fish was arranged in ribbons around a frozen "rose" of leche de tigre, surrounded by nasturtium leaves and lightly pickled radishes, and topped with a dusting of crumbled corn nuts. The beautiful presentation was made to be destroyed: mash the frozen sauce so it can merge with the lightly marinated fish, dig around and find the sweet potato cubes underneath, and you have all the flavors of a classic ceviche back together again.

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Cobaya Muñoz at 1111 Peruvian Bistro

Diego Muñoz is a superstar chef. He spent the first part of his career working at some of the world's top restaurants: the Adriàs' El Bulli and Andoni Luis Aduriz's Mugaritz in Spain, Pascal Barbot's Astrance and Guy Martin's Grand Vefour in France, Massimo Bottura's Osteria Francescana in Italy, then off to Australia at Bilson's in Sydney. After literally cooking his way around the world, he returned home to Peru, where he ran the kitchen at Gaston Acurio's high-end tasting menu flagship, Astrid y Gaston, for four years. During Muñoz's tenure, Astrid y Gaston worked its way from No. 42 to No. 14 on the much-hyped (and much-criticized) S. Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurants list. When Ferran Adrià was in town last year for a "Gastronomy Congress" at Miami Dade College, Muñoz was one of the chefs on stage doing a demonstration, along with David Gil and Fran Agudo of brother Albert Adrià's restaurant, Tickets.

Then at the beginning of this year, Muñoz left Astrid y Gaston, with plans to embark on another year of world-wide cooking adventures. So when I stumbled across a small Peruvian restaurant that Muñoz had opened a few months ago in Miami, with no fanfare whatsoever – well, surprised would be an understatement.^[1] We put the Cobaya wheels in motion to set up a dinner, which we were able to schedule while Muñoz would be in town this Friday.

Muñoz's restaurant, 1111 Peruvian Bistro, occupies the space that used to be home to BoxPark,^[2] in the ground floor of the Axis Brickell condo building. It looks much the same, the most notable addition being a mural across the top of the open kitchen which appears to track Muñoz's career – I recognized the El Bulli bulldog, that shaggy sheep looks like the ones roaming the Basque countryside outside Mugaritz, the bowtie must belong to Tony Bilson, and there's Casa Moreyra, which houses Astrid y Gaston. At the end, beyond the palm tree, is 1111.

(You can see all my pictures in this Cobaya Muñoz at 1111 Peruvian Bistro flickr set).

Once we got everyone settled into a few communal tables, Chef Muñoz introduced himself to the group, and servers started bringing out the first round of an eight-plus course dinner.

Many food cultures have their versions of meat-on-a-stick. For Peruvians, it's anticuchos. Veal or beef heart may be the most traditional, but it could be just about anything: chicken livers, steak, fish, shrimp, or, as here, octopus. The meat had a nice spring to it without being chewy or bouncy, It had been rubbed with an anticuchera sauce bright with chiles, vinegar and spices, and was served over a creamy corn purée with a crispy potato alongside and a dab of salsa carretillera on top.

Peru's most famous dish, though, is surely ceviche. But Muñoz is not a traditionalist: he has made ceviches of sea urchin, clam, apple, melon, avocado, and I'm sure any number of other ingredients. Here, the base was the customary cubed whitefish, but it came swimming in a creamy, tangy leche de tigre, garnished with soft chunks of avocado and potent sliced fresh chiles, then given an Italian accent with briny capers and a drizzle of olive oil. It was a very good ceviche, and oddly reminiscent (in a good way) of a vitello tonnato.^[3]

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first thoughts: N by Naoe Shabu Shabu - Brickell Key, Miami

It was nearly seven years ago that I first found my way into Naoe. Back then, I had no clue what to expect, having heard nothing about the place other than its short blurb on OpenTable. The restaurant turned out to be something of a portal to Japan located in an unassuming strip mall in Sunny Isles Beach, in which Chef Kevin Cory served a bento box of kaiseki style delicacies followed by a procession of what was, at the time, the best sushi I'd ever experienced.

Since then – as Kevin recently reminded me – I was the first to write about Naoe after its move to Brickell Key three years later, and also one of the first visitors to his side venture, N by Naoe, which he opened last year alongside Naoe in an adjoining space. N by Naoe did a pretty remarkable $80 lunch service similar to the opening salvos of a Naoe dinner, presented in a multi-tiered bento box. Alas, that is what you call a "niche market."

So N by Naoe has been repurposed. Now N by Naoe does shabu shabu.

(You can see all my pictures in this N by Naoe Shabu Shabu flickr set).

"Shabu shabu" is the Japanese onomatopoeic equivalent of "swish swish" – and more specifically, refers to the sound that thin slices of beef make as they are quickly cooked via a brief splash in hot water. "Beef cooked in hot water" doesn't sound like the most exciting meal in the world; but when you start with silky, obscenely marbled Japanese beef, and combine it with beautiful fresh vegetables in a flavorful stock, you get something magical.

It starts with water: water which comes from a well on a tiny hilltop property in Kanazawa, Japan owned by Kevin Cory's family.^[1] The water is warmed on a tableside burner, and a strip of dried seaweed is added to make a kombu dashi. It's simple, but kombu is loaded with glutamates (the stuff in MSG that makes everything taste better). A couple of dipping sauces – nutty sesame, and bright citrusy ponzu – are also arranged at each diner's place setting. After a few minutes of simmering, the kombu is removed, and a platter piled with vegetables is brought to the table.

For us, there were several different kinds of mushrooms – brown buttons, oysters, wood ear, enoki – as well as napa cabbage, chrysanthemum leaves, and blocks of tofu. You toss some vegetables into the pot – some of the heartier mushrooms, and the firmer bits of the cabbage can take a while, and add their flavor to the broth, while the frilly cabbage leaves and delicate chrysanthemum may need less than a minute.

Then the centerpiece is brought to the table: wagyu from Miyazaki Prefecture, thin slices of ribeye with incredible speckled fat marbling that runs through the entire steak. You have probably heard of "Kobe beef" – in fact, you have probably heard many things called "Kobe beef" that are not in fact "Kobe beef," since "Kobe beef" can only come from Kobe, Japan, and I'm pretty sure that places like Prime 112 are not paying for Japanese beef to put into hot dogs and hamburgers, even if they're sold for $25-30; but I digress. I mention this because the beef N by Naoe uses is not called "Kobe beef" because it comes from Miyazaki Prefecture, not Hyogo Prefecture where Kobe is located. But – unlike those ridiculous hot dogs and hamburgers that call themselves "Kobe beef" – this is every bit its equal. This particular sample carries an "A5" grading with a BMS or "Beef Marbling Score" of 8 on the 1-12 scale used in Japan, and was one of the most luscious steaks I've ever tasted.^[2]

You take a slice of that beef. You swish it a couple times through the broth ("shabu-shabu").^[3] You swipe it through one of the dipping sauces. You eat. You pluck some of the vegetables and tofu out of the pot and do the same.^[4] Repeat. And repeat again, until you and your dining companion are anxiously eyeing the last slice of beef on the platter.

It's so rich that really, that one platter is enough – but sometimes enough isn't quite enough. If you understand what I mean, then you'll be glad to know that you have the option to add on an additional half-order or full order of beef. The fixed price per person for the shabu shabu is $60 per person; an additional order of beef can be had for $72, or a half-order for one person can be had for half the price.

Around the time you are closing in on that last slice of beef, the server will deliver a bowl of perfectly cooked rice. Then the pot will be scooped up and its contents buffeted with some chopped scallions and served to you as a restorative soup. It's surprisingly flavorful, imbued with the concentrated essences of the beef and vegetables which have been cooked in the broth. The one-two of rice and soup is a traditional Japanese coda to a meal that fills up and then calms your belly.

A simple bowl of fresh fruit – here, a couple different kinds of grapefruit – closes out the meal.

This is an elemental meal that depends almost entirely on its ingredients; after all, the cooking itself is being done by unskilled amateurs. But with the outstanding quality of the beef, and those gorgeous fresh vegetables, it works. It's also a lot of fun.

N by Naoe
661 Brickell Key Drive, Miami, Florida
(reservations exclusively through SeatMe 5:15-10:45pm Su-Tu, Th-Sat, and lunch 12-6pm for parties of 8 to 16)

^[1] Kidding.

^[2] For further explanation of the Japanese grading system, read up at the Japan Meat Information Service Center. The letter grade is based on yield; the number grade is based on quality, including marbling as well as both the texture and color of the meat and fat.

^[3] Long communal chopsticks are supplied for action involving the big pot, unless you're dining with an uncouth lout who uses the communal chopsticks to feed himself. Steve insisted this is how you show dominance in shabu shabu. I think he confused it with sumo wrestling.

^[4] Pro tip: though the recommended pairing is the sesame sauce with the beef, and the ponzu with the vegetables, both Steve and I preferred to reverse it.  The citrus in the ponzu nicely cuts through the fattiness of the beef, while the creamy, nutty sesame sauce adds a bit of richness to the vegetables.

Cobaya del Cielo with Chef Juan Manuel Barientos

There are few places in the United States where you can have as varied a sampling of Latin American flavors as in Miami. And yet there are only a handful of such restaurants here that strive to operate on the higher end of the dining spectrum. Decades ago Douglas Rodriguez did it with Yuca and then Ola, and more recently, Gaston Acurio's branch of La Mar in Brickell raises the bar for Peruvian food. But these types of places are still the exceptions.

Add El Cielo to the mix. Its chef is Juan Manuel Barrientos, a 31-year old who looks like he could be half that age, but whose flagship in Bogotá, Colombia has already been recognized in the S. Pellegrino "Latin America's 50 Best Restaurants" list. His ambitious tasting menus mix traditional Colombian ingredients with modernist methods and dramatic presentations. Earlier this year, he opened another iteration here in Miami, which a couple weeks ago played host to our 57th "Cobaya" dinner.

Here's how it went:

(You can see all my pictures in this Cobaya del Cielo flickr set).

After a bit of a head fake to start (we had our guinea pigs meet at a small café around the corner from the restaurant's location inside the Brickell on the River condo, where they were given a little snack for the walk over), we had cocktails out on the patio before being led inside to the dining room.

Things get kind of weird quickly. The meal starts with what Chef "JuanMa" calls "chocotherapy": liquid chocolate that is poured over the diners' hands, meant to be rubbed into one's skin and then licked off. It's messy, it's goofy, but it also gets everybody laughing and it smells great too.

That's followed by another cocktail, a "mistela" of aguardiente and passion fruit (which would probably have been better if served colder) and a snack he called "Follow the Stars" made up of a crisp sheet of nori topped with toasted sesame seeds, citrus curd and candied slivers of carambola (a/k/a star fruit). This uncannily reminded me of a snack I'd had five years ago at El Bulli, a nori cracker filled with tart lemon and sesame.

(continued ...)