first thoughts: Phuc Yea | MiMo District (Miami)

It's hard for me to believe it's been five years.

But it's been almost exactly five years to the day since I checked out a curious little pop-up restaurant in a non-descript café in downtown Miami. September 8, 2011 was opening day for Phuc Yea!, a little experiment in Vietnamese flavors by Aniece Mienhold and Cesar Zapata, the team who had previously been at a fun little spot in Buena Vista called Blue Piano. (You can read the report here and see more pictures in this flickr set.) I came away pretty excited by what they were doing: banh cuon so good we immediately ordered two more rounds; tasty salt and pepper smelts; a salad of pig ears marinated in nuoc cham, then fried crisp and served over cubed watermelon; chewy pork riblets with a soy caramel glaze.

That was five years ago. The Phuc Yea pop-up had its three-month run. Then Cesar and Aniece went on to do something different, opening The Federal, which they styled as a "Modern American Tavern," serving buffalo pig wings, creamy duck rillettes topped with marshmallow fluff, and biscuits so good that Williams-Sonoma started selling them. (You can read my thoughts on The Federal here).^[1]

But, like me, they never forgot about Phuc Yea, and never gave up on the idea of reviving it. That idea became reality this past week, as they opened a new Phuc Yea in a permanent home in the "MiMo District."

This one is all grown up, in a beautiful bi-level space in an Art Deco style building along Biscayne Boulevard.^[2] There's a raw bar and small lounge with a few tables at the entrance, some more tables outside, and upstairs, a dining room with moody, dramatic lighting and another big, welcoming bar, plus plans in the works for an outdoor patio in the back when the weather cools off.

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

The menu brings back many of the dishes from the original pop-up, plus several new items too. Most notably, there's now a raw bar featuring oysters on the half shell with a lemongrass and ginger mignonette, a daily crudo, steamed gulf shrimp and lobster, which can be ordered a la carte or as a seafood tower. There's also a "cajun wok" section of the menu, inspired by the hybrid Vietnamese/Cajun crawfish boil restaurants which seem to have originated in Houston and are catching on elsewhere (some good background on the phenomenon in this Southern Foodways video and this piece by Robb Walsh). You can get crab, shrimp, clams, or in season, crawfish, served up with a choice of sauces: cajun, green curry, garlic butter, or chili garlic.

We started with an old favorite, the banh cuon, or pork rolling cake: chewy wide rice noodles, swimming in nuoc cham, that Vietnamese elixir of fish sauce, citrus, garlic and chiles that winds its way like a Bootsy Collins bass line through so many dishes here,^[3] garnished with savory ground pork, nubs of cha lua sausage, earthy wood-ear mushrooms, funky dried shrimp, fresh cucumbers and cilantro. It still hits all the right spots for me. So did the meaty, chewy pork riblets, which now also get smoked for an extra layer of flavor.

For something new, I really enjoyed a simple, bright, clean dish of fresh mango and chunky cucumber, tossed with slivered red onions, toasted garlic, dried chiles, bean sprouts and herbs. A light wash of nuoc cham intensifies the flavors, like salting a slice of watermelon. This is a great thing to cut the richness of a buttery seafood boil or a big steak.

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Phuc Yea! - Pop-Up Downtown Miami

I usually try to give a restaurant at least a couple of visits and a couple of months before writing about it. But with Phuc Yea!, a Vietnamese pop-up restaurant slated to be open only a few months total, that may be too late for the information to be of much use. Phuc Yea! doesn't follow the rules of a normal restaurant, and so my review won't either.

Official opening night was last Thursday, and I was there. We had a great meal, basically eating our way through the entire menu and then back again. You should go and do the same.

I gave a bit of a preview last week and won't repeat what's said there. But a bit of nitty gritty before talking about the food. Phuc Yea! is operating out of the "Crown Bistro" space located within the Ingraham Building downtown, across from the Gusman Center. There is no signage outside on the building for either Phuc Yea! or Crown Bistro. You get to it via SE 2nd Avenue, where there is an entrance just north of the main entrance to the office building, which leads into a corridor with mostly vacant retail space and the restaurant at the end.

It is a typical downtown lunch spot - meaning, completely nondescript and lacking in personality. The Phuc Yea! crew (Aniece Meinhold, Cesar Zapata and Daniel Treiman) have "spruced it up" by adding some curtains apparently inspired by an anime featuring an innocent big-eyed young girl and an angry Viking spirit. It's not exactly Extreme Makeover: Home Edition material, though it has its own unique charm. But the whole point of a pop-up is the food, not the decor, and happily, their talents in the kitchen vastly exceed their interior decorating skills.

(You can see the full set of pictures in this Phuc Yea! flickr set)

Our table was debating our choices among the first section of the menu (labeled simply "1 - một") until finally taking the easy route and ordering everything (except the pickles, which we knew would be coming as an accompaniment to one of the larger dishes later).

Of these, the dish that really stood out, that we were craving more of before we even finished - that we wound up getting at least two more orders of - was the bánh cuốn. I've often seen this translated as "pork rolling cake," though Phuc Yea! dubs it "Oodles of Noodles."

It features chewy rice flour crepes, rolled jelly-roll style, and in this iteration, topped with a cornucopia of ingredients: bits of roast pork, shreds of wood ear mushrooms, fresh bean sprouts, crispy fried shallots, nubs of salty pork terrine, a spray of fresh cilantro and mint, all anchored by a deceptively light-hued sauce rich with the potent umami blast of nước mắm, or Vietnamese fish sauce. Every bite makes a play to different taste receptors, hitting multiple notes at once, but ultimately achieving balance. It was a great dish.

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Phuc Me? Phuc You!

Several weeks ago, I was disappointed to hear that Aniece Meinhold and Cesar Zapata had packed their bags and left Blue Piano. I'd only gotten in once to the pocket-sized wine bar and music lounge just north of the Design District, but was very pleasantly surprised by the well-selected wines and the creative and tasty tapas-style bites while Aniece was running the bar and Cesar was in the kitchen.

Silver lining and whatnot, Aniece and Cesar, along with Daniel Treiman (chef and occasional Short Order and Eater Miami contributor) are now teaming up to do Phuc Yea!, a modern Vietnamese pop-up restaurant that will have a 3-month run in downtown Miami.

Launch date is this Thursday September 8, after which they will be up and running Tuesday - Saturday from 5:30pm - 10:30pm until November. Phuc Yea! will be setting up camp in the Crown Bistro, located inside the Ingraham Building in downtown Miami (19 SE 2nd Avenue).

Some preview menu highlights include mini banh mi sandwiches with roast pork and house-made cha lua; thit bo kho, a Vietnamese beef jerky they've redubbed "Viet Cowboy Snack;" banh cuon (a/k/a rolling cake, a rice crepe wrapped around pork); caramelized pork riblets; "Nam Style Charcuterie;" and a few larger plates of char siu style pork, confit duck or fried snapper served with rice and a "table salad" of lettuces, greens, herbs and pickles. You can see the whole Week 1 menu here.

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