best thing i ate last week: green chile dosa at Paper Dosa in Santa Fe

One of my New Year's resolutions: post more frequently. So let's start 2018 on the right foot by getting back to these "best thing I ate last week" posts - a nice way to keep current without doing the usual more lengthy exegesis (and fewer footnotes!).

We just spent a few days between Christmas and New Year's Eve in Santa Fe, a place with some great food traditions which bridge Mexico and New Mexico, in much the same way that Tex-Mex has become its own particular idiom. One of the challenges I always face when choosing where to eat in these types of communities is how closely to hew to tradition, particularly with limited dining opportunities. Do I look for the most "authentic" places (whatever that means), or do I just look for good food?

I went in the latter direction for our last night in Santa Fe, and it worked out great. Paper Dosa (see more pictures in this Paper Dosa flickr set) is a South Indian place run by chef Paulraj Karuppasamy which began as a catering business, then started doing weekly pop-up dinners, and in 2015 opened as a full-blown restaurant. The menu features about a half-dozen appetizers and chaats, several choices of dosas and uttapam, rounded out with a few curries. It reminds me quite a bit of Hopper's in London, where we had a great lunch early last year.

Everything at Paper Dosa was eye-poppingly good, but the standout was a dish that sort of came full circle: a delicate dosa (a crepe made of fermented rice and lentil batter) stuffed with local green chiles and melted cheese, served with traditional accompaniments of sambar (a sort of lentil stew), plus coconut and tomato chutneys. This wasn't one of those goofy "fusion" dishes, like where some French or Italian dish gets some incongruous Asian ingredient thrown into it. It tasted entirely South Indian, and entirely New Mexican, all at once. And it was the best thing I ate last week.

Happy New Year, all, and welcome to 2018.

Paper Dosa
551 W. Cordova Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico
505.930.5521

best thing i ate last week: fried chicken sandwich at La Pollita

There's yet another wave of taquerias opening in Miami these days, so many I've given up even trying to list them, much less sample them all. But last week I did stop in on La Pollita, which is currently operating from a trailer parked in the Midtown Garden Center. The backstory is intriguing: chefs Luciana Giangrandi and Alex Meyer worked at some pretty highfalutin places before this: Eleven Madison Park (just named as "World's Best Restaurant" by the suspect but influential 50 Best list), its sibling the NoMad, Scarpetta in Manhattan, Animal in L.A. Which made me wonder – what are these folks doing running a taco truck?

Making really great food, it turns out. 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, and was the best thing I ate last week.

(You can see some more pictures in this La Pollita - Miami flickr set).

The mantra at EMP is "Make It Nice." The alumni running La Pollita learned it well.

La Pollita
2600 NE 2nd Avenue, Miami, Florida
310.435.7766

best thing i ate last week: Oysters Ciancio at Mignonette Uptown

We've kind of let the "Best Thing I Ate Last Week" routine fall by the wayside. Let's remedy that right now.

A couple months ago, I attended a friends and family at Mignonette Uptown, the new oyster bar and seafood place from Daniel Serfer (who also runs Blue Collar in the MiMo District and the original Mignonette Downtown in Edgewater) in the old Gourmet Diner on Biscayne Boulevard in North Miami. I liked it. I finally got back there this weekend, and tried a dish I missed on that first visit: the Oysters Ciancio, named after the restaurant's chef de cuisine, Anthony Ciancio.

They're topped with a paste of garlic, shallots and white miso, basted with beef tallow, and broiled, and they come out plump and savory and just a little bit meaty and a lot delicious.

(You can see more pictures in this Mignonette Uptown - North Miami Beach flickr set.)

At Mignonette Downtown, you might instead get the Oysters Frank, named after chef de cuisine Bobby Frank, which come topped with melted Manchego cheese, crispy bacon, sherry and butter. It's just one example of how the theme of the two locations is consistent while the particulars of the execution vary. Some more: the really suave squid and tomato stew which was the "CBGB" (chowder, bisque or gumbo) of the day at Uptown, and a clever Thai-French mashup of tom kha moules frites. I'm pretty happy that I can now go seven miles in either direction from home and run into a Mignonette.

Also: big shout-out to chefs Jeremiah Bullfrog and Kurtis Jantz, who reminded us it's Mardi Gras season by throwing an Ole Bay All Day party at BoxElder Saturday (pics here). All afternoon they were slinging Natchitotches meat pies, muffulettas, crab gumbo, boiled crawfish and king cake donuts. It was a great time.

best thing i ate last week: banchan at Gabose Korean BBQ

Can someone explain to me why there is no good Korean BBQ in Miami? How is it possible, with a population of over 2.5 million in Miami-Dade County, that I have to drive across the county line to Broward to sate this particular craving?^[1] Fortunately, Gabose Korean BBQ is only about an hour away, and we happened to already be heading in that direction this weekend.

I was too hungry and impatient to wait for one of the charcoal grill tables, so we let the kitchen do the cooking instead. The gochu pajun (a sort omelet / pancake hybrid like Japanese okonomiyaki) was generously studded with green onion and fresh chiles, a welcome recipe for bad breath. The daeji tofujigae, a spicy soup with tofu and slivered pork, came to the table ferociously bubbling, its broth redolent with Korean chile flakes. The marinated galbi was good as always; the haemul dolsot bibimbap, a rice dish studded with seafood and vegetables cooked in a blazing hot metal bowl, was actually a bit bland before we perked it up with a generous spoonful of gochujang.

But my favorite thing about a meal at Gabose may be the banchan, the little bowls of various pickled and preserved nibbles that accompany every meal. Here, there was a classic napa cabbage kimchi, slabs of some sort of mild-flavored jelly in  a sauce of soy, scallion and chile flakes; marinated seitan strips; bouncy little marinated mushrooms; a bright pink, tangy cabbage slaw; a potato salad generously dressed with Korean chile; and zucchini kimchi, more fresh and less funky than the cabbage version.

Is there a Michelin category for "worth a one-hour schlep"?

Gabose Korean BBQ
4991 N. University Drive, Lauderhill, Florida
954.572.4800

^[1] I guess I need to try Shilla Korean BBQ / Sushi Cafe out west of the Miami airport.

best thing i ate last week: aji nigiri at Myumi

There's been a deficit of "best thing I ate last week" posts the past few weeks on account of travel – Seattle a couple weeks ago, including a wonderful return to Willows Inn, and San Francisco this past weekend. Let's try to fill in the gaps. Since I already wrote about our last Cobaya dinner with Gabe Fenton at Bourbon Steak, and will hopefully get around to writing about Seattle and San Francisco shortly, b.t.i.a.l.w. honors for the week before last goes to a bite from an omakase meal at Myumi, now situated in Wynwood Yard.

I wrote about my first visit to Myumi last year. The quick version: an omakase-only sushi tasting menu, served out of a truck, of surprisingly great quality. And my latest experience was every bit as good as my first. The highlights included shima aji with a nice snap to the flesh, meaty steelhead trout, salted and peppered and seared, and one of my favorite fish, the silver-skinned, polka-dotted kohada, lightly cured in vinegar.

But maybe my favorite bite among the ten courses (for $60) was this nigiri of aji, the pleasantly oily, fatty fishiness of the minced horse mackerel counterbalanced by the zing of ginger and scallion, then topped with toasted sesame seeds.

(You can see the full set of pictures from my most recent meal at Myumi in this Myumi - Wynwood flickr set).

best thing i ate last week: pan con tumaca at Alter

A recent twitter exchange hit on a nugget of truth: more often than not, when a dish is "revisited" or "reinvented" (or worse, "deconstructed"), the end result pales in comparison to the original.

The classic Spanish snack, pan con tumaca (a/k/a pan con tomate or pa amb tomàquet), is a simple thing: grilled or toasted bread, rubbed with raw garlic and tomato, drizzled with olive oil, and sprinkled with salt. And yet with the right ingredients – crusty bread, ripe juicy tomato, fruity peppery olive oil – it is magically good, and difficult to improve upon.

The version I had this weekend at Alter, though, manages it. A thin plank of sourdough, golden on its surface but with still a whisper of tenderness at its center. A daub of tomato butter, warmed with Aleppo pepper. Soft, crushed cherry tomatoes, bleeding their juices. Slivers of pickled garlic, as thin as Paulie cut in prison. Red vein sorrel – pretty, sure, but also providing a bit of grassy, tart contrast.

Unfortunately, Saturday was the last lunch service at Alter, which is too bad: the 5-course lunch tasting for $39 was one of the best meals you will ever find at that price. (You can see pictures of the whole meal in this Alter - Lunch flickr set; the pan con tumaca was an extra sent out by the kitchen). But the trade-off will be a reinvigorated focus on dinner service at Alter, including an upcoming addition of some grilling stations outside to do some live fire cooking. Good things coming.

Alter
223 NW 23rd Street, Miami, Florida
305.573.5996

best thing i ate last week: ice cream sandwich at Cream Parlor

Sometimes, it's the simple things that deliver immense satisfaction. I'd just finished brunch at Pinch Kitchen on Biscayne Boulevard, and noticed that the new ice cream place across the street, Cream Parlor, had finally opened. I took a peek inside, and was pleasantly surprised at what a charming little place it was, loaded with vintage tchotchkes on the walls, mismatched coffee mugs, and flowery grandma plates. It also turns out to be a lot more than just an ice cream shop: there's a pretty extensive breakfast menu, plus sandwiches, tartines, salads, and healthy-sounding vegetable dishes like curried chickpeas and sriracha lentils.

The ice cream flavors veer more playful rather than artisanal: Red Velvet Cake, Prince-inspired Purple Rain, technicolor-hued Unicorn Poop. Among many other options, you can construct an ice cream sandwich from your choice of flavor and cookie, which I did with their salty peanut ice cream and Belgian chocolate and bacon cookies. I highly recommend the combination. What's more, the couple running the place, Johnny and Ainsley Tsokos, are as sweet as their ice creams.

(Some more pictures in this Cream Parlor flickr set).

Cream Parlor
8224 Biscayne Boulevard, Miami, Florida
786.534.4180

best thing i ate last week: orange chocolate souffle at Pinch Kitchen

I'm not much of a dessert person, but there are certain things that hit certain spots for me. The combination of orange and chocolate is one of them, going back to a childhood fondness for the mandarin chocolate sherbet at Baskin Robbins (the flavor was discontinued many years ago, but memories persist). So when I see a dessert with orange and chocolate, I have trouble not ordering it.

Somehow I missed it on my first visit to Pinch Kitchen, a new-ish restaurant opened up on the northern periphery of the "MiMo District" along Biscayne Boulevard by a couple Pubbelly alumni, John Gallo and Rene Reyes. But their short list of desserts includes an orange and chocolate soufflé, baked right inside hollowed out oranges, and served with a classic creme anglaise. I went back for brunch this weekend to try it (and a couple other things).

The soufflé is airy and light but intense with chocolate flavor, drawing some extra citrus perfume as you scrape your spoon across the inside of the orange skin. I don't know if Baskin Robbins is ever bringing back mandarin chocolate sherbet, but this is a good substitute.

Also very good: a wahoo tartare from the daily specials at Pinch, given some tangy brightness from a fine brunoise of fresh peach, and some zing from fresh red chiles.

(There are a few more pictures in this Pinch Kitchen - Miami flickr set).

Pinch Kitchen
8601 Biscayne Boulevard, Miami, Florida
305.631.2018

best thing i ate last week: etouffee brute at Dusk

The last time I was at Cena by Michy (which would, alas, turn out to be the last time I would ever be at Cena, which closed a couple months later), Michelle Bernstein introduced me to her latest chef de cuisine, Mike Mayta. He – and his wife Keily Vazquez, who together also ran Illegal Bakery – were joining a distinguished group of alumni who have passed through Michy's kitchens and dining rooms: Timon Balloo, Lindsay Autry, Jason Schaan, Berenice de Araujo, coctkail master Julio Cabrera, wine savant Allegra Angelo.

Cena is gone, but chefs Mayta and Vazquez have found another place to ply their trade, with a pop-up called Dusk, operating in the Crumb on Parchment space in the Design District (probably not coincidentally, also run by Chef Bernstein). They've put together a menu of a baker's dozen of dishes, some with Latin leanings (ajiaco pot pie, brisket saltado), others a bit more gastropub-y (chicken 'n' biscuit with chicken liver mousse, chorizo scotch egg), and some with a little bit of both (yuca fry poutine).

We made our way through a good bit of that menu Saturday night, and enjoyed everything we tried. My favorite – very possibly influenced by its having been inspired by the Burger of the Day from Bob's Burgers – was the "Etouffee Brute." This Cajun-Italian hybrid combined risotto style carnaroli rice, bound and enriched by a ruddy seafood stew studded with strips of nubby octopus, bolstered and warmed with 'nduja sausage, flecked with slivers of dried okra, and crowned with a plump, juicy head-on royal red shrimp.

A strong runner-up was a summery dessert from Keily Vazquez which combined dainty little blueberry pies with a delicious sweet corn ice cream.

You can see all the pictures from our dinner in this Dusk - Miami Design District flickr set.

Dusk is operating Thursday-Saturday evenings in the Crumb space, from 6pm to 10:30pm, with plans to be there through September.

Dusk
3930 N.E. 2nd Avenue, Miami, Florida
786.292.6799

best thing i ate last week: hokkaido uni at Shuko (New York City)

Some sort of sound had involuntarily come out of my mouth. I'm not sure exactly what it was; it may have been a moan. It may have been a giddy chuckle. But when I came back to my senses, I saw that everyone on the other side of the counter was looking at me with an expression somewhere between bemusement and shock.

Shuko is not a stereotypically austere, somber sushi bar: the soundtrack is dominated by old-school hip-hop, and the chefs fist-bump regulars across the bar. But still, whatever I'd done had caught everyone's attention.

It was triggered by this bite of Hokkaido uni: the lobes of sea urchin cold and creamy, with a flavor both briny and fruity, like an oceanic peach, tucked over a pillow of rice into a gunkan maki of crisp nori. Beautiful stuff, worth embarrassing yourself a little bit.

You can see all the pictures from our omakase dinner at Shuko in this Shuko - New York City flickr set.

Shuko
47 E. 12th Street, New York, NY
212.228.6088

best thing i ate last week: shaved cobia at Alter

It had been about six months since I'd been to Alter for a regular dinner, though in the interim, I'd attended a few excellent collaborative dinners there with chefs from Contra, Central and Aubergine. Also in the interim, Alter's chef, Brad Kilgore, was named a "Best New Chef" by Food & Wine magazine, and Kilgore and Alter were selected as semi-finalists in the James Beard Foundation Rising Star and Best New Restaurant categories, respectively (both national, rather than regional, recognitions). Not a bad stretch. And fully deserved, for what is currently my favorite restaurant in Miami.

More good news since my last regular visit: the dinner menu is almost entirely new, with only a few staples remaining (the grouper cheek, the short rib in a somewhat modified form, and of course the soft egg with scallop mousse and the bread and beurre). So Mrs. F and I were able to construct a DIY tasting menu of almost entirely new dishes (it's tough to pass up that egg).

I liked all the new items, but my favorite was a crudo of shaved cobia, which had been marinated (cured? brined?) with dashi and dried mushrooms, then sliced into thin ribbons arranged in delicate curls around a castelvetrano olive "snow," mounds of sushi rice, green mustard oil, and slivers of more olives and dried mushrooms. I loved the deep umami flavors instead of the usual pairing of citrus with raw fish, which still retained enough balance to complement rather than overwhelm the cobia.

(If you want to see more, all the new pictures are at the end of this Alter - Miami (Wynwood) flickr set).

best thing i ate last week: grilled cabbage at Birch (Providence)

This past Sunday I found myself in Providence, Rhode Island for 24 hours; a fortunate opportunity to pay a visit to chef Ben Sukle's restaurant, Birch. Here's an excerpt from a nearly-finished recap of an outstanding meal:

Instead of the usual slab of meat that invokes the end of the savory dishes on the tasting menu, Sukle went with a tranche of grilled cabbage. The edge was black with char, the interior was soft and silky without being cooked to sulfurous mush. Folded within was creamy rutabaga and caramelized sauerkraut. Speckled on top was an assortment of toasted seeds – sunflower, cumin, sesame. A broth of dried apples was poured tableside. This was a fantastic dish.

More to come soon.

best thing i ate last week: philly cheesesteak at Philly Grub

When I was in high school a long, long time ago, I worked one summer at a place called All American Heroes in the Aventura Mall food court. (It happened to be in the same space that was occupied by the gastroPod for a brief time last year). It offered the usual assortment of cold cut subs you'd find at any Subway wanna-be, but the real specialty of the house was the Philly cheesesteak. By the end of that summer, I fancied myself a legitimate cheesesteak-slinger, and had gotten pretty adept at that double-spatula chopping action on the flat-top.

You'd think that after having cooked countless hundreds of them, I'd also be absolutely sick of cheesesteaks. But that moment never came. At the end of my shift I'd still happily make myself one – usually with provolone, sometimes mushrooms (I was fancy even then) – and enjoyed it every single time.

So I was intrigued when I saw signage going up for a place called "Philly Grub" on a, well, pioneering stretch of NW 54th Street in Little Haiti that's often part of my daily commute. It opened a few months ago, but its hours (11am-6pm Mon-Sat, 11am-5pm Sun) never coincided with mine. I finally made it in this weekend, and was reminded of what I loved about that summer: the cheesesteaks.

(You can see a few more pictures in this Philly Grub flickr set).

There's not much to the place: a counter to take your order, a couple tables, a ledge around the wall with some stools. And there's not much to the menu either: your basic Philly cheesesteak, with a few options (Whiz, provolone or American; onions, peppers, mushrooms, lettuce, tomato and pizza sauce if you wish), along with a chicken cheesesteak, a vegetable Philly, plus sausage, meatball, and Italian cold-cut hoagies. But you'll appreciate the bare bones approach when you see that all the sandwiches are $7.76. Sides – Penn-Dutch style potato salad, a pretzel, or chips – will set you back an extra $1.76, or you can splurge on the pierogies with grilled onions and sour cream for $2.76. For Philadelphia nostalgists, there's also Italian water ices and TastyKakes for dessert.

It is a finely crafted sandwich that you'll get for your $7.76. The beef is tender, well-seasoned and cooked through – still juicy, not entirely dried out, but not sopping its way through the bread before you can finish. For tradition's sake, I abandoned the fancy pretensions of my youth and got crazy with the Cheez Whiz; there's a reason for those traditions sometimes. It comes on a real-deal Amoroso roll, with just the right balance of crusty and tender, like Peter Falk in Princess Bride.

That cheesesteak wasn't just the best thing I ate last week; it was almost as good as the ones I used to make.

You can read some more about Philly Grub and its owners in this piece in the Miami Herald.

Philly Grub
99 NW 54th Street, Miami, Florida
786.857.6906

best thing i ate last week: korean blood sausage by James Strine at Duck Duck Goose

P.I.G., the annual celebration of porcinity organized and hosted by Chef Jeremiah Bullfrog of the gastroPod, is consistently one of my favorite local food events of the year. It always seems to have good juju: the chefs bring their "A" game, the guests are in a good mood, the music's tight, the weather's right. So when Jeremiah said he was spreading his wings (sorry), and doing something called Duck Duck Goose, a P.I.G. style party but with an avian bent, featuring ducks from Lake Meadow Farm and D'Artagnan, I had high hopes.

I was not let down. It was a little steamy out there Saturday afternoon, but it was an auspicious first run for what I hope will become another regular event. Picking a favorite dish was tough. I could have easily named Aaron Brooks' (Edge Steak) arroz con pato, a sort of Peruvian paella infused with multiple layers of Peruvian chiles and cooked over an impressive open fire rig. Or Jeremiah's ma.po'outine, a hybrid of ma po tofu and poutine with duck fat fries and some serious ma la Sichuan zing. Or Brad Kilgore's (Alter) elegant foie gras and rabbit pavé with layers of fermented sunchoke yogurt and mushroom dashi gelée, crowned with golden raisins and preserved marigold petals. Or Steve Santana's (Taquiza) creamy, duck-fat enriched tamal colado served with pulled roast duck and a dark, rich mole negro.

But for me, it was the Korean style blood sausage that James Strine, from Café Boulud in Palm Beach, that stood out among several great dishes. The sausage – soft, meaty, with a ferrous tang – was bound with sweet potato noodles and sticky rice, and served with smoked duck and a tea-smoked duck egg, with everything brought into sharp focus by a pungent, cutting chile oil made from local Datil peppers, dried and infused into oil with other aromatics.

If you missed Duck Duck Goose, well, you missed out - you should hope, like I do, that it comes back around next year.

You can see all my pictures in this Duck Duck Goose flickr set, or flip through them here:

best thing i ate last week: abalone at Aubergine + Alter dinner

A few months ago during a west coast jaunt, I had a really outstanding meal at Aubergine, Justin Cogley's restaurant in L'Auberge Carmel. One of the most interesting things was that in moments it could be hyper-local, while in others its makes (very good) use of product from literally clear across the globe. On the one hand, there's abalone farmed in Monterey Bay waters about five miles from the restaurant. On the other, there's densely marbled A5 wagyu beef from Hokkaido, Japan, about 5,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean.

Cogley brought both items with him when he came to do a collaboration dinner with Bradley Kilgore at his Wynwood restaurant, Alter. The good news is, they travel well. My favorite was the abalone: cooked so its flesh is springy but not tough, with a pure taste of the sea. Garnished with Carmel seaweeds and wispy lettuces, it swims in a sort of warm tea steeped with dried mushrooms, offering the depth and clarity of flavor of a well-made dashi. The dish was every bit as good as I recall it being in situ.

Honorable mentions to Brad's dish of venus clams with oseta caviar and potatoes over a yogurt purée, garnished with paper-like sheets of slow-cooked onion; to an outstanding dessert from Aubergine pastry chef Ron Mendoza which combined a candy cap mushroom mousse with fermented banana and shards of crisp chocolate; and to the plump, juicy pork shu mai at a late Saturday afternoon lunch at BlackBrick.

best thing i ate last week: parrillada at Los Fuegos

Months ago, I made my first visit to the new Faena Hotel, to try out Chef Paul Qui's restaurant, Pao (some first thoughts on Pao here). I was equally intrigued by its sibling at the Faena, Francis Mallmann's Los Fuegos, but hadn't made my way back. Mallmann, if you're unfamiliar, is a larger-than-life character who runs several restaurants in Argentina, and literally wrote the book which has inspired a new wave of interest in open-fire cooking. (For a good introduction, this episode of Chef's Table featuring him is highly recommended).

I pass up 99% of the freebie meal offers I get via FFT, but an invite to a Sunday asado at Los Fuegos was too good to pass up. So full disclosure and all, but hopefully I've built up enough credibility that you'll believe me when I tell you this was great stuff. Our afternoon junket took us through most of the Sunday menu, which is typically a $75 affair with several choices among three-plus courses. On special occasions (Father's Day is coming up ...) it will likely be more expansive, more expensive, and more family style, like what we were served.

There were lots of highlights – the wood oven baked empanadas, the grilled sweetbreads given a black-edged hard sear and a squeeze of burnt lemon, the bubbling provoleta with crusty bread – but the centerpiece was the parrillada, and the real standouts for me, the crisp-edged, tender-fleshed lechoncito, and the oozy, rich morcilla sausage.

(You can see all my pictures in this Los Fuegos by Francis Mallmann flickr set.)

I'll be back on my own dime soon.

Runner-up: the ultra-crispy Korean fried chicken, served in a puddle of kimchi-spiced yogurt, at Talde Miami Beach.

best thing i ate last week: magurozuke nigiri at Myumi

Last summer, I wrote some "first thoughts" about Myumi – a food truck doing an omakase-only sushi service out of a lot in Wynwood. I came away impressed: fish, rice, knife-work, garnishes were all quite good, and indeed if I had any complaint, it was only that they could be a tad heavy-handed with the embellishments, hiding the quality of the base components. By Miami sushi standards, I rated it quite highly; for sushi coming from a food truck, it was downright exceptional.

Since I last wrote about Myumi, the truck moved a few blocks to Wynwood Yard, where it now shares space with a funky outdoor bar, Mortar & Pistil, a vegetable garden, as well as a few other food trucks. The sushi is still every bit as good as my initial experience, and now you can  stroll a few steps and grab a cocktail or a beer (I highly recommend the locally made M.I.A. Megamix pale ale) to accompany your meal, and finish it with some frilly shaved ice cream from Mr. Bing.

The ten rounds that made up our omakase selection had about a 2/3 overlap with my earlier visit. This time around, my favorite bite among many good ones was the magurozuke, the glistening tranche of lean tuna marinated, if my taste buds are on target, in a blend of shoyu, mirin and dashi, and topped with a dab of fresh wasabi.

You can see the rest of the pictures from this meal towards the bottom of this Myumi - Miami (Wynwood) flickr set.

best thing i ate last week: oysters frank at Mignonette

There are so many new places that have opened in Miami of late; and yet sometimes – often – I just want to go back to an old favorite. Mignonette, Chef Daniel Serfer's oyster bar in Edgewater, has become one of those old favorites: a place where I might very well order the same thing every time I go, and always leave happy.

But here's something new: "Oysters Frank," named after chef de cuisine Bobby Frank. Topped with smoked bacon, manchego cheese, a goodly amount of butter and a dash of sherry, then broiled, these will give Mignonette's excellent rendition of Oysters Rockefeller a run for their money. Round out the rest of the meal with their very good lobster deviled eggs, one of my favorite salads, and a fancy seafood tower, and I bet you'll leave happy too.

best thing i ate last week: grilled eggplant salad at Vagabond Backyard Cookout

I'm a big fan of all the good things happening in Miami's "MiMo District" along Biscayne Boulevard, anchored of late by the refurbished Vagabond Motel. Yes, it's partly because it's a straight shot from home across 79th Street Causeway for me, but it's also because the neighborhood has some old 1950's Miami feel, which many of its new inhabitants are looking to preserve in some fashion while still bringing new styles and flavors.

So I was particularly happy to see Chef Alex Chang, who runs the Vagabond Restaurant, team up with Chef Phuket Thongsodchaveonde of Cake Thai Kitchen up the street for a Backyard Cookout around the Vagabond pool. Two of my favorite spots, at one event? Sold.

Together they did a Thai-style BBQ that included grilled corn slathered with coconut cream and palm sugar, a fragrantly spicy Isaan style pork shoulder larb dusted with roasted rice powder, BBQ chicken with papaya salad and sticky rice, grilled whole fish cooked in banana leaves, and for dessert, an ice cream sandwich tucked into a hot dog roll topped with toasted peanuts and fish sauce caramel (a LOT better than it might sound).

(You can see all my pictures on the back end of this Vagabond Restaurant flickr set).

But my favorite dish was this eggplant salad. Little golf ball sized Thai eggplants were halved and grilled so their edges blackened and their insides had just started to go soft and custardy. They were doused in a key lime vinaigrette packing sour, sweet, and just a little heat. But the clincher was the toppings: those crispy shallots, those chewy, funky dried shrimp, like little flavor bombs that keep you digging in for another bite.

It was the best thing I ate last week, and a really fun way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

best thing i ate last week: everything at the Central + Alter dinner

Don't make me pick a favorite. I just can't.

Last Tuesday was the second collaborative dinner hosted at Alter restaurant by Chef Bradley Kilgore. This time, he brought in Chef Virgilio Martinez of Central in Lima, Peru. These kinds of team-ups can be something of a crap shoot for the diner: even with talented chefs, it's unpredictable how effectively their styles will mesh, or how well someone's cooking may show on the road.

Yet this dinner was so in tune that for most of the night I couldn't tell who had cooked which dish, other than that Virgilio's sometimes had a tell: if I had to google an ingredient, it was one of his.^[1] But regardless of the creator, everything - everything! - at this meal was exceptional. If I had to narrow it down to two:

(You can see all the pictures in this Central @ Alter flickr set.)

"Valley Between Andes" – I later figured out that Martinez's menu at Central features dishes inspired by the products of different elevations of the Peruvian topography. This one included avocado, tree tomato (a/k/a tamarillo), and kiwicha (amaranth seeds). The avocado was so creamy and rich that it almost ate like tender braised beef, napped with a tangy sauce and speckled with the nutty, quinoa-like kiwicha, with shards of translucent, herb-dotted crackers for some textural contrast.

"Fallen Tree" – Brad started with a caramelized tranche of heart of palm as the base of the dish, with the other components evoking a tropical forest floor: snails, dehydrated mushrooms, a tangle of green (seaweed?) moss, a pouffe of spring garlic mousse with pickled honshimeji mushroom "spores" poking up out of it.

But these are just examples – every course of this menu impressed. It's unusual to have so many dishes that simultaneously achieve the delicious, the beautiful, and the unexpected all at once.

^[1] I.e., kiwicha (amaranth seed, a pseudocereal like quinoa), tree tomato (which I'm more familiar with as "tamarillo"), airampo (a magenta hued prickly pear fruit), chaco clay (an edible clay which apparently has been consumed since pre-Colombian times).