Tomatoes, Top Chefs and Pop-Ups

A few upcoming events that may be of interest to discriminating eaters:

March 23, 2011: "Celebrate the Florida Tomato," a Slow Food Miami event at Sustain Restaurant + Bar. Sustain will be putting together a 4-course menu featuring local heirloom tomatoes from Teena's Pride Farm. Starts at 7:30pm, $90pp including cocktails, four courses and wine. Click the link or the invitation below to reserve.

April 1, 2011: Johnson & Wales Distinguished Visiting Chef Dinner with Chef Kevin Sbraga, winner of Top Chef Season 7 and a graduate of J&W's North Miami campus. The menu preview includes lobster bruschetta and veal sweetbread hors d'ouevres, caesar salad with sous vide chicken, fish and chips with "a variation of tartar sauce," meatloaf with chanterelles, bacon marmalade, pickled onions and truffles, and a banana split with strawberries, chocolate ganache and pineapple. The event, which is a scholarship fundraiser for the University's College of Culinary Arts, starts at 7pm at Johnson & Wales' North Miami campus. Seats are $85pp, RSVP to 305-913-2108.

And, perhaps most intriguing of all:

April 2, 2011: "Room4Dessert 2" - a 6-course, pop-up dessert tasting by Chef Will Goldfarb, the self-styled "ultimate outlaw of pastry." Two seatings (8pm and 10pm), $75pp, with assistance from some local suspects and paired wines. Click the link above or the picture below for more info.

The preview menu:

Key Lime Margarita

Geisha 2011: Geishysoisse of coconut with black sesame and raspberry

Rouge featuring hibiscus, cherry, beet, red wine and Campari

The Sugar Refinery

Nobody says I love you anymore with shortbread and epoisses

And introducing:

THE JEFFREY

That’s the best part about the Jeffrey, it goes away and then it comes back

Cobaya / Ideas in Food Dinner

While the teeming hordes invaded the sands of Miami Beach for the South Beach Wine and Food Festival last week, fifty intrepid souls ventured to the Wynwood Arts District for a very different dining experience. When we heard that Chef Alex Talbot of Ideas in Food was interested in coming in to town to do a dinner, we jumped on the opportunity.

The names of Alex Talbot and his wife and partner Aki Kamozawa may be more familiar to chefs than to diners. But for anyone with an interest in contemporary cooking, their blog, their classes, and now their book serve as an indispensable source of inspiration and guidance. Just one small example: I recall a couple years ago sitting at the kitchen bar of the now-closed, and missed, Talula, watching sous chef Kyle Foster roast off some marrow bones. When I asked what he doing with them, he gave me a sample of a dish he was playing with, pairing marrow and pickled bananas. Where did that idea come from? Right here. There are probably countless other similar instances of dishes where Aki and Alex provided the ignition spark for their creation, or the practical guidance for their execution.

So it was a particularly exciting experience to be able to try their cooking first-hand. Chef Jeremiah Bullfrog of the gastroPod lent his shiny Airstream trailer to serve as the kitchen for the evening and also was a huge help with sourcing, logistics and cooking; still more prepping, and schlepping, was done by local chefs Kurtis Jantz and Chad Galiano of Sol Kitchen, Albert Cabrera, and others. GAB Studio provided a great venue, with two long tables stationed in the middle of their photography studio, surrounded by works from local artists. You can see all my pictures from the dinner in this flickr set: Cobaya / Ideas In Food.

the dining room



the diners

The whole meal was prepped on the gastroPod, with everything served on recyclable disposable plates. It was interesting to me that Chef Alex arrived in Miami with no food prepped in advance, and no menu planned, with everything from idea to execution taking place in the few days after he arrived.


the kitchen

Here's the menu he put together:

Surf and Turf

steak tartare, seaweed mayonnaise, bean sprout batons

Clams in Green Sauce

parsley, coconut, garlic-mustard

Steak and Eggs

beef tendon, onsen egg, culantro

Kimchi Cavatelli

kimchi gravy, torn basil, benton's ham

Twice Cooked Scallop

pumpkin, citron-sriracha, furikake

Sweetbreads

green mango, rum raisin, lime vinaigrette

Sticky Pork Belly

cream soda, crunchy turnip, charred scallions

Powdered Goat Cheese

strawberry relish

Malted Milk Custard

the menu

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Where to Eat for South Beach Wine & Food Festival

It's time! Time for the culinary clusterfuck that is the South Beach Wine and Food Festival, as chefs, pseudo-celebrity-chefs, and their stalkers invade Miami for four days of food festivities. I'm not completely knocking the thing: there are in fact some great chefs coming to town, some of the events provide an opportunity for the local talent to show off, and, well, I can't speak from personal experience because I haven't actually been to a SoBe Fest event in several years. So I'll just have to leave the celebrity chef gossip over the next week to others, and hope everyone that's going enjoys it.

In the meantime, if while you're here you want more of a taste of what Miami has to offer, and haven't had your fill at the Burger Bash or the Bubble Q, a few ideas:

The Alt.SobeFest

(WARNING: horn self-tooting alert!) If you're looking for an alternative to the glam and glitz of the SoBe Fest, welcome to the underground. On Saturday February 26, Alex Talbot, who with his wife Aki Kamozawa make up the creative culinary team that is Ideas in Food, is in town and will be doing a dinner for the Cobaya Gourmet Guinea Pigs. Details here, and though all seats have been filled, waitlist requests are still being taken.
Even if you can't make the dinner, there will be an "open house" style brunch (no reservations needed, a la carte prices) with Alex cooking on Miami's favorite Airstream trailer, the gastroPod, on Sunday February 27 from 12:30-4:00pm at The Stage in the Design District, 170 NE 38th Street.

South Beach Underbelly

You know from Joe's Stone Crab. You know from Prime 112. Wouldn't you like to see a little more of South Beach than the big-name places?

A good place to start is Pubbelly (my thoughts here), a recently opened restaurant sort of off the main drag on 20th Street near Purdy Avenue. It styles itself an "Asian-inspired gastropub," but I see a lot more Spanish tapas bar than English gastropub in it. Not surprisingly given the name, pork belly plays a major role, whether it's paired with a miso butterscotch and bok choy, or in a "McBelly" sandwich with kimchi, BBQ sauce and pickles, or in a kimchi fried rice served in a hot stone bowl. The menu changes regularly, but other items to look for include the duck and pumpkin dumplings in a orange soy brown butter, croquetas, and possibly the best pan con tomate I've had in Miami.

Another even more off-the-beaten-path place to consider is Indomania (my thoughts here), just north of South Beach proper on 26th Street. This Dutch-Indonesian restaurant is cozy, comfortable and friendly, and ordering the rijsttafel will bring you nearly 20 different dishes to try for under $30 per person.

And if you're still peckish after all the SoBe Fest afterparties, you can do worse for late night eats than to find your way to The Alibi. Tucked into the back of a dive bar called "Lost Weekend" on Española Way and open till 5am, the Alibi does an authentic Philly cheese steak, a solid fried shrimp po'boy, crisp hand-cut fries with a choice of seasoning (I like the "ranch dust"), and house-made pickles.

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