best thing i ate last week: dim sum at BlackBrick

For Father's Day, the kids indulged me and let me pick where to go for brunch. It had been a while since we'd done a dim sum run, and I had it on the brain. The day before, we'd driven past Tropical Chinese territory (after already having eaten lunch) while en route to the Redlands to get the last of the season's lychees. We ended up bringing home about twenty pounds of tropical fruits from Robert Is Here: fantastic jackfruit, mamey sapote, canistel, sapodilla, ciruela, three different varieties of mangoes, and – oh, yeah – some juicy, perfumey Brewster lychees. Not wanting to trek all the way down south once again on Sunday, we headed instead to BlackBrick in Midtown.

Sometimes father really does know best. The dumplings – shrimp har gow, pork shiu mai, jade duck dumplings – were great, their silky, translucent skins encasing steaming hot, juicy fillings.

Runner up: I could have just as easily picked the shattering crisp bean curd skin wrapped around an unctuous mushroom filling, or the char siu pork served with fluffy parker house rolls for some DIY bao action.

BlackBrick
3451 NE 1st Ave., Miami, Florida
305.573.8886

best thing i ate last week: Grouper Cheek at Alter

I've been waiting a long time for Bradley Kilgore to get a place where he could really do his own thing. We first crossed paths when he was the sous chef at Azul, and we did a Cobaya dinner  there with Andrew Zimmern as a guest (who nicknamed Brad "Wall Street" for his slicked back hair). A brief stint at Exit 1 on Key Biscayne, a longer and more fruitful tenure at Jean-Georges' J&G Grill, and now that time has finally come with Alter.

The menu at this roughly 45-seat venue in Wynwood is all Brad's, honed down to seven appetizers and an equal number of mains. A five-course, $65 tasting menu selected from among those items is a good way to try a lot of it at once. That's what I did for my first visit, with a couple add-ons.

Cheeks are like the pork belly of fish: richer, fattier, moreish. This grouper cheek is meaty but giving, substantial enough to stand up to the intense shoyu hollandaise draped over it like a velvet robe. Various seaweeds and flowering dill are scattered about, like it just washed up on a black sand shore (that's actually creamy black rice). A couple twists of cucumber and thin rounds of chile pepper provide a bit of palate-cleansing snap.

It doesn't just look like a seascape. It tastes like one too, but with more butter and umami. It was the best thing I ate last week.

(Full disclosure: this course, a small sample of one of the larger entrées, was a gift from the kitchen in addition to the tasting menu; I did my best to make up for it with the tip).

Runner up: the soft egg dish from the same meal. More to come on that after at least one more visit, in order to do a more fulsome write-up.

You can see all the pictures from my first visit in this Alter - Miami (Wynwood) flickr set.

Alter
223 NW 23rd Street, Miami
305.573.5996

best thing i ate last week: Pork Tonkatsu Sandwich at Vagabond

In the interest of encouraging myself to post more frequently, I'm trying something new, and simple: the "best thing I ate last week." There were a couple other contenders, but this week, it was the pork tonkatsu sandwich at Vagabond Restaurant and Bar.

It starts with a panko-breaded and fried pork cutlet in the Japanese style (most people think of sushi when they think of Japanese food, but they are also expert fryers, and not just with tempura; I'm coming around to the opinion that the Japanese just do everything better). The pork is nestled between layers of sauerkraut brightened with  the citrus-chile sting of yuzu kosho. It's all squeezed between fat slices of Japanese-style milk bread (see?) that's softer and whiter than Brian Scalabrine, spread with a little spicy mustard for some extra zing, the edges of the cutlet flopping off the sides.

There's a lot going on here: Is it a Japanese-style Indiana pork tenderloin Reuben sandwich? I don't know. But it was the best thing I ate last week.

This was originally a brunch-only item at the Vagabond, but you can also now find it at their lunch service which started a couple weeks ago (Tue-Fri 11:30am - 2:30pm).

Runner up: the somewhat unorthodox, but delicious, arroz con pollo at the Matador Room.

Vagabond Restaurant
7301 Biscayne Boulevard, Miami
786.409.5635