best thing i ate last week: charcuterie at Quality Meats

It wasn't any one thing in particular (though they were all pretty excellent); it was the sheer joyous abundance and variety of the charcuterie spread that Chef Patrick Rebholz laid out for his Cobaya dinner at Quality Meats last Tuesday.

There was a smoked soppressata, topped with a cornbread cream. There was suckling pig coppa di testa, topped with fried sage leaves. Cured foie gras torchon, rolled in malted barley and a mango gastrique. A hearty pork headcheese with rounds of slivered onion. Hickory smoked duck bacon. Coppa, topped with aerated mozzarella. Calf liver mousse with pickled ramps. Merguez "prosciutto" topped with preserved lemon. Pork jowl corn dogs with tabasco mayo. Popcorn drizzled with melted dry-aged beef fat. All of it made in-house, all laid out up and down a roll of butcher's paper stretched along a forty foot table as we entered the room.

It was the best thing I ate last week. (You can read more about the dinner here).

Quality Cobaya with Chef Patrick Rebholz

The scent – well, let's be more blunt – ripe, animal funk of cured meats as we entered the room was a good sign. It soon became apparent from whence it came: a spread of charcuterie laid on top of butcher paper that stretched all the way down a table set for forty guests.

We were in a private second-floor room in the old Bancroft Hotel on South Beach, a beautiful property whose Art Deco features have been pretty respectfully preserved. It's now the home of the Miami outpost of Quality Meats, a New York restaurant with some historical legacy itself: its owners opened the original Smith & Wollensky steakhouse in New York in 1977.^[1]

The chef was Patrick Rebholz. Before joining QM, Rebholz had spent most of the past decade cooking in Charleston, most recently as the chef de cuisine at the Peninsula Grill. We got a hint that Chef Rebholz had big plans for his Cobaya dinner when he asked for an early start time. Sure enough, we didn't wrap up until nearly four hours after our 6:30pm commencement. It was time very happily spent.

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

After milling around at the bar while our group assembled, we were escorted upstairs to the "Bancroft Room" and its wafting meaty aromas. Moscow Mules in gleaming copper mugs were handed out to everyone. All the chairs were pushed back from the table so that Rebholz and crew could more easily make their way through to apply some finishing touches: cornbread cream on top of the smoked soppressata; aerated mozzarella on top of the coppa.

There was plenty more: silky, intense cured foie gras torchon coated with malted barley and a mango gastrique; thin-sliced suckling pig coppa di testa and hearty headcheese; merguez "prosciutto" topped with preserved lemon; creamy calf liver mousse topped with pickled ramps; pork jowl pastrami; hickory smoked duck bacon; toasty pork jowl corn dogs with Tabasco mayo; popcorn dressed in dry-aged beef fat. Rebholz poured some of his house-brewed beer too, and it was a great match with the charcuterie.^[2]

It was a crazy good way to start a meal, and folks dug in pretty rapaciously. Then Chef Rebholz just rolled the paper down to clear the table.^[3]

(continued ...)

best thing i ate last week: shrimp and eggplant dressing at Mignonette

I don't always think to take a picture of the side dish. It is, after all, just a side dish, right? And when there's a huge, whole roasted redfish literally flopping off either end of its plate as the main course, well, that has a tendency to draw some attention to itself.

That was the scene at Mignonette last Tuesday, as the restaurant hosted its first "Shucker Series" dinner, the first guest of honor being New Orleans chef Stephen Stryjewski (Cochon and Cochon Butcher).

There were also Pemaquid and Fat Bastard oysters served raw on the half shell, more of those Pemaquids slathered in chile butter and roasted, a ruddy, soul-lifting shellfish and tasso gumbo, a crudo of golden tilefish with favas and mustard greens, and a lemon and blueberry buttermilk pie that would make your eyes cross.

But what hit me hardest was the shrimp and eggplant dressing served alongside the fish. Such a great combination of the flavors of ocean and earth: bits of shrimp, creamy eggplant, surely some Cajun trinity (onion, bell pepper and celery), maybe some cornbread crumbs binding it all together, and a judicious addition of spice.

You can just barely see it, blurry and out of focus, in the bottom of this picture, as Stryjewski and Mignonette chef Daniel Serfer move one of those redfish out to the dining room. (You can see all my pictures from the dinner in this Mignonette Shucker Series flickr set). As I was busy dissecting our fish, Mrs. F was surreptitiously eating almost all of the dressing. Not fair. Because it was the best thing I ate last week. If you're in New Orleans any time soon, it's a staple on the menu at Cochon: get it.

Mignonette
210 N.E. 18th Street, Miami, Florida
305.375.4635