best thing i ate last week (feb. 8-14): chow fun with braised pork and mustard greens at Talde Miami Beach

I still have little hope of keeping up with the pace of Miami restaurant openings, but lately I've made a small dent in the list. Saturday before last, I braved my way through Miami Boat Show traffic to visit Talde Miami Beach, Chef Dale Talde's new restaurant in the Thompson Hotel (OK, maybe not even so new any more - it opened in November).

(You can see all my pictures in this Talde Miami Beach flickr set).

Where its companion in the Thompson, Michelle Bernstein's Seagrape, harmonizes with the hotel's 1950's, Morris Lapidus vibe, Talde brings a little of Chef Talde's Brooklyn home base to the beach: half the seating is in a re-purposed shipping container, graffiti covers the walls, hip hop blares over the speakers. The menu is similar to the chef's Brooklyn outpost which also bears his name, and features a hodge-podge of unabashedly inauthentic "Asian-American" dishes: kung pao chicken wings, pretzel pork and chive dumplings and the like.

It's a refreshingly casual place in a part of the beach that is becoming increasingly fancy. Prices are not exactly cheap, but they aren't ridiculous either, especially the short list featured on the "Late Night Noodles" menu from midnight to 4am on Thursdays to Saturdays for the club kids crowd.

I took a spot at the small kitchen counter that lines the back of the restaurant, where I tried a few things including one real standout: Talde's chow fun with braised pork and mustard greens. The broad rice noodle is given an unusual presentation, rolled in a tight spiral and seared on its top surface, the idea being that you break up the noodle and mix it with the rest of the components at the table. It makes for a great combination of crispy and chewy. The noodle, once given some encouragement, is an effective vehicle for the flavors of the tender braised pork, a broth that's redolent of sweet soy (and possibly Chinese fermented black beans), and some pleasantly tangy pickled mustard greens that provide much-wanted brightness.

I'll be back soon to try the Benton's bacon dumplings and the Korean fried chicken with spicy kimchi yogurt.

first thoughts: Ichimi Ramen, Coral Gables

There are so many new restaurants opening in Miami these days that I have given up on the prospect of keeping current with all of them. In fact, I've somewhat happily resigned myself to the opposite: I'll just wait six months, and a good number of them will have already closed.

Still, amidst this latest wave, there are some good things happening. I was sad to see Little Bread (formerly Bread & Butter) close in Coral Gables as Chef Alberto Cabrera heads off to Las Vegas, but was happy to see a promising-looking replacement coming into the space; Ichimi Ramen. Ichimi is a ramen-ya and izakaya run by Chef Constantine DeLucia, who previously worked at Momi Ramen as well as Lure Fishbar and Estiatorio Milos. I've already been in there twice since it opened a couple weeks ago.

Like Momi, Miami's only dedicated ramen specialist, the noodles are made in-house. The prices are also close but not quite at Momi-esque levels (depending on contents, ramen bowls run $18-22),^[1] though at least they take credit cards so you don't need to bring a wad of cash. The menu currently features four styles of ramen (tonkotsu, seafood, veggie, and beef brisket) as well a few cold ramen dishes. They are planning to do tsukemen (plain noodles served with an intense dipping sauce on the side rather than in broth), but it wasn't yet being served on either of my visits.

(You can see all my pictures in this Ichimi Ramen flickr set).

The first bowl I sampled was their veggie ramen, and it was great: a focused, flavorful shoyu broth (that I assume starts with a kombu dashi) stocked with shiitake and nameko mushrooms, bamboo shoots, bean sprouts, and a bouquet of pea shoots and tiny greens. The noodles are simultaneously hardy and supple, with a nice spring to them. It brought back memories of one of the first and still best bowls I had at Momi, a vegetarian ramen I've never seen on the menu there since. I've also tried Ichimi's tonkotsu ramen, which was good but not a show-stopper: the slabs of pork belly were delicious, but the broth lacked that lip-sticking unctuousness that typically characterizes the long-cooked pork bone elixir.

Ichimi also offers a pretty extensive menu of "izakaya" type small plates, most of which are much more ambitious and chef-y than your average izakaya. Maybe the best example is this "uni taco," which cleverly uses a tempura-fried nasturtium leaf as the tortilla, then tops it with a slice of wagyu beef, a couple lobes of tender, bright-orange sea urchin, and a spray of shiso "air, with a final garnish of purple micro-shiso and more pea tendrils.

(continued ...)

WeWork Miami & Food Panel Discussion - Monday February 22 6pm

Pop-up panel alert! Come out on Monday and see me do my best to moderate a discussion about the present and future of Miami's food and cocktail world with some of my favorite people in the business: Brad Kilgore of Alter, Steve Santana of Taquiza, Jessica Sanchez of Loba, and Elad Zvi of Bar Lab and Broken Shaker.

We'll all be at WeWork, located at 350 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach, on Monday February 22, starting at 6pm through 8pm. Please RSVP to RSVP@workshopcollective.com if you're coming, thanks.