first thoughts: Dragonfly Izakaya | Doral

Nearly a year ago, I posted some thoughts prompted by an Eater "Future Week" feature on the future of Miami dining. One of the things I predicted was that we would start seeing more independent restaurants in less trendy neighborhoods: places like Doral and Kendall, with lower rents, lots of potential customers, and not much competition other than chains. I'll confess that as a Miami Beach resident, I don't get out that way very often (honestly, I'd usually rather chew off one of my own limbs than drive on SR-836 West). But I braved the westward traffic last week to pay a visit to Dragonfly Izakaya, which opened last month.^[1] The menu, which promised seafood from Tsukiji Market and robata-grilled "neck to tail" yakitori, had lots of the right words on it.

(You can see all my pictures in this Dragonfly Izakaya and Fish Market flickr set.)

It's a big venue, with a long and busy indoor/outdoor bar, seating for probably about 100, and an open kitchen with a robata grill and sushi bar. At the entrance is a small space that's slated for use as a fish market, though it's not yet up and running. Dragonfly's a good-looking room, which incorporates Japanese elements into the design – big sake barrels, wooden planks over the robata grill with the menu written in kanji – but not in a completely over-the-top Epcot kind of way.

We started at the bar, which during happy hour features $7 cocktails (including a nice pre-batched Old Fashioned) and several sub-$10 snacks, including a solid rendition of chicken karaage for $5 (that's not the entire portion – someone ate half of it before I got there). After the happy hour clock wound down, we shifted our way over to the sushi bar to sample through the rest of the menu.

We started with a round from the robata grill. The selection was not as broad as the menu promised: a "Neck-to-Tail Tasting Menu" listed several of the more exotic chicken bits, but some of my favorites were not yet available: bonjiri (chicken butt, from the end of the tailbone), seseri (neck, with lots of nice crispy skin) and tsukune (ground chicken meatballs, not sure why these would be so difficult to drum up). But we still did OK – pictured here and working clockwise from top left, eryngii (king oyster mushrooms) doused with butter and lemon, reba (chicken liver) swiped with tare, kawa (crisp, fatty chicken skin), and shio saba (salted mackerel). In the bottom left corner is one of my favorites, okonomiyaki, a sort of savory Japanese pancake studded with cabbage and seafood, then bedecked with Kewpie mayo, okonomi sauce, aonori, beni shoga (red pickled ginger), and wispy bonito flakes. Off-screen: tontoro, grilled pork cheek, served with a nutty sesame oil dipping sauce.

Of these, the highlights were the saba – it was powerfully salty, but the mackerel was tender, oily and fishy in a welcome way – and the okonimiyaki, a treat that's difficult to find here in Miami. The chicken items were good, but lacked that fantastic balance of juicy and crisp that I've experienced at yakitoris in Japan (though that's setting the bar pretty high).

We followed with a round of nigiri: here, from back to front and left to right, hamachi (yellowtail), saba (mackerel), hotate (scallop), ika (squid), ikura (salmon roe), and mirugai (geoduck). Off-screen: ama ebi (sweet shrimp), served in the customary fashion accompanied by their fried heads. Again, the offerings on hand were a bit shy of what was listed on the menu: no o-toro, uni or aji. no kinmedai or aji from Tsukiji market. But from what we sampled, the fish was of pretty good quality – I especially enjoyed the firm snap of the mirugai. The rice was a bit cold, stiff and underseasoned for my taste. The chef also sent over a tuna kobashi for us to sample, with ruby-hued cubes of fish given a riveting dash of kimchi spice and a savory hit of toasted sesame oil, served with slivered avocado and airy rice crackers for some DIY Japanese nachos.

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travelogue: a weekend of eating in Cartagena

Let me just betray my own ignorance immediately: when a good friend said he was getting married in Cartagena, I had absolutely no expectations of the city whatsoever. I was going for the wedding, and didn't really give much thought to what else the destination might hold. I booked a flight (direct out of Fort Lauderdale on JetBlue, and quite cheap, I should note) and started looking for a hotel near the church where the ceremony would be. And as I was searching on Google Maps, those little pictures of the spots you're clicking started popping up – and like a dummy, I realized, "Oh. This place actually looks really nice!"

The heart of Cartagena, the Old Town, is a walled city overlooking the Caribbean coast which has long been attractive to empire builders, tomb raiders, slave traders and pirates. Its winding streets are lined with Spanish colonial buildings and dotted with plazas and churches that date back to the 16th century. About half of those buildings are beautifully preserved; the other half are in a state of often remarkable decay, the kind of ruin porn that draws people to Cuba and Detroit. (With its designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, all the facades must be kept intact, though owners will often adapt and re-purpose the interiors).

It is about as picturesque a place as I have ever seen, yet still has the feel of a lived-in city and not some sort of Potemkin village. I was completely charmed by it.

We only had a weekend to explore, and a wedding to celebrate and related events to attend, but in between the festivities, here's what we did while in Cartagena:

(All the places we visited, and many more, are bookmarked in this Cartagena Google Map; you can also see all my pictures from around the city in this Cartagena, Colombia flickr set).

Our home base was the Hotel Quadrifolio, which was two blocks from the chapel in the heart of the Old Town. It's an eight-room boutique hotel in a beautifully restored old 17th century residence. As we checked in – while sitting in what was more of a living room than a lobby, and sipping on delightfully cold, slushy mojitos – we flipped through a picture book with before-and-after shots of the restoration. The transformation is remarkable.

The rooms are all situated around a central courtyard lined with arched passageways. A small indigo-tiled pool is nestled in back. Despite the tropical heat, the A/C in our room blasted at arctic levels, while the bathroom was open-air, with a small garden next to the shower. The decor throughout the property seamlessly merges the contemporary and the pre-Columbian. It was a glorious place.^[1]

(There are more pictures of the hotel in this Hotel Quadrifolio flickr set.)

Hotel Quadrifolio
Calle del Cuartel (Cra. 5) No. 36-118, Cartagena de Indias, Colombia
+575 664 6053

We dropped our bags and went exploring the town, running into several other wedding attendees along the way. Though it's less than a mile from one side of the Old Town to the other, we would see something new every time we wandered the criss-crossing streets: an impeccably preserved church here, a beautiful but crumbling facade a block away.

And everywhere there were fruit vendors, with carts stacked with mangoes, papayas, coconuts, pineapples, and other more exotic specimens: maracuya (passionfruit), lulo, tomate de arbol, guava, granadilla and more.

Though we knew there would be food at a reception for the wedding guests that night, I was feeling peckish around mid-afternoon, and we stopped off for our first bite at La Cevicheria. We chose it primarily because it was open in mid-afternoon, and most places in town close at 3pm until dinner service (I get the sense that siesta is still taken pretty seriously here). I learned later that this is on the W.W.B.D. ("What Would Bourdain Do?") list for Cartagena, and I can see why.

Maybe I was especially hungry. Maybe the charm of the town makes everything taste better. Maybe it was their good A/C or their cold beer.^[2] But this octopus ceviche, was, in the moment, one of the best ceviches I'd ever had. The octopus hit that satisfying equilibrium between tender and chewy, speckled with diced onions and peppers, all awash in a citrusy marinade stained dark brown by the octopus' pigment. You can also adjust the heat level yourself with a bottle of a really outstanding orange-hued hot sauce that our server was good enough to clue us in on.

La Cevicheria's ceviches are served with saltines for scooping, but for a worthwhile upgrade, get an order of their tostones, the plantains flattened wafer-thin and fried until shattering crisp.

(There are a few more pictures in this La Cevicheria flickr set.)

La Cevicheria
Calle Stuart 714, Cartagena de Indias, Colombia
+57 5 660 1492

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Duck Duck Goose! June 4 in Wynwood

Duck Duck Goose from jeremiah bullfrog on Vimeo.

I've repeatedly said here that P.I.G., the annual porcine production hosted by Chef Jeremiah Bullfrog, is one of my favorite Miami food events of the year. (Most recently last November for P.I.G. #6.) Well, now the P.I.G. is spreading its wings.

On June 4, Chef Jeremiah's gastroPod will play the host of "Duck Duck Goose." Whereas P.I.G. is a celebration of all things pig-related, this one is for the birds: a great lineup of guest chefs cooking locally pastured poultry, including ducks from Lake Meadows Farm. Expect a flock of ducks, hopefully some geese, and lots of live fire cooking over embers. So what's with all the birds? Says Jeremiah: "After seven years of cooking pig, we thought it might be sustainable to switch up farm animals."

The chefs include some P.I.G. regulars and some new additions: Brad Kilgore of Alter, Will Crandall of Izzy's Fish and Oyster, James Strine of Café Boulud, Patrick Rebholz of Quality Meats, Cake from Cake Thai Kitchen, Gabriel Ask from the Faena, Aaron Brooks of Edge Steak, Steve Santana of Taquiza, Brian Mullins of Ms. Cheezious, Babe Froman Fine Sausages, and John Lermayer, mixologist from Sweet Liberty.

The deets:

When: June 4, 2016 from 5pm-9pm
Where: gastroPod, 168 NW 26th Street, Miami (Wynwood)
Tickets: $59 - get 'em through Eventbrite

It's the same basic idea - get some great chefs together to all cook good things with tasty animals - but Jeremiah says Duck Duck Goose will have a somewhat different feel from the P.I.G. fests: "PIG is more of  a Rock n Roll and Whiskey vibe. With DDG, the aim is towards Champagne and Bossa Nova." So imagine something like this:

But with a duck, and a different soundtrack. Sounds good to me.