Duck Duck Goose Trois at The Anderson

I've said here often that P.I.G. - Pork Is Good, Jeremiah Bullfrog's locally grown celebration of all things porcine, has become my favorite Miami food event. A few years ago he added a spin-off – Duck Duck Goose, starring the one protein that may come close to rivaling pork's range, versatility and deliciousness: duck. The inaugural DDG in 2016 was a blast, but I sadly missed Number 2. The birds were back for Duck Duck Goose Trois this past Sunday afternoon.

(You can see all my pictures in this Duck Duck Goose Trois flickr set.)

It didn't look like good flying weather for ducks Sunday morning, with Subtropical Storm Alberto creating a wet and windy maelstrom. But somehow, like the eye of the storm, a perfect little window of calm, sunny weather opened up at just the right time. The festivities, hosted by The Anderson bar on Miami's Upper East Side, went off without a hitch. Here are some highlights:

Duck terrine with a wild mushroom gelée, pickled sunchokes, smoked duck egg yolk and duck chicharrones from David Coupe and Josue Peña of Faena. Really beautiful technique and great flavors.

Torched miso and duck fat onigiri stuffed with miso seasoned slow cooked duck, from Katsuya Fukushima of Washington DC's Daikaya – very possibly my favorite bite of the day.

Fuqi Feipian – literallly "husband and wife lung" – done here as crispy tripe and confit duck wings laced with Szechuan chili oil from Jeremiah Bullfrog. A close rival for my favorite bite of the day, given my penchant for tripe.

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Cobaya Upland with Justin Smillie

When I first heard that Upland was opening in Miami Beach, the place was something of an enigma to me. I thought of Justin Smillie as a New York City chef (one whose NYC restaurant, also named Upland, I'd never tried), but the menu felt like it came from the other coast. As it turns out, Upland is a town in San Bernardino County inland of Los Angeles where Smillie was born, and his cooking style is indeed very much inspired by the "California cuisine" idiom: seasonal, vegetable forward, casual in presentation but still precise in execution.

The South of Fifth spot, which Smillie opened with restaurateur Stephen Starr (whose Miami products also include Makoto and Le Zoo) has become one of my favorites among the latest crop of "Sixth Borough" restaurants in Miami. I love the dining room, designed by Roman & Williams, with its green leather banquettes and walls lined with backlit jars of preserved lemons. But even more, I love the food, whose superficial simplicity usually belies a sonorous depth of flavor.

We were eager to do a Cobaya dinner with him, and the interest was mutual, but since Smillie is not in South Florida regularly this was a challenging one to schedule. We finally lined up a date, and even though it was only a week after our last event, we jumped on the opportunity.

As always, our request to the chef was simple: do whatever you want, just don't do anything on your regular menu. Smillie's response was entirely off-menu, but also entirely in keeping with the spirit of his restaurant.^[1] Here's what he made:

(You can see all my pictures in this Cobaya Upland with Chef Justin Smillie flickr set).

Smillie started things off with a salad – served family style – and my immediate reaction was, "It's not going to be as good as his little gem salad," a combination of perky gem lettuce, avocado, cucumber, and shaved ricotta salata in a walnut vinaigrette that hits all the right notes for me. I was wrong. This was every bit its equal. Here were all sorts of early spring things: tender spinach leaves, asparagus, fava beans, artichokes, frilly little mushrooms that were crispy like croutons. Crumbled cotija cheese added some creamy richness, a precisely balanced vinaigrette added structure and brightness.

Mrs. F thinks I hate salads. I don't. A good salad makes me very happy, and this was a very good salad.^[2]

Spring is also the season for soft shell crabs, when they molt from their hard exoskeletons and basically the whole critter can be eaten. Smillie gave these a crispy new shell of flaked coconut, and served them with a hemp seed aioli and a bouquet of fresh soft herbs. There was a sneaky bit of nostalgia here which it took me a while to pinpoint: this was like a gussied up version of coconut shrimp!

Speaking of nostalgia – when was the last time you had mango salsa? When was the last time you actually saw mango salsa on a menu, even here in the erstwhile capital of Mango Salsaville? Smillie described this dish as "hot smoked tuna cheek, spicy mango," but let's call that "spicy mango" what it is: MANGO SALSA! And it was delicious! The smoked tuna cheek, like the Japanese izakaya staple hamachi kama (yellowtail collar), was somewhat fiddly and took some work to extract the good bits, but the reward was some of the fattiest, most unctuous, flavorful flesh on the fish. And yes, it tasted great with the sweet and heat of that "spicy mango," as well as the blistered shishito peppers and huge basil leaves draped on top.

If the Miami Heat can break out some neon pink and blue Miami Vice uniforms this year, it's only fitting we bring back mango salsa too.

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Cobaya Time Machine at Stripsteak with William Crandall and Seth Weinberg

"Abandon care and enter light-hearted ...

for this is the Poodle Room, the exquisite tongue-in-cheek room,

and here life is never quite serious! Lift your cocktails

in an atmosphere reminiscent of an intimate salon in a French palace ...

its damask decor a background for paintings of poodles

with an amusing resemblance to Fragonard's playful courtiers and ladies."

There were no paintings of poodles, but just about everything else from our Cobaya dinner at Stripsteak a couple weeks ago hearkened back to the era of the Poodle Room, a cozy bar from the opening days of the Fontainebleau resort. Designed by architect Morris Lapidus and completed in 1954, the Fontainebleau was maybe the most ostentatious example of the grand but playful "Miami Modern" style, and quickly became a popular playground for the rich and famous. Frank Sinatra and the "Rat Pack" hung out here. Elvis performed here after he returned from military service. Movies were filmed here, including Jerry Lewis' "The Bellboy" and scenes from "Goldfinger" My in-laws (neither rich nor famous, but long-time Miami Beach denizens) used to go see shows at La Ronde nightclub.

With all that history to play with, Stripsteak chef William Crandall and bar director Seth Weinberg went with a "Time Machine" theme for our dinner. They found postcards, matchbooks and swizzle sticks from the hotel's first days, scoured old menus for historical dishes, and maybe most remarkably, sourced spirits all from the 1950's through 1970's for cocktail pairings to go with the dinner. It was a pretty remarkable and fully realized experience.

You can see all my pictures in this Cobaya Fontainebleau 1954 flickr set. Here's a rundown of the evening.

Once our guests arrived, they were offered a Hemingway Daiquiri made with 1970's era Bacardi Superior rum and 1950's era Cherry Heering, along with grapefruit juice and lime. Then they were shown downstairs to the "Poodle Room" – a corner of the Stripsteak dining room conveniently situated next to the bar.

That bar counter was lined with spirits that were anywhere between forty and sixty years old, some recognizable – Southern Comfort, Pernod, Noilly Prat Vermouth – and some rather mysterious – Oscar Liquore di Prugne?

Chef Crandall had dug through old menus from the Fontainebleau to look for inspiration, and his lineup featured dishes that you very well may have eaten at the hotel's restaurants way back when, but prepared with modern cooking sensibilities. A disk of creamy, rich foie gras torchon came dappled with a peppered port wine sauce and a quenelle of soft, melted julienned leeks, very old school, but also a crispy pumpernickel crumble in place of the traditional toast points. With this, Seth poured something he called "Strangers in the Night," a sweet-leaning concoction of Barres Colheito Porto from 1979, 1950's Stravecchio Branca (an oak-aged Italian brandy), and 1957 Chateau Thierry orange bitters.

I thought it was smart that they didn't quite try to serve each cocktail with a particular dish, but instead would often serve them between courses, as the strong flavors could easily overwhelm more delicate dishes. This was especially so because Seth took his "Time Machine" mission pretty literally: than the citrus in the opening daiquiri, literally everything in the other cocktails came from another era. This made for some very spirit-forward drinks, which is how I usually like them, but can be a tough match with food. For the next round, and sticking with the Sinatra theme, there was a drink he called "Luck Be a Lady" –1962 Southern Comfort (higher proof and less sweet than the current version), 1972 Dubac Orange Brandy, and 1974 Jorghe Amaro, which brought a potently herbaceous, almost medicinal kick.

This is the kind of dish you never see any more: sole bonne femme, the traditional mushroom accompaniment taking the form of a fluffy wild mushroom mousseline as well as some shingles of black truffle, plus some confit shallots on top and a caviar speckled hollandaise alongside. Back in the day, sole would often be fileted and served tableside; we could have used some of that tableside service, or at least a heads-up that the fish was being served bone-in, as I got a mouthful of bones before realizing it. And the fish possibly could have cooked a bit more, to pull more cleanly away from the bone. But I thought the flavors here were a worthy take on the classic.

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