Phony Bagelmania Has Bitten the Dust

I know it seems odd that after a week in northern California I should be talking about bagels. A case of recency trumping primacy (there are many good things to eat in San Francisco - the bagels are not among them).

After returning home to South Florida, I was intrigued to read on the Florida Chowhound board of a new bagel place opening up in Delray Beach called "The Original Brooklyn Water Bagel Co." The pitch is that they claim to have found a way to duplicate, through "purification and modification," the supposedly magical effects of the New York public water supply on bagel-preparation.^[*]

Opinions among the chowhounds seem decidedly mixed, with some pronouncing them the "Best bagels in S. Fl.," while others declared them "really nothing special." As is somewhat typical, many of the posters (particularly the cheerleaders) are first-time posters, miraculously roused to action by the appearance of a new bagel place.

Anyhoo ... I happened to be up in Palm Beach this morning, and Brooklyn Water Bagel was only a brief detour on my drive back to Miami. I stopped in and they do indeed have lots of fancy metal tanks on display which create the Brooklyn holy water. Other than that, it's a modified fast-food setup where you order at the counter, pour your own coffee or soft drink, and get a card which plugs into a little device on your table to tell them where to deliver your order.

I had requested a lox eggs & onions with a toasted poppy seed bagel, but alas, their toaster was behaving over-aggressively and had been put on time out for the morning. Considering they just opened a week ago, I was not going to hold this against them; besides, it gave me a better opportunity to sample their bagel au naturel, and they assured me the bagels were still warm from the oven. There was another mild snafu a few minutes later when, instead of getting a LEO with a bagel on the side, I instead got a LEO stuffed within said bagel (which was a different but very similarly described menu item). I can deal with that in stride too. It's all about the bagel anyway, right?

As for that bagel. I was underwhelmed. It had a nicely crusty exterior, but otherwise it struck me as too fluffy and risen, and too dry. In fact, for a bagel fresh out of the oven, it felt oddly stale. I can't imagine driving all the way from Miami to Delray even for an authentic Brooklyn bagel, but this one certainly wouldn't be worth the schlep.

But maybe I'd just forgotten what a good bagel tasted like - an easy thing to do amidst all the imposters these days. So as I continued driving south, I recalled another small detour along the way - Sage Deli in Hallandale. Lacking Brooklyn Water Bagel's fast-food franchise aspirations, Sage is an old-school Jewish deli that bakes its own bagels on premises, and also offers the full gamut of the usuals - several different smoked fish, corned beef and pastrami, deli salads, knishes, blintzes, etc. They also had what I recalled to be some of the best bagels in South Florida, though it had been some time since I'd had one. I grabbed a quick sesame bagel (toasted with a working toaster!) topped with scallion cream cheese at the counter, and was reminded what a good bagel should be. Crusty on the outside, but still chewy and even a bit dense on the inside - substantial, serious and not in any way fluffy. It's not a New York bagel, but it's as close as I've gotten here in South Florida - even without any Brooklyn water.

The Original Brooklyn Water Bagel Co.
14451 S. Military Trail
Delray Beach, FL 33484
877.224.3580

Sage Deli
800 E. Hallandale Beach Blvd.
Hallandale, FL 33009
954.456.7499

^[*]Having been open a week, Brooklyn Water Bagel's website already optimistically has a link for "Franchise Info" though it's a dead link.

Going to California ...

... with no aching in my heart. Actually gone last week and came back, late last night, which explains the dearth of posts here of late. But fear not, I'm working up my reports from the other coast. A preview of what's to come: Yank Sing, Great Eastern, Fifth Floor, Zuni Cafe, Incanto, Citronelle Carmel, Manresa, Bistro Laurent, Artisan, Le Colonial.

Experiment #1

The first run of the "Cobaya - Gourmet Guinea Pigs" dinner was earlier this week at Talula with a menu crafted by Chef Andrea Curto-Randazzo and her sous chef Kyle Foster. There was a preview of the menu here the evening before the dinner, and now there's some feedback in the comments there from some of the other guinea pigs.

Before recapping the meal, some general thoughts. The goal here is a very simple one - to get talented chefs to cook great, interesting meals for an audience of adventurous, open-minded diners. That may happen inside a restaurant, it may happen outside of one. It may be a multi-course tasting menu, it may be a family-style whole hog dinner (here's hoping). For those who question the "underground" street cred of this mission, those questions are perfectly legitimate. My answer is, "I don't care." We're not limiting ourselves to meals cooked in abandoned warehouses in secret locations disclosed the day before the dinner; we're also not limiting ourselves to white tablecloths and silverware changed between every course. I'm very open-minded that way: all that matters to me is if the food is good, and I think there's enough similar-minded folks to make that game plan sustainable.

In any event, here are my thoughts on the first Cobaya experiment (the restaurant was very generous on corkage and so several of us brought bottles, wine pairings are noted below where I can recall).

diver scallop crudo - a couple thin slices of cold, sweet sea scallop, topped with a Blue Moon Beer sorbet, some micro-greens tossed with some pickled ginger, and a sprinkle of mint sea salt, all presented on a big scallop shell like Venus on the Half-Shell. I enjoyed the texture of the sorbet against the scallop, though I thought the sorbet was too sweet which overwhelmed the beer flavor; the minted salt did a nice job of perking up the flavors.

Had a Hubert Slovakian sparkling wine with this, which I thought was a perfectly nice bubbly though not a great pairing.

foie gras - the foie was perfectly seared, with a very fine cross-hatch across the surface. A great set of accompaniments, too - a sort of hash of Homestead lychees, toasted almond slivers, and house smoked bacon (Talula does a lot of in-house charcuterie and the results are outstanding), and a drizzle of a root beer gastrique that provided a tantalizing sweet-spicy component. You can also find this root beer gastrique on the Talula regular menu where it accompanies a seared scallop app.

Poured a Bodegas Gutierrez Casta Diva Cosecha Miel (2003) with this, a sweet muscatel from Alicante which showed some nice citrus, honey and spice.

quail - rubbed with ancho chile and roasted, served with a raisin-cocoa nib jus and a puddle of buttered popcorn puree. The quail was perfectly roasted and it was reassuring to see that this group wasn't remotely self-conscious about getting down to business and using their hands to pick up and gnaw on those little leg bones. The raisin-cocoa nib component did a neat job of mirroring the notes of the ancho chile, though it was curious that the flavors more fully revealed themselves on their own (particularly the cocoa) rather than when had in combination with the quail. The popcorn puree was also a nice complement, though the flavor -surprisingly to me - was not dramatically distinguishable from just a simple corn puree.

Paired with a Finca Sandoval (2004), a syrah-based blend from Manchuela that had nice dark fruit and some smoky, chocolatey notes.

tripe risotto - one of my favorites of the night among several very good dishes. Talula always does great risottos but this was a real knockout. Creamy rice and lots of slippery, velvety braised tripe, smoky spicy house-smoked tasso, along with some textural and flavor contrast from some softened but not melted green apple dice and red cabbage, and walnuts. Just an absolutely beautiful dish. I could have happily had another bowl after dessert.

Had with a Poggio San Polo Brunello (1997) which was beautiful, both elegant and robust, but still felt really young and could have used some more aeration. Lesson for next time.

spinalis - another of the favorites of the night. The spinalis is, as I understand it, basically the cap of the ribeye, the strip of meat outside the fat layer of a typical rib-eye steak, taken cross-wise off the top of the cut. It is a fantastic cut of meat, with deep meaty flavor, and a great combination of texture and tenderness. It was accompanied with a summer stone fruit panzanella (slices of nectarine (?) and plum (?) tossed with cubes of toasted bread), "blackberry wine" and a toss of crispy fried shallots. The unconventional pairing of the fruit with the beef nicely lightened up the dish some.

This was possibly one of the best semi-fortuitous wine pairings of the night (when I saw the description it was screaming for a zin for me), a C.G. di Arie "Southern Exposures" Shenandoah Valley Zinfandel (2006), a really nice zin with plenty of berry fruit but still good balance and even elegance.

cheeses - a couple artisan cheeses from Carr Valley, the menu listed a River Bend sheeps' milk cheese and a Bessie's Blend goat & cow's milk cheese, though some of us at the table believe we actually got a Mobay (Carr Valley's take on the French Morbier) instead. The pairing with a house-made mostarda (cherries in a syrup pungent with mustard seed and horseradish) and truffle honey was intriguing, but ... I prefer Talula's cooking to Carr Valley's cheeses.

panna cotta - a beautiful creamy-white panna cotta speckled on top with vanilla beans, with a hint of fresh tarragon and a scatter of strawberries macerated in a white balsamic syrup. This was a nice light dessert, with an excellent texture. Jay Rayner got some titters on Top Chef for noting that a proper panna cotta should wobble like a woman's breasts, and that's an apt description. Sadly, there are so many fake ones on South Beach, it would be hard to tell (panna cottas, that is).

This made for an unexpectedly brilliant pairing with another of the Hubert Slovakian bubblies, this one with just enough of a hint of sweetness to complement the dessert. Unfortunately I can't tell you the particular label on this, only that it was one of those serendipitous moments.

It was a great meal, and a great group of people with whom to share it. The real pleasure of this, from my perspective, is having the opportunity to tell a great chef, "Cook me what you want to make." More such experiences will be coming.^[*]

^[*]Chef Curto-Randazzo has given hints that she may start doing a "Cobaya Happy Hour" and offer some more adventurous tapas-style items at more affordable prices. When there's more information I"ll be happy to pass it along.

Old Spice

I know it feels like it was only yesterday we were talking about "Spring Spice," but the seemingly never-ending seasonal parade of "Spice" specials has finally come full-circle to the original summer Miami Spice program, with a multitude of restaurants committing to the 3-course, $22 lunch, $35 dinner regime for August and September.

I gave my fairly obvious Miami Spice "strategy" in the earlier post - "look for interesting food, and look for places where the Spice menu actually offers a meaningful discount off the regular menu prices." Implicit in that strategy is "avoid the ubiquitous Spice trifecta of farmed salmon, skirt steak and chicken paillard if at all possible." And, as always, keep in mind that restaurants frequently change their Spice menus, so don't kvatch because you saw something different online. This is important if for no other reason than the sanity of the line cooks who grow weary of cranking out the same dish over and over and over again. So without further ado, here's what looks interesting to me:

Area 31 - great idea of a "sustainable dinner" with 4 (!) courses - key west pink shrimp; ricotta gnocchi with tuna bolognese; striped bass with English peas, watermelon radish and long pepper; and key lime curd.

Asia de Cuba - similar to sister restaurant China Grill, I like that they offer several different choices and have adapted the "Spice" concept to their family style servings. Seems a better deal if you go with more than 2 people.

BLT Steak - assuming they're still serving the warm chicken liver mousse and popovers with the Spice menu, worth it for that reason alone.

Bourbon Steak - duck rillette, "American Kobe" Rib Eye ($10 upcharge), and doughnut tiramisu? Sure, even if I'm a little sore that the upcharge seems a bit contrary to the spirit of the thing.

Eos - lunch only, but bonus points for playing the bone marrow card as an accompaniment to a grilled flatiron steak; plus unlimited glasses of Boutari wine (not conducive to afternoon productivity).

Gotham Steak - mostly just because I haven't tried it yet, but there are probably worse meals to be had than a corn soup with lump crab, braised veal cheeks, and cherry clafoutis.

Hakkasan - again mostly because I haven't been there yet, though entree choices of stir-fry black pepper beef or steamed red snapper don't exactly inspire. Early reports suggest they're not exactly encouraging people to take advantage of the Spice menu at the restaurant either.

Michy's - pork belly, nectarines, basil & star anise; grilled short rib w green tomato slaw and gremolata; and Michy's bread pudding? Yes please. A couple other interesting items I've not seen from her before, too - a chilled beet soup (borscht is coming back, baby!) and a yellowtail braised in Malaysian curry with mango, sticky rice and hearts of palm stew.

Neomi's - "taco truck" app - kogi tacos with korean bbq pork & kimchee, or fish tacos with yellowtail and the customary accoutrements; and I've tasted a preview of the "taste of lobster" entree - it is definitely worth tasting.

Palme d'Or - wild mushroom cassolette with creamy spinach & poached quail egg sure sounds good; so does Maine lobster bisque with lobster ravioli & saffron cappucino; braised short ribs with potato gratin, baby carrot & black truffle sauce sounds a bit heavy for summer, but somehow so much more appealing than a grilled striped bass filet.

Petite Rouge - since this place is already pretty reasonably priced, this may breach my "don't do Spice if it's not a bargain" rule, but nonetheless, you can't go wrong with escargot, bavette a la bordelaise, and tarte tatin.

Restaurant at the Setai - always intriguing-sounding food and the Spice is a real bargain compared to their regular menu prices; though the Spice menu they've posted for the summer looks awfully similar to the menu they did in the Spring.

Scarpetta - will I feel like less of a shithead for ordering a $23 bowl of spaghetti pomodoro if it's part of a $35 3-course menu?

How are your Spice experiences this summer?

[OK, I'm kicking myself for not immediately thinking of the opportunity to link to this]

Pizza Crawl Part IV - il fin

They say all good things must come to an end, and "Pizza Crawl" finally did so earlier this week - just in time for the Miami Herald to get on the pizza bandwagon. Another troupe of pizza fans came along for the final edition, which made its two last stops in South Beach at Fratelli la Bufala and the newly opened Casale.

Fratelli la Bufala

I had always been curious about Fratelli la Bufala, which came to South Beach with an authentic Italian pedigree. The brand was supposedly started by the sons of a family of Italian buffalo mozzarella producers who thus dubbed themselves the "Fratelli la Bufala" and has nearly 100 locations, mostly in Italy but also including such far-flung outposts as Hannover, Strasbourg, Istanbul and Dubai.

The full contingent of pizza-tasters had not yet come on board when we arrived at Fratelli, so we limited our tasting to only four pies. When we first started the pizza crawl, we had the idea of sampling a "control group" margherita from each restaurant; that idea was quickly abandoned as the group sought to identify the best "signature" offering from each place (a couple additional unofficial rules instead came into play: one was that if a pizza included the name of the restaurant, it had to be ordered; and another was that if a combination sounded completely unlikely - i.e., the "Joey's Pizza" with tuna, salami, gorgonzola, capers and spinach - we ought to order it just to see if it could actually work). While I lobbied to try a traditional margherita at Fratelli, I was boisterously voted down and instead we tried:

La Reale - tomato sauce, bufala mozzarella, bufala smoked mozzarella, bufala ricotta & prosciutto crudo
Diavola - tomato sauce, spicy salame, mozzarella, basil & crushed red pepper
Vesuviana - fresh cherry tomatoes, smoked bufala mozzarella, bufala mozzarella, green olives & anchovies
Sausage & Broccoli Rabe - a special, double-crusted pizza, explained further below.

Across the board, I found the basics at Fratelli were done right - the crust was thin but not cracker-crisp, with some nice bubbles and just a hint of charred bits; the cheese was high quality; the sauce struck a nice balance between acidic and sweet. Yet while they were all good, there was nothing about any of the pies we tried at Fratelli that made you sit up and say "This is a great pizza!"

Though I like the sausage and broccoli rabe combo, I was suspicious of the special we ordered, which was described as being a pizza topped with another pizza crust on top to create a stuffed effect (though not crimped and sealed like a calzone). This sounded too much like some Frankenstein-ish Pizza Hut creation dreamed up for the sake of creating a new product line, but it turned out to be fine, though I still could have easily lived without the extra crust. I am not usually a fan of the multi-cheese approach adopted by the Reale, as I find it's usually overkill, but this one was OK, even if the multitude of cheeses made this pie a bit soggier than the others. The Diavola had a nice assertive spiciness from the salame and crushed pepper, but the one that showed the most promise for me was the Vesuviana, which sported ripe juicy cherry tomatoes, a nice element of intrigue from the smoked buffalo mozzarella, and some high quality anchovies.

Despite missing a "wow" effect, Fratelli la Bufala put out some good pizzas. It is surely the only place in town where pretty much all the pies are topped with high quality mozzarella di bufala, though their prices still remain mostly in the same neighborhood as other pizzerias (mostly in the range of $11-15).

Fratelli la Bufala
437 Washington Avenue
Miami Beach, FL 33139
305.532.0700



Casale

[Sorry, this place has closed]

Casale is a sister restaurant to Sardinia, which opened nearly three years ago and has a well-executed focus on the cuisine of its namesake region of Italy. I had heard Casale described as a pizzeria, but it is more ambitious than that. In addition to nearly twenty pizza choices, there is a mozzarella and burrata bar with a number of options for accompaniments, more than a half dozen crudos, several antipasti and salads, and a pretty sizable selection of sandwiches and a few other items as well. It is also a much larger space than I had anticipated, indeed it's a sprawling space with still more seating in an indoor/outdoor upstairs area too.

Since this was the final round of Pizza Crawl and we were only visiting two establishments for the night, we ended up sampling a pretty broad array of Casale's pizza options:

Pugliese - rapini & wild boar sausage
Funghetto - wild mushrooms, taleggio & sage
Smeraldina - braised fennel & bottarga
Catalana - chorizo, manchego, tomato & olives
Atomica - spinach, artichokes, guanciale & quail eggs
Sag Harbor - mussels, clams, baby octopus & shrimp
Buongustaio - baby zucchini, parma prosciutto & burrata
Sagaponack - potatoes, anchovies & ricotta
Super Margherita - prosciutto, bufala mozzarella & arugula

I thought that the crust at Casale was among the best that we've sampled, thin but with a bit of chew, nicely blistered and bubbled and crisp around the edges, if occasionally veering a little too far into blackened and charred territory (an assumed risk when you're dealing with a hot oven). The toppings were often very vividly flavored - the braised fennel on the Smeraldina was silky in texture and bright in flavor, the mushrooms on the Funghetto were rich and meaty with a nice resinously woodsy note from the fresh sage leaves. A few in particular I thought were complete and unqualified successes - the Catalana (an unorthodox but effective use of Spanish ingredients), the Atomica (the spinach jazzed up with the salty guanciale and the use of quail eggs a great way of distributing their yolky goodness across the entire pizza) and the Super Margherita hit all the right spots for me.

On more than one occasion, though, the promise of the menu didn't quite come through on the plate, because the flavor of a key component was missing in action. The Smeraldina was missing the funky whiff of bottarga, making it a one-note fennel composition. The Pugliese appeared almost completely devoid of broccoli rabe. Others just didn't quite click - the potatoes in the Sagaponack were mushy, the Sag Harbor a vast improvement over the seafood pizza we had at Spris but still not quite right.

Despite these miscues, though, Casale's basic execution is fundamentally sound, and the menu is more adventurous than many of the other places we visited. While other pizzerias may boast a lengthier list of pizzas, many are just minor variations on the same theme, whereas Casale's are for the most part each very distinctly different and often more ambitious.

Casale
1800 Bay Road
Miami Beach, FL 33139
305.397.8237



So after 53 pies at 11 different locations, what conclusions can be drawn? I have a few:

(1) Good pizza isn't easy to do right. Some places where I've had good experiences previously had poor execution on our Pizza Crawl visits. When you're working with extremely high cooking temperatures and short cooking times, the difference between soggy, perfect, and burnt can be a matter of seconds.

(2) You can't make a truly great pizza without great ingredients. The places that stood out to me the most - Pizzavolante, Racks, and Casale - are using high quality ingredients, and it shows in the finished product.

(3) Pizza is a great cheap meal. At most of the places we went, the pies averaged between $10-15. Most were of a size that you could probably split one between two people. Throw in a beer or a cheap glass of wine, and how many other options are there for getting something that's hand-made with artisanal ingredients for under $10 a person?

(4) Miami may not be a pizza mecca, but it doesn't suck either. No doubt all the New Yorkers will chime in about how nothing you get here in Miami can compare to any pizza you can get on any street corner in New York. Whatever. I'm just happy to see some local restaurants taking pizza a little more seriously and for the most part succeeding in their efforts.

And with the Pizza Crawl officially concluded, I am going to reopen the "best pizza" poll with all the places that we've visited. Take a look over on the right-hand column and cast your vote.