So many dishes, so little time!

A new restaurant opened in Surfside.  I discovered it thanks to thrillist's posting.  I always glance at what Thrillist sends, even if I find their overenthusiastic turn of phrase a bit clichéd (are there no BAD restaurants in Miami?  I know there are, but in Thrillist's universe everything rocks).  Anyhow, one fine day, I got news of the new Chow Down Grill in Surfside and I had to check it out.

Chow Down is an interesting little restaurant.  Located where the Piri-Piri Grill used to be, it's very tiny, having only 4 tables inside, and 3 tables overlooking the insane traffic of Harding Avenue.  The food is best described as pan-Asian.  Vietnam is represented thanks to the sandwiches (Ban-Mi, but called sandwiches on the menu), and the noodle soup (Pho).  Thai cuisine makes an appearance with green curry.  Chinese influence is seen in a few of the main dishes.  In other words, it's difficult to classify.

The 24-hour braised beef sandwich was very very good.  The beef is tender, juicy, and the other ingredients in the sandwich made the dish a layered taste experience.  Savory, some sweet (very little), crunchy, acid, creamy, the crunch of the baguette.  Perfect.  My next try was the Crab Rangoon dumpling.  That was disappointing.  Tiny squares of crispy dough around a mixture of spinach, cheese and crab.  The flavors did not combine to produce anything extraordinary.  It was acceptable, but I'd skip that one.  There was another dumpling with chicken and garlic that had wonderful flavor.  I was a bit concerned when I saw the thickness of the dough of the dumpling, remembering the leathery mess Miss Yip passes off as dumplings.  But this dumpling was pleasant to eat.

For me, one dish not to miss at this restaurant is the house noodle soup.  Order it with beef, or without, but skip other protein additions.  The broth is a wonderful old-fashioned beef broth - the kind that requires roasting bones, then simmering them forever in broth.  In a number of places, the broth of Pho is some greyish dishwater flavored with 5-spice or some such.  Here, the broth is a deep brown, and tastes like beef.  The real thing.  While the weather is this hot, this may be a difficult one to think of ordering, especially if you're sweltering at one of the outside tables.  But if you're inside, don't miss it.  One more good point of that restaurant: they serve a lot of organic food.  Service is attentive, and the overall meal was nice.  A good addition to my hometown.

The South Florida Foodies, which is the best group to hang around with, organized an early dinner at 600 at the Angler in South Beach for one of the hotel's Summer Thursday Front Porch Suppers - which feature a new England lobster boil  or Chesapeake Bay Blue Crab, or Shrimp - that used to be from the Gulf, but are now sourced from elsewhere.  The price is a very reasonable $26 for this bounty, and the $3 beer is a 16 oz can.  The presentation is ingenious: each person's food is cooked in its individual cheesecloth bag, which is split open, and tossed on a large plate complete with a tin bucket ready to receive the shells and other detritus.  A MESSY meal.    6 crabs on the plate may be just a tiny bit too much??  Opening a crab (thank you, Maude, for the amazing lesson on how to do this effectively) is not the fork-and-knife, pinky in the air sort of thing.  It's messy and enjoyable.  ViceQueen Maria posed the interesting question of whether this meal is appropriate for a first date.  Ahem. 

By the way, the bartender at this hotel is apparently a mind-reader.  I wanted some sparkly lemonade mixed with Hendricks Gin in a tall glass, could not describe it, but he produced the perfect drink.  Genius.  The manager assures us the brunch at the hotel is amazing, so that's one treat not to miss during the quieter off-season.

At home, I made an adaptation of Fine Cooking's spice-rubbed pork roast with chili-lime salsa.  My roast was boneless, and my spice rub enjoyed the addition of a teaspoon of greek oregano, and additional cumin seeds.  That smoky flavor in the herb is a good accent for the spice combination of cumin, paprika and chipotle pepper.  The cumin seeds make for a nice, grainier texture on the whole thing.  The pork marinated for 48 hours before cooking on the grill, and it was delicious.  A 2003 Pirramimma Petit Verdot with enough heft to stand up to the spicy flavors, and supple enough not to overwhelm the pork made a nice pairing with the meal.

 

I've also enjoyed a number of other great meals at a variety of places.  Happy Hour at Truluck's in the Galleria (sorry for the annoying music on the website) is a not-to-be missed bargain.  Half price on all cocktails and hors-d'oeuvres.  Not just well drinks: all cocktails.  Don't miss the ceviche and the duck tacos.  Both are lovely.  Dinner with friends at Candela's - Armando makes the BEST yucca frita in South Florida.  Girls' day out at The Grill on the Alley - yeah, it's a chain, but if they do things well, who cares?  Loved that the waiter brought me the whole bottle of Angostura bitters when I requested sparkling water with a dash of bitters and an orange slice.  A couple of lunches at Sugar Cane - has anyone ever had a bad meal there?  What a great concept and execution!

The restaurant scene is really getting better over here in South Florida.  I hope the economy picks up to encourage this exciting development.

Green mood?

I've been in the mood for eating green food. What I had on hand: zucchini, parsley, basil, cilantro, ripe Haas avocados, jalapenos and limes.

So I ended up making two of my favorite dishes.  Zucchini soup with basil, and green egg salad.

Zucchini soup is a lovely dish.  There is a silky quality to the cooked and blended zucchini that's beyond compare, and it requires no cream and very little fat.  It does, however, require a great deal of salt to taste perfect.

Add 4 chopped garlic cloves to 2 T of olive oil in a heavy pan.  Add 4 sliced large zucchini and stir well.  Cover and let stew for about 5 min to soften the zucchini.  Add salt, fresh ground white pepper, and water to cover.  Let simmer for about 30 min. until zucchini get very soft.  Add basil;  I like to cut a bunch in chiffonade: roll leaves up like a cigar, and cut into thin strips.  Add a handful of basil to the pot, reserving some of the strips for decoration. At this point, I like to use an immersion blender to blend the soup to its silky perfection.  Adjust salt to taste and serve.  Overcooking basil results in loss of flavor.
Floating a little bit of lemon-infused olive oil on top, along with some raw strips of basil is both decorative and adds an unexpected note to the soup.  I also like this soup served cold.
****************
Green egg salad.  Sounds like something frightening - possibly from another planet.  It's one of my favorite mix of flavors and textures.

Ingredients:
2 hard boiled eggs, thinly sliced
1 scallion, sliced
1/2 c chopped cilantro
1 to 2 jalapenos, seeds and veins removed, and chopped thinly.  (I also like serrano peppers for this)
1 Haas avocado, thinly sliced
1 lime, juiced
1 tsp olive oil
salt to taste

Stir all ingredients together.  The avocado will break into smaller pieces, as will the egg.  For a pop of color, add a few sliced grape tomatoes.  I personally prefer it all green, and serve it on open-faced sandwiches.  Makes 2 to 3 servings.

Voila!  Green food.

Hakkasan celebration

Loved loved loved yesterday's celebration at Hakkasan for Maude's 25th birthday.  Fun group, great menu, and the venue is spectacular.

So is the food.  I will judge a Chinese restaurant by the quality of its dumplings, among other things.  A thick,  leathery outer shell (a la Miss Yip in South Beach) eliminates the restaurant from any consideration for a return visit.  Hakkasan's dumplings are heavenly. No other word for it.  Light, tasty, just the right combination of textures, and the soup dumpling is worth rhapsodizing over.  (Rap-sodizing, yo?)

The bar is beautiful.  Hakkasan makes one of the most interesting bloody marys I've ever had. Muddled cilantro and basil are the stars, but the olives served with them were special as well.  The buttery quality of a cerignola olive, but smaller in size.  I'm going to start hunting for those.  The bartender was attentive, and while he was obviously very busy dealing with our large group, he never rushed the artful process of turning out a perfect bloody mary.

Service was disappointing for a restaurant of this style.   Right at the entrance, the hostess set the tone of haughty indifference.  Took a while to take her eyes off her computer screen,which was clearly much more interesting than us.  We did get a regulation smile & greeting, but to say it lacked warmth would be an understatement.  The waiters were experiencing difficulties keeping up with our large group's various requests.  They were polite, but at a place of this standing no one should be asking for water while hopefully waving an empty water glass.


So it's really a question of service quality to price ratio.  At these prices, service must be as faultless as the food.  Even for large groups.  

I keep hearing that there are choices of great Chinese restaurants in Miami.  My experiences in that area have been very limited.  I used to love Mr. Chu in South Beach - although I admit that towards the end the quality went down.  Mr. Chu is no longer there.  Hakkasan has exquisite food, but if I were to go back, it would have to be a special occasion.  I've never gone to Tropical, which everyone raves about.  That will have to be a project for a weekend sometime.  The rest of my experiences have been abysmal, marked by grey goopy food (overcooked with cornstarch?), tasteless messes where the vegetables are barely recognizable.  

From these awful experiences, I've drawn one sure conclusion.  If there is a container with sugar packets and sweet'n'low on the table at a Chinese restaurant, get the hell out.  The food is likely to be unspeakable slop.

Canyon Ranch Miami Beach and those intriguing numbers

Last night we had the pleasure of joining the South Florida Chapter of the AIWF for dinner at Canyon Ranch Hotel.  The meal was superb, as expected, and in this case, we found that Elizabeth Barlow's sous-chef had been a AIWF scholarship recipient.  This was a wine dinner featuring Long Island's Mattebella's wines.

On the way to the private dining room where we were to dine, I got to admire the terrace, which the food & beverage manager assured us, was the closest to the beach of any establishment in the Miami area.  I'm seeing lunch there in the not-too-distant future.

Each of us had a menu, and below each dish description was an intriguing set of numbers.  Regrettably, they were not the phone number of the rather good-looking waiter, but horrible information such as calories, carbohydrates, protein, fat and fiber.  To quote Sharon, a frequent accomplice in these food and wine forays: DON'T do the math!

It was the ultimate healthy menu, except for the amount of food.  We started with the avocado tartare, a signature dish of the Canyon Ranch restaurant and beautifully paired with Mattebella's Chardonnay.  This wine is crisp, citrusy, with really good butterscotch middle notes, and a tangy finish.  Not a hint of that despicable buttery fatness so prevalent in California chardonnays.  In conjunction with the avocado tartare, this was wine pairing heaven.

The next dish was not nearly as well matched.  The sustainably caught Chilean bass was rich, buttery, served with a pineapple broth (not my favorite) and an inspired key lime cucumber relish topped with a fiery hot bird pepper.  Unfortunately, this was paired with the Famiglia Red, and that was unfortunate.  There apparently was a misunderstanding on what type of broth was served with the fish.  The wine is lovely.  The dish extraordinary.  Together - not good. We asked the waiter to bring us some glasses of the chardonnay, and that went beautifully with the dish.

The next extravaganza was grass-fed tenderloin.  Not entirely sure about the "truffle cheese crust" piece of that dish, but overall this was truly wonderful.  I'm especially in awe of the grilled kale, and plan to try that at home.  If anyone has a better recipe - send it on.  The wine was wonderful, and a great match for the food.  This was Mattebella's Vineyard's top-of-the-line Old World Blend.  The wine is velvety, with just the right notes of dark fruit, ending with leather and coffee.  Not much grip in there - so plan to drink this within five years, but what a pleasing wine.  I'd compare this with a good, aged St. Emilion.

The desserts were a let-down, frankly. The combination of spiced zucchini cake, disguised as a dark chocolate truffle to fool unsuspecting diners, hibiscus creme brulee (just what flavor is "hibiscus" anyway?), and the fresh apple crumble topped with a sour ice cream of some sort (goat cheese?) totaled up to nasty.  I clearly lack the sophistication to appreciate such (precious) creations.

When I go back, and I will, I will have their house-made soda as a dessert.  The mango soda was wonderful.

So go to Canyon Ranch.  Have lunch on the terrace.  Or an early dinner.  Have superb food, don't look at those numbers too closely, and enjoy.

The mystery of the unevenly tart tart

 I was hanging out behind a motel on Sunday afternoon -  as one does - with a group of new best friends. The virtuous reason for being there was an event called Remember Haiti.  While this is certainly a fine cause, pig requires some sort of food reward for going anywhere. 


What a wonderful event this was!  We enjoyed the company of South Florida Foodies, great food, and a table overlooking a river.  The venue was The Red Light, a restaurant in my favorite style: a tiny treasure hidden away in some unlikely place, with great food and few pretensions.  Favorite husband and I enjoy discovering these little places.  Perhaps part of the game is this feeling of superiority their discovery imparts - the illusion of being part of The People In The Know.  


When we were freshly arrived in Miami, we did our share of going to absurdly overpriced restaurant with little to recommend them but waiters pretending to be Italian (cue in Fergie singing "Be Italian", the best number of the movie Nine http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5bbuXndMW4).  The 2-salad, 2-pasta, 2-coffee meals for $80 were shocking to one coming from Northern California where great meals could be had for $15 per person.  Some of our new acquaintances left us with the impression that no great meal could be had in South Florida for less than $150 per person, and even then it was an iffy proposition.  The Miami area was a culinary wasteland for me. 


Things have changed.  Perhaps we acquired a better knowledge of where to go.  I think that the rebirth of the design district and the Winwood area, the improving traffic situation around Brickell, and public support of great restaurants like Michael's Genuine Food and Drink (http://www.opentable.com/michaels-genuine-food-and-drink - this link offers the same blurb, and less flash nonsense than the "official" website), have made South Florida an exciting food place.


Back to our unevenly tart tart, which sort of started these musings.  Part of our feast yesterday included a Florida Lemon pie.  It was served with a dollop of whipped cream enhanced with a light sprinkling of basil chiffonade.  In my plate, the lemony cream center was perfect;  sweet, but not too sweet and with just the right degree of acidity to make taste buds ecstatic.  The basil added just the right note, incidentally.  Next to me, another serving of the same pie - where the tip of the wedge serving provided the right degree of tartness, but where towards the outer edge the lemony flavor whimped out.  How is this possible?  As a cook, I'm trying to understand how something like this can happen.  The blend of eggs, lemon juice, sugar and cream poured into a pie crust and baked, could not allow for an unevenly tart tart.  Was there a pot-scraping incident at work here?

I'm reasonably certain the ongoing mystery will still allow me to get on with my life.  Happy Passover to my Jewish friends.  What are you cooking?  This looks yummy: http://www.epicurious.com/articlesguides/holidays/passover/israelipassover/recipes/food/views/Roasted-Poussins-with-Pomegranate-Sauce-and-Potato-Rosti-238000  but is all that sugar really necessary??