❖❖❖

IN THIS ISSUE

WHAT'S NEW IN MIAMI?
BY JOHN MARIANI

R.I.P. CLARISSA DICKSON WRIGHT
By John Mariani

NEW YORK CORNER
DAVIO'S Northern Italian Steakhouse
by John Mariani

NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR
THE NEW FACE OF BAROLO
by John Mariani



❖❖❖








WHAT'S NEW IN MIAMI?
BY JOHN MARIANI



Ocean Boulevard, Miami Beach


 

    Despite the pizzazz that still enlivens Ocean Boulevard on Miami Beach, a good deal of the gastro-excitement has shifted to other parts of Miami, not least the Design District, which is quickly becoming a destination for tourists as well as those looking to decorate their condos.  Here are some of the most enticing new restaurants in the sun-kissed city right now, both on and off the Beach.

 

MC KITCHEN

4141 NE 2nd Avenue

305-456-9948
http://mckitchenmiami.com
         

        Quick: name a great Italian restaurant in Miami. No? Okay, how about a real good one? Take your time.  Nothing? Then here’s the exciting news: MC Kitchen is not just the best and best looking Italian restaurant in Miami, it’s one of the best in America right now.

         It’s hard to imagine an Italian restaurant in Miami having partners with better iambic names than Chef Dena Marino and Brandy Coletta. Dena’s national repute comes from working with Michael Chiarello at Tra Vigne in Napa Valley, then at Ajax Tavern in Aspen, where her lusty style of Italian cooking fit like a ski glove in the town’s Rocky Mountain chic.

    Brandy, a grad of U of M and a business developer who worked on two Presidential campaigns, has a canny sense of South Florida style, shown in MC Kitchen's clean, stripped down décor befitting its Design District location, starting with gauzy curtains hung from a 16-foot ceiling, polished wood paneling, a bar backed in chrome and mirrors, and a white marble counter at the stainless steel open kitchen. Even the liquor and wine bottles seem artfully placed on glass shelves to harmonize with the rest of the décor.

         What distinguishes MC’s cooking is its elemental simplicity--the first rubric of Italian cuisine, adapted by Dena Marino with all the gusto she can muster in a dish like her pappardelle of spring ramps and “forever braised” pork ragù, and her crisp, charred pizzas topped with broccoli di rabe, sausage, fontina and caramelized onions.  Miami being a hot weather city, she lightens up the menu with a juicy mahi mahi with arugula, licorice-like fennel, tiny, rare Ligurian Taggiasche olives, and tangy orange vinaigrette.

         Her food and Coletta’s savvy coalesce in a sophisticated balance rare in a sunny city where glitz too often trumps good taste.  

 

 

OAK TAVERN

35 NE 40th Street

786-391-1818 

http://oaktavernmiami.com

    This is another Design District restaurant whose previous occupant, Pacific Time, was much heralded as among the more innovative restaurants of its day. Oak Tavern owes its name to a huge and ancient oak tree on the premises, and it's more down to earth than its swanky predecessor, both in its décor and its menu, which pretty much has something for everyone. It’s got a big, long friendly bar, roomy leather banquettes, brick walls and tables made from  reclaimed wood, with a large communal table on wheels near the entrance. Of course, this being Florida, there is ample space outside.

    Chef David Bracha (below) separates his menu into small plates, pastas and pizzas, large plates, charcuterie, cheese and sides, and there’s plenty of everything, which means not everything is going to be of equal value.  I was really won over by black grouper with an octopus-romesco stew  ($26) and by a snapper filet with toasted farro, spring vegetables and pistou ($25).  Suckling pig ($24)--a regular item here--was crisp of skin and velvety of flesh, served with hearty braised lentils, mustard fruit and a smoked jus.

    I wasn’t enamored of the bland duck pizza with fontina and truffle ($15) or by the unconvincing St. Louis smoked ribs ($14)--there’s good reason why barbecue places are only barbecue places--but the boquerones with roasted peppers, kale, and ricotta ($6) are addictively good, and for dessert, if they have the pineapple upside-down cake, order it before they run out.  Each day there is a special, like short rib pho or wood-grilled goat, all very modestly priced.

     The wine list is short and unimpressive, but there’s a serious attitude towards good artisanal beers.

Open for lunch Mon.-Fri., nightly for dinner.

 

TONGUE  & CHEEK

431 Washington Avenue

305-704-2900

http://www.tandcmiami.com

    The name is forgivably duplicitous, for while you will find beef cheek on the menu, I didn’t see any tongue; by the same token, the name implies this is a fun, drop-in kind of place with serious food, from charcuterie and cheeses to generous main courses, all served by a chef, Jamie DeRosa, with a very long, very fine résumé that includes working with well-known chefs Allen Susser, Wolfgang Puck, Mark Peel, Joachim Splichal, and Geoffrey Zakarian.  Together with fellow industry veteran Michael Reginbogin, he opened the 150-seat Tongue & Cheek on South Beach.

        The menu is not unlike Oak Tavern’s, though smaller and better focused, starting off with appetizers like bruschetta of heirloom tomatoes with Boursin-style cheese ($9), and finger foodie lettuce wraps of crispy pig’s ears with orange and salted peanuts ($14).

      
 DeRosa picks up plenty of flavors from the most sensible match-ups, like grilled skirt steak with crème fraîche tater tots, maiitake mushrooms and Cerignola olives ($33), and his juicy fried chicken comes with pickled red cabbage, cheddar, a delightful bacon biscuit and hollandaise shot through with Tabasco ($24).  Shortribs get a Moroccan couscous treatment, with feta and grilled Indian naan bread ($34).  And he’s particularly proud of his poutine ($12), the Canadian national dish here interpreted as braised beef, cheddar and pastrami spiced fries (right)--a lot better than most poutines I’ve had north of the border.

        Ricardo Torres does some fine desserts, not least Norman’s Key lime pie (in homage to Florida chef Norman van Aken, I suspect), and a Cracker Jack milkshake and Almond Joy bar that is sure to make your head waggle.

        The place is big and wide, rich in wood and subway tiles, with views of the Miami skyline painted as a mural. It’s a lot of fun, though the music can get way too loud, and there’s hardly a dish on the menu that will leave you hungry.

Dinner served nightly.
Photos by David Durbak

DOLCE

Gale South Beach Hotel

1690 Collins Avenue

786-975-2550
http://www.dolceitalianrestaurant.com

        Pedigree counts when it comes to Italian food, and Chef Paolo Dorigato has a good one: born in Trento, he picked up his American mojo at restaurants like Le Cirque, Osteria del Circo, and Cipriani Wall Street in New York before coming to Miami, where he is doing some authentic cucina italiana in a refined, sleek dining room that could very well be on Milan’s fashion street, Via Montenapoleone.    Like MC Kitchen, Dolce brings a higher level of Italian cuisine to the city and certainly to the Beach.

        By all means begin with selections from the mozzarella bar with artisanal meats and vegetables ($14-$26). There are pizzas  ($13-$17) listed, too, but I found them too trendily thin in the crust, without the proper chewiness. Pastas include an excellent short rib ravioli in a richly reduced Barolo wine sauce ($$22) and a very tasty pappardelle alla bolognese ($20), although it’s more a meat and tomato sauce than an authentic rendering alla bolognese.  Spaghetti and meatballs ($23) are a nice choice, now becoming again as popular as pasta primavera used to be.

    Dorigato is at his finest with seafood: a roasted branzino ($34) was perfect, served with cous cous, baby carrots and cherry tomato sauce (right), and the seared red snapper ($27) with leeks, asparagus and olives was simple and delicious in every moist morsel. I did not care at all for his veal milanese with Tuscan fries.

        The best of the desserts is his budino pudding with salted caramel and a chocolate chip cookie for good measure, followed by a light panna cotta with mango puree and strawberry compote.

    Dolce’s wine list is not particularly comprehensive but solidly chosen in both white and red categories.

 

Dolce serves breakfast, lunch and dinner daily

THE CYPRESS ROOM

3260 NE Second Avenue

305-520-5197

http://www.thecypressroom.com

        No one is a bigger fan than I of Chef Michael Schwartz, whose fabulous Michael Genuine Food & Drink was the first big opening salvo in the Design District a few years back. Indeed, the restaurant rang up so many awards, including my own as one of the “Best New Restaurants of the Year” in Esquire, that money men came calling and convinced Schwartz to open a lot more places very quickly, including another Michael’s Genuine in the Cayman Islands, dining rooms on two Royal Caribbean cruise ships, Harry’s Pizzeria, as well as a line of beers.  (His Restaurant Michael Schwartz in The Raleigh Hotel is in limbo with the recent sale of the property.)

        On top of all that he opened The Cypress Room last year in the Design District, a small, clubby dining venue that has the ambiance of one from the 1950s, with a wood-burning grill as the featured cooking implement.  This means the cooking is very simple, which I usually applaud, but I found the food overall to lack any real excitement, and there were some problems with pacing and the temperature of the food.  Royal red shrimp ($23) with cucumber, coconut, lime and puffed rice was pleasant enough, but frog’s legs ($21) with capers and potato definitely needed a dose of garlic. An onion soup ($17) was actually a thin chicken broth with a pullet egg and a little Gruyère cheese.

        The best of the entrees was a superb bouillabaisse Florida style ($37) with aromatic fennel and plenty of good olive oil, and I sort of enjoyed a leg of lamb in broth ($46). A not very big antelope chop ($46) came out tepid and bland.  Thrice-Cooked fried potatoes ($10) were absolutely wonderful and I wish I'd ordered more. There is also, as it follows the fashion of the day, a côte de boeuf I didn’t try, at a whopping $139 for two.

        Of the desserts a Pavlova cake had a meringue crust that was too hard when it should have been crisp but yielding.

        I hope that Michael Schwartz has not got too much on his plate to deal with.  He's immensely talented, but The Cypress Room does not show that off at his best.  Nor do management contracts on cruise lines.

The Cypress Room is open for lunch Mon.-Fri., for dinner Mon.-Sat.

 

❖❖❖

    This week the last of the “Two Fat Ladies" died: Clarissa Dickson Wright followed the passing away of her colleague Jennifer Patterson (on the right in the photo) in 1999, leaving everyone who loves food very much to mourn two of the great teachers of English cookery.

    The couple filmed four BBC series that became internationally beloved for their quirky disobedience to any trends or fashions in cuisine. Riding around the English countryside in their sidecar motorcycle, they would arrive at a large stone house, enter a spacious well-equipped antique kitchen and begin preparing old-fashioned British fare underpinned by classical French technique. 
    Long before Paula Deen embarrassed herself on American TV with her near-pornographic overuse of butter, the Two Fat Ladies were ladling cream and butter, suet and lard into pastry crust, wrapping meats in caul fat and streaky bacon, and absolutely reveling in the decadence of it all in the name of delicious, good flavor.  They knew exactly what they were doing, without so much as a smirk.

    Wright had once been an attorney,  battled and defeated alcoholism, worked as a cook and managed a London book shop, ran a catering business and luncheon club, and became a guild butcher—a rarity for a woman then. She had run through a large inheritance, went bankrupt more than once, and grew fat.  But when asked if she minded the TV show being called “Two Fat Ladies,” she replied, “If you're fat you're fat. I hate this modern-day political correctness, that you don't call things by their proper name."

    Her persona, which was only slightly less eccentric than her partner’s, was that of a formidable and brazenly large woman, laughing heartily, tongue in cheek, lecturing, cajoling, and saying outrageous things like, “you really want to get it well greased. Did you see `Last Tango in Paris?’ Something like that.”  She raged at health food and never imagined too much of something could be anything but better.

    The two women had actually never met before they went on the air in 1996, so the show was really an act, one playing off the other, Jennifer r-r-r-rolling her r’s and Clarissa making off-color jokes as the kitchen filled up with wonderful smells only imaginable by the TV viewer.  The show met every expectation of those who like their Brits dotty, and Wright and Patterson played it all to the hilt—fiercely intelligent but seeming to be completely loopy. They were the polar opposites of the frenzied BBC sitcom characters Edina Monsoon and  Patsy Stone on "Absolutely Fabulous." The Fat Ladies never quite winked at the camera but you knew they were having a ball, and it came through the airwaves like the aroma of vanilla and caramelized sugar.
    Only 66 when she died, Wright left behind a legacy of British humor and presented a powerful argument for saving the cookery of another age, one now eclipsed by a modern cuisine more about style than good taste.  Wright and Patterson are now both gone, and in their place we have the rantings of Gordon Ramsay in fully rehearsed  explosions of dyspeptic rage where once the Two Fat Ladies--everyone's crazy English aunties-- gave us such good-natured and genteel instruction in the true joy of cooking and eating.

❖❖❖







❖❖❖

THE NEW FACE OF BAROLO

By John Mariani

 

    It is by now a given among connoisseurs that Italy’s Barolo wines are on a par with the very finest wines of Bordeaux and Burgundy, though there is something of a cold war going on among Barolo producers in the region of Piedmont, pitting strict traditionalists against a more progressive wing.      

      Not that anyone there can fiddle too much with the basics, for under Italian wine laws Barolo must be made entirely from nebbiolo grapes from delimited zones within Piedmont, named after the towns set among 19th century vineyards. Barolo will always be a big, tannic red wine--called “noble”--and the government gives the wine its highest appellation, D.O.C.G., which means it is guaranteed to be among the highest quality wines in Italy.  Indeed, if a vintage turns out to be low in quality, the Barolo vintners must label their product as simple “table wine.”

         The imbroglio among vintners in the present century matches those who believe that Barolo must be made tannic, with fermentation lasting up to two months and aging done in huge old oak barrels called “tonneaux” for many years, and, on the other side, a younger generation that believes the old style robs the wine of its fruit and takes far too long to mature. These modern Barolos are more commonly aged in smaller French barrels called “barriques” and made of new wood.  That these are somewhat less weighty wines than the traditional Barolos is generally true.

         The problem for the consumer comes when confronted by so many new Barolo labels. Wine-Searcher.com   shows 500 different Barolo labels on its website  , and that’s only a partial list.  And these producers want very much to sell to the U.S. market because interest here is very high.

         “Americans who love wine really know a lot about them--more than many Europeans,” says Paolo Damilano, a fourth-generation winemaker at his family’s Piedmont estate, Damilano (right). “It’s difficult to sell Barolo in Italy because the Italians think of it as a special occasion wine, while Americans drink it as often as they wish to.”

        

    The occasion I had to drink Damilano’s wines was at Ristorante Morini in New York when Guido was on a sales and media tour. “Sixty percent of our exports are to the U.S.,” he said over a plate of macaroni with tomato, onions and mozzarella. “Only fifty percent of our wines are actually sold in Italy.”

         Paulo (on the right in photo) and his brother Guido, together with their father, Mario, date the family’s winery to 1890. Originally set on just 12 acres, it has been appended with holdings in the most prestigious zones, including La Morra, Casorzo, Serralunga, and others, all growing nebbiolo grapes, but each with a different expression of terroir in the wines.

      One section, called Cannubi, is planted on a long hill above the town of Barolo, providing an ideal amount of sun and a perfect mixture of marl and sandstone soil for the grapes to prosper (below).  Damilano’s Cannubi, from vines that date back five decades, is aged for two years in the traditional big oak barrels, and on its emergence in the market its tannins are tamed and its elegance pronounced, even with a high 15 percent alcohol.  The fruit and acids are impeccably balanced and go very well with simple dishes and meats.

         Damilano’s Barolo Brunate, made from grapes from younger, albeit 30-year-old vines, is only 14 percent alcohol, after spending 24 months in a succession of new and old oak barrels.  It has amazing richness bound with complexities and nuance, and, if one is willing to wait three to five years, it will be a template for a middle style, between strict tradition and progressivism.

      Damilano also produces less expensive Piemontese wines like Barbera d’Asti, Arneis, Nebbiolo and Chinato, but it is on their Barolos that they stake their reputation and on the American market where they are carefully building it.