It would take a while even to list the mediocre restaurants on Miami Beach, where second-rate branches of wheezing originals elsewhere replace anything even vaguely indigenous. So, on a recent trip I was very happy to find a few newcomers that are dedicated to rise above the ordinary.

 

 

HABITAT

1 Hotel

2395 Collins Avenue

305-604-6700

 

    Puerto Rican-born José Mendin’s lengthy résumé includes the opening of Nobu Miami and Nobu London, and a stint in Spain, where he steeped himself in both traditional and modern Iberian cuisine. Upon his return to the U.S. Mendin helmed Sushisamba Miami Beach and a branch in Las Vegas, followed by Mexican concepts in Chicago and Miami.

      All these culinary influences inform the menu at Habitat, the first venture of Mendin’s Food Comma Hospitality Group, a large, rambling space that avoids looking like a hotel dining room by being broken up into a bar and lounge that leads to the rustic main dining area, as well as to a much-desired 60-seat outdoor patio.  There are also two private dining areas, The Tambourine Room and The Wine Lounge.

    The menu is ambitious, so the best way to gauge its range is to go with the seven-course tasting menu at $90, within which, thankfully, you’ll have some options, rather than those chosen solely by the chef. (Otherwise, à la carte prices are high.)

    From the raw bar comes first-rate cobia sashimi (right) graced with brown butter soy sauce, samphire, lime and “sea water” ($18,) and a bracing hamachi aguachilies with a lemongrass romesco, guajilla peppers, radish and cilantro ($22). The Florida stone crabs with a yuzu dijonnaise (market price) could have been larger and meatier.

    Ordering a mess of the small plates is a wise move. Intensely sweet Medjool dates are graced with a crema cabrales, almond powder and butiferra Catalan sausages ($14), while Mendin serves creamy mozzarella balls (left) with baby tomatoes, sweet melon, and basil ($16). Silky foie gras takes a salt cure well, served with tomato chutney and milk bread ($27).

    From the woodfire grill comes tender monkfish—a species often overcooked—with katsuobushi-flecked barbecue sauce, pickled fennel and radish (not cheap at $55), and a juicy, crisp-skinned baby chicken asado with aji panko and lime ($31).  Simply grilled, the langoustines are irresistible ($23). The skirt steak with shisho chimichurri is as good as any around town (but again, not cheap at $55 for ten ounces).

    Patricio Sanchez’s desserts include joyously decadent chocolate s’mores ($14) and “Habitat” ($13) of mint basil financiers, dulcey mousse, mango and coconut.

    Habitat’s success belies the notion that vacationers in Miami only want to go with the expected. Few restaurants around are doing food of this sophistication and global reach and fewer still with such flair and imagination based on wide experience.

 
Open for breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. Brunch on weekends.

 

 

THE STRAND BAR & GRILL

Carillon Miami Wellness Resort

6801 Collins Avenue

305-514-7474

 

  Set between the hotel lobby and the pool, with the beach beyond, The Strand Bar & Grill is a spacious, long room, about half of which is taken up with a swank, very comfortable bar with a serious cocktail program (drinks are $14). Although recently renovated and opened last Autumn, with soft, sandy colors, potted plants, banquettes, 1950s-style light fixtures and open kitchen, it still has the feeling of a hotel dining room serving three meals a day, but I enjoyed the relaxing atmosphere, and the tables so well set apart from one another. 

    Chef Patrick Ochs (left) follows an original chef who didn’t last out the year, and Ochs has added a few more of his own ideas to a menu he originally had a hand in, which is a mix of Floridian cuisine and an all-American cast meant to please any appetite. But there’s much you won’t find elsewhere on South Beach. 

    For the moment, the menu is broken into raw, one (appetizers), two (pastas), three (entrees), grilled, sides and desserts.  When I dined there this spring, the best of the first was the octopus with lightly smoked potato cream, olives, marble potatoes and smoked paprika vinaigrette ($27), and I loved the roasted foie gras with an apple soubise and a well-conceived hard cider gastrique ($28).  Carpaccio ($18) gains little by being wagyu grade; the provenance is not listed.

    Ochs goes just far enough in making his pastas all his own, adding fava beans, artichokes, cherry tomatoes and basil to spinach bucatini (right; $19), and braised rabbit, saffron, dandelion greens and charred peppers to garganelli  ($25). King crab fettuccine with a sweet-sour gremolata, tomatoes and lemon-herbed breadcrumbs ($27) was quite good, but the campanelle with foraged mushrooms gained nothing from insipid summer truffles ($21). (Caveat: the current website menu lists different pasta dishes than those described here.)

    The entrees are impressively simple: roasted chicken with asparagus, morels in a vin jaune reduction ($38), and a terrific smoked duck with English peas, carrots, luscious foie gras purée and baby onions ($32). Okay—but not as good as it might be were it made from American lamb—was a trio of New Zealand lamb items with smoked yogurt and za’atar ($38).  Branzino, now ubiquitous on American menus, took on added flavors from artichoke, eggplant, a confit of sweet tomato, and a zucchini sofrito ($32). One has to wonder why, beyond being expected, a farmed Mediterranean fish—as well as King salmon and Maine lobster—needs to be on a Florida menu. 
    The coconut panna cotta is the way to go with dessert (left).

    The short wine list is badly in need of expansion.

    I hope Ochs stays right where he is and gets to show more of his own talents, and I doubly hope the management can keep the menu prices as reasonable as they are.

 

Open for breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. Brunch on weekends.

 

 

NEW YORK CORNER

By John Mariani

AI FIORI

400 Fifth Avenue
212-613-8660

 

 

    Ai Fiori does not mean “out of the fire” but “among the flowers,” and this enchanting dining room is Chef-owner Michael White’s finest tribute to la cucina italiana.

    That Ohio-born White has achieved so high a reputation among New York’s toughest critics would be remarkable had he come by his knowledge of Italian food only cooking on this side of the Tyrrhenian Sea. But in fact his study for seven years at the illustrious San Domenico in Imola, Italy, provided the ballast he needed to do what he now does so splendidly, equally well at Ai Fiori in midtown as at the seafood-centric Marea on the Upper West Side.

    True, White’s signature, via his Altamarea Group, is on far too many management contracts worldwide, including restaurants in London, Istanbul and Hong Kong, which he could hardly visit with any frequency, but in New York his high-end ventures and his lower-end Osteria Morini and Nicoletta pizzeria have a consistency that indicates he is a presence at them. 

    Ai Fiori is located up a winding staircase on the second floor of the Langham Hotel, so its separation from the lobby diminishes any sense of being a formulaic hotel dining room.  The entire staff also shows no signs of the usual forced attitude of hotel employees.

    A superb use of lighting and a tamping down of noise—the tablecloths are nice and thick—has made the dining room as ideal for a business lunch as a celebratory evening, and it’s packed every night, with a surprisingly large contingent of Asian visitors. All women guests dress well; most men make an effort.

    Rome-born Wine Director Alessandro Piliego oversees a 1,000-label wine list, with dozens of Champagnes, and the sophisticated Bar Lounge is always crowded. Unfortunately, you’ll look in vain for any white wine priced under $52 or red under $75, and even those are rare.

    Scott Schneider has been Chef di Cucina since June 2016, and he translates White’s ideas impeccably; his 4-course $108 fixed price menu is quite reasonably priced, especially since à la carte prices are very high, with pastas at $37 and too many supplements. (There are also a 7-course menu at $150 and a vegetarian menu at $125.)

    You’ll begin with very good bread and butter, and at my dinner this week an amuse of flawless fluke crudo with a cucumber pepinato set on a silver spoon. A nod toward French cuisine is the foie gras torchon ($30) that I found oddly without flavor. There is also a selection of caviars prettily arrayed on the plate (left).

    White’s pastas have always leaned towards being very rich and very satisfying—he does not stint on the butter, cheese and cream—the exception being a superb signature item, cavatelli with blue crab, lemon, bottarga roe and a shot of diced chilies. The agnolotti are big and each makes for two mouthfuls, stuffed with ricotta and mascarpone with sottocenere cheese from Veneto and a lushly reduced red wine glaze. Tortelli, filled with braised lamb, mustard greens, pecorino and fennel with a crack of black pepper, are more bite-sized and very good.  There is always a risotto; ours came with summer asparagus, chanterelles, prosciutto and Lagrein wine (right).

    I am not one who likes long waits between courses, but at Ai Fiori, they are rushing things. Our main courses arrived within one minute of the pasta courses being removed, before we’d even had a chance to savor another sip of wine.  They’re not kidding about the meaning of service à la minute.

    Nevertheless, there was a great deal to savor in main courses like the butter-poached lobster (left) with porcini, pea leaves, tarragon soubise ($46); the tender breast of duck with a sweet-sour mostarda, chicory and ripe blackberries ($44); and a roast saddle of baby lamb with al dente farro, squash and a salsa verde was a triumph of summery flavors ($48).

    Desserts, all $16, are of a kind all upscale Italian ristoranti are now serving, and Ai Fiori offers several beauties like a plum semifreddo on buttermilk cake, lemon crèmeux and ginger granita; an out-of-the-ordinary cheesecake tinged with lemon verbena, olive oil sided with a blueberry gelato; and a tarteletta almond cake with citrus foam and a pomegranate-tarragon sorbetto. Still, these desserts are so complex that it's not always easy to discern the main ingredient among the flash.
    I’m glad to see a fine selection of cheeses offered, three for $18, six for $29.

    I’ll give the espresso a “B”—when it should have been an “A+.”

    While I hate the idea of awarding stars—most food critics do—the fact that the Michelin Guide has never awarded Ai Fiori, now seven years old, more than a single star is consistent with its annual snub of the city’s Italian restaurants. (It was among my choices for Best New Restaurants of the Year in Esquire in 2011.) I would certainly put Ai Fiori in a higher firmament, for the kind of la cucina italiana it serves is available at no more than a handful of Italian restaurants in America.  While Marea may get more publicity for its seafood-centric menu, Ai Fiori has a far wider one to entice you.

 

Open for breakfast, lunch and dinner daily.

 

NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR

GOD KNOWS WHAT THEY'LL
DO WITH THE RUM RAISIN

Fudgie the Whale, a Carvel ice cream cake marketed under the slogan “For a whale of a dad”  is now available through Father's Day as a stout beer with  “hints of Carvel chocolate," called Fudgie the Beer.

 

 

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