Virtual
Gourmet
"Eve" by Galina
Dargery (2013)
❖❖❖ 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
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 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
Chef David Bracha (below)
separates
his menu into small plates,
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.
431 Washington Avenue
305-704-2900
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).
Ricardo
Torres
does some fine desserts, not least Norman’s Key lime
pie (in homage to
Florida chef Norman van Aken, I suspect), and
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.
Gale South Beach Hotel
1690 Collins Avenue
786-975-2550
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
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
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
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.
❖❖❖ CLARISSA DICKSON WRIGHT LEAVES THE
KITCHEN
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.
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
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. ❖❖❖ NEW YORK
CORNER
by John Mariani ![]() NORTHERN ITALIAN STEAKHOUSE 451 Lexington Avenue (near 46th Street) 212-661-4810 davios.com/nyc
Monday night in NYC. Bitter cold: 21 degrees with wind chill factor down to 10. Nobody on the streets. Not a night to go out to dinner. Yet, upon entering the three-month-old Davio's, I found that it seemed everyone who did go out to dinner that night was in the restaurant, which was doing booming business. Which goes to prove that: New Yorkers are a tough bunch; steakhouses make sense anywhere; and Davio's, a small steakhouse chain, has plenty of out-of-town regulars and new fans. Since opening the original Davio’s in Boston, owner Steve DiFillippo has had considerable success capitalizing on the Italian steakhouse theme, with branches in Foxborough and Lynnfield, MA, Philadelphia, and Atlanta. When I heard he was opening in NYC, I arched an eyebrow, not because Davio’s food could not compete with the city's better steakhouses, but because I wasn’t sure New Yorkers would embrace a Boston clone, especially in a neighborhood overrun with steakhouses.
Obviously,
I had no need to worry. For,
like several of the new steakhouses around town,
like NYY Steak, Del Frisco’s
Grill, and Costata, Of course, the addition of the title “Northern Italian Steakhouse” to the Davio’s name means that the menu will cast a wider net than most others in the field. Indeed, Davio’s menu is somewhat unwieldy, with many more dishes than is necessary. Chef Chad Brown, a native of Seoul, South Korea, has a solid résumé that includes stints at NYC’s Del Posto, CATCH, and Bond 45, and he’s been given some leeway to create his own dishes that you won’t find at other Davio’s branches. It’s a good looking place, broken into sections, with a bar with its own menu, a semi-open kitchen, well-set and well-separated tables, and good modern artwork, all of it breaking away from the clichés of steakhouses with wood floors, yellowed walls, and dark wainscoting.
There are six pasta dishes on the menu and every one I tried was first rate, including spaghettini with abundant lobster, tomatoes, and basil ($34). Capellacci come with slowly roasted squash, Amaretti cookie crumble and a rich walnut cream sauce ($27), while potato gnocchi (left) with mushrooms, basil and white truffle oil ($28) were fought over at our table. I have chided the Davio’s people for a lack of authenticity in their “bolognese” sauce, but their tagliatelle in a braised veal, beef, pork and tomato sauce ($28) would win over anyone by any name whatsoever. It’s delicious.
This is a
steakhouse, but we enjoyed a
pan-seared halibut whose snow white flesh was well
accompanied by pancetta
bacon, broccoli di The beef dishes come from unassailable sources, including a fine center cut filet ($37) with more flavor than expected of this cut (right), and a finely crusted NY sirloin ($48), cooked perfectly, with a deep rich flavor only meat this good can achieve. Side sauces like blood orange citron, salsa verde, truffle tarragon butter and Davio’s Steak Sauce are available. In the face of such quality meats, it was puzzling, then, to find an Australian rack of lamb (with roasted lamb neck, escarole ragu, and cannellini beans) at $45 on the menu--especially since the Atlanta Davio’s serves far superior Colorado lamb (which is infinitely better than the New Zealand lamb they serve in Philadelphia for $49). Davio’s NY’s nearby East Side competitors--Palm, Smith & Wollensky, Sparks, Michael Jordan, and others--all serve American lamb for the same reason they serve American beef: superior quality.
Desserts like panna cotta (right) are
generously proportioned to share, and the warm
chocolate cake is a fine one. An added attraction is Davio’s proximity by one block to Grand Central Terminal, and breakfast is served every day. More important, in a neighborhood already rife with steakhouses, Davio’s is trying hard to attract a clientele that can count on true hospitality rather than the kind of favoritism that reigns at its competitors. They do so by offering a two-course $25 lunch and a three-course $38 dinner, Bar Menu, and, exclusive to the NYC branch, wines are half price on Sundays from 5 pm to 10 pm.
❖❖❖ NOTES FROM THE WINE
CELLAR
By
John Mariani
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 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
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.
❖❖❖
According to the Los Angeles Times, Taco Bell is testing a burrito and
quesadilla combination that rolls the contents of a
burrito inside a toasted quesadilla. Some of you might
recognize this exciting menu item as Taco Bell’s answer
to the Quesarito, a secret menu item from
Chipotle.
Taco Bell’s Quesarito options will include a beef,
shredded chicken or steak burrito with rice and sour
cream, wrapped in a grilled quesadilla. Depending on
your choice of meat, the test prices range from $1.99 to
$2.99.
REASON NO.
10: SOME OF THEM SEEM
❖❖❖
Any of John Mariani's
books below may be ordered from amazon.com.
❖❖❖
FEATURED
LINKS: I am happy to report
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Gourmet is linked to four excellent
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a contributing editor for Ski and a frequent contributor
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and Elle Decor.
"I’ve designed this site is for people who take
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NEWSLETTER is published weekly. Editor/Publisher: John
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