Notes on Miami, during the week of the South Beach Wine & Food Festival:
Park place
They call it the South Beach Wine & Food Festival, but the most memorable event, at the most next-level venue, this year was Saturday at Marlins Park. Julie Loria’s “Diamond Dishes” bash was the first event at the new baseball stadium. And while it was fun to see chefs Scott Conant, Michelle Bernstein, Laurent Tourondel and Hedy Goldsmith with food stations on the different bases while the DJ blasted “I Like How It Feels” by local favorites Enrique Iglesias and Pitbull, the big star was the stadium itself. Really, you could have opened it up with no food, no music and no plan, and people would have probably stayed for hours walking around. The stadium is vast, with an upper deck that goes on and on and on, despite the fact that the ballpark’s approximately 37,000-person capacity is small for Major League Baseball. And the stadium is ridiculous, with highlights including an aquarium behind home plate. (We didn’t have access to the swimming pool over by left field, but we were assured that it was there.) And with Marlins Park, the Frank Gehry-designed New World Center and the Herzog de Meuron-designed 1111 Lincoln Road, Miami is truly becoming a city with weird and wonderful structures and the kind of pure possibility any other world-class city would be happy to have.
Midtown mania
We spent late Saturday night in Midtown Miami, the $2.3 billion-dollar mega-development that has turned into a dining and nightlife establishment that can hang with South Beach on most nights. At Sustain, we ate with a big group that sampled most of the farm-to-table restaurant’s smartly conceived menu. Highlights included the ridiculously rich and satisfying poutine with foie gras and duck confit and an equally ridiculously rich and satisfying s’mores donut. Really solid fried chicken, too. And big bonus points for the restaurant’s playlist, with songs from LCD Soundsystem, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Passion Pit, Miike Snow and the Pixies. Yes, Midtown is good for the hipster crowd, too. After dinner, we popped in for a drink and more dessert (including the excellent torrejas with maple caramel apples) two doors down at Sugarcane Raw Bar Grill. It was after 1 a.m. when we left Sugarcane, which was still packed. Our car rounded the corner and passed by Ricochet, Midtown’s new lounge/performance space. An attractive crowd, dressed to impress, lingered outside. Midtown wasn’t shutting down anytime soon.
Tweets of the week
Fatty Crew’s Zak Pelaccio (@zakarypelaccio), tweaking Scarpetta’s Scott Conant for his new huge beard after they both filmed “Today Show” segments from the beach: “. . . and have you seen @conantnyc new fluffy beard? Some fresh competition in the red beard department . . .” And then later from Pelaccio, while having dinner at Michael’s Genuine Food & Drink: “I walked into @MGFD_MIA and at the door saw @pichetong & he said he saw @conantnyc today & thought Scotty was me. Time to shave, bro!”
Around the festival
Roy Choi of LA’s Kogi food truck had our group going back for seconds of his killer kalbi and salt-chive kimchee combo at the Delano’s Q event. . . . Boston brought Mexico to Miami with Ken Oringer and Jamie Bissonnette’s chilaquiles and micheladas hangover brunch at Baoli. . . . Three memorable bites at the Fontainebleau’s Best of the Best event: 1. Sea bass tiradito from Ricardo Zarate of LA’s Mo-Chica and Picca. 2. Lamb tartare from Michael Solomonov of Philadelphia’s Zahav. 3. Florida rock shrimp over rice from Gabrielle Hamilton of New York’s Prune. . . . Three memorable bites at the Ritz-Carlton South Beach’s Burger Bash: 1. Zak Pelaccio’s Fatty Cue lamb burger with Lady Jayne’s salted chilis and rye barrel-aged Worcestershire sauce. 2. The double-patty Husk burger with American cheese, bread-and-butter pickles and special sauce from Charleston’s Sean Brock. 3. The Korean-inspired bulgogi burger from Angelo Sosa of New York’s Social Eatz. . . . We asked festival creator Lee Brian Schrager about recent memorable meals, and he raved about Jean Paul’s House in Wynwood. The new spot, located inside an old cottage, serves Peruvian classics like ceviche and lomo saltado but also fuses Latin American flavors with contemporary American cooking. . . . Melanie Dunea of “My Last Supper” took over the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas’ Slice pop-up to film a video in which she asked passersby about what they want for their final meal. Should be fun seeing the responses of hungover industry people operating on two or three hours of sleep. Good luck with the edit! . . . One dinner companion had the best sighting of the week: Lil Wayne, skateboarding near his La Gorce Island house.
Beyond the festival
There are a handful of South Beach restaurants that aren’t exactly secrets but still feel like delicious hideaways on a week with the Food Network crowd all over town. On Saturday, we went to two of those spots and got a little loose. First there was cuban oxtail at Puerto Sagua. Then there was Haitian pumpkin soup, whole snapper, creole-coconut shrimp, grilled corn and much more at Tap Tap. The bill for both places combined was less than what one person typically spends at Prime 112. And these were no doubt the most comforting dishes we had in South Beach all week.
Back to the beach
Parts of Collins Avenue and Ocean Drive that have been known largely in recent years for their run-down Art Deco hotels are getting a second wind. On Collins, the Royal Palm is being turned into the James Royal Palm, which will feature an outpost of the Catch restaurant and a nightlife venture from Meatpacking District moguls EMM Group. The Delano has replaced the Blue Door restaurant with the Light Group’s Bianca, serving locally sourced Italian food including a solid spaghetti vongole, in an attractive indoor/outdoor setting. The newly renovated Shelborne, despite complaints about its rooms, is turning itself into a restaurant and nightlife (late-night karaoke downstairs) destination. That hotel includes hot spots like Vesper American Brasserie, where LeBron James proposed to Savannah Brinson on New Year’s Eve.
Over on Ocean, the Winter Haven hotel, just below the renovated Betsy and offering stunning water views on 14th Street, is being turned into a Marriott Autograph Collection hotel. The Blue Moon hotel on Ocean, less than two blocks south of new Iron Chef Geoffrey Zakarian’s Tudor House restaurant at the Dream South Beach, is also becoming part of the Autograph Collection. The South Beach hotel market could really heat up when Sam Nazarian’s SLS, with a Hyde Beach club and dining options including the Bazaar by Jose Andres, an Andres food cart and Katsuya, opens on Collins in mid-May. It’s not just about the W South Beach and the Setai anymore.