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02/07/2000 Archived Entry: "Florida Eating Diary, Part 1"

It’s all about expectations. I expected south Florida to be less than it is, so I was thrilled to find it is more than what my New York friends say it is.

This was my first trip to the Sunshine State and o I called this a reconnaissance mission. Checking out as much as I could in a week, I made a loop starting with Miami and Miami Beach. Then I drove up to West Palm Beach/Palm Beach, skipping even a look at Fort Lauderdale and Boca, which I will have to check out on my next trip. After visiting a retirement community in Boynton Beach, where my friends Bea and Ed Lewis have bought a beautiful home (you may know Bea as the long-time food columnist for Long Island’s Newsday), I drove across the state to Fort Myers to visit my Connecticut neighbor Marie Kalman, who has been wintering on Captiva island, and now on the mainland, her entire long life. Then I drove back across the state to Miami through Naples and the Everglades. It was a short trip, but I saw enough to get me back to Florida when I again need a quick and easy get-away. Now that I see how fast and easy it is to get there (certainly easier than going to the Hamptons), I understand why northeasterners flock to Florida in the winter.

Without going into all my non-food travel details and tips right now, I have to highly recommend a visit to Viscaya, an historic home and gardens right on Biscayne Bay at the south end of Miami City – near Coconut Grove. That is, if you like touring old houses. This one is a museum of decorative arts, the conceit behind the 1914 Italianate villa being that it was in the same family for 400 years and the various period rooms were decorated by succeeding generations of the family – from the Renaissance through Edwardian days. In truth, it was built by John Deering, a bachelor-collector businessman who did not inherit any of this, but built the house and assembled all the antique decorations himself on shopping sprees to Europe. At one time, the estate covered 180 acres and was self-sufficient. Amazingly, Deering hardly ever entertained and used the house for only nine seasons before he died of pernicious anemia. Now the property is about 30 acres and has gorgeous Italian-style gardens that are almost as interesting as the house.

I know you are most curious about my eating experiences, so without further ado, here is the first part of my Florida eating diary. There will be more tomorrow, including a review of Norman’s, south Florida’s most acclaimed restaurant, and Bea Lewis’ “Klass and Kitsch Tour” of Palm Beach County. I think there may even be a third installment, which will include my trip across the state (anyone for coconut pie?) and the Thomas Alva Edison winter estate in Fort Myers.


Spiga: 1228 Collins Ave., Miami Beach; (305) 534-0079

I arrived in South Beach at about 10 p.m. on a Friday night. By the time I was settled into my room, I was bushed and it was nearly 11. It seemed so easy to walk next door and to eat at what looked like a very pleasant Italian restaurant where there was outdoor seating. Even if I was too tired to walk Collins Ave. or Ocean Blvd. to get an eyeful of the hot, young international crowd – the whole neighborhood is like a party from afternoon into the wee hours -- I could check it out from a comfortable table with a plate of pasta before me. That everyone eating under the eaves of Spiga was speaking Italian seemed like a good sign, too.

Spiga, it ends up, is run by an Italian chef who is refugee from New York’s Bice (which itself is a branch of the famous restaurant in Milano) and another good Italian place in NYC that I can’t remember at the moment. In any case, I ate some gorgeously thin and delicate egg pasta dressed with a duck ragu that was too sweet from too much carrot. I mean, you could have called it carrot ragu for the all diced orange veggie in it. Still, it had an elegance to it, and plenty of diced duck meat, too. With several grinds of freshly ground pepper and some extra Parmigiano to counteract the sweetness, it turned out to be quite delicious. Fresh and unusually firm (that’s good) snapper in a white wine pan sauce with capers and parsley was mighty fine, too. And both the big bowl of airy chocolate mousse and house-made tiramisu were sensational. Yes, sensational!
This very civilized dinner for two, including wine and bottled water, came to $78, including tax and tip. I figured I was going to like South Beach.


Versailles: 3555 SW 8th St. (Calle Ocho), corner of 35th Ave.; (305) 444-0240

It seemed like every Cuban-American and -- most significantly -- his mother, was eating lunch this Saturday at Miami’s oldest and most notable Cuban restaurant. No wonder. All the traditional dishes are on the very extensive menu, all made with fresh ingredients and well-prepared as far as this gringo palate could tell. Since all the Cuban mamas were enjoying it so much – some of them gathered at tables together for, I supposed, a weekly gossip --I figured I should, too.

The sprawling restaurant and bakery is nothing fancy but has crystal chandeliers and other decorations to make it live up to its grand name. The service is friendly and efficient. And the prices are right. Our lunch, enough for three although we were only two and drinking for one, came to $45, including tax and tip.

I ordered the “classic” combination plate, which had some delicious and moist roast pork, a good taste of picadillo, the ground meat dish flavored with sweet peppers, onion, and raisins; a sort of stodgy but tasty tamale; steamy, fluffy white rice, a bowl of delicious black beans, and relatively ungreasy fried sweet plantains.

Ropa Vieja, the Cuban braised beef with tomato, onion. and sweet red pepper that falls apart into stringy (ropa) strands, was as succulent as I’ve ever had it. One of the specials of the day, tubular macaroni (a la Catalan) cooked in a tomato sauce seasoned with chorizo and ham, was wonderful comfort food. The macaroni is soft, not al dente like Italian pasta might be but in fact is not necessarily. The sauce was somewhat sticky for my taste, but it belied the opinion I often hear in New York that Cuban food is never seasoned well. This had plenty of punch.

Let me not forget dessert: How can you not love a restaurant that offers five or six kinds of custard. By recommendation of our waitress, I went for the natilla, which is essentially creme brulee. Okay, it's not as delicate as creme brule in a fancy French restaurant, but more like the prototype for creme brulle, crema Catalana -- a rich, eggy custard with a mantle of caramelized sugar, this one in such a gigantic portion that it could have been lunch by itself.

I also drank the best Mojito of my life at Versailles. This is the cocktail composed of rum, lime juice, and mint. The Versailles version was totally green with mint, plus it had a sprig of fresh leaves on top, propped up by the ice. You get a good whiff with every sip. And it was served with a sugar cane swizzle stick, which I chewed on happily. The drink was plenty strong with rum, too, so I didn’t dare have a second. Unfortunately, when I asked the waitress how they got the drink so green -- and could she ask if she didn’t know -- she said, “Oh, just look up any recipe in a bar manual. They’re all the same.” I’m going to get a Cuban friend to call the bartender and ask in Spanish. I’ll keep you posted.


Rascal House:172nd St. and Collins Ave., Miami Beach; (305) 947-4581

This is the dearly departed Wolfie Cohen’s other place, Wolfie’s being the first. Even though Wolfie’s in South Beach looks dangerously dirty inside and out, I was willing to take a chance on it for old-times sake (and research) until a Brooklyn friend who used to live in Miami and was visiting her family there told me to steer clear. Its even worse than it looks. Instead, she said, go to North Miami Beach and check out the crowd at Rascal House.

The acres of wood-grain laminate and turquoise everything else (of course, I exaggerate) immediately took me back to “The Junction” (Nostrand and Flatbush Aves.) of my Brooklyn youth. Wolfie’s was THE family restaurant in the Brooklyn College area then – in the 1950s.

Since I had already eaten breakfast and lunch this day, and was ready to have dinner at Joe’s Stone Crab House, I wasn’t able to eat much. The rolls were irresistible, however, especially the rye stick with carraway seeds and a generous coating of coarse salt. That’s a roll I don’t see in New York anymore – and miss. There was also an excellent dark pumpernickel roll filled with onions. I could see why practically everyone takes the rolls home. The waitresses have plastic bags handy to pack them up. I told my waitress I thought it was awfully generous of management to pile the baskets so high knowing that no one could possibly finish them – and they could not be sent out to the next customer. She said it was part of the attraction of Rascals – their signature, as it were – and that, in fact, most people take them home to their doormen. Knowing the roll preferences of their doormen, in fact, leads people to request a certain selection.

I was amazed that so many people were eating delicatessen – pastrami, corned beef – and the pickles, especially since many of these seniors are also on high-blood pressure medication. But … you gotta go some way.

I ordered a pastrami on rye and just picked at it. It was merely okay.

The experience was worth well worth the trip all the way to Miami, though. We sat at the counter, because even though the waitresses told us this was a very slow Sunday – so many Super Bowl parties in the high rises – there was a long wait for tables. Next to at the counter, was a very handsome woman of a certain age who came in with two very well-groomed friends. She must have been a newcomer. “Oy, they have cholent!” she exclaimed as soon as she opened the menu, reading off the starchy ingredients of this heavy-duty Sabbath casserole – barley, potatoes, kishka, etc. It was nearly 80 degrees that day, yet “We have to order that for the table, girls,” she told her friends.


Joe’s Stone Crab Restaurant: 11 Washington Ave., Miami Beach; 1-800-780-CRAB

The word on Joe’s is that you have to wait two hours or longer for a table unless you come before 5 p.m. Correctly betting that Super Bowl Sunday would be a slow night, we waited about 20 minutes, not even enough time to finish my weak Planter’s Punch and greasy, tough conch fritters. (Well, I wouldn’t have finished those fritters anyway.)

If I had waited the usual length of time, I am sure I would have been mightily disappointed with the restaurant. As our waitress explained, even thought the menu goes on and on, you come here for one meal only: Stone Crabs, hashed browns, creamed spinach, and Key Lime Pie for dessert. The crabs are great. I like them better than lobster. But who knew how expensive they are? An order of the five large claws is $39. Our waitress told us that this was the best deal – the most crab for the money. But you could also order nine medium claws for less, or 4 jumbo claws for $72 (something crazy like that). They are served cold and pre-cracked in the kitchen, so you don’t have to do much work to get to the sweet meat. They come with both melted butter and a mayonnaise-based mustard sauce (see recipe below). You can dip into either or both. I ate a few of mine the way our waitress instructed (she’s local), which is to squeeze lemon juice into the butter and dip the meat into the lemon butter AND the mustard sauce.

The hashed browns are fabulous, a well-crusted mound of soft, oniony chopped potatoes. I only wish they were this good at some of our New York steakhouses. (And that includes Peter Luger.) The spinach was a big disappointment. It was terribly metallic tasting. It must have been sitting on a steam table all day. The Key Lime pie was the best commercial version I ate on the trip, but in no way was it a contender for best overall. That one was baked by my friend Dottie Causey in Fort Myers from the recipe of her step-sister’s (and my friend), Marie Kalman. Marie’s recipe has been on the Food Maven web-site since the beginning. Check it out in the More Favorite Radio Recipes section.

Mustard Sauce
From Joe’s Stone Crab Restaurant

1 tablespoons plus 1/2 teaspoon Coleman’s dry mustard (or more to taste)
1 cup mayonnaise
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon A-1 sauce
2 tablespoons heavy cream
2 tablespoons whole milk
Pinch of salt

Place the mustard in a mixing bowl with the mayonnaise and beat, by hand or with an electric mixer, for 1 minute.

Add the remaining ingredients and beat again until the mixture is blended and creamy.

If you’d like a little more bite, beat in as much as another 1/2 teaspoon dry mustard.

Chill, covered, for several hours, or until serving.