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The New World cooking of chef Govind Armstrong is already legendary in Los Angeles, but his Table 8 outpost on Ocean Drive has caused diners to rethink the strip as a dining destination, thanks to dishes such as, opposite page, from left: seared Florida Gulf shrimp with mashed avocado, cucumber and roasted poblano pepper; diced ahi tuna with asparagus, marinated radishes and aioli; and caramelized-banana bread pudding with butterscotch sauce and toffee-banana ice cream. |
GOVIND
ARMSTRONG
TABLE 8
Ocean Drive has reclaimed its spot on the sizzling South Beach social scene since chef Govind Armstrong opened an outpost of his Los Angeles-based hotspot, Table 8, at the new Vincci South Beach Hotel earlier this year. The L.A.-born, Costa Rica-raised toque’s celebrated menu, which boasts a roster of fresh South Florida seafood, juicy Chicago Stockyards beef and seasonal produce prepared with marked California flair, plus the space—a sexy indoor dining room and breezy outdoor patio—add up to an all-too-rare phenomenon: a Miami dining experience that’s as vibrant and buzzing as it is elegant and civilized.
Steak supremacy: “The 32-ounce porterhouse for two is the secret dish/secret weapon that has still never been on the menu. It’s made with kosher salt with a bunch of aromatics—coriander, fennel seed, chili flake and bay leaf—and baked in the oven for about 30 minutes or so. It’s presented tableside. We take it back to the kitchen, carve it and send it out with roasted and grilled seasonal vegetables and a potato purée. We recommend it cooked medium rare. People tell us they’ve eaten at the best steak houses in the world—Peter Luger, Craft and so on—or are from real meat-eating towns like Chicago, where they have steak six days a week, and that the porterhouse at Table 8 is the best steak they’ve ever had. If you have it once, you’ll come back for another one. It’s very, very addictive.”
Words of inspiration: “I’m really happy with how my [first] cookbook—Small Bites, Big Nights—turned out. The photography is so great that it inspires readers to try the recipes. I personally love a book called Culinary Artistry by Andrew Dornenberg and Karen Page. Although it’s not really a cookbook, it’s so interesting. They put a bunch of leading chefs together and had them pair up ingredients, vegetables, sauces and meats in different ways. It’s just a great reference book to get your brain clicking—a good way to jump-start things.”
Mouth-watering roots: “I really like sunchokes, also known as Jerusalem artichokes. They’re not really artichokes: They’re kind of lumpy root vegetables that look like ginger but have a really creamy texture when they’re roasted and a crispy, nutty flavor when they’re not cooked. The great thing is they’re very nutritious. They’re so versatile. I just love them. You can use them raw in salads or shave them really thin and make chips with them. We do a really great soup, which is sunchoke and pear soup with a blue-cheese crouton. You can find them in any decent grocery store, but they’re very intimidating-looking. You can sub them in for potatoes. They’re just not as starchy or carb-heavy.”
Pinot con queso: “Our boucheron is a very interesting, supersimple little appetizer. It’s just the cheese—slightly aged goat cheese—with avocado and a roasted onion. Pinot Noir is many chefs’ favorite wine because it’s so food-friendly: It won’t overpower anything and pairs so well with a dish like this. The acidity of the balsamic-roasted onion, the smoothness of the avocado, and the sharpness of the cheese tastes wonderful with Pinot Noir, which is earthy, slightly buttery and has a little bit of acidity to it.”
1458 Ocean Drive, Miami Beach
305-695-4114
table8la.com
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MIKE SABIN
PRIME ONE TWELVE
Behold the animal that is Prime One Twelve: a tornado of energy comprised of ravenous A-listers—bacon strips and martinis in hand—clamoring for their rightly deserved tables, where they’ll relish chef Mike Sabin’s highly marbleized prime beef and sumptuous, delightfully oversized sides. Once you get past the seating hoopla and secure an actual table, you’ll appreciate the surprising coziness of the place. The warm brick and dark-wood milieu is the perfect setting in which to indulge in one of life’s greatest pleasures—Maryland-born, Hawaii- and Europe-raised Sabin’s divine take on gourmet American comfort food.
A cheese pleaser: “The food’s really simple, and a lot of people have a hard time grasping that. It’s good because it’s fresh food prepared every day, like the four-cheese truffle macaroni and cheese—which is actually made with five cheeses: cave-aged Gruyère, Vermont Cheddar, fontina and mozzarella. We don’t count the Parmesan. It’s just a béchamel—a mix of milk, butter and flour. It’s brought up to where it’s almost a heavy-cream consistency, then we temper in the cheese. We add the cooked elbow macaroni and truffle oil—I have an exclusive with a company out of Italy. I can’t tell you which one. We top it with toasted bread crumbs.”
All prime, all the time: “We’re one of the only [restaurants] that serves only prime beef—with the exception of the churrasco. I have a third-generation meat guy in New Jersey who handpicks our prime meats. We have our own dry-aging room up there, and it’s shipped down here once a week.”
Bold-facers galore: “The list of [regulars] we have coming in here is unbelievable. Jamie Foxx comes in for the scallop appetizer with the short ribs and chocolate-pudding cake. Lenny Kravitz likes his rib eye medium rare and orders sides of truffle mac and cheese and the creamed corn. Anna Kournikova always has the sea bass.”
Saturday-night fever: “It’s definitely stressful. We’re doing 500 to 600 covers out of an 80-seat restaurant. Sometimes we do close to four turns per night, which is almost unheard of. We start at 5:30 and sometimes go past 1 in the morning. It takes a very special person to work in an environment like this. It’s pretty much the tip of the iceberg as far as this business is concerned. This is an example of a restaurant reduced to its most simple yet probably most extreme form. It’s busy all the time. Every night is like a Saturday night. Everyone who works here has to walk in and be on top of their game.”
112 Ocean Drive, Miami Beach
305-532-8112
prime112.com
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SERGIO SIGALA
CASA TUA
With any luck, you know someone who knows someone who can help you snag a highly coveted dinner table at Casa Tua, the romantic Italian restaurant hidden behind the hedges at the corner of 17th Street and James Avenue. Brescia, Italy-born chef Sergio Sigala’s delicate dishes, such as risotto with chanterelle, summer truffle and Parmesan cheese, gnocchi with burrata mozzarella from Puglia, cream and tomato sauce, and tender octopus carpaccio, are authentically sumptuous and taste even better against the backdrop of flickering candlelight, plush sofas and light bossa-nova music.
Constant cravings: “Our menu is always changing, but we have kept a few since we opened: the tuna tartare, the cavatelli, the beef tenderloin with foie gras, and the tiramisu. One of our best-selling items is the risotto, which we make with organic aged rice and ingredients depending on the season and product availability.”
Home, sweet home: “‘Casa Tua’ means ‘your house,’ so the food and décor reflect a homey concept. The food we make here is simple, light and easy to make—the kind of dishes you can eat every single night and never grow tired of.”
No expense spared: “When we first opened Casa Tua, we were introducing new products and rare, hard-to-find items imported from Italy, and it was hard to make our guests understand the prices we were charging to do this. We had to work hard, training our waiters to explain the quality of the ingredients and how and where they were made. Now, our customers understand.”
U2 can enjoy Casa Tua: “Many famous people have dined at Casa Tua, but I’ll never forget the night I cooked for U2. They’re my favorite band. The night before, I had gone to the concert at the American Airlines Arena, wishing one day I’d meet Bono. When I found out they were coming to Casa Tua, I almost had a heart attack. They let me choose for them, and at the end of the dinner, I had realized my dream of meeting Bono. He told me that he considered Casa Tua to be one of his top five restaurants in the world.”
1700 James Avenue, Miami Beach
305-673-1010
casatualifestyle.com
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Chef Pierre-Philippe Saussy deftly combines classic French concepts with twists from Asia and the Caribbean, creating Evolution favorites such as: caramelized Tahitian-vanilla rice pudding with exotic-fruit sorbet, coconut-orange tuille and passion-fruit coulis; yellowtail snapper with hon shimeji mushrooms and Cavaillon-melon ginger
aromatic sauce with microherbs; black sea bass under a sea-scallop crust with coconut jasmine rice and sauce bouillabaisse. |
PIERRE-PHILIPPE SAUSSY
EVOLUTION
When news that world-renowned New York-based chef David Bouley had opened his doors at The Ritz-Carlton, South Beach, die-hard foodies—plus everyone titillated by the opulent, whimsical work of famed interior designer Jacques Garcia—flocked in droves. A year later, Evolution is still the talk of the town. Chef de cuisine Pierre-Philippe Saussy—born in Puerto Rico to French parents—executes Bouley’s French-prepared fare with flair, infusing his food with delectable touches from Asia and the Caribbean. Acclaimed favorites such as the phyllo-crusted Florida shrimp, squid, scallop and crabmeat in an ocean herbal broth, as well as the seared foie gras with pruneaux d’Agen (prunes from southwest France) and quince, transport diners into a fantastical world of deliciousness, complemented by breathtaking stained-glass art and textures as vibrant as the food.
The buzzed-about bass: “Our signature dish at Evolution is the same you’ll find at New York’s Bouley: the scallop-crusted sea bass. It’s served with jasmine rice with coconut milk, crabmeat and a bouillabaisse sauce, which is very rich and shellfish-based with tomato and fennel. We layer slices of scallops over the bass and a purée of orange is sandwiched between the fish. You can taste the sweetness from the scallops, the tanginess of the orange purée, the silkiness of the fish, and the creaminess of the rice with the coconut milk, and it’s all accentuated by the richness of the broth.”
Chicken stock, watch your back: “David Bouley introduced me to tomato water, which we use in a lot of the sauces—instead of chicken stock or water—to thin something down. The great thing about it is that it comes from such a perfect vegetable. It has sweetness, acidity and this clean, bright flavor that makes everything amazing. I’ve been using it the past few years and can’t do without it.”
Phenomenal fish stew: “My parents were French, and I was really inspired by my great-grandmother, who was also French. I grew up in Puerto Rico, but she lived with us and was one of those amazing cooks. We were living in San Germán but eating things like terrine and all these really great classical French dishes. When I was a kid, we’d go fishing a lot, especially on Sundays, and bring back snapper, which my great-grandmother [Luciéne Castagno] would use to make bouillabaisse for the whole family. Even though she passed away 15 years ago, I can still taste it. It’s really hard to re-create that flavor—it stays with me. I have never had a bouillabaisse as good as she used to make, even when I went to France and ate at the best restaurants in Marseilles.”
The chef recommends: “We serve an incredible poached yellowtail with a Cavaillon melon in a yellow-curry sauce. David Bouley has been doing this dish for a long time, and was actually one of the first people to oil poached fish. We take a Japanese yellowtail, start it in cold oil and slowly bring the oil up. So instead of shocking the fish [right away by putting it into] a hot oil and bleeding out all the proteins, it’s evenly cooked. You end up with this amazingly tender piece of fish that almost looks as if it could be raw. The combination of flavors is also really interesting: You have a Cavaillon melon, which is similar to a cantaloupe, and it’s served with a yellow-curry sauce. There’s the spiciness of the curry and the sweetness of the melon, and it’s served with a pungent ginger aromatic sauce.”
1669 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach
305-604-6090
bouleyevolution.com |
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