Top of the Mark

Sunday--our last night in South Beach. Our last chance to find good food. So rather than trying for hipster status by going to the happeningest spot on the block, we decided to go for a place that had been around for at least a few years, with a chef who had a sound reputation.

And so, crossing our fingers that the rain would hold off for the short walk down Collins, we headed out to Mark's South Beach, one of four restos in South Florida owned by chef Mark Militello.

We arrived at the Hotel Nash, which houses the restaurant, just as the raindrops were getting fatter, and ducked inside. There was only one other party in the restaurant, which seemed surprising for 8pm on a Sunday. But, as our waitress pointed out, it was close to the end of the season. Plus the rain tended to keep the locals away. Plus there was some kind of hip-hop convention in town, which really really kept the locals away.

Digression: what happens at a hip-hop convention? Do they have a keynote speaker? Are there tracked sessions (beginner, intermediate and advanced hip-hop)? What does the exhibition hall look like? Is everyone wandering around with baggy low-rise pants and bling, carrying Vibe tote bags filled with brochures and FuBu logo frisbees?

We ordered cocktails--a Martini for me and a Manhattan for The Boy. Wow, were they potent. "Yeah," said our waitress of the bartender, "she's pretty generous with the spirits."

I liked our waitress a lot; cool, funny, laid-back. We talked about life in Miami (she was a California transplant) and whether there was really any perfect place to live in the world (everywhere has its downsides).

I also liked that the corridor to the restrooms had old framed hotel invoices on the walls, itemizing the spending habits of guests in the 1930s (beer: 10 cents. Room for a week: three dollars).

And then to food. The Boy started with the yellowfin tuna tartare, which came with avocado and lemongrass oil. I went for the conch chowder, a generous bowlful, slightly too heavy on the coconut milk but saved by the donut-hole-sized plantain beignets piled in the center.

And then The Boy had striped bass, served with a deep, fresh tomato sauce, and olive gnocchi with the texture of good sausage--not sticky or doughy, as gnocchi often are. And I chose a second app: scallops with calabaza puree and passionfruit. The scallops tried to hold their own next to the fruit, but were slightly overwhelmed by sweetness. I'd probably have enjoyed it more had I not just waded through a bowl of coconut milk.

But even though my choices were not so well thought out, this was still the most satisfying meal we had in Miami (Cuban food aside). There was a sense, from the creative-but-not-painfully-trendy menu, and from the waitstaff, that the food mattered more than anything else.

This wasn't a place to see and be seen, but a place to get carefully considered dishes with fresh ingredients (many menu items are created from that day's market offerings). It was the one resto where the music was in the background, rather than being a pounding obstacle to conversation. It was the one place where we didn't feel completely ripped off when the check arrived.

And it was the one place that, should we find ourselves in South Beach, we'd be likely to go back to.

Style over substance. Again.

Saturday night, and another attempt to find good food at non-rip-off prices. Our plan was to wander Lincoln Road (lined, you may recall, with eatin' joints), and do cocktails and apps at a couple of the best.

Hm.

As it turned out, most of the restos were Italian. And most of these had maitre d's essentially acting as carnival barkers. As we walked past each place, they'd gesture at long tables piled with Saran-wrapped samples of the house specials, entreating us to try, inviting us to a seat, thrusting business cards into our unwilling hands. "Come on, nice couple, you come eat with us, good time, yes?"

Um, no. I don't buy cars from the guys who yell on TV on Sunday mornings, and I don't eat in restaurants that so obviously have no unique value proposition that the owner has to shill on the street. Sorry, buddy.

So after a half-hour stroll up one side of Lincoln and down the other (which was a show in itself, if only for the number of tiny dogs on parade), we settled on Yuca, a nuevo latino resto with an interesting menu.

The only outside table remaining was not under an awning, and after the previous night's monsoon, we decided it would be safer to eat indoors.

I don't remember the last time I was in a place so loud. Not that there were many diners, either; more that every surface seemed designed to bounce sound back into the room.

When it was time to order drinks, the waiter recommended the mojito. "It's a classic traditional Cuban cocktail," he said, assuming we'd never heard of such a thing. So okay, we thought, it's obviously the house special. Let's try it.

Every mojito I've ever had looked like this.

The mojito at Yuca looked like this.

The Boy was indignant. "Is this from a mix?" he half-yelled (no other way to be heard) at the hastily departing waiter.

Okay, it didn't taste bad. But having spent the last couple of days sampling mojitos at various places, this was just sad. Not even a shred of mint leaf--though ironically, both my first app and my dessert came with generous garnishes of the herb, so it's not as though they were suffering a mint shortage.

We felt a little better when the food arrived. I had a roasted piquillo pepper stuffed with chorizo in a pool of cabrales cream sauce, the sweetness of the pepper and the saltiness of the sausage playing off nicely against the cheese. The Boy went for tasajo, a deep-fried yellow plantain wrapped around a cured beef filling, the sweetness of the two working well together.

For our second apps, I had tamale de caracol--a corn tamale stuffed with conch and fresh corn kernels. The filling was interesting and tasty, but could have been more generous; there was a good half-inch of thick, impenetrable cornmeal dough at either end. The Boy won this round with "montaña de Martí," a happy pile of sweet ropa vieja over a fried green plantain cake.

We don't usually do dessert, but the list was too intriguing to pass up: selections like mamey sorbet and sweet potato beignets (which they don't know how to spell).

I'm a sucker for tres leches cake, and they had one made with turrón, a Spanish nougat traditionally eaten at Christmas. It's hard and crunchy, but this cake was soaked with sweet cream, and turned out soft and dense. Delicious, but also too sweet and heavy to finish, especially served with guava cream cheese ice-cream. The Boy opted for "peras en cartucho," slow-roasted pear stuffed with dulce de leche, wrapped in filo, and served with fresh rum-raisin ice-cream. Again, a little too much sweetness (even for The Boy), though the combination of sweet and spicy flavors would make it a perfect Christmas dessert.

So the food made up for the "mojito." But then there was the waitstaff, who seemed largely inexperienced, not sure of what to do next, not noticing when water glasses were empty, occasionally shouting at each other for minor infractions.

As we were settling up (which in itself took a while), four waiters were engaged in pulling together two tables to seat a large party. Evidently there was one more chair than there were diners, so the unemployed seat was left in the middle of the floor like an abandoned car in the middle lane of the highway, forcing waiters and diners to skirt it each time they passed. It didn't seem to occur to anyone that it might be a good idea to move it ...

Aaaaanyway.

After dinner we wandered down Washington, two blocks parallel from Ocean, noting that there were fewer hip restos and more tattoo parlors and strip clubs. And then across onto Ocean to check out the Deco hotels lit with pastel neon, and the former Versace mansion-turned-nightclub (he woulda wanted it that way).

And then the rain came. Again.

We ducked into a doorway for a while, and then decided to make a run for it. Fortunately, we were saved from drowning by the appearance of the two greatest words in the English language: Martini Bar.

So we sat in the gorgeously Deco lobby of the WinterHaven and had reasonably priced rum punches until the rain slowed down.

And so to bed.

Style over substance

One thing we'd wondered before coming down to South Beach, home of the beautiful people: does the idea of style over substance hold true for restaurants as well as for everything else?

So far, the jury is still out.

We checked in to The National, spent a little time hanging at the "Tiki" bar near the pool (in quotes because it wasn't particularly Tiki) and had $30 worth of drinks--that is, one G&T and one mojito. Youch.

Nice pool, though.

And then to the day's big decision: what to do for dinner?

At the salon last week, the client in the chair next to mine, who had just returned from SoBe, recommended Table 8, the hottest new spot with the hottest new chef (all reviews make sure to mention that he started working for Wolfgang Puck "at the tender age of 13"). It seemed promising, and he makes use of local ingredients, so we figured maybe it was Craigie Street transported to Miami and therefore worth a shot.

The fact that we couldn't get a table until 9:30 meant it was popular; another promising sign.

Of course, this was all decided by 5--there was no way we could go hungry for another four hours. So we wandered out to Lincoln Road, the pedestrianized street lined with boutiques, sidewalk cafes and restaurants. I realized it was vitally important to return when I wasn't so hungry; many cute shoes!

Oh, and also a store selling The. Most. Horrendous decorative items: six-foot-tall rampant onyx dolphins and majestic eagles on dodgy faux-marble plinths and "authentic eggs" (whatever that means). I must go back and laugh some more.



And finally we came across SushiSamba, a hip blend of Japanese and Brazilian cuisine, and got a table outside. (Apologies for the link; the site's all Flash, so there's no direct access to the Miami resto. But you get the picture.)

People watching on Lincoln is the best anywhere. In the space of 20 minutes we saw:

• A fuschia-spandex-clad bantamweight Hispanic on rollerblades


• A crazy-haired old lady pushing a stroller containing three white bichon frises in pink hats


• A middle-aged guy (who looked a lot--a lot--like Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs) in a folk-style hippy dress and Cuban-heeled shoes, dancing down the street with a boombox.

Nothing better than watching the parade with cucumber-sake cocktails and sushi tiradito: yellowtail with japaleno and lemongrass; kanpachi with truffle oil; salmon with chimichurri and ginger; tuna with green apple.

And then the rain came.

It started with high winds that blew salad off nearby plates. Then it was as though someone turned the shower on full--fat drops of water, bouncing off the sidewalk, making diners run for cover and waiters rush to collect plates and drag tables under awnings (which quickly lost their waterproof capabilities).

We stood in the doorway and watched as the half-empty water glasses on our abandoned table filled to the brim. Though the sky lightened, the rain kept stotting it down, and we realized the only sensible thing to do was wait it out at the bar with a couple of mojitos.

After about ten more minutes, the skies cleared and we made our way back outside, splashing through two-inch-deep puddles. Such is Miami.

Deluge aside, the dining was great--interesting and thoughtful combinations, fresh ingredients, awesome floor show.

And so on to Table 8. The space is ultra-hip--a long rectangle, dimly lit, the wall at the far end shifting colors from orange to blue to lilac to green. Our reservation was pushed back a half-hour for no particular reason, but we were happy to hang on the low, simple couches and watch the beautiful people watching each other.

The cocktails were interesting; I had what was essentially a basil mojito, spiked with lime juice--very refreshing. The Boy had a black cherry caipirinha, which was just cough-mediciny enough to satisfy him.

And then the food. As it was so late, we decided to stick to apps. The Boy did a much better job of ordering than I; his sweetbreads were melt-in-the-mouth fabulous, and his scallops came on a bed of perfectly creamy risotto.

I probably shouldn't have gone all-salad, but still. The duck prosciutto salad with green beans was pretty good, though a little stingy on the meat. And the second dish involved thin slices of flavorless heirloom tomatoes hidden under an amorphous glop of bland mozzarella.

Eh. Maybe I was just tired. But the fact that all this--two cocktails, two glasses of wine and four apps--came to $175 wasn't cool either. I assume this is an example of style over substance; that one doesn't go to these places to eat, but rather to see and be seen.

But if that's the case, then where does one go to eat really good food at reasonable prices?

(Oh, walking back we saw another only-in-SoBe vision: a guy looking something like this, with one of these around his neck).