Finding Nemo... Again

One can find all kinds of great food in Miami - a vast array of ethnicities are represented, many high caliber, famous chefs, the finest ingredients of any type and most beautiful scenery and dining rooms imaginable. But for land-locked midwesterners - especially Kansas Citians who live among the best beef money can buy - seafood is the natural draw.

Finding this true for ourselves, Elizabeth and I planned our first dinner in South Beach at Nemo, a fantastic seafood restaurant owned by the Myles Restaurant Group who also owns other South Point luxe/glam spots like Prime One Twelve. This is a beautiful, relaxed little area with some of Miami's best food. And outstanding seafood.

Finding the weather unseasonably cool (upper 50's - thanks a lot, el nino), we opted for indoor seating. Not a downgrade by any means, but a slight hindrance to kicking off our vacation the way we had imagined. Thankfully comfortable, we were seated in a perfectly dim room with just the right ambient noise level, at a table large enough to provide space for the bounty of bread, water, wine, salad and seafood we ordered, but small enough to allow our surroundings to fade away, cheshire grins gleaming toward each other.

Not wanting to blow our entire vacation budget our first night in town, we shared a salad to start (not pictured - sorry) which was good but nothing special, and then dove straight into our entrees which were  perfection on (two) plates.

Now and then one is fortunate enough to walk into the right restaurant for their mood with the right menu for their appetite, and walk away knowing that dinner was a perfect "10". That's what happened for us at Nemo.

Elizabeth is a scallop freak. With good reason. They're delish. So she naturally gravitated toward the pan seared diver scallops. This was an appetizer listing, not an entree, but the waiter seemed to think it would be enough food to feed one person as their entree, so she trusted him. She was not disappointed.

(He was a good waiter, by the way. One of those career waiters - a "cool uncle" kind of guy who probably could have been a corporate America cog like us, but opted for a cash-on-hand, SoBe lifestyle with few responsibilities and a high fun factor. He was attentive but not annoying, friendly but not trying to be our friend. Just right.)

A gorgeous looking plate arrived with a large mound of mashed potatoes (spiked with truffle oil - Miami's favorite $5 entree additive - every restaurant in Miami uses truffle oil wherever they can to increase entree prices). The potato fluff was studded with three beautiful seared scallops and a hunk of rich short rib meat on top. Scallions and red-brown pools of pinot noir sauce surrounded the heavenly hill of food and complimented the flavors quite nicely. The scallops were rare on the inside with a delicious seared exterior. The short rib shredded effortlessly and the potatoes were the penultimate starch filler. Elizabeth isn't a huge truffle fan but enjoyed the burly depth the truffle oil added to the dish.

I opted for what I'm guessing is a hot item on the menu's entree list. Listen to this: Jumbo Lump Crab Crusted Grouper. I could have been sold on any one of those words alone.

This plate came with an extremely generous bed of creamy sauteed forest mushrooms, thin but al dente asparagus sliced beautifully on the bias, atop which sat a tantalizing jumbo lump crab-crusted fillet of grouper. One may question whether jumbo lumb crab-crusting anything is really a beneficial culinary technique or just an unthoughtful piling-on of decadence, but in reality, it's a measure of genius.

The crab crust creates a shell that traps sweet moisture into the grouper, making the fish succulent and juicy on the interior, but lending a contrasting texture outside. The end product is a large piece of meat that provides what I found to be bite after bite of meaty, heavenly seafood. The mushrooms, asparagus and white wine-cream sauce added an unctuous base of flavor that made the dish even more complex and luxurious.

Chefs often criticize garnishes like the little flower blossoms you see pictured above, but when one is vacationing to a warm weather climate in late February, these kinds of things nail home a certain vacationers' satisfaction that we both appreciated very much.

Having consumed paradise's lunch earlier in the day, and seemingly the perfect dinner, one may think dessert would have been impossibly overwhelmed and, ultimately, useless. Oh contraire.

We knew, going into our dinner at Nemo, exactly what we were hoping to have and were delighted to find it still available. This dessert is, quite simply, the best dessert I have ever had in my life. You can take your molten chocolate souffles, your tiramisu, your cheesecakes, bread puddings and creme brulee's and stuff them in a sack. Nemo's got homemade donuts.

Fresh, fluffy, light, chewy, and dusted in fine granules of white sugar, reminiscent of the beach you came to lay upon, these things are my heroes incarnated as food. One needs not the decadent chocolate and tangy raspberry dipping sauces that come with the donuts, but one is fiendishly happy to employ them... you know, for some variety.

WARNING: we were already full when we ordered the donuts, but we did it, anyway. Not ordering them would have been like travelling to the city where your childhood best friend now lives and failing to meet up with him/her for a drink. We had to get them. And we had to eat them. But whilst we were living our lives back in KC, Nemo did something utterly insane. They increased their donut serving size from six to *gulp* TEN. The affable grin and shrug our waiter gave us when imparting this news after setting the giant bowl down on our table was hilarious and pathetic all at once. It was like we had won a two-seater sports car and when he dropped it off he said, "oh yeah, it's a convertible, too." Jackpot!

As  you can imagine, we rolled out of Nemo embarrassingly full, but with grins on our faces that indicated the indulgence was exactly what we had planned. With our seafood needs satiated and our ultimate dessert improved upon, the night's dinner was perfect, setting the stage for a fantastic vacation.

Rating: four napkins

The New Blanc. A Four Napkin Restaurant Reopens on the Plaza

(Before reading this post, for necessary background, please read my original post on Blanc.)

First, let me reiterate that while I enjoyed the decor and general atmosphere at the original Blanc in Westport, which recently closed in lieu of their reopening at the Plaza in the old Pizzeria Uno location, I never considered the space to be its strong point. Quite the opposite. The original blanc was too small. There were maybe one or two tables in the front and a couple in the back that were ideal, and the rest pretty much felt squeezed into places that weren't very accommodating. The bar, thus, was not set terribly high for the new Blanc location in and of itself.

So why was I so trepidacious of the switch? Because in my mind, the Plaza ain't so cool anymore. It's chain heaven and overrun with local tourists - those from a 4-hour radius of Kansas City who stand in line for .4 MPH carriage rides behind enslaved horses with creepily braded tails (I guess there IS a reason it's called a ponytail after all...). This crowd is hardly indicative of the crowd amongst which I enjoyed mingling at the previous Blanc and I feared the whole vibe would be thrown off.

Sparing one small complaint, what I found in the Plaza Blanc last night was a spot-on reincarnation of Blanc 1, with an abundance of comfortable seating, a fun, raucous mixed crowd of diners, a mostly unchanged menu and even edgier white (Blanc) themed setting. PHEW.

Having extolled Blanc's menu before, I'll only mention the food in so much as to let you know the burgers taste the same, and the menu has been augmented with just a few new selections. It's not online yet, but the newbies I can remember now are a "$100 burger" ($15) featuring a big dollop of foie gras butter and stuffed with braised short ribs. New appetizers included fried cheese curds and peppadew pepper poppers. Forgetting my journalistic responsibility to investigate these additional choices, I went right back to my old favorite - the Pale Ale battered onion rings. And I don't regret it, because last night's rings were off-the-charts good. The onions were very thick cut and the crisp fried batter clung to them impossibly well. Our inside-out burger delighted, as did our BLT salad, which gave us more than our money's worth in B(acon) but left out the promised avocado.

The... how shall I say... whiteness of the new Blanc is stunning. Walking in, you know you're in a place unlike any other in town. And I love that, amid all the chic white, vibrant orange accents, bright lights and general trendiness, the fare is down-to-earth. Burgers and good bottles of beer.

The bar is brilliantly illuminated and features all the different beers available. Clean-looking glass-front mini-fridges below it dazzle, as well (this is a great touch I've seen at other bar favorites like Harry's Country Club and R Bar).

Some tables are high tops, like the one we had. High tops can be painful... they're usually stools whose backless quality lends to slouching and deeper-seeded worry that because of my gangly nature, I'm trending toward unsightly scoliosis. Most tables, though, are regular height, and I was amazed at how cavernous the dining room was. One glass wall between the bar and big dining area, and another between the middle and back, separate most of the seats into three general areas, but upon entering, one can hook around to the right and enjoy a cluster of seats near the bar, or walk straight through, past the bar, and into a sectioned-off orange room for another angle. I question the move to this locale no more. They can seat probably four times as many people in the old Uno location as compared to the closet in Westport.

So, then... same great food, fun, appealing aesthetic and comfortable setting. What's the criticism? Something I'm sure others wouldn't mind nearly as much. The music.

Never mind that it was probably a little louder than it needed to be. It was a grand reopening kind of night. Party it up. I just didn't appreciate its overtly clubby feel. One could find Blanc to be less approachable than they'd like, because of its trendy feel. I think the friendly, casual staff and the relatively simple menu keep Blanc grounded, but the boom-boom-boom baseline of the techno beats that pulsated throughout the restaurant all night made me feel like we could have been in a dance club as easily as a restaurant. Thank goodness the cast of Jersey Shore weren't there, or some good-natured battling would have broken out for sure. (Then again, I wish that would have happened.)

In the end, my rating of Blanc remains unchanged with the new location. Take the music down a notch and throw in some indie rock and I'm back on the bandwagon for good. Can't wait to try the new menu selections. I'm almost glad we didn't have them last night, just so I have a reason to return soon. I suggest you do so, as well.

Rating - still - four napkins.

Blanc Addiction

Sometimes I go on a kick of eating at the same restaurant many times over the course of a few months. As someone who enjoys reviewing area restaurant both new and old, this can be a guilty pleasure... I always feel a responsibility to try restaurants I haven't visited yet. But I just can't get Blanc Burgers + Bottles off my brain!  This is how I know it's a truly outstanding restaurant.

On a recent Saturday night, finally coming down from a period of busy weekends out with friends and family for our birthdays among other things, we had nothing planned come 7 o'clock. The night, and our dinner plans, were a destiny of our own choice and it took no debate, no consternation, no time... to decide on Blanc.

Blanc is a small burger joint in the heart of Westport - 419 Westport Road, to be exact. The decor upholds the name; a white bar top with white bar chairs and white liquor cabinets greets patrons upon entering, as does a fantastic beer selection. Nicely organized by beer type, there are lots of beers from which to choose, including Boulevard's smokestack series, which is tremendous fun for pairing with food like gourmet hamburgers.

On our trip, the polite hostess unfortunately forgot about us until about the time we were down to the last sip of our beers (Left Hand Milk Stout for me - creamy and soothing) but more than compensated for the slip by generously offering to purchase an appetizer for us! We morphed that into two more free beers (strong ones - Unibroue's La Fin du Monde, 9% ABV) to pair with our dinner.

The last thing I need in my diet is more red meat - I try to limit my intake to once a week but go over that allotment often - but it's hard to resist when you're at a hamburger joint. If one does venture out of the cow zone, there are several options available. The pork burger is very tasty and I do recommend it. But I think that was a one-and-done thing for me. It's the red meat that's so exceptional here.

Beef burgers are made with a combination of premium, yet fatty, meats including Tenderloin, Ribeye and NY Strip (the best parts of any cow!). They're thick yet tender. One can tell the meat is not only top quality, but handled properly and by that I mean not handled too much at all.

On this trip, however, we went back to the fabulous Bison burger. Generally speaking, bison is a lean red meat. Somehow I think they choose very rich pieces of bison to grind into this burger, though, because it's just as juicy and tender as the cow-beef burgers. Not a hint of gaminess to it, either, just succulent and delicious. Topped with pepperjack cheese, deliciously sweet peppadew pepper jam, butter lettuce, onion and mayo, it's amazing. But with the perfectly over-medium fried egg built into the equation that our waiter so skillfully recommended, it's an absolute killer.

Burgers come with a sweet, homemade pickle on the side. I never used to be a fan of sweet pickles, but have completely changed my tune after a few of these. It's a great contrast of texture and flavor with the rich burger, with its crunch and zing.

The other available sides, the ones you pay for, add to the phenomenon that brings this place back to mind so frequently. The beer batter on the Boulevard Pale Ale onion rings is that smoother, crunchier batter... a casing completely encompassing the sweet, thick-cut onions rather than a bread crumb dusting that flakes off and coats your fingers when you pick one up. Perfect. For those looking for the utmost in high fashion grub, there are the superb truffle fries. The earthy, unctuous potato sticks can be smelled throughout the restaurant, giving the whole place an air of mystery and richness that lets you know it's more than just a greasy spoon.

True gourmands downplay the use of condiments, especially ketchup. I happen to love Heinz 57 and French's yellow mustard on burgers, fries and rings, but they're unnecessary at Blanc. Diners receive small portions of ketchup and aioli with their orders, but don't go asking for the server to bring you a bottle of ketchup. If you do, you're not paying attention to the quality of the food you're consuming. Burgers all come topped with thoughtful house-made condiments and the sides are so impeccably made, they just shouldn't be soaked in anything before they reach your mouth.

I struggled mightily with what rating to give Blanc. For what it is - the coolest burger spot in town - the menu and quality of food is nothing short of perfect. The vibe is great. The service is good enough not to stand in its way. But my mental tussle revolved around my feeling that there are so few comfortable places to sit in this little place. Overall, Blanc's square-footage is very limited and the wall separating the kitchen from the dining room makes it so that the majority of the seats in the house seem to have just barely been squeezed in. This layout does something to me psychologically... it makes me think of Blanc as a first stop on a weekend night out. It could never be the crown jewel my evening. But while that criticism may have deducted a napkin from many restaurants, I cannot fault Blanc for it.

Blanc's a burger joint. Burger joints, by nature, are meant to be in-and-out (or literally "In-N-Out"). But Blanc has a great combination of excitement within a reasonably comfortable setting. It's the perfect jumping-off spot for a great night out on the town. It was created with a singular vision in mind and delivers 100% on that vision. I love it, and for these reasons, Blanc is a four napkin restaurant.

Rating: four napkins

Oklahoma Joe's: KC's Four Napkin Gas Station Barbecue

In a posting a little while back, I mentioned a forthcoming soliloquy on barbecue. Ironically, it turns out that soliloquy is being delivered with my first four napkin review.

I am happy to live in a city that is widely regarded as the barbecue Mecca of the world. Sure, there are other regions that naively claim stakes to this title – your Texas’s, your Carolinas, your Tennessees (specifically Memphis) – but there can only be one true King of Barbecue, and that King is Kansas City. After all, we host the American Royal – the annual festival held in celebration of barbecue, where the best of the best are crowned each year! I don't debate this topic. KC is the barbecue capital.

With that out of the way, I move on to the second point of the soliloquy: barbecue and grilling are completely different things and should be regarded as such. Example: when the numbskulls on The Hills unwittingly claim they’re having a “barbecue” at their Malibu beach houses, they’re just grilling. To quote the authority of all authorities – the internet, and specifically Wikipedia – “…practitioners consider barbecue to include only indirect methods of cooking over hardwood smoke, with the more direct methods to be called 'grilling'". If you ever question whether you are, in fact, grilling or doing barbecue, ask yourself these questions: 1) am I using a smoker? and 2) Will a dry rub or barbecue sauce be used? You are only doing barbecue if you answer "yes" to both of these questions.

Now having established both the capital of barbecue as well as its correct definition, I’ll point out that there are several restaurants in Kansas City that do barbecue very well. Most are little shacks tucked away in discreet nooks of the city, but upscale variations are also found downtown, on the plaza and out south. And they all serve the exact same plates of food regardless of how it may be presented (though each claims their own slight variation makes their food the best).

However. Within the last decade, a leader has emerged... a place that draws ridiculous crowds every weekend of the year, and every week day during lunch. This is a place that embodies the no-frills atmosphere I love in a barbecue restaurant (it's literally located in a gas station), meaning it stakes its reputation solely on the quality of its delicious. smoked. meats.

This place not only has a massive Midwest following, it’s received some serious national accolades, my favorite among them being listed as number 13 on Anthony Bourdain’s column for Men’s Health Magazine: 13 Places to Eat Before You Die. Bourdain, who I’ve written about before and of whom I’m a big fan, has eaten the best of everything, from hyper delicacies at the world’s top rated restaurants (many of them also on this list) to wildly fantastic street foods and specialties at famed local joints across the globe.

Of all the places he’s been, and of all the foods he loves, he chose Oklahoma Joe’s barbecue in Kansas City, Kansas, for the final spot on his enviable list of must-eats.

Normally I wouldn’t take the opinion of one New York-based chef so seriously... certainly not on the subject of barbecue, and especially not one who spent most of his career cooking at a French Brasserie. But having watched all his shows and read the book he wrote about his career as a chef and the restaurant industry, I respect his viewpoint. When I saw Bourdain speak at The Midland downtown about a year ago, someone in the audience asked him where he was going to eat that night. He replied (paraphrasing), “I’m flying out of town so I won’t be eating here.” (pause and disappointment from the crowd…) “But if I did eat anywhere in Kansas City tonight, it’d be at Oklahoma Joe’s.” (eruption of applause from the OK Joe’s fans in the house!!!)

Okay, enough guffawing over its national media attention. Let me tell you what sets Oklahoma Joe’s apart from the rest with three simple words that encompass all that's important in barbecue: flavorful, tender meat.

On the topic of flavor: obviously the meat has to shine, but what gives barbecued meat such great flavor is smoke. Whether mesquite or hickory (mesquite being my favorite by far), that smoky flavor must completely permeate your food. On a slice of brisket, you should be able to see a bright pink ring that comes from the penetration of smoke into the meat. You always get this at Oklahoma Joe's. Moreover, when you smell your food, it should absolutely reek of that smoke. Heck, the restaurant itself should have smoke visibly hanging in the air, and you should be able to smell it if you're anywhere within a quarter mile radius of the place. I'm not joking! And if you get your 'cue as takeout, the bag of food and any finger that touches it should smell like it was soaked in a bath of mesquite. Your hair, the morning after eating barbecue, should smell like mesquite. That's how important the smoke is, and Oklahoma Joe's delivers on every one of these criteria.

Tenderness is paramount to the experience of eating barbecue. Rib meat should be falling off the bones - literally sliding off cleanly when you wrap your lips around that first meaty bone. Brisket and pulled pork should essentially melt in your mouth. To me, the tenderness of the meat at Oklahoma Joe's is what creates the clear separation between it and all other barbecue. Whether Gates, Arthur Bryant's, Jack Stack or some other tiny shack, I've had ribs that weren't smoked long enough and wouldn't separate from the bone, resulting in a texture similar to an overcooked pork chop. Not good. I've had "crunchy" slices of brisket that tasted like cheap, metallic hamburger. But I've eaten at Oklahoma Joe's more than any of these other places and have never - not once - had anything that wasn't incredibly tender.

Meat. Barbecued meat should not be gristly or have huge chunks of fat in it. I can't use the word "lean" because there is plenty of fat in some of these meats, and there should be. But it needs to be evenly distributed. The low and slow cooking process makes the fat in a good, clean piece of pork butt melt away. You will never eat at a barbecue place that doesn't serve some fatty meat, but I've had inedible, fatty burnt ends at Gates and Jack Stack, stringy brisket from Arthur Bryant's, Danny Edwards, Smokehouse and Winslow's, and discarded huge chunks of fat-ridden pulled pork at others before. Don't get me wrong - I like all these places for one reason or another (well, not Winslow's), but they just don't measure up to OKJ's where you always get bite after bite of perfect, delicious meat.

For my money, the best choice in barbecue is pulled pork. I love it all, even chicken. And brisket is a close second. But in barbecue, pork is king and I personally enjoy the satisfaction of demolishing a massive sandwich to the sticky interaction with ribs. I must admit, in a departure with Kansas City 'cue customs, I enjoy a pulled pork sandwich Carolina style - meaning that spicy coleslaw is piled on top of the pork, in the sandwich, giving it a cooling, contrasting crunch that, for some reason, does more for me than pickles alone can.

The experience of starting in on one of these sandwiches at Oklahoma Joe's induces gluttonous euphoria. Noticing a juicy chunk of pork tumble from the overflowing bun and fall on the plate causes pleasure sensors to light up in my brain.This food is a drug and I'm happily addicted.

And like the worst addicts, I fully intend to share my love of this drug with as many people as possible. It always disappoints me when I see KC Masterpiece on grocery store shelves, or when my company caters meetings for clients from across the country with bbq from the wrong restaurant. Because these aren't the best representations of Kansas City barbecue. That's why, when my wife and I were planning our wedding rehearsal dinner, what to eat was the easiest of all the decisions we had to make. Oklahoma Joe's wowed our out of town guests and thrilled those who were already fans. It does the same for me every time I bite into a Carolina-style pulled pork sandwich, still, and always will. That's why Oklahoma Joe's is a KC Napkins four napkin restaurant.

Rating: four napkins