Six Days in Miami Beach - Six Ethnic Cuisines

By Billa

Knowing we (me and my husband Martin) were going to be staying in Miami Beach for six days in the beginning of January, I made dinner reservations at six new (to us), interesting-sounding restaurants. It happened that each of the restaurants represented a totally distinct ethnic cuisine. They were Japanese, Peruvian, Italian, Israeli, Greek, and Colombian.

Here’s what the experience was like:

Day 1 - Japanese

Located on a rooftop 18 stories above South Beach, Watr (yes, it’s spelled correctly) serves Japanese cuisine in an outdoor setting with stunning ocean views.

For my entree, I ordered the shrimp tempura and tuna roll, which included spicy bluefin tuna, yuzu juice, and tobiko roe (the salty fish eggs of flying fish). Martin had hamachi sashimi - yellowtail tuna with a tart and tangy ponzu sauce, avocado coulis, tomato, and shiso, a type of mint.

My dessert was a yuzu mousse. It looked like a lemon, but it was actually a delicious, edible sweet cookie-like shell filled with a creamy, subtle citrusy mousse. There were also mounds of raspberry meringue all over the plate, the sweetness of which contrasted nicely with the sourness of the mousse. Martin ordered passion fruit and mango flavored mochi - scoops of gelatinous rice bean paste ice cream.

Day 2 - Peruvian

Ceviche by Divino was a very unassuming small restaurant. But the food they served us had big, authentic flavors.

I ordered a poke salmon bowl. The bowl had salmon ceviche, giant corn kernels, edamame, and aji amarillo rice (cooked rice flavored with a Peruvian chili pepper paste that gives the rice a vibrant yellow color and a spicy kick). Martin’s salmon ceviche en canasta de toston was made up of green plantains shaped into baskets and filled with marinated salmon and accompanied with a small pitcher of leche de tigre, literally “tiger's milk,” the leftover, spicy lime juice-based marinade that is used to make the ceviche.

Day 3 - Italian

My first thought upon arriving at Pane e Vino is that it was touristy and hokey. In the front window of the restaurant stood a woman chef making ravioli, and other pasta dishes.

There was an unusual item on the menu that caught my eye: spaghetti alla ruota, described as spaghetti with tomato sauce, prepared in a whole parmesan wheel aged 24 months. We were seated outside and the waiter wheeled out a cart carrying a giant bowl made from a hollowed out wheel of parmesan. He proceeded to place piping hot spaghetti in the bowl. Then he scraped the sides of the cheese wheel bowl to incorporate the cheese into the spaghetti. The result? One of the best pasta dishes I’ve ever had. The unctuous, creamy spaghetti was luscious with flavor. Yum!

Martin loved his ravioli. It was stuffed with pear and gorgonzola cheese, and covered with a caramelized leek sauce. I’m sure it was as good as he said, but it lacked the drama of my dish.

For dessert, we shared a plate of cannoli. Apparently, a good move, as the pastry chef, wearing a toque on her head, came out of the kitchen to tell us that we chose her favorite dessert on the menu. It was very good, the filling sweet and creamy, the whole thing dipped in pistachio nuts on both open ends and drizzled with a chocolate sauce.

Day 4 - Israeli

Motek (which is a term of endearment meaning "sweetheart" in Hebrew) is a wildly popular restaurant with eight locations in Florida. We went to the one in Miami Beach.

It’s the kind of place where you choose a number of small plates that you are encouraged to share. As soon as we sat down, they presented us with a complementary, warm and yeasty challah bread.

The dishes we chose to share were crisp, savory zucchini pancakes with labneh (a thick yogurt cheese); za’atar French fries with just the right level of spiciness; and Moroccan fish - Chilean sea bass with chickpeas, a spicy tomato confit, and a tahini sauce. It was a lovely, light dinner that filled me with memories of the foods I ate growing up in Israel.

Dessert was a cheesecake presented in a small round box. We both thought It was excellent, but it didn’t taste like any cheesecake I ever had, so I asked the server what it was made of (there was no dessert menu, which is an annoying new trend) and he said brie, mascarpone, and cream cheese. That explained why the taste was so distinct. I doubt I ever had a cheesecake made with brie before. I guess it's also why the cake was served in what looked like a box of brie.

Day 5 - Greek

Santorini by Georgios restaurant is located on the main floor of the Hilton Hotel in South Beach Miami.

For my main course, I ordered Key West shrimp - grilled shrimp served over a bed of rice with lemon butter and tomato confit. It was just what I felt like having, although I realized that it was  hardly a Greek specialty. Martin’s moussaka, an eggplant dish layered with potatoes and ground meat, topped with a creamy béchamel sauce and sprinkled with feta was more in the spirit of the place.

For dessert, we chose yalaktoboureko (a warm filo pastry filled with vanilla bean custard, served with a side of vanilla ice cream). It came in two sizes, large and small. We decided to share a small one. Good thing because it was humongous.

Day 6 - Colombian

La Ventana advertises itself as the best Colombian restaurant in Miami Beach.

I had salmon with mashed potatoes. It was good, nothing out of the ordinary and not particularly Colombian. Martin had pollo en salsa criolla (chicken breast cooked in creole sauce and served with plain white rice and roasted plantains. He liked the sauce. It gave the chicken a nice tang. He also liked the roasted plantains, which were sweet, crispy on the outside and soft on the inside.

This restaurant claims to have over 12,000 mostly 5-star Google reviews. It's hard to believe because it’s a small place, open for only 12 years, and most people tend not to review restaurants. We looked up Per Se (in Manhattan), one of the top restaurants in the country, which has been open for 21 years, and that place has only around 1,800 reviews. Also, La Ventana’s reviews mostly sound phony, as they thank a server by name without hardly mentioning the food. I would think most people do not remember a server’s name, but rather what they ate. Perhaps these reviews are bot-generated. We did not post a review, nor do we remember our server’s name.

Looking back, it was wonderful to try a different cuisine every night. It felt like we were on an adventurous trip. And most of the food was really tasty. I think the next time we go to Miami Beach, I just might repeat the experience with different restaurants and cuisines.