After months of "Coming Soon" signs, and weeks of training, Mister01 pizza finally opened in Flagler Village and, perhaps inevitably after such a long period of anticipation, I found it disappointing. Granted, I didn't get the celebrated star-shaped pie; I wanted something smaller and simpler. My 8-inch pie looked like something you'd get in thousands of American pizzerias: a mottled surface of yellow and red surrounded by a hard flat rim. I had been expecting a pillowy, cratery crust encircling a field of red dotted with small white patches. I googled "Neapolitan pizza" and this is the picture that appeared on my screen, which I showed our waitress after she asked how we had enjoyed our pizzas and I told her I'd been expecting something different. To be fair, everything that went into my pizza seemed of high quality; it just didn't meet my aesthetic or chewy standards.
Yesterday morning I played an hour of tennis with our neighbor Petra, the former #1 female player in Slovakia, and then went with friends to Voo La Voo for crepes and a bottle of Vin de Provence. My afternoon nap was one of my finest ever.
I was very happy to read that Michelle Bernstein’s Cafe La Trova won the “Best American Bar Team” award from Tales of the Cocktail. We ate there last year, and more than the cocktails I remember going up to the bar at the end of the evening to ask for change to tip the valet. A handsome man in vest and bow tie – quite possibly head cantinero Julio Cabrera – came up to me and shook my hand.
I try to keep up on the restaurant scene in Miami (part of my duty, I tell myself, as a travel writer) and on special occasions we’ll even partake. Increasingly, the more I anticipate the experience, the more I am disappointed.
Saturday evening we drove down to Miami Beach for Hania’s birthday dinner. Because of traffic, it took us almost an hour. But I found a parking spot on the street in Sunset Harbor, a few steps away from Stiltsville Fish Bar. South Beach has a different Pay by Phone system than Miami and, partly out of protest, I refuse to download it. I took two one dollar bills out of my wallet, grabbed a handful of quarters, and walked to the machine on the sidewalk. The quarters, I noticed with surprise, were giving me only a few minutes each. Then I read that parking on the street of this supposedly “locals” neighborhood costs $4 an hour, the amount I pay at the garage by Lincoln Road, or the one in Coral Gables, for an entire evening. We had an hour and ten minutes before I’d have to return and feed more money into the machine.
I had seen the restaurant once at happy hour, bright and quiet; with its ice-filled bathtub in the front, it had looked like the kind of place its name suggested. Now it was dim and noisy, with that annoying house music without which, apparently, Miamians are unable to digest their food. The fish bar had transmogrified into a trendy restaurant.
We were led to one of the worst tables, at the kitchen-end of a string of tables in the middle on the room. The people at the table in front of ours left, so we moved to a slightly better location. But wait staff still rushed past us, on either side, like at a Manhattan deli. But at least in delis you don’t have to contend with “boom, boom, boom” drowning out your sentences.
I picked up the cocktail menu. In the land of the trendy, I figured, one should drink craft cocktails. Their names were easy to read but their descriptions weren’t: they were written in small brown letters on a black background. Why make things difficult for your customers? Or was this a way to out seniors dining with 20-somethings? My wife had just turned one year old than I, so, without shame, I took off my glasses and put the menu close to my face. It was too much work. I picked up the off-white food menu, with the wine list on the back, and, from the second column, chose the only sauvignon blanc that came in a glass.
The waitress arrived and told me there were other sauvignon blancs by the glass; the columns were not for reds and whites but for wines made inland and those produced close to the sea. How precious. Had my eyes not been strained by the cocktail menu, and my mind addled by the decibels, I probably would have noticed this information written at the top.
I asked for bread, thinking perhaps it hadn't arrived because Hania had announced that she is a celiac. I was told there would be none but that I would get crostini with my wood-grilled oysters. The bivalves arrived with several small, thin slices of what had the consistency of Melba toast, and the same lack of taste. ( On the menu it is described erroneously, or ambitiously, as "charred sourdough.") The watermelon and blood orange ceviche was not as appealing as the basic ceviche I get at my local mom-and-pop Peruvian place. (And, I gather from my restaurant reading, putting citrus in ceviche isn’t all that original either.) My shrimp and grits came swimming in a strange black (or dark brown) sauce; happily, Hania liked it, so I ate her fish. Also happily, the house music had been replaced by something slightly less irritating, but the noise level hadn’t decreased. Why do Americans talk so loudly? With their mouths full, at that?
I walked outside to put more money in the parking machine. Coming back in, I noticed that everyone in the restaurant looked happier, and wealthier, than me. I braced myself for the check.
The waitress at Gran Forno asked if I wanted chicken with my caprese salad. Caprese salad. I asked her if wait staff were instructed to try to get customers to order more expensive dishes.
She explained that it was also in her best interest. "I get a bigger tip," she said, then added that some diners are actually pleased to learn that they can add meat to a salad. Foreigners, I thought, probably Europeans unused to accommodating kitchens.
After I finished my salad, the waitress returned. "Would you like anything else?" she asked. "Dessert? Coffee? Coffee with chicken?"
I gave her a good tip.
Eating with friends at a pizzeria on Saturday evening I got everyone's attention by mentioning the story I'd heard on NPR that afternoon about restaurants that advertise fried calamari and actually serve fried pig rectum.