5/10/2010

Viva D. Rodriguez Cuba!

I didn’t really plan on being in Miami two weekends in one month, it just worked out that way. I stayed at the beautiful Mandarin Oriental and then at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach. The Fontainebleau recently had a one billion dollar makeover (you heard me right, $1 billion) that resembles a rehab center for celebrities.

The nexus of Latin cool, Miami is vivacious, tacky, hot, multilingual, gaudy, tattooed, hipped and hopped, alive, seedy, gleaming, and whatever you want it to be. It is where the tectonic plates of North and South America collide in a cacophony of human diversity.

Close friends in Chicago recommended that we go to the top Cuban restaurant in town, D. Rodriguez Cuba. Opened last December in the art-deco Astor Hotel at 956 Washington Avenue in South Beach, D. Rodriguez is a big space with high ceilings, a live salsa band and with multi-leveled terraces outside. For a quieter dinner dine around 7:00 pm as the live music starts at 8:30.

Cuban cuisine is historically a blend of Spanish, African and Caribbean cuisines. Typical fare consists of rice and beans; a main pork or beef course; vianda that encompass yucca, malanga, potato, plantains, unripe bananas and even corn; and a salad composed of tomato, lettuce, avocado, including at times cucumber, carrots, cabbage and radish. Fruit is often ignored, except ripe plantains, which can be served with the rice and beans. Cuban fare is usually served family style.

Chef Douglas Rodriguez is considered to be the Godfather of Nuevo Latino Cuisine. He has opened restaurants in Miami, Philadelphia, Arizona, and the most recent, D. Rodriguez Cuba at the Astor Hotel in Miami Beach. You may know him as the executive chef and co-owner of the Patria in New York City.

I won’t dwell on his cuisine except to say that his Tapas (crab and lemon with cucumber yogurt Empanaditas), Ceviches (Fire and Ice - Salmon, lemon juice, chives, jalapenos, dill over yogurt and cucumber granite) and Cassabe Flat Breads are not to be missed. The menu is an adventure. And a few puffs of a good cigar out on the terrace afterwards might have you exclaiming, “Who lives better than us!”

Richard Wottrich

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