Weekend Eater

Give your taste buds a culinary tour of Miami

By Danny Brody

Get a quick paella fix at Crandon Park on Key Biscayne. Photo by Danny Brody

When most Miamians think of the weekend, visions of 2½ booze-filled days of partying, dancing, hanging out at the beach and hooking up come to mind. But when I daydream about the weekend, images of goat heads, pig ears and several kinds of shrimp fill my reveries, because I’m an Eater, with a capital E. I don’t like the term foodie — it sounds too juvenile. I take my “weekends only” special treats very seriously, so sometimes I start the weekend a little early — Thursday at lunch, to be exact. 

In the House of Bargains parking lot on Northeast 79th Street, ribs are thrown into the smoker at 7 a.m., assuring at least 3½ hours for the smoke and meat to meld before being served. Order a rib sandwich and a quarter-rack gets tossed on the hot, triple-sized grill; the high heat sears the outside for crispiness, leaving the inside juicy and tender. Splash on some homemade hot or mild BBQ sauce, toss out the accompanying white bread slices (or use them as napkins because there’s no point in eating them) and your early weekend has begun.

Friday mornings are reserved for Torta Talong — an omelet made with mild Chinese eggplant served with pickled onions, tomatoes and a spicy red sausage called longaniza — at the Filipino lunch truck at the Port of Miami. Wash it down with mango juice and you’re ready to head uptown for lunch. At Kingston Delight in North Miami Beach, Fridays mean Goat Head Soup. While everything here is homemade and delicious, the soup is beyond belief. A soft yet substantial finger-shaped dumpling nudges morsels of potatoes, bananas, carrots, celery, an entire sprig of thyme and tasty pieces of goat meat and fat. I’m not sure the long-stewed goat tastes like ‘head’ particularly, but it definitely does not taste like chicken. It is very tender and rich, as I imagine it should taste, and the broth is complex and satisfying.

On Friday evenings, before the weekend gets away from me, I head up to Chef Francois on Northwest 27th Avenue. Francois Joseph, his full name, was a chef to the rich at the ritzy Biltmore Hotel and the Hyatt Regency, among others, for nearly 20 years. Now, his tiny take-out lies on a desolate stretch most people don’t even travel, much less notice his sign. Yet his skills are obvious, as when he elevates the humble souse — a concoction popular in Caribbean and Southern black homes — to royal status. There are pig ears, of course, and other bits of hog swimming in a vinegary and oleaginous broth. Eat it hot, try to identify the mystery cuts and remember: For the Eater, the weekend’s just begun.

Some people run errands on Saturday, shop for underwear, pick up the dry cleaning, maybe see a movie and, perhaps, spend some time at museums and art galleries. But my calendar has a big red circle around the first Saturday of every month to remind me not to eat breakfast and to get to the beach early, because by 1 p.m., I must be parked at the bar of Boteco for the feast that is Brazilian feijoada. Feijoada is a long-simmered black bean stew (feijao means beans) that usually contains many different parts of the pig. It also may contain fresh and dried beef (called tasajo or carne seca), usually some kind of sausage, some salt pork or pork belly chunks and … well, you get the picture. It is served with traditional accompaniments, including white rice and farofa (toasted manioc flour from cassava rather than wheat, which you shove in your mouth instead of bread — weird but it works), peeled orange segments and collard greens or kale (couve). Also try the homemade acaraje, fried bean cakes or fritters, which are authentic Bahian street food and a great snack between heaping plates of feijoada.

The beverage of choice is a caipirinha, an almost pure-alcohol cocktail made from cachaça, the Brazilian sugarcane liquor, shaken together with a sugar-muddled lime. And like its rival, the better-known mojito, it won’t leave you picking mint out of your teeth all evening. This is an afternoon feast, with music and dancing, lots of laughter and camaraderie for the whole neighborhood. 

Late night finds me in the parking lot of Take One strip club on Northeast 79th Street (could this be the new restaurant row?) getting my street-food fix. Strip clubs and fried shrimp have a certain affinity for each other, and these shrimp are cooked fresh in a big outdoor contraption by a guy working out of a hatchback, then served alongside crisp, seasoned French fries. He wouldn’t tell me the secrets of his marinade or spices or where the shrimp came from, or why they were almost as fresh, sweet and mouth-watering as the sweaty, young, half-naked hoochies shaking their rumps inside. But they were.

On Sunday, if I feel lucky, I head over to Bajareque, which was once a Puerto Rican dive on Northwest 36th Street and is now owned by Venezuelan Gerardo Velazco. Depending on the anticipated hangover crowd, he may make a huge pot of his mondongo, prepared in the style of his hometown of Maracaibo. There’s lots of tripe, which has been cleaned and marinated overnight in fresh lime juice, and stewed for hours with carrots, celery, yucca, yam, pumpkin and garbanzo beans. Add some warm tortillas fresh from the oven, a few cold beers and you’re ready for an afternoon nap.

Of course, Sunday also is beach day, and I often sit in the sand at Crandon Park on Key Biscayne, where you can have your fill of hot dogs, fruity-flavored shaved ices or your own barbecuing. But the smell of the salt air and the ocean always bring me back to seafood, and the Fast Paella man keeps the briny fishies coming in a soft bowl of fragrant yellow rice cooked in a giant pan in the sand. With some sweet plantains on the side, the shrimp, squid, mussels, chicken and red peppers of the Paella Valenciana smell and taste so crisp and fresh, its memory will keep you warm for days, or maybe even all the way till next weekend. 

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