Mom Wishes She Could Cook This Good

By Mark Goldberg
Dining Critic 

There’s something to be said for comfort food: those meat-and-potatoes, stick-to-your-ribs meals that remind you of Mom’s home cooking, when you still lived at home and Mom cooked all your favorites. Perry’s offers a menu filled with those favorites. But you’ll only recognize them if your Mom had the culinary inventiveness to mix in some Caribbean touches and a bit of French and Italian flair.

The room is delightful, with an inside-out design that places rough-cut wood siding, canopy awnings and rain gutters within, so you feel like you’re dining on the front porch.

But it’s the food you’ll focus on, with such interesting fusions as conch escargot and turkey-and-mango meatloaf. Starters begin with an excellent Vegetarian Black Bean Soup ($4.95). This spicy treat has more in common with a Bahamian chili than the Hispanic soup of the same name. Thick, yet fat free, it’s a bowl of puréed beans, chopped tomatoes and onions, and a bit of sour cream over rice. The Escargot ($9.95) uses the French preparation and presentation stylings, but replaces the snails with lightly sautéed, farm-raised Princess conch. The chewy, but not resistant, conch works extremely well, absorbing as much of the garlicky flavor as any upstanding snail. Jumbo Lump Crab Fritters ($9.95) were very good. But the fritters were so tiny, they looked lost on the plate. Dip them in the accompanying key lime mustard sauce and you disguise their flavor. In contrast, the Portobello And Goat Cheese Quesadilla ($8.95) filled half a large platter, the soft taco folded over a hearty serving of sliced and sautéed mushrooms, soft manchego and grilled onions. We could have done with a little less of the red pepper sour cream topping. A lesser amount would have fortified the quesadilla’s gentler flavors rather than masking them.

Perry’s offers a Meal Deal every evening – all night long – that features a small house or Caesar salad or a bowl of the black bean soup, one of the evening’s specials, and a choice of pecan pie or a mini sundae all for the cost of the entree itself. Considering an exceptionally-tender and perfectly-prepared 8-ounce Filet Mignon ($23.95) in a rich cabernet sauce, served atop a delicate mashed potato/bleu cheese blend with a spinach side was one of this evening’s specials, the Meal Deal made for cost-conscious, quality dining.

Three of our four entrees featured mashed potatoes as accents. However, each was tastefully different and perfectly fitted for its platter. The Havana Skirt Steak ($18.95), a sizeable portion cooked to order, was marinated in lime and mango mojo and served with a boniato mash. Boniato has a gentle sweetness about it, but mix it with the mango mojo and enjoy it along with a bite of skirt steak for a sweet & sour treat. The Barbecue Beef Ribs ($19.95) are affectionately called Fred Flintstone ribs because the eight meaty ribs are so huge they must have come from a mastodon. Perry’s slathers on their own sweet, secret sauce which actually highlights the already-tangy ribs. And the mashed potatoes? They’re ladled over with creamed corn. Mix it up and do down home right. The Salmon ($18.95) didn’t need any mashed potatoes to achieve its success. The filet was crusted with chopped pecans then coated with a bourbon glaze before baking. Beneath the pink fish were wonderful sweet potato ravioli and a bed of spinach.

Desserts run from a warm and gooey Pecan Pie topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream to a light and tart Key Lime Pie (both $4.95). Chocolate Chiffon Pie was loaded with crunchy bits of chocolate while the Chocolate Turtle Cheesecake (both $5.95) – a thick NY-style cheesecake with an Oreo crust and topping of chewy caramel, chocolate and pecans – left us with sweet thoughts of how Mom’s home cooking was never this good. 

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Perry’s 

ADDRESS: 18955 Biscayne Blvd., Aventura

PHONE: (305) 705-0071

HOURS: Lunch Monday – Friday 11:30am to 5pm; Dinner Monday through Wednesday 5:30pm to 11pm; Thursday through Saturday till Midnight; Sunday till 10pm

FOOD: Down-home cooking with an upscale Caribbean flair

SERVICE: You couldn’t ask for more personable servers

PRICES: Appetizers $4.95 to $12.95, Entrees from $11.95 to $21.95

WINES: A modest list of domestic and international labels

ATMOSPHERE: Like sitting out on the front porch

RESERVATIONS: accepted

SMOKING: Section available

CREDIT CARDS: All major credit cards except Discover