Broward County

A Tale of Two Eateries

Michy’s and Meche’s use the same passion to serve two different kinds of fare

By Danny Brody

Michy’s Wild-Caught Colossal Shrimp. Photos by Richard M. Brooks

Once upon a time, a little girl dreamed of escaping her hometown to become a world-famous ballerina. She went to New York City to follow her dream, but, ultimately, became a celebrity chef, the darling of the Miami food world, at a restaurant that bears her childhood nickname.

Another little girl dreamed of leaving her hometown of Santa Barbara, in western Honduras, to start a new life in the glamorous jewel of the tropics. Here, she opened a café; but when the city of Miami went after small businesses to make room for development, she closed up shop. Luckily, she found a new location and named it after her late, beloved mother.

Two women, with two very different dreams, nourish their customers in restaurants just nine minutes from one another with methods that seem light years apart. This is the story of Michy’s versus Meche’s.

Michy’s

Before even driving to Michy’s on Biscayne Boulevard to drool over Chef Michelle Bernstein’s latest confabulations, you’d better have a reservation. If you don’t, you’ll have to take a seat at the bar, sip a sparkling wine mojito and bop your head to cool Thievery Corporation tunes while you wait for a table.

For the most part, Michy’s food is pretty high-end, but it does mix prestigious ingredients — Foie Gras ($24), Oysters ($36/dozen) and Wild-Caught Colossal Shrimp ($22 for one) — with such interesting preparations as Sweetbread Scallopine and Gnocchi Lasagna.

The rest of the menu includes mostly comfort food gilded with that special celebrity chef touch: Short Ribs Falling off the Bone, Chicken Pot Pie with Burgundy Chicken Glaze, and Fettuccine Carbonara My Way.

Seventeen of the menu’s 23 “Plates of Resistance” come in full or half portions. The half portion of Sweetbread Scallopine is a particular hit — flattened and crisped like a thinly pounded veal cutlet and covered with a tart caper and pomegranate sauce, the sweetbread reveals a subtle taste.

The gnocchi in the Gnocchi Lasagna are fluffy and, once eaten, leave no evidence on your tongue. The meat sauce and cheeses are sharp, but the dish’s composition is more haphazard than a lasagna (perhaps it’s named that because everyone loves lasagna). The Short Ribs, also terrific, are tenderly cooked and, indeed, fall off the bone, making it easier for the Bernstein acolytes sitting in the front of the house to gum them down. The Creamy Mashed Potatoes and Moroccan Carrots sides are almost elegant. 

Michy’s most traditional dish is the Duck Confit. It is dark and juicy, and the accompanying classic Frisee Salad, with Lardons and Poached Quail Eggs, makes the dish an authentic French bistro treat.  To drink, I recommend the Höss Grüner Veltliner, a remarkable $48 wine that will go with almost anything on the menu. Although prices have gone up here and those $18 half plates can add up, the wine list has remained one of Miami’s better bargains.

Meche’s

Another crowd-pleasing restaurant is Meche’s, an authentic Honduran eatery, located at Northwest Second Avenue and 31st Street in an up-and-coming part of Wynwood. Owners Dania Hernandez and Alba Montero got a nice bump from Art Basel in December — not just from Central Americans, Cubans and Venezuelans, but from “Europeans, Americanos,” Montero says, as she pats out the dough for freshly made baleadas, a traditional dish from San Pedro Sula similar to a Mexican taco but with a 10-inch tortilla.

After grilling the dough, she dips a ladle into the big black pot warming on the stove and fills the tortilla with the beans and a couple of strips of steak. The fresh dough, slightly salty meat and thick beans make a homey meal. Different fillings include eggs, cheese, cream and chorizo, but the star of the dish is the dough, which tastes and looks almost like a freshly grilled Indian chapati. The owners, who are sisters, keep the place open seven days a week from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. One or both is always in front of the stove, and they use old family recipes that are evident in the rotating daily soup specials, served with fluffy rice and a tortilla. Sunday’s Jaiba (crab, $8) is a hearty fish soup made from what might be called “gumbo crabs” (they don’t have much meat, but they impart an amazing flavor to the soup), and which contains al dente pieces of root vegetables, which are hard to get right in a long-cooked soup. Wednesday’s Sopa de Frijoles ($6) sounds straightforward, but this bean soup contains what have to be the largest pieces of pork skin (chicharrón de cerdo) I’ve ever been served, along with solid plantains, bits of beef and tons of cilantro — all mixed in a full quart of soothing broth. Saturday’s Mondongo, a clean-tasting tripe stew, is the best I’ve had in Miami. I also highly recommend the Catrachitas, which are like tostadas — crunchy tortillas topped with thick, mashed beans and cheese that usually disappears in just a few bites.

There is no beer or wine here, and that’s just fine with Montero and Hernandez. It keeps their customers upright. And although there is no valet parking like at Michy’s, when you enter through the blue, wooden screen door, you get the same feeling of family, and two very different worlds seem as one.