JAMM AQUINO / JAQUINO@STARBULLETIN.COM
Cafe Miro chef Shigeru Kobayashi's dessert plate features a vanilla bean crème brûlée, fresh fruit, gateau chocolat aux classic cake, and a rose champagne sorbet with mango and strawberry coulis garnished with a ladyfinger pastry.
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Artistic expression
Cafe Miro presents classic menus with delicacy and style
CAFE MIRO was an instant hit when it opened nine years ago with prix fixe menus priced at about $25 per person, far and away one of the best values you could find for a complete and satisfying classic meal.
Even so, newness often gives way to a ho-hum familiarity, and the quiet, proficient restaurant sort of faded from my memory. I only started thinking about Cafe Miro again while staring at it through a window from a table at Town across the street, wondering how it was holding up against this new competition.
Cafe Miro was never one of those front-of-the-mind restaurants anyway -- the type that catapults into the realm of national magazines and popular culture. Cafe Miro makes no bold, loud, questionable, trendy or gimmicky moves. It's always been focused on the purity of great food, beautifully presented.
In fact, when I looked at a menu again, it seemed so staid and basic as to be disappointing. In the heat of summer, when the nation's best restaurants are offering light, seasonal fare, the meat-filled prix fixe menu struck me as something more suitable for a cold winter.
But as the meal progressed, I recognized in chef Shigeru Kobayashi's work a genuine love and respect for food, and that is something I never take for granted as there are times when I feel as though a restaurant exists for its chef's or owner's ego, or as a bank to its financiers.
THE RESTAURANT'S two rectangular rooms are simply appointed. Lithographs and posters of namesake Joan Miro's paintings serve as decor.
Few surprises await frequent diners, whom I imagine to be grounded sorts who know what they like without chasing after the next culinary thrill. There are always a couple of appetizer and entree specials, but they can always count on the tried and true of two prix fixe menus.
The first, at $35, comprises a choice of one of four appetizers, one of five entrees and dessert. The second is $40 and features an appetizer plate, one of two seafood selections, a choice of two new or any of the first menu's entrees, and dessert.
On the first menu, appetizer selections include ahi carpaccio with wasabi mayonnaise, asparagus and scallop with a spicy cream sauce, and oysters presented escargot style, broiled with herb-garlic butter. We've seen these types of dishes so often, I consider them self-explanatory, so I opted for the seafood salad with an orange, lime and soy dressing. Too often, "seafood salad" draws a connotation of dried-out, watered-down seafood nuggets. Here, the single shrimp and scallop are cooked to tender perfection, as is the squid, guaranteed not to bounce and exhibiting excellent timing, which continues throughout the meal. Cooked ahi is not one of my favorite dishes, but the citrus dressing worked wonders in perking up the fish's one-dimensional flavor.
Entree choices are a duck confit, sautéed pork tenderloin, roasted game hen or 7-ounce rib-eye steak with daikon fusion sauce or a red-wine sauce and anchovy butter ($5 more for 10 ounces). Here, we opted for the game hen with morel sauce. Again, I've rarely been impressed with the dried-out birds served elsewhere, but here, it's so moist as to melt off the bone.
ON THE SECOND prix fixe, the seafood selection of three seared scallops was accompanied by a delicate honey cream sauce with a balanced touch of curry, something I'd come back for again and again.
Because of the availability of the second course, the rib-eye steak selection is reduced to 5 ounces, with an option of getting the 7 ounces for $3 more and 10 ounces for $8 more. The two new entree selections are a braised short rib with port reduction sauce, and roasted rack of lamb -- two cutlets as opposed to the typical three on most menus -- with a sauce of minced shiitake and mint.
With the menu all planned out, by the chef's reckoning you should have room for dessert, and he goes aboveboard. The plate created for one is what most people would share elsewhere, and might consist of a small brûlée; a scoop of ice cream in a crisp, thin sugar wafer cup; a wedge of chocolate gateau; and a sprinkling of fresh fruit, all arranged as if to pay homage to Miro's colorful, exuberant artwork. It seemed too decadent to polish off all by my lonesome self, yet I managed.