Audio By Carbonatix
“Have you been to Naoe [na-o-éh] yet?” a friend
inquired a couple of months ago. A few emails followed from others
asking the same question, and over the next few weeks, the 17-seat
omakase oasis in Sunny Isles Beach was brought to my attention by
acquaintances, colleagues, readers, and bloggers. It seemed this sort
of foodie excitement hadn’t been seen since South Florida’s pioneers
first espied mango trees. By the time Gustavo, who was busy trimming my
hair, inquired whether I’d visited, I was beginning to get a little
annoyed.
That evening, I finally made it to the strip mall on the east side
of the 163rd Street Causeway, by Collins Avenue. Black letters on a
white sign above the entrance spell Naoe, with the corresponding
kanji characters below. Nowhere is the word restaurant posted;
passing by in a car, one might assume the space was an import shop. So
when it opened this past March, most of the patrons were friends
— but shout-of-mouth has since set things in motion with the
increasing momentum of a rice ball rolling down a mountain.
The softly lit room is bare-bones as can be: black tables set on
black floors, comfortable white leather seating for a dozen, and
unadorned tan-toned gray walls. Attention naturally gravitates to the
five-seat dining bar — a thick plank of raw, smoothly sanded
blond hinoki wood. More specifically, patrons peer at the man behind it
— the one slicing and dicing with a cutlass-like knife. That’s
Kevin Cory, whose business card reads, “executive chef, general
manager, and dishwasher.”
Wendy Maharlika, the other half of this two-person operation, hosts,
waits tables, and does everything else necessary, all in a friendly and
incredibly efficient manner — more amazing yet when considering
she also works what most would consider a challenging day job as
assistant food and beverage director of 1 Blue Restaurant at the Regent
Bal Harbour. The dynamic duo has toiled together since Cory helmed
nearby Siam River in the early years of this decade, a sparkling stint
that resuscitated the restaurant and did not go unnoticed by serious
sushi aficionados (or by New Times, which during Cory’s tenure
awarded the restaurant with two consecutive Best Sushi honors).
Maharlika started us off by inquiring about food allergies and then
explained that dinner for each person consists of a four-item chef’s
choice (omakase) bento box plus a bowl of soup on the side. Afterward,
if we desired, the chef would prepare nigiri sushi for us, two pieces
at a time.
We had been seated at a table, but when a two-spot opened at the
bar, we switched. Eating at a sushi bar (and we’ll call it this,
although Naoe isn’t a sushi joint) has more in common with counter
service at a pub or coffee shop than any restaurant experience. A
personal connection is established when watching a
bartender/short-order cook/sushi artist prepare a comestible or
cocktail just for you (speaking of which: Offering to buy a beer for
the chef, a Japanese custom, is never a bad idea — and the
short-order cook probably wouldn’t mind either).
Another plus is you can observe the mastery of well-trained chefs.
Cory worked in Japan at a traditional kaiseki restaurant, and his more
intricate presentations here are perhaps influenced by the meticulous
garnishes of that cuisine. The chef has some advantageous family ties
as well: Relatives own the Naoe shoyu brewery in Oono, Japan (in
operation since 1825), and different relatives run the Nakamura brewery
in Ishikawa. The latter is known for producing soft, smooth sakes,
including a certified organic Junmai and the Renaissance Kanazawa
Junmai, made with wine yeast. Many patrons seem to order the frozen
rendition of Kaga No Yukizake, which starts as a sherbert-like treat
scooped with a small spoon and finishes as chilled, velvety sips. Tall
flutes of Sapporo beer are on tap, and a couple of soft drink imports
round out the beverages.
“It’s not fresh… it’s alive” is the restaurant’s tag line, and
indeed on any given day, Naoe might receive live scallops, mirugai,
aoyagi, oysters, baigai, tokobushi, or asari flown overnight from
California, Massachusetts, or other coastal states. Japanese imports
include anago, unagi, and hamachi; Cory hauls in local catches from
Haulover boats. Dead or alive, the seafood is always of pristine
quality.
The bento is presented as a rectangular wooden vessel with a cover.
It looks like the sort of box that might contain chess pieces, but
traditional bento components of fish, rice, and pickled or cooked
vegetables are neatly compartmentalized within. Japanese treats du jour
were little silver-skinned aji, or horse mackerel (as with most fish,
the smaller ones are tastiest), which Japanese fishermen discovered off
the waters of New Zealand in the 1970s when they were expanding their
aquatic parameters to satisfy increasing sushi demand. We watched as
the chef filleted the aji; plucked a few teeny bones; brushed the
firmly textured, mildly oily flesh with homemade glaze made with shoyu;
flashed it under the broiler; sliced it; and plated it with pickled
wasabi leaves and flowers. Freshly grated wasabi root mixed with
horseradish sat on the side. You can request pure wasabi, but because
the root goes for around $15 per ounce, there is a $5 to $10 surcharge
— a way for Cory to keep prices down while providing quality
ingredients.
A second section of the box brought meaty salmon strips, each
wrapped in an opaque sheath of pickled or salted white seaweed (ugo).
On the side were thin snippets of freshwater eel, roasted and lightly
glazed in sauce made in-house with eel broth, sweet soy, and whatever
else Cory puts in to give it a salty/savory/seductive flavor. Also
squeezed into the square: a slice of lightly breaded, deep-fried shrimp
tamago — a traditional sweet egg omelet often served as nigiri,
but here it also contains potato and is served warm and lusciously
custardy.
The final compartment holds rice molded into a decorative floral
shape. On this occasion, it was flavored with shiitake mushrooms and
hints of eel, with wisps of pickled daikon on top; other times, the
grains might boast notes of portobello and sardines. These are not
random matchups but rather the results of a knowing chef playing tastes
off one another like dueling banjos (or, more aptly, dueling
kotos).
The covered bowl of soup contained a dashi-based stock with parsnip,
soft cubes of egg tofu, and the cress-like herb mitsuba, or Japanese
wild parsley (most produce used at Naoe is organic). The price for the
bento box and soup is only $26, perhaps the best American restaurant
value since David Chang debuted Momofuku in New York.
We weren’t finished. The chef pinched warm rice, ovally molded it in
his hands, melded some melting Scottish salmon belly on top, and
lightly lacquered it with syrupy shoyu-based sauce. We also tried
another silver-skinned Japanese fish — the kohada — and a
chilled slice of the shrimp tamago (custardy even when cold), both
prepared similarly to the salmon: atop rice and brushed with shoyu. The
meal was capped with a complimentary taste of cantaloupe sprinkled with
sweetened rice vinegar.
Naoe had some serious timing issues in the beginning. Visualize one
man preparing and plating 17 bento boxes (68 compartments) with
multiple ingredients, one at a time, while also filling countless
requests for nigiri. Then imagine being customer number ten or 14 or
— yikes! — 17. Bentos often took up to an hour to arrive.
Now a new seating system should somewhat remedy this problem. Guests
making dinner reservations (accepted only through opentable.com) will have options for 7:30,
8:30, 10:30, or 11:30. Ostensibly, the 7:30 and 10:30 crowds will be
nibbling their final nigiri as the respective replacement groups filter
in. Still, one chef is one chef, so don’t come here expecting quick
bites before a show; if you’re an impatient sort, you might not want to
come at all. For everyone else, Naoe presents one instance where truly
great things come to those who wait. But you already knew that,
right?
