Stubborn Seed
I recently had the opportunity to check out Miami nightlife, which was a lot of fun. But, let’s face it. I’m more of a eater! Drinking is great anywhere and there’s not too many ways you can recreate a classic cocktail, so I don’t waste too much time on drinking and partying when I’m touring a new city. The food is where it’s at.
The Restaurant
Stubborn Seed is a unique take on a sharing style concept of dining. The restaurant is located on a quieter street in Miami Beach, sort of in a residential area, which was very appealing to me.
The Chef
Chef Jeremy Ford is the food mastermind behind this sharing style restaurant concept — Stubborn Seed. Ford is the winner of Bravo’s Top Chef season 13, as well as the Executive Chef of restaurants at The EDITION hotel in Miami Beach, FL, including Matador Room by Chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten — the popular unique 1950s themed Latin American restaurant.
I loved the ambiance of the restaurant! The food was amazing and the service was phenomenal. Jake was our waiter that evening and, coincidentally, knew a lot about the Culinary Institute of America (C.I.A.) that’s located upstate in Hyde Park, New York. Not only was out waiter very knowledgeable of wine pairings, but I also heard another waiter at the next table who sounded like he could be a sommelier. There’s something nice about asking a wait staff what their favorite dish is or what customers usually love, and not getting a blanket statement like “Oh well, everything on the menu is just delicious.”
Dinner
(The Winter 2019 Menu)
I recommend the Chef’s 7 Course Tasting Menu for anyone who isn’t picky and doesn’t mind having their food selected for them. And if you like wine with your dinner, don’t try to choose your own, just go with the offered pairings.
To the right is the Winter 2019 Menu at Jeremy Ford’ Stubborn Seed. I’ll give you the low down on what I ordered with my boyfriend. First things first, the waiter recommend ordering a few different plates to share because that’s how the menu is tailored. I usually go for a coursed tasting menu, but I really wasn’t starving that night, so we ordered a little bit of everything to share.
The House Made Bread is delish and the dip is unlike anything I’ve tried before. These potato rolls are brushed with fennel pollen and served with garbanzo chili dip.
The Kamboo Charred Octopus is served with a guajillo chili and garlic purée, crunchy potatoes, mint, and avocado. First of all, I love octopus and typically prefer it charred as opposed to sauteed or just boiled, for the sake of avoiding gummy texture. So, this was an easy first pick and I was thrilled with it. And the light zesty lemon sealed the deal on flavor.
The Local Wahoo was amazing! This scombrid fish was served with a habañero yogurt sauce, snow peas, passion fruit, and a dash of mint. Just a caution for anyone who doesn’t do raw food though, there are some pieces that may be slightly under-cooked, but the entire dish is not raw. This dish is refreshing because it’s served cold and the flavor is just this surge of spicy habañero that dissipates with the sweetness of the fruit and the yogurt sauce. And in case you’re wondering about the habañero yogurt sauce, it’s typically a combination of a plain yogurt with some type of hot sauce. I couldn’t put my finger on what brand of hot sauce was used, which I’m usually an expert on, but perhaps this was completely homemade concoction. Then, the snow peas give the dish some crunchiness for texture. Locally caught fish or “Fish-of-the-Day” are usually good choices at restaurants. So, when in doubt, go local!
Ricotta Stuffed Pappardelle with king crab and Parmesan cloud. I liked this dish, which sort of surprised me because I prefer lobster over crab. And I really liked the way the sweet, yet salty, taste of the ricotta really complimented the sweet juiciness of the king crab.
Honey Spiced Duck served with crispy celery root, salsify, and brown butter dates. I f*cking love duck! It’s like a more succulent version of chicken. This duck dish was like perfectly balanced, in terms of flavor. Crispy celery roots are an ideal replacement for potatoes or any other heavy starch side, if you have a main protein in a dish that already has rich flavor. And then you have salsify, which is a root vegetable from the dandelion family, also known as the “oyster plant” because it tastes like oysters when cooked. This is yet another new addition to my internal food dictionary. However, that’s not the exact flavor I got, which might be because it was mixed with other herbs or was overcome by other flavors.
The Nantucket Bay Scallops are served with coconut chili emulsion, baby spinach, and sunchokes. This dish introduced two new items to my palette: 1) sunchokes and 2) the emulsion stuff. Sunchokes are a thin-skinned tubular-shaped root vegetable that are also known as the “Jerusalem artichoke,” sunroot, or earth apple. These root vegetables are very similar to a potato or turnip, with a sweet and slightly nutty flavor. As for the components of the sunchoke, it is a great source of iron, calcium, magnesium, and potassium. You can read more about these chokes here. According to ThoughtCo., “an emulsion is a colloid of two or more immiscible liquids where one liquid contains a dispersion of the other liquid.” More simply put, an emulsion is a mixture of two things that don’t usually mix. And in this delicious scenario, we had a coconut chili emulsion, which was a combination of coconut milk and a chili sauce. See those bubbles on the plate? That comes from the water-based coconut solution, which does not evaporate as quickly as a flavored extract would because it’s thicker. I actually tried doing some more research, but as it turns out this cooking mastery is pretty unique to Stubborn Seed and not many other restaurants make emulsions. Even in all of my fine dining experiences in New York City, I’ve never had an emulsion.
Wine & Cocktails
The wine selection was greatly wide and our waiter was very knowledgeable on pairing wines with our dishes, as I mentioned before. We ended up ordering one bottle, instead of several glasses to pair with each course. My boyfriend got me into Oregon Pinot Noirs and after some more research on the food blogs, apparently they’re all the rage these days. So, we went with the Lemelson Pinot Noir.
Since I enjoyed wine with dinner, instead of cocktails, I took a look at Stubborn Seed’s cocktail offerings online instead. I’ll add them to my wishlist for next time, like the Desert Daisy or the Thyme Traveler. The Soleil Spritz has Aperol and blood orange, which are two of my favorite ingredients in a refreshing Summer cocktail. I’d love to try the Stubborn Seed Old Fashioned because I like it when bars and restaurants put their own twist on a classic cocktail. Their special Old Fashioned cocktail is a mixture of Jojo Tea-infused Redemption Rye Whiskey, Winter Spices, and Citrus Aromas. Thirsty Mag featured pictures of the specialty cocktail served on a tray with small, amber-colored dropper-style bottles of housemade bitters and simple syrup, in a Summer feature on the brunch scene in Miami Beach.
Dessert
For dessert, we split the Eggnog Spiced Cheesecake with gingersnap cookie crust and cranberry compote. The cheesecake was thick and creamy, just how I like it. And the cranberry and gingersnap flavors were perfect for balancing each other out because you have that taste of something tart and peppery sweet.
The dessert menu was curated by Pastry Chef Dallas Wynne, who is actually a very well-known female chef in the South Beach area and was named Miami’s Best Pastry Chef in 2019. She’s got 2020 ranked in my book. The dessert menu had so many options to choose from, including: mother watering options like the Corn Pavlova, Honey Baked Pears, and Snickerdoodle Cookies. If I didn’t order the cheesecake, the Honey Baked Pears were my second choice.
I didn’t have room for a whole dessert this time, but if I did, I would have gone for the Kaiyo Japanese Whiskey & Cookie Flight. Yes, ladies and gents, you can pair whiskey and cookies! The first “course” is a Brown Butter Snickerdoodle cookie paired with the Kaiyo Mizanura Oak whiskey. This sounds amazing, especially because I love snickerdoodle! Next up is the Triple Chocolate Chunk cookie paired with Kaiyo’s “The Single.” And last, but certainly not least, is the Oatmeal Dulce de Leche cookie paired with Kaiyo’s “The Pleated.”
Digestif
If dessert isn’t enough to satiate you, go for a digestif or one of the other high-end spirits Stubborn Seed carries. I’m not a whiskey or spirit snob whatsoever, but any bar with Glenlivet 18 Year is top-notch in my book. If you really wanna go big or go home, boss up and order that pour of Remy Martin cognac. I’m pretty basic, so I tend to stick with Johnnie Walker Blue Label.
I’m always curious about “Coffee Cocktails,” so of course, I’d recommend an Espresso Martini. And pretty typical for a Cuban restaurant that serves post-dinner cocktails with coffee is a “carajillo.” It’s Spanish hot coffee drink mixed with hard liquor like brandy or whisky.