The Design District is one of the few neighborhoods in Miami I like, along with the nearby Wynwood Arts District. Now, I could say the Design District is my favorite neighborhood in Miami, but that would presume an acquaintance with the city that I don't really have. After living in, what, seven cities, my brain cannot process any more. South Beach is where my great-grandma used to live, and downtown Miami looks confusingly like a video game, all shiny and new. Vast areas of Miami are generic, spread out and somehow poor and fretful. There may be a lot of beauty, carnet colored flowers and even a goat or two:
But to see this goat, who lives in Little Haiti, a large area which contains on its commercial strip tiny Haitian churches and Churchill's Pub, a studenty rock club a few blocks from the Design District, you need to commit to feeding it grass twenty-four hours a day, and that would distract this reporter from her duties in Boca. Back to Fratelli Lyon.
Many years ago, I realized I had a thing for restaurants in stores. Credit my family with this prediliction. Sundays I spent with my grandparents, and the usual activity was shopping. It was the 70's, the place was Bloomingdales on Third Ave, and the kid needed to be entertained, so an ice cream cone slowly consumed in the basement near the hat racks was one way to increase the fun without overflowing the closet. I'd forgotten those days, but they came back to me as I took on the trappings of adult city life. Whether it was a taco counter at Woolworth's in downtown El Paso or a coffee stand at Fred Segal's in Hollywood, I just liked eating small amounts of cheap food in the presence of furniture, racks of clothes and other shoppers, and far away from windows.
Now, the sight of food near furniture excites me, and I am not the only one. Now we have Fratelli Lyon: it looks like a furniture store, but am I allowed to just sit in the window and drink coffee? Yes! Fratelli Lyon captures the excitement of eating regionally inspired antipasti over orange mesh placemats and drinking very passable espresso from perfectly weighted glass cups, served by friendly, handsome Miamians from around the world. Glossy haired women cluster with dashing men in suits confidently holding Italian crystal glasses, discussing business or fashion or whatever. A large window glimpses the street, but inside it's much prettier: why hang around in the sun and shrieking traffic when inside the furniture is peaceful and minimalistic and with a few grand you can walk out with a furniture cabinet?
The menu is reassuringly simple, a single page broken into regionalisms, varieties of antipasti, and several entries. How nice, I thought, to have a chance to eat some antipasti after so much heavy meatloaf and pizza, more typical South Florida fare.
The waiter explained the somewhat complicated pricing structure in a way which narrowed my choices very clearly: I really didn't want meat or fish, just tasty green stuff, and the basic antipasti plate was only $12.
The restaurant is modeled after the sleek wine stalls of La Boqueria or Vinoteca in London. The portions are good, but why is the trend to squeeze a little too much food into a small compartment, leaving well-ordered, gaping holes around?
Menus have become deliberately regional and fragmented; diners now must understand that a tomato sauce would be laughed at in Lombardy and that Romans prefer spaghetti al tono to pizza.
I had the fava beans, fennel and caponata. The beans were a bit oily and the fennel was cooked too gently for my taste, but it was good. A glass of lovely house white, the antipasti and bread and an espresso came to about $20, which is a great deal for sitting alone with some fresh food at a minimalist emporium. Now if only I could have Driade come and clean my closets.
No comments:
Post a Comment