Itamae AO's tasting menu is unforgettable & unique - Review - Miami - The Infatuation
"Miami has plenty of tasting menus and omakase options, or whatever it is you want to call a dozen-ish seasonal courses hand-delivered by a chef standing behind a smooth counter. But Itamae AO is unlike any of them. When a chef at this Nikkei restaurant in Midtown slides a bowl towards you and describes what’s in it, your brain won’t know what to do with the words. “Hokkaido scallops cured in kombu, fried apple banana, ají charapita salt, and osetra caviar,” they calmly state, as if that's not the first time these sounds have been uttered in human history. Just as you're processing all these new, excellent sensations, they'll introduce a smoked Jimmy Nardello leche de tigre with Japanese sea bass and a fried caper leaf. Just give up on trying to follow along, and embrace the joy of uncharted territory. photo credit: Cleveland Jennings / @eatthecanvasllc photo credit: Cleveland Jennings / @eatthecanvasllc photo credit: Cleveland Jennings / @eatthecanvasllc photo credit: Cleveland Jennings / @eatthecanvasllc The sea creatures that make up most of dinner—kanpachi, swordfish, razor clams—are served raw, fried, dry-aged, or maybe minced and steamed into a delicate frisbee. They lounge in leche de tigre you’ll want to bring home and use as paint swatches. These are not agreeable, patient flavors that sit on your tongue and wait for you to notice them. They instantly make you pucker and sweat, and might inspire momentary confusion followed by intense delight. $165 gets you eight courses of that feeling, plus dessert. Itamae AO’s eight-seat counter is connected to its sister restaurant, Maty’s, another Peruvian spot making food that defies categorization. The two concepts are run by siblings, and though they share an air conditioning unit, they have personalities as distinct as the childhood rooms of an actual brother and sister. Maty’s is all clanking silverware, splattered sauce, and loud conversations. Itamae AO is meticulously clean and sparsely decorated. The two main visuals in the room are dry-aging lockers where humongous fish stare back at you, and the covers of hip-hop albums that play throughout the two-hour meal. photo credit: Cleveland Jennings / @eatthecanvasllc video credit: Ryan Pfeffer photo credit: Cleveland Jennings / @eatthecanvasllc photo credit: Cleveland Jennings / @eatthecanvasllc video credit: Ryan Pfeffer We’ve only come close to experiencing food like this at the previous version of Itamae, a Design District restaurant that set Miami’s standard of ceviche unrealistically high. And the reasons to visit this version of Itamae are mostly the same: because there are no alternatives. No one else makes food like this. Not even close. Food Rundown photo credit: Cleveland Jennings / @eatthecanvasllc Tasting Menu Most of the eight courses look something like this: a delicate piece of seafood is accentuated by a sauce or leche de tigre that consists of several words you didn’t see coming. The highlights of the meal remind us of the kind of tiraditos we used to find at the old Itamae, which can be spicy, tart, and sweet all at once. But we’ve also had fried slabs of hamachi, soba noodles with spiny lobster tartare and uni, and a bowl of warm, soupy short grain rice mixed up with chunks of cold ceviche. The menu changes a lot—our two meals here were completely different—but both occasions lasted about two hours and left us pleasantly full. photo credit: Cleveland Jennings / @eatthecanvasllc Sashimi Course Normally course two or three, this is when the meal really hits its stride and delivers the kind of flavors we come to Itamae—and only Itamae—for. You get three separate bowls of beautiful fish, but the leche de tigre outshines everything. We’ve had bigfin reef squid in a fermented yuzu leche de tigre, kanpachi in a local jackfruit leche de tigre, and Japanese sea bass in a midnight black puddle of habanero ash leche de tigre. You’re provided a little block of yuca pavé to wipe it all up with. photo credit: Cleveland Jennings / @eatthecanvasllc Hotate The only dish that’s been perfectly preserved from the old Itamae is this nigiri, which consists of scallops cured in kombu, a squiggle of fried apple banana, ají charapita salt, and a camel’s hump of osetra caviar. It’s the sole nigiri to make an appearance throughout dinner, and that’s understandable. No poor piece of sushi should be forced to follow this. photo credit: Cleveland Jennings / @eatthecanvasllc Dessert After all those punchy, acidic flavors, dessert starts with a refreshing bowl of seasonal kakigōri. On our visits, that’s been followed by a block of lúcuma custard topped with miso caramel and candied shiitake mushroom, which tastes slightly autumnal, like a pumpkin pie from another dimension." - Ryan Pfeffer
