A visit to Chef Niven Patel’s award-winning restaurant in Coral Gables
By Andrew Gayle
There is something inherently thrilling about sitting in a restaurant in Miami’s leafy suburb of Coral Gables that the New York Times recently ordained as one of the top 50 in the United States. You read that correctly. One of the top 50 in the entire country.
What we wanted to find out was whether the restaurant measures up to that accolade. It does. And then some.
At any given restaurant, there is good food and sometimes great food. Some dishes are better than others. At Mamey, there are no weak items on the menu. The culinary creations of Chef Niven Patel are spectacular, and his growing reputation as one of the most important young chefs in America is well deserved.
The overriding culinary proposition of Mamey, with some South Asian exceptions, is Caribbean cuisine infused with the spices of India. Patel has a background in both, having spent years as a chef in Turks and Caicos and subsequently at the helm of his successful Ghee Indian restaurant in Dadeland. That tells only part of the story, however. The rest is Patel’s ingenious combinations and contrasts of tastes and textures that create complex flavor profiles.
Take, for example, one of the newer items on the menu, the shrimp spring roll. This consists of a single large shrimp wrapped in spring roll pastry. The roll itself comes out warm, with a thin crust that contrasts with the cool, plump shrimp inside, both in texture and temperature. A sweet chili sauce for dipping adds a piquant edge. We could have ended the night right there, with plate after plate of these succulent crustaceans.
Or take the glazed lamb ribs. These are first baked with a rub of spices that include coriander and cumin, then served on a plate with sliced, pickled star fruit, the plate itself pooled with sweet and sour vinegar tamarind sauce. We were instructed by our waitress to take a bite of the starfruit with each bite of lamb, to offset the lamb fat with the penetrating sour of the pickled fruit. The combination was a delightful dance between opposites.
All of Patel’s dishes are like these, with surprising layers of complimentary and contrasting tastes. His jerk pork belly, for example, is dusted with Jamaican spices and placed atop sliced maduros previously sauteed in Indian ghee butter and then drizzled with an aioli yogurt. Each bite of pork broke the jerk crust and unveiled soft juicy strands of meat inside, balanced by the sweet banana flavor of the madura.
Even something as simple as mojo chicken becomes an elevated dish at Mamey. The chicken breast is cooked just enough, so that it remains moist and rich with the garlicky flavor of mojo marinade. Excellent by itself, it’s then served atop a bed of rice cooked with adzuki black beans, avocado, spinach, and coconut milk, then topped with pickled onions. Another dish we sampled, the tuna tartar, also took the expected to another level. The tuna was laced with a creamy aioli and smoked soy, along with sesame seeds sprinkled throughout, so that each bite regaled the tongue with soft, citrusy yellowfin tuna and a spackling of the tiny seeds, contrasted by tostones that were thinner and crunchier than pastier Cuban varieties.
The ambience of Mamey is nearly as exotic and layered as the food. Most of the seating in the main room is at low tables with comfortable chairs, so that it feels like you’re in an elegant but informal supper club. One whole wall is dominated by a bar, the sound of the cocktail shaker adding to the atmosphere. Two of the other walls are comprised of jungle murals a la Rousseau, with tropical plants staged in front of the murals. A large wicker chandelier overhead adds to the feeling that you are somewhere on the border between Zanzibar and a Rainforest Cafe. Outside seating consists of a long, high-ceilinged breezeway with its own parade of Moroccan-style lanterns. With a soundtrack of contemporary upbeat African rhythms, it feels remarkably like Rick’s Café in “Casablanca.”
Mamey is a restaurant that would awe even the snootiest food critics in cities like New York, London, or Paris. The fact that it is just south of Downtown Miami is something everyone should take advantage of.
