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Executive Lifestyles - Dining & Spirits
Multiethnic Italian
 Chef Felix Pavon is flanked by owners Spurgeon Solomon (left) and Moshe Petel. |
Grazie
701 Washington Ave., South Beach
graziesouthbeach.com
305/673-1312
The most vibrant example of south Florida's cross culinary culture is surely the 2- year-old Grazie in South Beach. One of the owners, Moshe Petel, is an Israeli; the other, Spurgeon Solomon, is from Honduras. Their executive chef, Felix Pavon, is Nicaraguan. Together they are responsible for some of the best Italian food to be found in Florida, where it sometimes seems that every other restaurant is Italian.
Petel and Solomon worked together at South Beach's unique Osteria del Teatro, headquarters of the "hautest" Italian cuisine. Petel, a Miami resident since 1986, for two years owned a chic little gem on Española Way called Wok on the Beach. Solomon had considerably more local experience, having spent several years learning the basics at Carnival Cruise Lines and then six years at Miami Beach's Dominique's and Miami's City Club restaurants, learning from Golden Spoon-winning chef Pascal Oudin how to put French accents on his Italian specialties. Chef Pavon developed his Italian skills at Il Tulipano in Texas before moving to Florida in 1990 and Coral Gables' award-winning La Bussola. He was spotted by the pair in 1997 and recruited for their aptly named new endeavor, Grazie in Pinecrest, an area not exactly overrun with top-of-the-line places to dine. After seven successful years, the trio returned to South Beach and the familiar Washington Avenue neighborhood to showcase all that they had learned about the Italians in service standards and menus, starting with 11 antipasti, $5 to $18, including beef and sushi-grade tuna carpaccios, grilled veggies, shrimp and portobello.
The half-dozen salads, $8 to $11, include one named for Casanova, baby spinach leaves mingled with honey pecans covered with grilled portobello and Parmesan shavings, and one named for Solomon, featuringarugula, Belgian endive, shallots and goat cheese blessed with sun-dried tomato vinaigrette. The 11 pastas range from $15 for angel hair with fresh garlic, tomato and basil to $22 for homemade black fettuccine with shallots, shrimp and wild mushrooms in a basil saffron cream sauce splashed with white wine.
There's more shrimp, jumbos, grilled with aromatic herbs heightened by a citrus- white wine sauce for $32. Other offerings from the sea include grilled salmon with a pink lobster sauce for $25, and for $3 more, pan-seared fresh catch with caper- dotted lemon sauce and a $32 mixed seafood grill. Seven selections, $18 to $28, cover the land-based specials: Three chicken, including pollo pizzaiola, a standard scarpariello (shoemaker) combination, and a breast in a sauce of porcinis, shallots and sun-dried tomatoes drizzled with white truffle oil. The quartet of scaloppines includes the basic Milanese and Francese treatments and one liberally sprinkled with wild mushrooms sautéed in a red wine sauce.
All of it gives good reason to say "grazie" to the terrific trio of Petel, Solomon and Pavon.
