Tonight we celebrated our 10 year anniversary, my close friends and I…
“The best thing I know how to make for dinner is a reservation”
LOL! Don’t like my joke? Fine… anyhow, I made a dinner reservation for this restaurant at least one month in advance at OpenTable.com. The location was nicely tucked in the center of Miami Beach’s, Ocean Drive.
A Fish Called Avalon is actually a restaurant in Hotel Avalon. It is easier to spot the neon green Avalon sign, rather than the little reception desk out front. Most people going about the area will probably be in beach attire or summer gear… that is the pleasure of being in Miami Beach.
For seating, there is a choice between patio or indoor. We opted for the indoors because, well, we still had a long night ahead of us and didn’t want our ‘do’ to get ruined by sitting outside. In March, Miami Beach carries a small breeze. Inside, the ambiance was elegant; table cloth, real chairs, and of course solid dinnerware.
To start off the night, we did a few toasts to ‘us’! The 10 years we stuck by each other and actually survived through each other… no easy task there. Hooray sistahs! A cheer to the Fantabulous 4!
After the drinks, the waiter brought our lovely complimentary bread… oh, we love free things and bread is one of them. I believe it was a sourdough bread mixture and butter balls were served on the side, butter so good, it can be eaten by itself!
For starters, we ordered the pan roasted crab and rock shrimp cake. The crab cake is place on top of a mango slaw and encircled by chipotle aioli. It was good, just what weneeded to settle us down after a few glasses of white wine. It was brought to my attention that crab cake is not hard to make, but the important thing was the fresh ingredients.
For my entree, I ordered the special of the day. Don’t pass up a chef special when given the opportunity, because most of the time, the chef will make it and it includes the fresh catch of the day with the freshest ingredients. Plus, the chef really gets to diverge from the main menu and create something original. The special was grilled cobia over creamy leek polenta and a ginger-carrot bearnaise sauce. I never had cobia before, but I must say, it was an enjoyable experience. The texture reminded me of swordfish, which is firm and tight, but slightly less firm and hard. The cobia did not have a fishy taste, it actually tasted a little creamy and was grilled fork tender. The leek polenta was good of course, I have yet to have bad polenta. The ginger bearnaise sauce sounded weird but it didn’t taste misplaced at all. This dish was excellent, well worth the money and made me a new supporter of cobia.
This is the Caribbean spice grilled grouper over boniato mash and mango relish. Boniato is a sweet potato, fyi. I don’t recall the taste of this particular dish, as to I am very un-partial to mangos.
This is the pan roasted local snapper with sautéed spinach and sweet roasted pepper tapenade. Tapenade is the technique used to purée popular ingredients such as olives and capers. Decent flavors for a decent dish, again, I have problems recalling what it tastes like, but doesn’t it still look tasty?
This is the grilled local mahi mahi with lemon grass scented purple sticky rice, hearts of palm salad, and a coconut red curry sauce. Doesn’t the dish look complicated? The taste was probably equally complicated. I like how they made the sticky rice purple, it gave the dish more attitude.
Ah dessert, first on the list is a pretty traditional cheesecake with caramel syrup and vanilla bean ice cream. The cheesecake was nicely plated and formed into pyramids, certainly made it that much more fun to eat. But, cheesecake never made it on to my top list of sweets, so I wasn’t as excited as I should be to eat it.
The second dessert, yes we decided to go all out that night, is the chocolate marquise with candied hazelnut, raspberry coulis, and fresh raspberries. The chocolate marquise is essentially a cake made with bittersweet chocolate and some type of liqueur or brandy or cognac. The dessert proved moist and fresh, the raspberry syrup was good, but I think the cake held its ground just fine.
For kicks, I’ve decided to show you our bill (eliminates the need for me to mention the price of each dish, one by one). It was not a cheap dinner, but who says that being together for 10 years would be cheap? We could of done much worse if we got another bottle of wine… I’ll mention that one for our 20 year anniversary.
I didn’t like the addition of the automatic 18% gratuity, no it’s not convienent… but what can you do? Overall, I was so glad that everyone liked this restaurant. I got the task of picking out all the restaurants for our trip (because I love food that much) and I felt like I had to redeem myself after the restaurant from the night before. The crowd on a Friday was just right, not too much but just enough. This is a great place for anniversaries and birthdays and other occasions. The Maître d’ joked with us throughout the night and came by often to ask if we were having a good anniversary dinner.
“HAPPY ANNIVERSARY GIRLS!” Until next time… 5 years?
