Kris is owner and chef. Known in the past as an exec on Wall Street, real estate mogul and yoga instructor. Kris now has opened Red Light and it was nominated as a semi-finalist for the James Beard Foundation Award. So that’s pretty big stuff.
The Location of the restaurant is at the far right corner of the Blu Motel, once called the Gold Dust and had its plenty share of the seedier elements of society. I will still bargain to say that rooms going for $59.95 a night still haven’t really brought it up to being a "Go to Spot" for Miami tourists. The restaurants sits perched on the bay straight across from the Boulevard Strip club.
When I pulled the menu up online it looked scrumptious and a bit different ahhh... hopefully the food will be bliss. Here were some of the highlights while looking at the menu: Golden crab and fennel soup with lemon toast cream, mussels citrus steamed with green tomatoes and crisp plantain chips and crispy skin snapper, lemon brown butter, coconut rice and green steamed veg. Yum.
So salty and I headed over there one night. We walked in and we said we didn’t have a reservation but did you have a table for two. Although the restaurant was completely empty the host took to looking at the computer for a bit, then told me Kris was not here tonight but said he did have a table for us. We walked downstairs which is open and perched on the bay. First off ,the smell is almost unbearable and if it was light out I would have been afraid to look in the water because I still am having nightmares of seeing a hand or a leg floating by. A waiter walked by us after we sat and took an order from two gentlemen to our left he then walked by us again. He went upstairs brought down their drinks, walked by us, came back down walked by us, took their order and walked by us. Excuse me I said are you our waiter he answered no and walked back upstairs. A few moments later a guy came to our table and said I guess I'm your waiter.yup I said. We had already had plenty of time to look at the menu which was half the size of what we saw on his website and none of the dishes that I had wanted were there. But I understand you need to change it up, keep it fresh. We decided on the large order of mussels that was explained to be with parsley and garlic, the large order of the Barbeque shrimp and the New York Strip. They offer 3 red wines and had maybe 6 different beers so I chose a rioja and salty had a beer. Our drinks came but so did the bad news that the kitchen was out of garlic so did we still want the mussels. I’m going to repeat this because 1. When I walked into the restaurant there were to people at the hostess stand, a woman behind the bar and another woman was sitting there probably a server not quite sure though 2. There is a supermarket one block away from this restaurant 3. Was he really telling me you have no garlic in house? So I said we would skip the mussels and parsley and just go with the shrimp and steak. The wine was good and it was chilled which was nice on this warm night. Then came in a homeless man and set up his steel drum right next to us and started to play a very melodic beat so that was a great surprise. When the shrimp came only six were in the bowl, a bit of surprise that this was the large order but they were incredibly delicious. The broth was a soupy dark brown bay broth but it tasted heavenly and as I nabbed the last shrimp our server brought us out another six saying it was the kitchens mistake of sending out the smaller portion. Yes I thought more shrimp. As the restaurant started to fill up, a party of 17, a couple deuces and a four top and now on my second glass of rioja. I was really prepared to enjoy our next dish until salty looked at his watch and it had been an hour and a half and we had to leave to go pick up our son. So without any idea were our server was we walked upstairs asked for it to go at whatever temp it was and flew out of there. Disappointed yes. No garlic for the garlic mussels unacceptable. Kris you should be there every night is my advice to you. We may try it again but we will call in advance next time.
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