Palacio de los Juegos in Miami

If somebody told us that we could actually die from eating too much Cuban food at once, we would look them straight in the eye and say:

“We’ve been to Miami.  We know.”Every guide book/article/TV show on Miami recommends venturing into Little Havana and seeking out a restaurant/institution called Versailles (3555 SW 8th Street).

So on the day after Christmas 2008, we went.  And had a wonderful time in a parallel universe.

A few things to know first:

1.  It’s pronounced Vur-SIGH-yes, in a Cuban interpretation of the famous French palace. The signing of the 1763 Treaty of Paris in the Palace of Versailles was a huge turning point for Cuba, when Spain was told to back off and let Cuba grow into its own.  Which, of course, Cuba promptly did.

2. English is only begrudgingly spoken here. Our unsmiling waitress, a brassy Latino bottle blonde with dark lipstick and talon-sharp nails, responded to my broken-Spanish queries with the same patience of those who beat the mentally retarded.  However, a gracious, friendly manager in a starch-stiff, forest-green blazer (that incidentally seemed to say, “1964 is calling and would like its blazer back”) made sure our meal arrived and deftly handled our bill when we finally chose to peel ourselves up from the table.

3. Nothing here comes without an implied warning from the American Heart Association. The fresh-baked bread is so white you could sled on it.  One of the most popular items is a medianoche, a sandwich of spicy, layered pork cooked in its own fat.  Fried onions, beans, tomatoes and plantains are the only vegetables.  Be strong.

4. Our simple, delicious breakfast of fried chicken croquettes, garlic rice, black beans, scrambled eggs, and bacon, served with baskets of buttered bread and drop-dead exquisite cafe con leche (Cuban espresso with condensed milk), was $10.50…for the both of us.

The last time we’d had a breakfast so cheap, we had to drink it with a straw.

While we stuffed ourselves silly, the vintage-60s dining room (replete with frilly, scroll-edged mirrors) filled up with Cuban Miami:  Sassy grandmothers in kitten heels, trophy wives just off the tennis court, white-haired lions with shirts unbuttoned to golden saints, and shiny-cheeked businessmen shaped like potatoes, speaking Spanglish between bites of medianoche.

But the real action was outside.

Versailles has an express bakery counter where you can stand around in the Miami sun sipping tiny cups of coffee and munching fruit-stuffed empanadas with old Cubano men in shirtsleeves and hats…and wait for news cameras to appear.  Anytime anything happens in Cuban politics, this is where the reaction interviews go down. But judging from the din we heard, debate rages out there with or without a spotlight.

After Versailles, cafe con leche formed a hold on our lives I can only compare to a 48-hour madness.  We stopped at bars, cafes, holes in the wall at mini-malls.  It always tasted like rich, sweet heaven, and we’d both swear it made us more witty and attractive.  I’d make it for us at home, but what if it turns out it only works in Miami?

We cut our caffeine onslaught with fresh-squeezed fruit juices and tostones (curly, fried plantain chips) from the Palacio de los Juegos (5721 W. Flagler Street, which is a lot farther along residential/industrial Flagler than you’d hope).  This indoor-outdoor Cuban market (pictured above) requires either rapid-fire Spanish or lots of pointing; when it’s finally your turn, 10 more people are waiting.  Enormously popular despite being squat and ugly, here you can eat garlic pork rinds right out of the fryer, order a whole cooked chicken, or, like me, sip from the world’s most gorgeous cup of watermelon juice.

Our last night in town, we were lucky enough to have dinner at Havana Harry’s in Coral Gables (4612 S. Le Jeune Rd., (305) 661-2622).  Twice the size of Versailles and decorated like an upscale, saltillo-tiled Mexican restaurant, the dining room was filled with multi-generational Cuban families.  We were greeted in Spanish and grateful that we’d taken the extra time to put on our last clean clothes of the trip.  It’s not fancy, exactly, just extremely respectable.  Jeans and t-shirts might feel a little wrong here.

Either way, we had come not for fashion but for the vaca frita. In short, this is an ungodly massive plate of tender, shredded beef, lovingly steeped in garlic and spices until, even when the dish is plated, the seasoning gives off its own heat.  Paired with soft, pan-fried plantains and the national dish of Cuba, Platillo Moros y Cristianos (spicy black beans and white rice), this is our idea of a huge meal.

But here, we were solid amateurs.  All around us, people were scarfing down starchy appetizers like empanadas and croquetas, having entrees as big or far larger than ours, then chasing it all with dairy-based desserts.  Beer and mojitos were free-flowing, but it was all we could do to finish our half-pitcher of sangria.  We regretted only that we hadn’t worn our comfy pants to dinner.

And to think, some folks in Miami eat like that every night.  The whole idea begs the question:

“Who the hell wants to live forever, anyway?”

See related posts
Buen Ser, Miami
Our Miami Top 10
Miami: A Mid-Week Wander
Adventures in Layover Land: Miami
TWT Travel Binder: Florida

Travels With Two

Okay, so The Biltmore in Coral Gables, Florida isn’t really hauntingly beautiful.  But it is beautiful.  And haunted, as well.

So it’s got that going for it…as well as the biggest hotel swimming pool in America.

The tallest building in sleepy, tree-lined Coral Gables, this 1920s landmark hotel is said to have been modeled on Seville, Spain’s famous cathedral.  Having fallen in love with that Gothic treasure in May 2007, I’m not sure we’d entirely agree, but here they are side by side — judge for yourself.

What a stay at The Biltmore absolutely resembles is an old-fashioned resort vacation, where the hotel is the destination.

We drove from the Keys to The Biltmore on Christmas Day 2008, and as we pulled up the hotel’s sloping, lamp-lit drive to the front door, could hardly believe its glamour.  It could have been the contrast between our road-grimy bedraggled-ness and the doorman’s white gloves, but whatever — we were suitably wowed.

I’ll start with the really sexy part:  In winter, it’s more than half the price of a South Beach hotel without skimping on any of the fancy. While Miami hotels offer ocean glitz and streamlined modernity, the Biltmore offers sumptuous elegance…and free self-parking.

The Biltmore’s ornate lobby is a marvel.  The ceiling’s painted like a Ukranian Easter egg, and fabric-draped cupolas have portholes that reveal tiny, exotic finches perched inside.  A 30-foot Christmas tree twinkled as if to say, “Well, hi there.”

By the time Adam returned from parking the car, I’d been handed a cool towel, a glass of champagne, and had booked a glorious afternoon tea just steps away.  By sunset, we’d already sipped our Russian Caravan to a guitar serenade, strolled beneath exotic banyan trees at the edges of the impossibly emerald golf course, and kissed by a trickling fountain in a garden courtyard we had all to ourselves.  Our continuing fears about the economy aside, we were fully smitten.

But, ah — I’d mentioned haunting.

As our bellman carefully laid out our things in our simple 6th floor room, with its endless view of the Gables’ fluffy trees and red-tile roofs, he cheerfully apprised us of the Biltmore’s checkered past.  Al Capone and his cronies were frequent guests here in the ’20s, and were apparently responsible for an on-site mob hit or two; the murder victims have been restless ever since.  Panicked reports of ghost sightings on the 7th floor finally inspired the hotel to stop booking it, and the whole floor was turned into the spa. As the bellman jokingly put it, what’s an extra pair of hands here and there while you’re getting a massage?

We hung at the pool instead.  The Biltmore’s pool really is the largest of any hotel in the U.S. It’s L-shaped, shimmering turquoise, and framed by faux Greek statuary and arbors of bouganvillea…but it’s not heated. And even with 80-degree December days, by late afternoon only my crazy husband (who I call “my polar bear”) and aged English folk would attempt to actually swim.  The irony of such a massive expanse of water is that the real attractions here are the huge romantic patio/cabanas, the two-story waterfall over the bar, hilariously formal European crowd (even the children), and my favorite sport — jewelry watching.

Taking the tiny, wood-inlay and brass elevators was almost as fun.  While we’d wait for it up on our floor, we’d scope out all the old photos of Coral Gables when it was still a goofy boom-time land development dream; gotta love mustachioed men in white linen suits perched on the sticky shore of a mangrove swamp.  When the elevator would finally arrive, there’d always be an earnest young sunburned kid from Austria (or Germany, or Switzerland) in painfully clean clothes, lugging a massive, tricked-out golf bag towards the ground floor.  Each time we’d flatten ourselves to the elevator walls, we’d silently reflect that without golf in our lives, we were missing out on a whole different version of the Biltmore.

We contented ourselves instead with earth-toned outfits and fabulous food at Fontana.

Christmas dinner beside the palms and soaring fountain at the hotel’s outdoor Mediterranean restaurant was elegant, romantic and deeply perfect.   (I barely needed a sweater in the warm evening breeze, but hey, it looked really cute with the dress.)  We remarked in passing to our gracious Italian waiter that the complimentary mini-antipasto plate was a work of beauty, and like magic, another appeared in its place.  The menu was a holiday special, but no matter; we can say with confidence that anything here made of pasta or seafood will make you weep for your lost childhood, like the critic in Ratatouille.

I’ve saved the best for last:  Fontana’s legendary Sunday brunch ($75 per person).  Miami and Coral Gables locals flock here in hordes, so if you’re a guest, be sure to book this when you book your stay.  Learn from our first-seating mistake and book a sit-down time no earlier than 11:30 am; unless you nearly starve yourself, you will never make it through even half of the ludicrous quantity of food here. We’ve never seen anything like it, and we’ve been to Las Vegas and the Deep South.

There’s a four-protein carving station, an omelette bar, a groaning bread table, an entire antipasto section, cereals, waffles, cheeses for days, espresso drinks, enough sushi to feed the whole city, and just when you’re sure you’ll die, an entire room of dessert.  The latter has cookies, petit fours, cakes, pies, mousses, bars, and a chocolate fondue fountain.  If you’ve made the crippling error of ordering a mimosa and don’t remain vigilant in your refusals, you will see your glass refilled every 15 minutes of your meal.

But if you’re cool with spending your last day on Earth here together, then be sure to do one key thing — leave room for the blinis and caviar.

*For more of our photos from The Biltmore and Coral Gables, click here.

See related posts
Coral Gables: No, Seriously
Our Miami Top 10
Miami: A Mid-Week Wander
Death by Cubano Cuisine
Buen Ser, Miami
TWT Travel Binder: Florida

Travels With Two

For all you fans of Coral Gables, Florida who may be ruffled by my title, let me just say that we, too, are fans.

But you have to admit, when you think about the original city plan for CG, doesn’t it seem a bit…goofy?  

Here’s the deal:

In the Florida land boom/real estate bubble of the 1920s, dynamic local son George Merrick left a law career to take over his father’s 160-acre plantation.  With the late 1800s City Beautiful movement in mind, he envisioned his hometown as a quieter, more middle-class alternative to glitzy Miami. With blueprints in hand for one of the nation’s first fully-planned communities, he began to rustle up local money and excitement; the creation of Coral Gables and its hard-won gem, The University of Miami, began in earnest.

Here’s where the goofiness comes in.  While most of the original architecture was Mediterranean Revival, there were also more, shall we say, inventive features. There was a man-made “Tahitian” beach with a bandshell in the form of a huge coconut and grass be-skirted dancing girls from the suburbs.  Some areas were dedicated “villages” with imaginary versions of French Country, Dutch South African, English Tudor, and Chinese houses.  Canals criss-crossed parts of town, and you could take to them in gondolas.  Still standing are an endless golf course and the Venetian Pool, a crusty grotto of a swimming hole that used to be a rock quarry, but is now open to the (paying) public.

By 1929, Coral Gables, like many American businesses built on a foundation of romance and speculation, had started to seem like a naive idea.  Gotta say, being there for Christmas 2008, amidst a looming, history-repeating depression, felt a little poignant.

It’s still a lovely neighborhood, but now mostly for very wealthy people; we had a jaw-dropping time just driving around and ogling stately homes and the canopies of banyan trees that overhang the wide residential streets.  A great deal of dull revisions were made in the less charming 1960s and 1980s, and sadly, little of the original architecture remains.

We managed to see some, though, especially a whole block of colorful pagoda-style houses.  One cul-de-sac looked like an abandoned backlot for a silent film set in the French countryside.  We caught glimpses of 1920s stone bric-a-brac, gargoyles, ceramic tile, fountains, and stained glass.  Coral Gables is all about the, “Oooh, look at that!” factor.

To see how it was back in the day, check out the book Coral Gables: Images of America.

Or better yet, see dozens of photos at the most famous landmark in town, The Biltmore.  I can hardly wait to tell you about our stay at this hotel…

*To see more of our photos from Coral Gables, click here.

The Hauntingly Beautiful Biltmore
Our Miami Top 10
Death by Cubano Cuisine
Buen Ser, Miami
TWT Travel Binder: Florida

Travels With Two