Small Bites

LEE ANNE: We travel across the country to find the most unique small bites. MIKE: My Ceviche in Miami. The flavors are just so sparky and fiery. Those colors are beautiful. TED: You're eating this and you think, "I'm the luckiest guy in the world right now." MIKE: Barley Swine in Austin, Texas. AMANDA: I went in thinking, "Okay, small plates, beer, wine." I left thinking, "Oh, my God, that was a culinary experience." LEE ANNE: Amis in Philadelphia. Amis is one of those great neighborhood restaurants. It's shared plates. It's an abbondanza of food on the table. TED: Momo Sushi Shack in Brooklyn, New York. MARK: Momo Sushi Shack is perfect for small bites. It makes you want to share. LEE ANNE: These are Unique Eats. LEE ANNE: You go to Miami, there's the beach, there's lots of people walking around in very little clothing, so the last thing you want to do is go eat something really heavy. One place you're gonna go to get a light, delicious, amazing snack is My Ceviche. TED: My Ceviche is an awesome hole-in-the-wall where you can get the freshest, most delicious ceviches-- exactly that kind of hole-in-the-wall dive that you know you're gonna love. AMANDA: It's 240 square feet of space. There were three or four people behind that counter jamming, cranking out the most delicious ceviches in little teeny-tiny storefront in Miami. MARK: Ceviche is basically raw seafood that's lightly cooked in an acid--some fresh citrus limes and juices. It's all about how fresh your ingredients are. SAMUEL: We have the ocean in our backyard and we definitely need to take advantage of that. Local fish that we can use, starting with mahi mahi, snappers, triggerfish, cobia. MATT: The key to a great ceviche is balance of flavors. You have to make sure the calibration is absolutely perfect for it to really sing and harmonize. AMANDA: So this is how it works at My Ceviche. You pick your fish, whether it's octopus, black tiger shrimp, or local fish, and then you pick your sauce. It's the thing that you want your ceviche marinated in. So one of the popular sauces at My Ceviche is aji amarillo. First they takes fresh citrus like lemons, limes, and oranges, then they've got some heat from the jalapenos and aji amarillo, which is a Peruvian yellow chili pepper. Ginger, celery, onions, and garlic, kind of all rounds it out and brings those flavors together. When I tried the aji amarillo, I ordered the octopus. It's chopped up into small pieces and then they add sliced red onions for that sweet but sharp onion bite. Halved cherry tomatoes are added for sweetness, and then tiny diced jalapenos for heat. AMANDA: Fresh cilantro, fresh mint, and salt, and then the aji amarillo sauce. All of this gets tossed together and it's served with a wheel of cooked corn and a chunk of sweet potato. LEE ANNE: The fact that I was able to get it with octopus that was so tender-- it was just really balanced. You get that brightness of the mint, you get the sort of crunch of the onion, that pop of the fresh, sweet cherry tomato. The flavors are just so sparky and fiery. Those colors are beautiful. The color is insane, I mean, you're eating this and you think, "I'm the luckiest guy in the world right now." For those of us that like something a little bit creamier and sweeter, you have the coconut sauce. They take coconut milk and coconut water, garlic, celery, onions, and ginger, and then just a little bit of green Tabasco sauce. TED: The coconut style would go great with any protein-- shrimp, octopus, fish. We decided to go with all three. AMANDA: You have that wonderful coconut flavor without it being too sweet and it really rounded out the tartness, and I love the fact that those three different seafoods came together in that one ceviche. SAMUEL: People definitely need to come to My Ceviche to have a first taste of what ceviche is all about. AMANDA: I think this is a really bold concept to have just a ceviche storefront. But I think in Miami, the way he's making his ceviche, it really works. And it's just a walk from the beach. It's a lunch that you won't forget. TAMARA: The menu at Barley Swine is a list of 13 to 15 small plates. Farm fresh ingredients that were in the market in the morning and that afternoon, they're on your plate. AMANDA: Austin is one of those cities where food trucks are everywhere. A lot of chefs that start out with their food truck in hopes of doing well, saving money, and opening that brick-and-mortar someday. Bryce Gilmore is one of those chefs. BRYCE: I had a food trailer called Odd Duck, where the concept was to locally source everything and then just create a daily menu based on what we had that day. Really from that came Barley Swine. TAMARA: The menu at Barley Swine is a list of 13 to 15 small plates. And the concept is... "Which ingredients do we want to highlight on the plates?" They'll been inspired by say, broccoli and duck eggs or romanesco and chicken eggs, fresh ingredients that were in the market in the morning and that afternoon, they're on your plate. MARK: Bryce Gilmore is a chef who loves farmers' markets so much that he encourages his staff to come with him on Saturday mornings. Come on now. Let's do it. Go. Let's go. LEE ANNE: It's kind of a sight to see. Imagine 10 chefs descending on a farmers' market running from table to table, checking everything out, picking everything up, touching it, smelling it, and finding inspiration right then and there. BRYCE: The produce looks amazing. It smells great. It tastes great. We fill up a bunch of bags and go put in the back of my pickup truck. I think it's a great way to shop for a restaurant, and I wouldn't want to do it any other way. LEE ANNE: The back of that pickup truck starts to fill up really quickly. It's like, "Boom, boom, boom, boom, "booyakasha. We got a full truck. Let's go back to the restaurant." MATT: It's a wonderful moment when those chefs all get it back to the kitchen-- their haul-- and they're in their space. It's the ingredients that lead the discussion. "We've got some great broccoli. What are we gonna make of it today?" Or a duck egg. You know, "How does it come together on the plate?" AMANDA: Picking one ordinary ingredient, and presenting it to you in a way that you've never seen it before, and completely surprising you. TED: Grilled broccoli with fermented chili and crushed duck egg. It's a super impressive attempt to have diners look at and taste broccoli with a little more love, little more respect. Broccoli is prepared in three ways-- there are grilled florets, shaved raw broccoli, and broccoli stems that have been pureed and dried. AMANDA: It was so beautiful, I almost didn't want to eat it. I sort of wanted to get all the flavors together. The crushed duck egg with creme fraiche goes so well with the charred broccoli. And then the interesting texture of a dried broccoli chip. The daikon radish-- it accentuated the flavor of broccoli-- so brilliantly done. LEE ANNE: I love pretty much anything fried. You chicken fry anything--great. Chicken frying a chicken egg? Even better. They take a soft boiled egg which has been cooked and peeled and they do this sort of back-and-forth dredging between this flour-paprika mixture and then this egg-buttermilk mixture. And they fry it till it's golden brown and it's got that thick crunchy coating on the outside. The fried chicken egg goes on top of creamy grits. It's then served with romanesco, which is kind of like a combination of broccoli and cauliflower. They're a little bit charred, And then romanesco leaves have been fried until very crisp. MATT: You pick up that egg and you take a bite, and it's just a delicious marriage of that chicken skin thing with the heart of the chicken egg. AMANDA: You get that wonderful sort of earthiness of the romanesco. All the flavors go so well together, so I just wanna take a piece of egg, drag it through the green garlic, get some crispy romanesco leaves, and take that perfect bite. TAMARA: Barley Swine uses kind of all these elements of Austin that make Austin special and wraps them up into one restaurant. Farmers markets, a bunch of chefs all working together-- it's like this hotbed of creative activity all going on to your plate-- small plates. AMANDA: I went in thinking, "Okay, small plates, beer, wine." I left thinking, "Oh, my God. That was a culinary experience that blew me away." LEE ANNE: When you go to Amis, you can get a number of pasta dishes, and one of the standouts on the menu is the bucatini with jalapenos in an almond pesto. It's rich, it's nutty, it's a little bit spicy. LEE ANNE: The best parts about going out to eat at a place that serves small plates is that you can try the whole variety of the menu. It encourages sharing. It encourages tasting. And you really get to see the whole arsenal that the chef is bringing to the customer. MIKE: Amis, by definition, is a Roman trattoria in Philadelphia but it's so much more than that. Chef Brad Spence has really created a good menu. It's approachable. Different takes on classics, but when it comes to standard Roman fare, doesn't venture far from the truth. TAMARA: The best thing to do here is to do order a bunch of different things and then eat them all family-style. Everybody shares everything. Everyone gets a couple of bites, and you don't have to commit to only one thing. TED: At Amis, you definitely want to start your meal with the baked pecorino with almond honey, which is basically a bowlful of melted cheese. BRAD: That's what everybody loves about pizza-- is that hot, bubbly cheese. So we kind of took that idea and just eliminated everything else. We take really young pecorino, we put it in a little dish, and we just heat it up. And it gets a little bit crusty on the top. And then we serve that with a almond honey, which is basically almonds, honey, a little bit of chili flake, some fresh thyme, and olive oil. LEE ANNE: This is sort of, like, rich, gooey mixture is just then spooned on top of that hot cheese and it's almost like the honey itself from the heat of the cheese just melts. TED: It's just the most amazing melted cheese with the sweet, fiery, nutty honey on it. You put it on a piece of bread, and it's like, "Ah, this is the fondue of my dreams." MIKE: There's a dish at Amis called "Sal's old-school meatballs." These are old-school Philadelphia meatballs. TAMARA: This starts with pork, beef, veal. There's milk-soaked bread, which creates this really luscious, creamy interior, eggs, which will bind everything together, and then parmesan and pecorino, which are gonna give it a little sharpness and depth of flavor. When the balls are formed, they're rolled in double-zero flour before going into a hot pan to brown off. Once the meatballs are seared, they're simmered in a tomato sauce for about 5 minutes until they're tender and delicious. But that's not the tomato sauce they get served with. They get served with tomatoes that have been smashed with potatoes-- something they learned in a Roman trattoria. MATT: You taste it, and it's sort of hovering between potato and tomato. It's a little bit fruity. It's a little bit starchy. Kind of like the color of your shirt. Yeah, sorta like this. That's what it looks like. MIKE: What I love about this dish is the familiarity of the meatballs on top of this puree which is really unlike anything you've ever tried. It's so simple. It's so straightforward. Who would have thought blending potatoes and tomatoes-- where have you seen that before? LEE ANNE: When you go to Amis, you can get a number of pasta dishes. And one of the standouts on the menu is the bucatini with jalapenos and an almond pesto. BRAD: The pesto we use for the dish is kind of a nontraditional pesto. We use toasted almonds. We've a little bit of garlic and some really high-quality olive oil. And that's basically it. And then we just blend that up. TAMARA: In a separate sauté pan, he cooks fresh jalapenos with garlic olive oil. He adds ladles of starchy pasta water which is gonna start the sauce. MATT: Al dente bucatini is added to the pan and then the almond pesto. The dish is then finished with a generous amount of parmesan cheese. BRAD: We toss that together, and it's amazing that just a couple ingredients can make something so special. LEE ANNE: It's just rich, it's nutty, it's a little bit spicy, you know, and it's perfect. It's by far one of my favorite dishes at Amis. I will be going back for it. Amis is one of those great neighborhood restaurants. It's shared plates. It's an abbondanza a food on the table. TED: Flavors are sort of classic Italian, but there are these subtle twists that just make it something new and original-- you know, something you've never seen before. LEE ANNE: One of the legendary dishes that you absolutely have to get at Momo Sushi Shack are the gyoza. They're pan-fried Japanese dumplings. It's so juicy, and it was just, like, running down my chin. I couldn't stop. If you're craving what we're dishing, log on to cookingchanneltv.com /unique- eats. LEE ANNE: Different neighborhoods in New York are known for their food scene, and the last thing you would think of when you think of Bushwick, Brooklyn, is sushi. TED: Momo Sushi Shack has been getting a lot of attention for the fun atmosphere and great food. And now people from Manhattan are coming out to Bushwick to see what it's all about. MATT: It's so easy just to walk by Momo because it hides behind a screen of graffiti. And when you do find it, you step in, and suddenly it's this temple of sushi, and fun, and flavor. MARK: Don't think you're gonna go to Momo Sushi Shack, sit in a little corner by yourself, and have a couple of plates. You go with a group of friends, you order a bunch of food, and it's all about conviviality. PHILLIP: We encourage people to try maybe ten different things, because some things are one bite, or some things are small-entree size. TAMARA: Instead of having to marry one dish, you can date all of them. One of the legendary dishes that you absolutely have to get at Momo Sushi Shack are the gyoza, the pan-fried Japanese dumplings. They're using a heritage breed pork and they're using the tenderloin, so it's got a ton of flavor. TED: The pork filling is heavily seasoned with Chinese chives, garlic and ginger, celery, and salt. TAMARA: Tenderloin is very lean, so they have to add extra fat in to make it really juicy. They pour in some soy sauce for yet another layer of flavor. And then this all gets well blended by hand. TED: A spoonful of pork gets places into the center of a dumpling wrapper, and then it's folded over and sealed. AMANDA: They line up six gyoza in the pan, and when they start to brown and get a crust, they pour a mixture of cornstarch and water. And as the water evaporates, that cornstarch-water mixture begins to form, like, a lacey cookie at the bottom of the pan. MATT: When the gyoza came to the table, it didn't look like any dumplings we've ever had. It had this sort of UFO, this disk of crispness, on top. You just got to tap, tap, tap--it was perfect. Crunchy, crisp. I sort of picked it up with my hands, dunked it in the ponzu, and took a bite. And it's so juicy from all that fat. It was just, like, running down my chin. I couldn't stop. LEE ANNE: The tofu salad at Momo Sushi Shack is kind of genius 'cause it's sort of their take on a caprese salad. They've taken silken tofu and they pressed it so it takes on this really sort of creamy rich texture almost like fresh mozzarella cheese. PHILLIP: What makes the tofu salad dressing so special is we take tomatoes and basil and soak them in soy sauce over the course of a few weeks. TED: During that time, the flavors of the tomatoes and the basil are infusing that soy sauce and creating a really flavorful dressing for the tofu. MATT: The tomatoes in this process have essentially cured and they get a little bit chewier and a little more tender. TAMARA: The tofu salad is essentially a landscape of the pressed tofu squares, these really unique cured tomatoes, fresh tomatoes, and avocado. It's visually incredibly beautiful, and it's also unbelievably refreshing. I mean, it just tastes like a summer day. MARK: Having that first bite of that salad, if I were Italian, I'd be thinking about my Italian grandmother. PHILLIP: Everybody here loves each other and we're friends, and I think that that translates into the food. MARK: Momo Sushi Shack is a definite reflection on its owner. It's fun. It's loud. It's jovial. It just makes you want to have a good time. I could go there every day. I love you, Phillip! It's just the editors are gonna see it-- no one else. Sorry. I want nothing to do with you. You're the biggest loser I've ever met. They can cut it off right there, right?