Dan Marino's early years in the restaurant business mirrored his career with the Dolphins. The quarterback, who holds a slew of NFL passing records, never won a Super Bowl, and the restaurateur, who opened his first place in Coconut Grove in 1990, just didn't score big with it.
Dan Marino's early years in the restaurant business mirrored his career with the Dolphins. The quarterback, who holds a slew of NFL passing records, never won a Super Bowl, and the restaurateur, who opened his first place in Coconut Grove in 1990, just didn't score big with it.
Now, in a new location in South Miami, he has a winner. Like the Marino's in Coral Springs, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando and St. Petersburg, the South Miami restaurant goes well beyond the pedestrian Italian and bar food of his former spot. It also boasts a plusher decor of leather-looking banquettes and faux-marble tabletops.
The major style note is Marino himself. While not often there in person, he is ever-present in nearly life-size, back-lit color photos. It's a bit kitschy, but other areas of the warren-like restaurant are Marino-free zones, and besides, he looks pretty good in that uniform.
Marino is apparently calling the plays when it comes to service. The crack team of young servers is almost overly attentive, inquiring every five minutes if everything is OK. Take a few timeouts, kids.
Classic steaks, chops, seafoods and pasta are menu mainstays, but gourmet embellishments abound and prices are reasonable.
Crab cakes are lovely golden puffs so full of sweet Maryland blue crab meat that one wonders what holds them together. Flat bread appetizers are ''recommended by Dan,'' and for good reason: A light alternative to pizza, the cracker bread topped with honey-mustard chicken, mozzarella, red bell peppers, button mushrooms and spinach is quickly demolished by our threesome.
The eight main-plate salads include a tasty combination of spinach, feta cheese, strawberry slices and apple-smoked bacon in a chipotle-lime vinaigrette topped with two he-man chunks of cashew-encrusted salmon. It's a symphony of flavors, textures and colors.
A training-table sized dish of spaghetti has meatballs the size of mutant golf balls and a thick, vibrant sauce, but a penne pasta with portobello mushroom was seriously overcooked, particularly the mushroom, which already had eye-appeal problems.
The juicy New York strip steak, the most expensive entree at $28.95, is superb, its crusty exterior topped with garlic butter. It's served with enough smashed potatoes to satisfy a lineman plus perfectly steamed carrots and broccoli. (Good news: A less expensive steak, marinated prime sirloin at $18.95, is nearly as good.)
Chicken cordon bleu, two thick ovals of breast meat stuffed with ham and Swiss cheese and served over an Alfredo sauce, is a tasty classic, as is a hunk of fine-textured meatloaf resting on mushroom gravy.
Nearly three dozen, well-chosen wines are offered at $22 to $40 with most available by the glass ($5.25-$8) and eight by the half-bottle. A wine flight -- two-ounce samples of any three by-the-glass wines -- is $10.95.
Desserts, like most of the menu, steer away from the esoteric, but the ''famous'' almond basket ($7.95) begs to be put to the test. The cookie-dough basket is studded with almonds and tastes like almond brittle. Inside is a scoop of raspberry sorbet in a bed of whipped cream topped with raspberry sauce, strawberries and blueberries. Also outstanding is Marino's tart, palest-yellow Key lime pie.
Dan Marino has scored a post-NFL touchdown with this restaurant. Lots of South Floridians are going to go for it, as they say in football.
