Serves MOFONGO every Friday, Saturday and Sunday (Puerto Rican plantain and pork crackling dumplings) scooped and mounded in a pool of chicken or shrimp in creole sauce, this small, laid-back place in a SoBe strip mall also offers salads, sandwiches, pannini and pan bagnat (solid white tuna, hard-cooked egg, black olive and lettuce and tomato is delicious). Chef-owner Jimmy Carey also features carne guisada, beef and potato stew laced with fresh herbs and served with jasmine rice. Com once and you will be a regular and asking for the pineapple flan.
Linda Bladholm
lbladholm@MiamiHerald.com
Every Friday, mofongo fans flock to Jimmyz Kitchen in Miami Beach for their weekly fix of the Puerto Rican favorite. Made from fried slices of semi-ripe plantain, the Afro-Borinquen classic is mashed with garlic and chicharrones (pork cracklings) and rolled into earthy dumplings.
Chef-owner Jimmy Carey opened the casual spot in a small shopping plaza off Alton Road two months ago. Born in New York to a Cuban mother and Irish-American father, he grew up in Puerto Rico, where his father worked for an insurance company. His mother was a great cook and fostered his love of food.
A management-trainee job with the Chart House chain brought Carey to Miami 20 years ago. He caught the cooking bug, enrolled at Johnson & Wales University, and worked under chef Robert Holley at Brasserie La Coze, the brief-lived Le Bernardin outpost in Coconut Grove.
Jimmy'z Kitchen is a laid-back space with pumpkin-orange walls and heaps of tomatoes on stands at the small front counter. There are a half-dozen tables inside and two out front. This is a two-man operation, with Carey and his assistant, Frank Rios, cooking and waiting tables. Dishes and cutlery are plastic, and salads are served in big metal bowls.
Carey's Puerto Rican friends demanded the mofongo, so he made it a once-a-week special. He also often features carne guisada, a hearty beef and potato stew laced with culantro (saw-leaf coriander), cilantro, fresh thyme, peppers, onions, and tomatoes served with jasmine rice.
His menu mainstays, though, are salads and sandwiches including roasted veggie panini (with eggplant, red bell pepper, zucchini, oven-dried tomatoes, goat cheese and caramelized onion), pan bagnat (solid white tuna, hard-cooked egg, black olive spread, lettuce and tomato) and media noche (roasted pork, ham, Swiss cheese and pickles with mustard on sweet yellow bread).
The chopped salad is jumble of mixed greens, carrots, cucumber, red onion and scallions topped with crumbled blue cheese and candied walnuts tossed in sherry wine vinaigrette. Fat-free and low-fat dressings are also available.
Those vine-ripe tomatoes at the counter go into tomato and fresh mozzarella salad dressed in basil pesto. Tuna taco salad is a lush combination of coriander- and cumin-crusted Ahi tuna with chopped romaine, black beans, corn, pico de gallo and wispy strips of fried tortilla.
Specials range from grilled chicken breast on arugula with herb-roasted potatoes to various pastas. End with house-made pineapple flan or almond cheesecake. And save Friday for mofongo.
Reviewed on August 9, 2007.
