Michael D’Andrea’s homey Italian American cooking relies on good, old-fashioned garlic, onions and peppers -- and plenty of attitude. The meatballs -- soft, juicy, flavorful and dosed in sweet-tangy red sauce -- are the signature dish, but linguine with clams and chicken and mushroom cavatelli also stand out. There is no written menu and prices are high for the rustic fare, but there is nothing else like it in town.
In transient Miami Beach, where reputations are made more on flash than tradition, it's refreshing to see a quirky place like Macaluso's make it.
It's in a tough spot -- literally. The storefront on a hard-to-reach corner of Alton Road should have doomed the place. Yet, 11 years after opening his upscale Italian-American joint, Michael D'Andrea still draws celebrities and socialites happy to shell out a hundred bucks for homey cooking.
The secret: good, old-fashioned garlic, onions and peppers and plenty of attitude. The only things missing are the red-checkered tablecloths and raffia-wrapped chianti bottles.
For the many who don't know how to make pasta e piselli (pasta and peas) and other simple foods at home, this is the place to chow down in a dark and bustling dining room to a soundtrack of Sinatra and '80s R&B.
It is the meatballs -- oh, those meatballs -- that bring customers back again and again. Served with a mound of cooling ricotta cheese and lots of basil, they are juicy, flavorful, salty, cheesy and perhaps, yes, a bit too bready, but still somehow light and fluffy as just-spun laundry. The recipe is said to be so secret that no one is allowed in the kitchen while D'Andrea crafts them.
His red sauce, too, is a wonderful thing: sweet, tangy, rich and dark from long -- but not too long -- cooking and a dose of red wine.
One of my favorite pastas is cavatelli, a long, dense, partially opened tube tossed with a simple sauce of cubed chicken, button mushrooms, baby artichokes and tons of oil and herbs.
I also like the linguine with clam sauce. Just don't tell my mamma I spent $25 for a bowl of boxed pasta with just a few littlenecks -- not even in the shell. (Mario Batali charges less at Esca in Manhattan and uses pedigreed clams.)
Meals begin with a hunk of pecorino romano cheese slathered in oil and pepper to eat with warm, crusty bread.
For those who can take the heat, the Sinatra hot shrimp is the way to start. Three cigar-sized shrimp are doused in fresh-cut herbs, red chile flakes and garlic and dotted with scorching red and green pickled peppers, all served over triangles of super garlicky cheese toast.
D'Andrea boasts of recipes in the South Beach Diet cookbook, but the truth is it's tough to find heart-healthy options here. Salads of rough-cut iceberg and romaine with hunks of red bell pepper and tomato swim in an oily, grated-cheese dressing.
Sure, some patrons complain -- me included: Too much garlic. Too much salt. Too much oil. No half portions. No substitutions. No exceptions. No written menu. Customers have been shown the door for asking for salad dressing on the side.
The slim, handsome D'Andrea stubbornly keeps on doing what he knows best. The canned baby peas in his grandma's ravioli once troubled me, but I now find them comforting. Upgrading to fresh ones would seem inauthentic.
It's no accident the bar is lined up with brown paper packages ready for leftovers; portions are on a par with The Cheesecake Factory.
Speaking of cheesecake, desserts are heavy and dense. As if the thick, creamy, espresso-doused tiramisu were not enough, each comes with a crisp, custard-filled cannoli on the side.
A meal at Macaluso's is not just satisfying, it is stupefying. Prices are high for what my parent would call cucina povera (food of the poor), but for an overall experience of lusty, full-flavored New York Italian, you cannot do better than this.
