Russian & Turkish Baths

I roused myself from the pit of despair I was mired in last Sunday to post a feeble cry for help on Facebook, "anyone want to go with me to the Russian and Turkish Baths on the beach?"  I knew that several of my Groupon groupie friends had purchased the Groupon for the baths when it came out a few months ago so I was hoping someone would agree to meet me, thus forcing me to get out of the apartment when all I wanted to do was lay down and moan feebly.
I met Krei at the baths at noon and we spent a couple hours there, alternately baking, steaming, freezing, and boiling ourselves.  Since we're silly, we ran around playing with everything that wasn't tied down.  We blasted each other with fire hoses.  We jumped up and down under the rain showers.  We found the leaves they use for platza and started beating each other experimentally with them when a stern, tattooed young guy in a Speedo came up to us and, disapprovingly, mutely held out his hand for us to return the leaves to him.  Thus chastized by this guy who was obviously a Russian mobster who has killed people we stopped poking around and went back to the aromatherapy room.
One cool way to seem like a bad ass is to get nice and toasty in one of the hot rooms and then jump into the ice cold water pool and pour buckets of ice water over your head.  After the intial shock it actually feels great.
I knew I would feel like a wrung out, wet mop by the end of it all and need a long nap, and I was right.  I went home and straight to bed but first, just to ensure that I passed out, I made myself a vodka and tonic.  Ok, ok, so Grey Goose is French, not Russian, but at least I was in the spirit of things.

*As I read this over I notice an excessive use of metaphor and pun that I'd like to apologize for now.

Spizzigo and El Novillo

Playing catch up today at work.  Not on work related tasks, God forbid!  But on my blog.  You can't force these things, you know.

My son, mom and I have been having dinner with the changing cast my uncle drums up for our bi-weekly get togethers for months now, and it's been pretty good - as long as we've stuck to Tutto Pizza.  Our last two get togethers were at Spizzigo and El Novillo respectively and I found our meals there both lame and sad.

Spizzigo is located in a strip mall in Doral (please understand, I dislike Doral and everything in it in an intense and irrational way) which is already a point against the restaurant.  The place is cute, if perhaps a bit cookie cutter and sterile in design.  And freaking cold!  What's with running the A/C at meat locker temperatures?  Eh.  What can I say?  The meal was a disaster from the start.  I'm sure the waiter absolutely hated us.

It seemed that my whole family was in cahoots to be as critical as possible.  We are usually nice!  Really!  I swear!  But...they forgot to get me a wine glass, forgot to bring a place setting for my cousin's wife, they were out of almost every wine my uncle tried to order but two, half the entrees we ordered were cold...the waiters were pretty damn cute, I admit, but sullen and almost rude.  I watched three charming, adorable and admittedly annoying-as-hell little kids try to get a taste of the gelato and the counter guy blew them off completely.  I don't think our waiter even attempted to look pleasant.

My uncle ordered insalata de pere, gorgonzola e noci for everyone as a starter.  The creamy dressing was way too sweet and had no balance and the pears were not ripe.  The bread they brought us was terrible, how do you call the dough part?  The masa?  Not the crust but the...well, you get it, it was all doughy, undercooked, and the crust was dusty with flour and some pathetic herbs...no crunch at all.  It has the texture and edibility of Play Doh.  I ordered spaghetti salmone e limone and the sauce was greasy as hell and with no hint of *limone*.  My mom had some mushroom/spinach tortellini that was so salty.  Absurdly so.  It's like they knew she had high blood pressure and were trying to bring about a speedy demise.  My son's pizza was pretty much ok, and we were all happy to *help* him finish it.  Altogether merda, from start to end.  Maybe gelato would have redeemed it but I think not.  At least we had alchol.  We'll always have alchol.

We had dinner at El Novillo on our previous familial outing.  I've eaten there several times, usually for work, and have found it to be a nice, inoffensive, harmless kind of place where everyone's palate can get along.  BO-RING!  I had skirt steak and it was a bit undercooked, more rare than medium rare, but a little bloody meat never bothered me.  The side dishes are so dull!  They ladle out of a trough some mushy red beans and rice that are just bland, and some maduros that are sliced too thick...honestly, there are few things that annoy me more in life than thickly sliced maduros...the oil doesn't get to the middle and so you don't have the proper ratio of sweet, carmelized outsides to sweet, softened, cooked insides.  It's just dry and raw in the middle.  Caca!  Well, to be fair it was fine.  Honestly. It's like eating at your grandma's house, but not the good cook, the other one.  It's hard to ruin this type of food but it's easy to find it prepared with indifference.  I'm too picky about Hispanic food to deal with these generic, substandard meals.  You got to put some love into it, damn it!  And, of course, pour the wine liberally.  I've firmly established myself as the family alchy, and I'm ok with that.

Tamiami Truckers Food Court

The whole food truck business seems to inspire a great deal of feeling in people, from great apathy to great antipathy to great, um...sympathy?  Just trying to keep the trend going, there.  I've had my eye on the burgeoning food truck bizniz here in Miami (damn you, Ms. Cheezious, you stole our idea!) and I've generally thought, it's a good thing.  What's not to love about cheap, tasty, sometimes interesting food coming right to you?  It seems Miami borrows nothing cool from other, hipper cities and frankly, it bums me out.  Miami is sooo provincial.

Well, I was texting about my evening plans to check out the Tamiami Truckers Food Court to this friend of mine, and I didn't really expect him to have such, ahem, strong feelings about the food truck craze.  But here, I'll let him say it in his own words, "One thing is enjoying a bite at a place and appreciating it for what it is.  But this is another matter altogether.  It borders on the obscene at this point...I have had it with this food truck business.  It is so shallow.  You won't order a grilled cheese sandwich from Denny's, but all of sudden some Argentine c*** brings you one in a truck and it's the culinary equivalent of the Venus de Milo?  F*** that.  It's the excitement in people's eyes that most gets to me...There are perfectly decent restaurants going out of business, closer to home.  I'm not excited about standing in line with 200+ assholes who think this "street meat" parade is worth the sojourn inot the hills for a "really good sandwich".  All those FB updates, these twatters...I just can't take it."

I must say, full disclosure, this is one of my very best friends and I retaliated by posting many Facebook and twatter updates about the whole event, just to bug him.  I'm so mature.

I do see his point(s).  It was far as hell for me.  You get there and there is a sense of expectancy that never gets fulfilled...like another friend of mine said that night (be careful what you say, I will quote you), "It's like the Youth Fair without any rides".

Exactly.  I ate a lot, and enjoyed some things quite a bit...especially the carnita I had from Jefe's.  The fish taco from there seemed a little bland but P did steal my hot sauce.  Oh!  And Wendy's Crab Salad and Cheddar sandwich from Ms. Cheezious was really good, especially when she added the perennial pickles to it...I know she'll be making those at home very soon.  I thought the lettuce wraps from Miso Hungry was only ok, the pork inside was very dry.  The only sign of freshness in the wrap was the cilantro.  We had crepes at the French place that were pretty great, too.

All in all, I had a really nice time but to be honest, it was mostly the company and, well, the beer helps, of course.  I would have had an equally nice time at Wendy's apartment with the same people.  Now that I've done it once I don't know that I need to do it again, especially to the meet-ups that are so FAR.  Some of the meet-ups are much closer and I'm not averse to trying them out...I spent like $15 for quite a lot of food.  It is nice, however, to have a destination on a weekend night, it keeps me from feeling like I'm melting into a sloth-like complacency where I never  go out anymore.  I will just put forth one request: Port-a-Potties?  Please?

Robert is Here Fruit Stand and Farm

I romanticize country life, I admit that.  I imagine myself in some self sufficient paradise where the pantry is full of canned produce from my own garden, the laundry is drying on the line outside and chickens and piglets run around in happy, free-range bliss.  I suppose the reality of country life is probably relentless poverty and a crushing work load but hey, it's my fantasy, damn it.  Don't be a buzz kill.

Robert is Here is one of those places that I feel compelled to drag the uninitiated to.  It's far as hell and I suppose anything you find there you can find in a more convenient location but, what's the fun in that?  You can find fresh produce, jarred jellies, jams and preserves, and the most delicious milkshakes in terrific flavors such as key lime and cantalope/chocolate.  There is a small farmyard with real live animals (a weird mix including turtles, geese, ostriches or emus or something, burros or donkeys or something, parrots, chickens, goats...you get it) that no doubt eat a hell of a lot better than you and I do.  Hell, there is even a working water pump to play with!

I'm not sure of the sustainability of their products...I suppose I could contact them to ask if their products are produced locally or not, but I'm lazy.  I assume their produce is local and their jarred items are not.  In any case, it's always better to buy from an independent business rather than a chain, and it's always better to buy local food rather than something trucked in.  That would make you a locavore.  Crazy!