Uruguay's top restaurant opens a spinoff in Miami
The scene: Miami is especially known for its wealth of Cuban cuisine, and every variation of Caribbean, Latin and South American food is found here in abundance and excellence — and now that list notably includes Uruguay.
Bordering Argentina, Uruguay shares its neighbor’s passion for open grilling over live fire, or parilla-style cooking, as well as for beef, almost exclusively the drug-free, naturally raised, grass-fed variety. In fact, the two countries vie annually back and forth for the title of world’s biggest consumer of beef per capita — roughly double the amount of beef mad Americans eat. But Uruguay also has a huge coastal influence, loves seafood and is well known for its popular beach resorts. In Jose Ignacio, one of the posher beach towns, you will find the nation’s single most famous and popular restaurant, Parador La Huella. A laid back, open air beach spot built around a huge stone grill, it is a legend, one of the highest rated and toughest spots in all of South America to get a reservation. That’s why it was big news when the original, after more than a decade, opened its first spinoff, Quinto La Huella, in the new EAST, Miami hotel.
The Florida offshoot has proven so popular that fans are flying in from Latin America to eat here. It’s easier to get into than the original, and it serves all the classic recipes. The EAST, Miami is part of the new multi-billion-dollar Brickell City Center development, attached to a large upscale shopping mall in the heart of Downtown Miami, the city’s once sleepy but fast rising financial district. While not on the water, the hotel tries to capture a beach vibe, with a huge 20,000-square-foot pool deck on the same floor (fifth) as the restaurant. The main dining room spills outside through large doors to this area with multiple pools, hot tubs, and bar and food service from the restaurant. At the opposite end of the eatery, the two connected indoor dining rooms open to a large garden-style outdoor dining area under trellised shades. Abutting this is the separate room containing the large grill — a copy of the original by the same designer — with bar seating around it. You can dine inside, outside, at the bar or poolside, and the feel is casual and whimsical, with cowhide patterns, lots of leather and wood, antique kitchen implements and bowls, and original, sometimes comical art on the walls.
Reason to visit: Grilled beef, lamb, seafood and the molten dulce de leche cake.
The food: Uruguay takes its beef so seriously that the country has what amounts to a bill of rights for consumers, outlawing the sale of any “conventional” beef, the kind widely eaten in this country. No beef raised with hormones, antibiotics, an unnatural diet or with animal byproducts (all standard in the U.S.) can be sold in the country, which has arguably the strictest legal standards on earth. To measure up to this tradition, Quinto La Huella imports all of its beef — and also flies in most of its lamb, several wines, and even its delicious olive oil from Uruguay. At a time when restaurants have been rocked with food fraud scandals including meat and oil, this is as real as it gets.
But while Uruguay is crazy for beef, the original beachfront restaurant has always skewed more toward seafood, and that’s reflected here, with diners split about evenly between meat and fish. Everything is sustainably sourced, much of the seafood from local fishermen and off the Florida coast. The restaurant won’t serve things like threatened Chilean sea bass, and only serves salmon when wild ones from Alaska are in season, and then only fresh, and that’s the kind of seasonal devotion to quality ingredients found here. The owners have long been advocates of the environment and sustainability, and the menu reads, “We support local and free-range products,” many of them organic.
But despite being rated one of the best restaurants on the continent, the original is not fine dining, it’s fun and unpretentious, and that spirit is kept alive in Miami. The signature dishes are mostly fire kissed, including grilled octopus, whole fish, ribeye and rack of lamb, along with wood fired pizzas. The baby lamb is exquisitely tender and rich. Octopus is very popular and offered two very different ways: a substantial tentacle grilled a la plancha, on a wooden plank, meaty and delicious, served with paprika seasoned confit potatoes, and a paper thin sliced carpaccio version layered over creamy mashed potatoes with imported extra virgin olive oil. If you like octopus, both are stunning. While the delicious rib eye is the most popular steak, less common flank or skirt steaks are great stealth options. A traditional Uruguayan soup is offered as a starter, cazuela de pescado, comprising seafood, kale and lentils. It's well worth trying, especially if you like lentils. There are lots of other seafood appetizers including spicy fried calamari, crab cakes, fish fritters and crudo, a sort of ceviche of raw fish.
One section of the menu is devoted to dishes a la parilla, or from the grill, and options include several cuts of steak, lamb, game hens, black bass and sweetbreads, or organ meats, which are much more popular in South America than in this country. House-made chimichurri sauce is served on the side with all the meat dishes and is excellent — I couldn’t stop adding it. Hake and octopus are cooked on planks, and several other dishes contain grilled or wood fired oven ingredients — they even grill escarole.
It’s a great place for sharing, since there are so many tempting choices, delicious appetizers and sides (smashed cast iron roasted potatoes, grilled carrots, grilled squash), but whatever you do, leave room for dessert. This is not a suggestion, it is an absolute. In an era when restaurants are selling less and less desserts, especially at lunch, the manager told me that almost every single table orders sweets at both lunch and dinner, which is unheard of in the industry. But the reason is obvious: the list contains many exceptional desserts, including fresh fruit ice creams and a signature eye-catching pineapple soup, but best of all is the volcano of dulce de leche. Dulce de leche, a caramel sauce, is the staple dessert of Uruguay and Argentina, an absolutely beloved substance that is eaten on its own, in candies, on top of other things and as a flavor, especially ice cream. Here it's used in a riff on the classic molten chocolate lava cake, a dome-shaped cake that oozes warm, liquid dulce de leche when cut into. It is served with banana ice cream and is simply one of the greatest desserts ever, anywhere — it's worth the trip for this dish alone.
Pilgrimage-worthy?: Yes, the dulce de leche volcano is one of the world’s great desserts, and this is a restaurant people visit Uruguay to eat at, transported to downtown Miami.
Rating: OMG! (Scale: Blah, OK, Mmmm, Yum!, OMG!)
Price: $$-$$$ ($ cheap, $$ moderate, $$$ expensive)
Details: EAST, Miami; 788 Brickell Plaza, Miami, FL; 786-805-4646; quintolahuella.com
Larry Olmsted has been writing about food and travel for more than 15 years. An avid eater and cook, he has attended cooking classes in Italy, judged a barbecue contest and once dined with Julia Child. Follow him on Twitter, @TravelFoodGuy, and if there's a unique American eatery you think he should visit, send him an email at travel@usatoday.com. Some of the venues reviewed by this column provided complimentary services.