Miami: Barton G (July 2016)



My spouse and I visited Barton G. for dinner on a Saturday evening in early July 2016. Barton G. is open daily for dinner only. You can make a reservation using the Open Table online system. The restaurant is located on West Avenue in Miami Beach. (We took an Uber from our South Beach hotel for about $5.) Another branch of Barton G. is located in Los Angeles.

Barton G. The Restaurant makes each meal an experience, piquing your senses with enticing smells, extraordinary food, and over-the-top presentations. The restaurant was opened 15+ years ago by South Beach event designer Barton G. Weiss. In an attempt to make the dining experience fun, the chef presents food in wacky dress-up. The restaurant’s chef, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park New York, previously worked at Manhattan restaurants Aureole, Daniel, and Le Bernardin (although those restaurants feature sophisticated food using traditional presentation methods).

The restaurant features both indoor and outdoor dining. Upon entering the restaurant, a bar offers a place to enjoy a drink while you wait for your table. Dining tables (some of which share a padded banquette on one side) are arranged in two areas of the chic dining room. The outdoor space includes a raised terrace adjacent to a concrete patio surrounded by tropical foliage.

As starters, we ordered the voodoo shrimp rolls (crab-stuffed shrimp served with a remoulade sauce) and the bucket of bones (beef and pork ribs, lamb lollipops, and chicken drumsticks served with kettle chips and dip). As entrees, we ordered the long-legged short rib (tomahawk short rib served with plantain chips, mashed potatoes, maitake (hen-of-the-woods) mushrooms, and multi-colored baby carrots) and the Polynesian fish fry (crispy whole snapper, served with slaw, remoulade sauce, and an amazingly delicious coconut jasmine rice). For dessert, we shared the Baked Alaskan Everglades (a seven-layer red velvet cake layered with cream cheese ice cream cake wrapped in toasted meringue, with a candy apple “cherry” on top), which was much too large for two people, but we could not resist the spectacle. We will not go into details regarding all the various methods of presentation, because it would spoil the surprise, but be prepared to be amused and awed! Do not forget to take photos of your food and its presentation. As we read in one review (these are not my words, but they are too funny not to include) “… there's more selfie action happening in this restaurant than at your local middle-school dance, entire tables waving and passing around their phones like some sort of drunken Instagram kabuki ..”. Also, do not pass up the opportunity to order a signature cocktail, many of which are served with a dry ice component for an attention-grabbing bubbling and smoking presentation.

When you are in South Beach, make dinner at Barton G. a priority. We cannot remember ever having such a fun dinner!
















 















 

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