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!
