Root and Bone in South Miami

The Root and Bone in South Miami

I am a big fan of Bravo's Top Chef, so when there is a local restaurant by a top chef contestant in town, I try to go, whichever town I'm in. The Root and Bone in South Miami serves southern comfort food from a husband and wife team that were on in 2013. Known more for their evening meals, I wanted to sample the brunch menu and showed up shortly after opening at 10am on a Sunday. It was not busy for which I was thankful, only a few tables. I am a pretty standard breakfast eater, preferring the simple bacon, sunny side up eggs, sausage links and potatoes. Of course they did have the "American roots Breakfast" dish which would have all I wanted with the exception of scrambled eggs, but this was not a place to go for standard food and I wanted creativity.

I sat at the bar and had a course of the Drunken Deviled Eggs, and Smoky Bacon Board, which were both very tasty. Every morsel of these two dishes was delicious and they were well balanced with different flavors on the same plate.

The deviled eggs had surprising pink color to them due to the pickled beets giving it a slightly acidic flavor which brings out the dill that is important in the dressing. A not-too-crunchy chip was buried slightly below the top of the egg dressing giving it a nice texture. However, I truly enjoyed the smokey bacon board and felt by itself, it had a nice complemetnary set of flavors that lends itself to eating each piece of of food in succession to ready the palate for the next flavor, a very well thought out dish. The pieces of the bacon were very thick, probably double or triple the thickness of a thick center cut bacon from costco. The fresh/mixed pickles gave a nice sweet heat along with the marinated cheese to reset your palate for the next bite of the bacon. The fried pork skins was a nice touch as well giving a slightly crunchy, dry taste before the deep smoke of the bacon on the next bite. I thoroughly enjoyed this dish and felt it paired well with the drunken devilled eggs.

For the main course, I had the braised short rib meatloaf with eggs which was also absolutely delicious. I'm usually unimpressed with dishes that have short rib in them, generally because they tend to be underseasoned, but the veal demiglaze gave it a nice touch of flavor. The asparagus and eggs were a nice complementary flavor and nothing was overcooked.

As I go to these restaurants and having meals, I am finding that the singular meal I have is a tip of the iceberg and yet again I find that I need to go back to at least have the chef's sampler menu and the specialty dish, which is the southern fried chicken.