Fabulous Chef Adrianne in a Far Away Restaurant

It may seem strange for me to talk about a fine-dining experience being “so far away” in Miami, when I spent the better part of several months while working in the wine industry regularly making the trek down to Homestead for Dinner in Paradise at Paradise Farms, but Chef Adrianne’s fantastical restaurant is located just about 45 minutes away from my usual dining haunts—hardly a walk down the block. However far, her restaurant may be one of the best I have experienced in the Miami area, and that is not an exaggeration.

I often hear people complain about the ephemeral nature of the restaurant industry in South Florida in general; here today, gone tomorrow–what will replace it? Surely, much of this is due to competition, but there is also the element of quality, or rather, the lack thereof. Even the fancy “bourgeois” places that you find in the Brickell area and South Beach often cannot answer the most basic question for a place that demands the price they ask for unoriginal dishes: ummm… is this even good?

Chef Adrianne’s restaurant in West Dade is hardly a place “to be seen”, but if that is the criteria that you are placing on choosing your meal location, you deserve to pay triple for efforts in posing.

Now, if you are looking for tender, flavorful, fall-onto-your-fork braised Shortrib, and the softest, most creamy & authentic Burrata outside of Italy, then maybe you should make the drive, and forget about the scene.

My recent dining experience at Chef Adrianne’s Vineyard Restaurant & Wine Bar (down on 147^th Ave. near Tamiami Airport), was such an unassuming delight, that I cannot wait to run back (sit in traffic for a while) and try even more of her original creations that rival the best of the best of the big city. Her perfectly piled Blue Fin Tuna on a crispy wonton with caper shallot cream & Osetra Caviar was melt-in-your-mouth bonne bouche, and her Potatoes Aligot was so creamy and savory that it was easy to get lost in a moment of vegetable intoxication. Alas, coming up for air was only for a moment before drowning your taste buds in a bubbly bath of elegant Armand de Brignac Champagne, also a special treat found only at some of the top places around town—like Chef Adrianne’s. Proving that far-away locations do not necessarily preclude exquisite wine options.

I would be remiss if I did not mention the goat cheese cheesecake and poached pear dessert, possibly the most heavenly of the dishes of the evening. Never have I experienced such an ambrosial dessert; certainly a gift from the cheesecake gods. The poached pear, a little unsightly at first, was revealed as a perfect “pear” for the creamy cake. And together, they completed a meal that surely was to leave even the most critical of critics satisfied, if not with contentment for a dining experience thoroughly enjoyed, then with anticipatory desire for the next meal at this faraway hideaway.