Blogpost by Steve Deitsch
Cielo means sky or heaven in Spanish. In this case, it’s more the latter.
After a dinner at Colombian celebrity chef Juan Manuel Barriento’s new restaurant El Cielo, you’ll feel like you just died and went there.
Open only a couple of months, it is tucked away in the Brickell area in an unassuming residential tower, overlooking the Miami River.
Trained at the molecular gastronomy temple Arzak in San Sebastian, Spain, the 31-one-year-old master chef elevates food to new levels, in exciting and surprising ways.
He opened his first restaurant in 2007 in his native Medellin to much acclaim and later a second location in Bogota, and this is his first and only outpost in the United States.
The restaurant itself has an understated, somewhat rustic, yet sophisticated rustic look to it – this comes out in the food too.
Looking at the menu, the names seem somewhat vague or dull – but when the food comes out, you will have never seen or experienced anything like it before.
We chose “The Trip” – one of two pre-fixe dinners ($85 ea.), which included 10 tiny courses (not all of them food). Or you could pick “The Journey” – 20 tiny courses for $125 ea.
Getting the meal started with the proper Colombian tone, we started out the evening with a proper welcome – a “Carajillo” – a modern twist on the Colombian classic aguardiente liqueur (fire water) – but ours was a frozen whipped molecular aguardiente treat, served with a few droplets of Colombian coffee, and dusted with lime sugar crystals.
We knew we were in for something special – and like the first offering, each course had something to say – e.g. a nod to a famous artist, a tribute to his Colombian heritage or even a joke.
For example, there was “Black Pollock” – which was pollock darkened with squid ink and the entire plate was a beautiful splatter of flavors – all in black – a wink to artist Jackson Pollock’s famous works.
Then where was the “Boiled Egg.” The waiter told us that the chef was tired of making fancy food and so he was just serving us this – a plain boiled egg served in an egg carton. But it turned out to be a vanilla bean cheesecake (as the egg white) with a passion fruit gelee as the “yolk” and a candy crust as the “egg shell.”
There were so many fantastic experiential dishes like this. But my favorite was the “Amazon’s Tree of Life” they presented – a wire and mesh tree-like structure (made in Colombia, of course), with the branches on top consisting of a cheese bread made with yuca flour, native to Colombia. It was served with a pot of dirt and some small sprouts growing out of it. It turns out it was not a plant or dirt at all – it was a tomato and onion dip for the cheese bread, topped with edible (brown) yuca dust, made to look like dirt.
This is the holy grail for foodies in Miami .
El Cielo
31 SE 5th St.
North Tower
Miami FL 33131
305-755-8840
