Eating at this Brickell restaurant is a ‘mind-bending culinary playground’

Bazaar Mar: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ (Very Good)

In the famous children’s book, “In the Night Kitchen,” by Maurice Sendak, a boy floats on a dreamy journey into a surreal kitchen where food takes on magical properties.

Bazaar Mar is that mind-bending culinary playground brought to life inside the base of the SLS luxury hotel in Brickell, where famed Spanish-American chef José Andrés shapeshifts food in a sea-inspired, psychedelic dining room designed by Philippe Starck.

Steam clouds rise from cryogenic carts wheeled by servers concocting liquid nitrogen caipirinha cocktails tableside. As they whisk the drinks into sorbet-like consistency, smartphone flashes from photo-snapping, excited diners pierce the rolling fog, creating the illusion of a lightning storm inside the blue-and-white tiled dining room.

Food — most of it plucked from oceans around the world — is emulsified, squeezed, squirted, cured, chilled and mixed with chemical compounds until it resembles something swiped from another planet. Flavor is turned into powder, gels and foam, called “air” here. Even the margaritas come topped with ethereal puffs of salt and tequila. (Men with bushy beards beware.)

Read more here: Eating at this Brickell restaurant is a ‘mind-bending culinary playground’ 

Bazaar Mar

1300 S. Miami Ave., Miami (SLS Brickell hotel)

305-615-5859, www.sbe.com/restaurants/locations/bazaar-mar

This story was originally published February 15, 2017 at 11:02 PM.