This restaurant made Midtown cool. Here’s why people are still going
Sugarcane Raw Bar Grill is a time capsule for the last decade.
Scan the menu today, and you’ll see all the major food trends that defined the last 10 years of dining out in Miami. It’s only appropriate as the restaurant, which turns 10 this month, anchored the Midtown Miami planned development that bridged the gap between downtown and the MiMo District on the upper east side.
Small, shareable plates? Check. Short rib? Check. Tiradito and Brussels sprouts? Check and check.
“It was basically all brand new here,” said Shimon Bokova, Sugarcane’s co-founder and partner. “It was an instant success.”
Bokova’s Sushisamba was leading those food trends in New York, where the restaurant’s lounge was called Sugarcane, and one of his top chefs, Timon Balloo, was itching to start a new concept.
They turned the idea over to Balloo, who would eventually become a restaurant partner, and he defined the flavors. He tapped into his Indian, Chinese and Trinidadian background and turned the contrast up on the food with bold flavors. He remains a partner and executive chef there, even while he has opened his own restaurant, Balloo, which focuses on his roots.
They put the restaurant in a warehouse with high ceilings and a garden tropical vibe with indoor-outdoor seating and a buzzy bar that was open late. And voila!
Miami came in droves. Sugarcane was a destination for locals from the beach to the western suburbs. And it survived while Midtown struggled to keep tenants. (Only Sakaya Kitchen, opened in 2009, has been there longer.) Twice in one decade, the Miami Herald reviewed it favorably.
The restaurant’s menu has been tweaked over the years. But there are still dishes that appeared on the original sheet — dishes that made Sugarcane one of Miami’s landmark restaurants of the 2010s.
Go today and find that these trendy dishes are still crowd pleasers:
Crispy pig ears
Name a more ironically 2010s dish. (I’ll wait.) The food world fell in love with the other white meat again, in all its forms. This trendy new appetizer, dusted in Balloo’s mix of barbecue spice, was something crunchy and salty to nosh before the main meal.
Brussels sprouts
Before the 2010s, Brussels sprouts were a punchline. But guess what? Add bacon and a little bit of balsamic sweetness, and they became everyone’s new favorite vegetable side dish.
Dates wrapped in bacon
Miami, which likes to eat a banana with its picadillo, was ready for this mix of savory-sweet. Wrap a roasted date, stuffed with linguiça sausage and manchego cheese, with bacon, and you have the dish that launched a thousand shareable plates.
Scallop crudo
Sure, ceviche is everywhere in Miami now. But at the turn of the decade, Sugarcane perfected this lime-marinated crudo (read: raw) dish, balancing it with jalapeño heat and black truffle and tart green apple. No wonder it’s still a top seller there.
Short rib
This was the decade Miami realized that short rib cut lengthwise and cooked aggressively for a long time with Korean flavors was an inspired combination. Balloo’s fall-off-the-bone bite was every S in the 2010s catalog: savory, sweet, succulent and shareable.
Sugarcane Raw Bar Grill
3252 NE First Ave., Miami; www.sugarcanerawbargrill.com
This story was originally published January 15, 2020 at 3:30 PM.
