What would it take to convince you to drive to Pinecrest for dinner tonight? More specifically, South Dixie and 120th—not far, you might be thinking, from where the Everglades replaces what’s left of modern civilization.
Would it convince you if we said this journey leads to one of the most exciting new restaurants in Miami? Seriously, in Pinecrest.
It’s called Platea Prime Steakhouse & Ceviche Bar and, at its core, it’s a pretty simple concept: a Peruvian steakhouse. The thing is, this concept hadn’t yet existed in Miami, and maybe it hadn’t existed anywhere else in the country until now.
Chef Fernando Salazar, 30, dreamed up his Peruvian steakhouse after three years of running a ceviche food truck. His brick-and-mortar vision was to recreate the kind of steakhouse that’s popular back in his hometown of Lima, but he couldn’t seem to find a space for it in Miami’s buzzier neighborhoods. So he landed in a suburban strip mall. Yes, in Pinecrest.
Salazar did extensive research and came across no other Peruvian steakhouse in the U.S., and our own Googling yielded nothing to contradict his claim. In Platea, the chef has created something truly unique. It’s a modern, moody dining room where the open kitchen provides most of the light—a romantic spot fit for a proper date night, despite the perplexing Led Zeppelin soundtrack.
Overall, the menu features many highlights you’d expect from a high-end steakhouse: prime beef, sides and a few of the classic starters. And then it takes some surprising turns, making it far more interesting than your average Morton’s clone. For instance, there’s the ceviche made with pretty dollops of sweet potato puree and lots of sliced shrimp and other seafood, all soaking in an earthy-sweet leche de tigre.
The Peruvian theme continues through the entrees, including a chaufa and lomo saltado made with wagyu beef. The whole fish comes crusted with a lemongrass-spiked batter, and the Galapagos lobster tail is an 18-ounce beast served with stuffing, pico de gallo and a rich aji amarillo sauce on the side for dipping. It’s a hundred bucks, that lobster, but it’ll feed two, maybe with leftovers for tomorrow, and the presentation is a stunning tower of juicy meat rising out of the shell.
The sides, too, will seem familiar, with just something a bit more Peruvian about them, like the corn with anticuchera butter, aji amarillo and cotija. It’s a riff on creamed corn, and something like esquites, but also just its own thing entirely.
Of course, the main draw here is the steak: the porterhouse, the bone-in ribeye, the tomahawk. Unlike the salt-and-pepper-only rule at most steakhouses, here, the steaks are marinated in aji panca pepper, cumin, oregano, garlic, pisco, soy sauce and red vinegar—an addicting flavor profile combined with those blackened steaks.
We can’t promise it’s the butter of your personal lord and savior, but it adds a bomb of umami that oozees over the well-charred exterior of the steaks.
They’re delivered topped with a pat of butter and a sprig of rosemary, and waiters use blow torches to melt and char it all together. And there are two kinds of butter to choose from: truffle or “god’s butter,” infused with bone marrow. We can’t promise it’s the butter of your personal lord and savior, but it adds a bomb of umami that oozes over the well-charred exterior of the steaks, amounting to something just better than those dry-aged, mortgage-payment-priced cuts at some restaurants with trendier addresses.
Beyond the blow torches, there are lots more tableside presentations from start to finish, including a cheesecake that gets doused in liquid dry ice until it becomes engulfed in what looks like a rainstorm. The dry ice fog blows off, revealing a cloud-like dessert, a whipped dulce du leche semi-circle of creamy mousse surrounding a cheesecake flavored with lúcuma, a caramel-flavored fruit popular in Peru, and crumbles of cacao cookies.
Perhaps knowing that Pinecrest will be a hard sell to anyone who doesn’t live in, well, Pinecrest, Salazar is doing lots of nightly specials. There’s live music on some nights. It’s half-off select wines on Wednesdays. Surf and turf Thursdays means a 38-ounce porterhouse and Galapagos lobster costs $150, and the tomahawk Tuesday is a three-course dinner headlined by a 64-ounce tomahawk for $150—a deal that apparently has been selling out.
Aside from all that, the rest of the menu is filled with delicious-sounding things we didn’t try, like the side of fondue-style mashed potatoes with caviar and roasted garlic confit, or the double-fried “phantom” fries with a minty Peruvian herb called huacatay. Those sound like great reasons to come back, which we should do often. They have Uber down in Pinecrest, right?
