The lobster dish at Brasserie Laurel might look like something you’ve seen before at a fine restaurant. On the left side of the plate is a slice of lobster tail and a dainty little claw, both poached in butter, tender and rich. On the right are bits of veal sweetbreads, battered and crispy, like fried oysters but more tender, and slices of grilled leeks. Those components alone are enough for the dish to succeed. But then there’s the sauce.
It’s a sauce américaine, a French sauce traditionally made of onions, tomatoes, white wine, brandy, butter and stock. It’s perfect. Pass a crispy chunk of sweetbreads through and it’s just thick enough to cling (without getting gloopy), creamy and smooth. It’s lobster-like without that lobster-pot-water flavor. It’s rich and—well, as we said, it’s perfect.
The idea of taking a traditional French technique or ingredient and trying to perfect it or improve on it, that’s the entire point of this place. It’s not an easy task, considering all the hundreds of years the French have been perfecting their stuff already. But Brasserie Laurel nails plating and technique and even the atmosphere that ought to surround all of this Frenchiness, a brasserie that will likely bring the stars and Beards and all the honors bestowed to restaurants this good.
Chef Michael Beltran already has a Michelin star for his Coconut Grove restaurant Ariete, and for Brasserie Laurel he brought over the executive chef, Ashley Moncada, to take on the same role here. They’ve been working together on the menu for Laurel for a couple of years, iterating versions before it went live at the end of 2022.
The restaurant takes up a ground-floor corner spot in the Miami World Center, that still-coming-up development full of shiny new skyscrapers and construction barricades in a section of downtown otherwise known mostly as the home of Eleventh Street Pizza. Laurel has an understated look, brass light fixtures against dark-gray walls, dramatic arches sectioning off the kitchen and a half-circle bar looking straight out of Paris. At one end stands an intricate glass vessel with spouts pointing out in multiple directions, an absinthe decanter hinting at the full page of absinthe offerings on the drink menu.
A former general manager from the Surf Club runs the place, overseeing a staff that seems to have tasted everything, sipped every cocktail, sampled every wine. Sommelier Katriel Schwartz swooped in after we ordered a glass of champagne to offer a sample of the one we requested and also another she thought we might like better, fermented in the bottle for three years to give it a buttery richness.
That glass of bubbly held up well to the first round, starting with a crudo of tuna sliced into a perfect circle, bits of green beans, tomato slices, paper-thin onions, boiled eggs and finely diced olives, all reminiscent of a Nicoise salad. That pretty dish arrived with a brouillade, a bowl of oozy eggs and truffle jus that gets a shaving of black truffle tableside, all of it smearable on a crusty slice of sourdough.
The two are both very good starters, but then came the foie gras. It’s not unlike other foie gras, a sizable slice well-seared and dotted with cocoa nibs and green onions. On the side is a berry gastrique-covered canelé, like a tiny bundt cake from another, much tastier universe, imparting an otherworldly sweetness and depth of textures to the whole dish.
Along with the lobster, we ordered the scallops, a seared trio looking of crusty islands atop a saffron velouté with rock shrimp and English peas. It’s a delicate dish, the sauce almost pot-pie-like, without overpowering the freshness of the scallops.
It’s the details, like the sauce pooled beneath the lobster, that are symbolic of Beltran’s aim with Laurel. “If you look at what makes good French restaurants over a mediocre one, it’s the sauces, all day,” he says.
It’s just as evident in the side of mashed potatoes we received; they’re simply fluffier and creamier than any mash we’ve tried, like potato-flavored whipped cream dusted with chives to remind you that this dish is not, in fact, a dessert.
Of course, this level of skill and ingredients come at a cost; it’s $38 for the foie gras, $52 for the scallops, $59 for the lobster. Two-person dishes hit prices that would top the entire bill at your average corner French brasserie, like $135 for a guinea fowl with chanterelles and $150 for a boeuf en croute. There’s also a $29 burger (which we’re totally trying next time), a knife-and-fork affair of two patties with gruyere, caramelized onions and a brioche bun souped in an au poivre sauce. (The whole thing’s made all the more decadent ordered with a side of bearnaise sauce for the fries.) For many of us, this is a menu with 20th-anniversary prices, and so we hope your marriage lasts that long.
To end the meal, the server recommended an off-menu item, a crepe prepared tableside. Like the sauces on the entree, the one here is flawless: buttery and tart, with a remnant of the liquor that burned off when it was lit aflame. It’s got enough bite to cut through the creme anglaise inside the crepe, which seems almost poached, the dough remaining creamy and smooth. Right at the end, a foie gras torchon is grated over the top to give the dish a savory, earthy depth. It’s a crepe, and surely you’ve had one before, but here you’ll find delicate textures, the indulgent flavor of the foie and, yeah, that sauce.