One of the most anticipated restaurants of 2019 was Ember, and now that it’s open, was it worth the hype? We think so. Brad Kilgore’s upscale contemporary American restaurant is inspired by his Kansas City upbringing, which translates to a menu filled with lots of starchy dishes, thick cuts of dry-aged beef and an assortment of fire-grilled items you wouldn’t expect to be cooked over an open flame. Among the things you’ll find “embered” is an artfully stacked 30-layer lasagna (the cheese layers count, too) made with a vegetarian mushroom ragout and a terrine de campagne that will make pâté-haters into forcemeat-lovers.
It’s worth veering from the wood-fired theme to try one of the best renditions of fried chicken sold in a Miami restaurant (order it with Kilgore’s secret-recipe, thick barbecue sauce or with a drizzle of decadent caviar butter) and a delightful caesar salad composed of mostly beans and a halved soft-boiled egg. The mac and cheese with chicken cracklings and mashed potatoes (a Kilgore family recipe) are good but so, so rich. If it means skipping a side to leave room for dessert—do it. A slice of the giant maduro pie with a scoop of coquito ice cream is the thing we loved the most about our time at Ember, and we’re not even dessert people. Would we care as much about Ember if it weren’t a Brad Kilgore endeavor? It’s hard to say, but any place that serves fried chicken coated in melted butter, plus the most Miami version of banana cream pie we’ve ever tasted, certainly has our attention.