Chef Walter Martino – mommythefoodie

Food: 4/5

Ambiance: 4.5/5

Service: 3.75/5

🎶 It’s the most wonderful time of the year 🎶 Miami Spice is here! Ok I realize it began almost a month ago (🙈) but I just got back… so let the festivities begin!

Kaori is a pretty cool way to kick off Miami Spice. The ambiance deserves to be mentioned: Kaori is a small restaurant in Brickell with all white walls and white tables. HOWEVER the walls are used as floor to ceiling projections. What kind of projections you ask? Well tonight we visited Paris, Hong Kong, and sat in the middle of a an aquarium. Pair that with a DJ spinning as you eat and you are now cool 😎

Now to the food. The Miami Spice menu looked delicious so we chose not to mess with it.

We began with the veggie tempura. As a Latin girl, I love me a pair of high heels. We’ve also established I love food. Imagine my joy when this showed up at my table. To top it off, my friends at Kaori drizzle these fried veggies with truffle honey. Yum.

Next was the tuna avocado roll. The yellowfin tuna and the avocado gave this roll some serious creaminess which was helped by the fact that it was wrapped in rice paper. The crunch came from the cucumber and it was topped with Kaori sauce which was some kind of sweet mayo concoction. It was delicious. And pretty to look at.
For more creaminess, our third appetizer was the salmon tartar. Also absolutely delicious, though if I had to pick between raw dishes, the roll won.
Next up, entrees. I’m pretty sure this was the menu item I saw online that convinced me I needed to try Kaori. It did not disappoint. Helloooo fig and cheese ravioli. Stuffed with fig and Pecorino and paired with a sage butter sauce, this dish was my favorite of the night. The sweetness of the figs combined with the saltiness of the cheese. Loved it. I also loved that it was paired with a light sauce and not a heavy cream based sauced. This dish was light yet super tasty. Yum yum yum.

We also tried the filet mignon. It was very good, but as I ate it I felt like an unfaithful girlfriend. All I could think about were those ravioli 😍

The desserts were fine. Tiramisu, mille-feuille, and Nutella panacotta. After my appetizer arrived in a shoe and fig cheese raviolis left my head spinning, the desserts were kind of disappointing. Meh.