Ivy Bar, The Collab, and The Frost Symphony
One of the least appreciated cultural gems of Coral Gables is the Frost Symphony Orchestra, a world-class orchestra right here in our midst, which performs at the University of Miami’s Gusman Hall. It’s where we ended up on a recent Saturday night, for a brilliant performance of a new work that Lincoln Center commissioned UM professor Etienne Charles to write, along with another new work and Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet” suite. The same work by Charles was performed a week later by the Frost Symphony at Lincoln Center itself (see story pg. 24).
Etienne Charles is a renowned jazz trumpet player and one of the staff of award-winning musicians at UM’s Frost School of Music. His composition, entitled “San Juan Hill,” commemorates the multi-cultural community that lived in the blighted neighborhood bulldozed to construct Lincoln Center. For the performance, Charles partnered with members of Creole Soul, a jazz band with piano, bass, saxophone, guitar, flute, and drums. They occupied center stage, surrounded by 80-some members of the Frost Symphony, all conducted by Maestro Gerard Schwarz.
It was a resounding coda for the evening, which began several hours earlier at the Ivy bar of the THesis hotel, moving from there to The Collab restaurant, also at the hotel. The THesis stands directly across U.S.-1 from UM’s campus and is therefore a perfect place to start a night on the town ending at Gusman Hall.
Ivy is a third-floor open-air patio bar that looks over the lushly green streets of South Gables. Their specialty is the cocktail lineup created by Vincent Fabris, the French director of beverages at THesis. We tried two of them – a bold espresso-gin cocktail made with amarula cream liqueur, and a sweet refreshing vodka-raspberry cocktail. Both went down with no resistance, and the pleasant outdoor experience added to the refreshment.
Next came the culinary delight of The Collab, now considered one of the best restaurants in the Gables. Its menu is eclectic in the best sense, though described as Latin-based with Asian fusions. No matter. Not a single dish disappointed, starting with the blue crab croquettes ($16) and the crispy chicken ($22), crunchy fried chicken pieces with an exquisite sauce based on Japanese green onion and agrodolce, a sweet and sour Italian condiment. I could have eaten both all night but had to save room for another small plate – the salmon tartare in a creamy sauce of chili peppers and pistachio furikake – and entrees of pan-seared Faroe Islands salmon and beef tenderloin with pumpkin puree and truffle demiglace. Both top notch.
The atmosphere of Collab is enhanced by oblique planter boxes suspended overhead, with vines dripping down like a mini garden of Babylon. There is a warm glow from the open kitchen’s wood burning oven, used to make a half-dozen different pizzas; we tried a chicken sausage variation with red onions and tahini aoli that received a hearty thumbs up from all at the table. We ended the meal with their signature sticky toffee pudding and a sophisticated pistachio cheesecake. It’s easy to park at THesis, either with valet up front or in visitor parking behind the hotel, off U.S.-1. To reach UM from there, you go north on U.S.-1 and turn on Stanford Drive. You can drive straight to the parking garage opposite the Lowe Museum and walk from there, or drive south on Ponce then right on San Amaro Drive to the Gusman, where there is valet parking. We grabbed a street spot on Amaro and strolled from there. We needed that after the feast at The Collab.
