The Ultimate Fusion

KOJIN 2.0 IS AN AMERICAN/ASIAN MIX DRIVEN BY THE INVENTIVE MIND OF CHEF PEDRO MEDEROS

Right : Kojin 2.0, on Ponce just south of 8th Street, is run by Miami native Chef Pedro Mederos and his wife Katherine.
Left: Interior vibe feels like a neighborhood hangout in San Francisco, with home style furnishings and bookshelves.

Coral Gables is nothing if not a cauldron of new ideas in the world of creative cuisine. Sometimes it’s easy to pigeonhole a restaurant by its national source of cooking – Italian, American, French, and so forth. These are the restaurants of comfort food. Then there are the fusions, and the mixes of flavor that defy categorizing. Kojin 2.0 is one of these.

To begin with, you have a Hispanic chef trained in traditional French cooking who cooks American food. Add to that a spectrum of Asian flavors, layered with inspired nuances and clever pairings of texture and tastes. That might give you an inkling of the truly origi- nal array of dishes served at Kojin 2.0, which has already garnered a loyal clientele since opening last year.

The location, a cozy space on Ponce just south of 8th Street, has a history of creativity in the kitchen. It is the former home of Eating House,  known for the clever concoctions of Chef Giorgio Rapicavoli (Cap’n Crunch pancakes anyone?) followed by The Lion and the Rambler, another bastion of tasting menus. Chef Pedro Mederos now wows clients with dishes like venison carpaccio with egg yolk jam and katsuomirin flakes, or shallot nut eggplant with maitake mushrooms. If you noticed the Japanese flavors added on, then you’ve hit on Chef Pedro’s métier.

The restaurant, run by Miami-native Pedro and his wife Katherine, feels like a neighborhood hangout in San Francisco. Offto one corner is a reading chair by a bookcase, which has a record player atop shelves filled with LPs; a Dizzy Gillespie album is on display. The food is all the more spectacular when contrasted with this humble, cool-vibe setting.

While you can avail yourself of one of two tasting menus ($95 for six dishes or $125 for nine), we stuck to the refreshingly short entree menu. This speaks to Chef Pedro’s obsessive search for the new and interesting, as well as his confidence in the selection. On the night we visited, the regular menu had six starters and four entrees. Period.

“Go to any restaurant, and the minute you have to turn pages to get through an a la carte menu, there’s no way they’re executing all of this with any level of perfection,” the chef told us. “Some of the things are going to be dogs. The worst question a server gets is, ‘What’s good?’ Here, the menu is small, so everything is good.”

Top Left: Scallop crudo with sweet and tart apple yuzu sauce
Top Right: Hamachi collar with parsnip purée and asparagus
Bottom Left: Osaka chicharrones (Latin-style fried pork skin)
Bottom: Smoked short rib atop squash and celery root

Among the starters, we tried the Osaka Chicharrones and the Scallop Crudo. The chicharrones, a Latin staple of fried pork skin ($9), became quickly addictive when dipped in the accompanying ranch-style togarashi sauce and Kyoto onion dip. The half dozen scallops ($18) sat in a pool of sweet and tart apple yuzu with pistachio sauce to the side, topped with a squirt of kosho, a Japanese chili paste with a citrus tang. A complex dance of flavors straight from Chef Pedro’s foodie brain.

For the main dishes, we enjoyed the Wreck Fish sauteed in beurre blanc, sitting atop a golden beet puree ($38). But we loved the smoked short rib with demi-glace, atop a squash and celery root puree to balance the smokiness with a touch of sweetness ($48).Tender and exquisite.

The showstopper – and most unusual dish of the evening – was the Hamachi Collar for Two, with parsnip puree, asparagus, and a smoked trout sauce ($80). Also known as grilled yellowtail collar, this is the part of the fish just above the gills and below the head, considered a delicacy in Japan. Kojin’s is served with a smoked trout sauce, which is really a rich white wine sauce based on the smoked trout roll, as our waitress explained, which brings an umami taste to the dish.

“A lot of the things on the menu are seasonal,” says Chef Pedro. “So, like the Wreck Fish, which is a hybrid of snowy grouper and yellow ridge grouper, that’ll be on the menu for as long as we can get it and then change to another fish. The hamachi collar? We’re honestly processing so much hamachi that I had to put something like that on the menu. But the minute that we stop using hamachi elsewhere, that collar will come off.”

So, while the collar will probably be gone by the time you read this, you will still thank us for heading to Kojin 2.0. While they don’t have a liquor license yet, their excellent selection of sake, wine, and Japanese beer makes up for it. 

KOJIN 2.0
804 PONCE DE LEON BLVD
786.747.1404
KOJIN2.COM