Foodie on Duty - Family Food

Family food. For most people, it’s what they get from sitting around the dinner table with their parents and siblings. But in the restaurant business, it’s the food that separates the staff from the customers: Family food includes the meals we get before the diners dine in, and the extra treats we get behind closed doors on a slow night when the kitchen staff is especially bored.

It isn’t always good. For example, at an old restaurant in Manhattan where I used to work as a waitress, the food was, shall we say… “economical.” The restaurant referred to it as the “family meal,” but I lovingly called it “dog food pasta” – for what do you serve a dog but leftovers? It might not have been horrible, but it did taste comical. It was basically pasta with a balsamic reduction sauce and all the leftover meats from the night before. So in the same dish, you would get ribbons of fettuccine, overcooked penne, tomatoes, fish bones and cut up pieces of steak, salmon, chorizo and chicken. I’m all for innovation, but dog food pasta nights would make me feel like a human garbage disposal for all the food the restaurant owners were too cheap to throw away.

Family food, in essence, is the kitchen’s way of showing love to the staff. Fortunately for me, when I switched over to Miranda over on the Northside of Berry, the food was considerably better. Being an Italian restaurant with a heavy Latin influence, there was usually a pasta or rice dish dressed up this way or that – but man, was there variety!

Sure, there were simpler nights where we’d go with a trio of starches made up of fresh tortilla chips, fried potatoes and penne pasta. And then there were other nights when we’d go fancier, with juicy, drippy, hot slices of skirt steak fresh off the grill with just enough char to give it a smoky edge. Even though I literally wolfed it down in a matter of seconds, it was the best steak of my life. On another night, we were served a big pan of oniony-garlic fried rice studded with bright bits of carrot. The pièce de résistance was a huge dish of garlicky Prince Edward mussels in marinara. They were plump, fresh and incredibly tender. The best part of the meal came towards the end, when I could spoon the tomato-infused mussel broth over the rice and shovel it into my mouth before the customers filed in.

The things I loved best at Miranda, however, were the treats we’d get to try that were most definitely off the menu. Sometimes it was a fish-based pozole, a rich, soothing soup made with huge white corn kernels called hominy. We would be given wedges of lime to brighten up the dish. Little bowls of onion and freshly diced green chili were served on the side for you to load your bowl with at your own discretion. Another time, one of the staff brought over some rabbit, which was cooked in a red chili sauce. And yes, Thumper does taste surprisingly like chicken. And then there are the treats us servers steal in our free moments. A little taste of marinated baby octopus, a bowl of extra cheese-laden polenta or a few fried fingerling potatoes sprinkled with rosemary. Little slices of churrasco the cooks made on the fly on a slow night. Sometimes they’d bust out a small stack of tortillas and we’d make tacos out of the zesty chipotle chicken we utilized in our gnocchi dishes. If we were lucky, one of the chefs would mess up on something – like over-bake the tres leches – and we’d have a whole stainless steal pan of rejected sponge cake flavored with a touch of cinnamon. Because it would be overdone, all the edges were hot, crisp and crunchy like graham crackers.

My last meal at Mirandawas another trio of starches: mangú, nachos and penne. The penne was a simple offering of olive oil, white wine and garlic. The nachos were a less delicate affair of flavorful, Dominican-style black beans and spicy, juicy chorizo that were punctuated with the crunch of freshly fried tortilla chips underneath a blanket of melting cheese. Last, but not least, came the mangú – smashed sweet and tangy plantains cooked with cream, salt, pepper and a thick layer of Parmesan.

It’s been a wonderful month-and-a-half at Miranda, and I’m going to miss this beautiful restaurant. My eyes will no longer drink in the classic Italian-Mexican aesthetic of the beautifully patterned bread-and-butter plates, and the rich wood paneling that lines the tall, shining glass windows. My ears will no longer hear the mesh of Italian, French and 90s Mexican rock music. And my mouth will no longer taste someone’s sister’s tamales brought in from home, or those moist and buttery cranberry-studded scones eaten on the sly. I know that there are waiters throughout the neighborhood barely scraping by on a slice of pizza before service, or chowing down on dog food pasta in between shifts, so I feel lucky to have been one of the few who was able to touch, taste and experience the family in family food.

Miranda Restaurant
80 Berry Street
718-387-0711