Many people often ask me how I pick the restaurants I visit and most of the time it's really just from reading blogs and magazines and seeing what's trending. But I also love soliciting advice from friends, especially ones that are in the know about food and my friend Vince is a great example of that (doesn't hurt that he works at Food and Wine as well). So when I was looking for place in our hood, I reached out and asked his opinion and he mentioned MIUSA - I had actually never heard about it before and I probably would have never found it if he hadn't recommended it - so I'm glad I asked!
The place stands for "Made in the USA" and it run by 3 Italian friends, cute right? The decor is rustic but still with a touch of modern - very chill, cool vibe. The menu is extremely veggie friendly and has a ton of options for all types of eaters. It's mostly small plates but it also has several main dishes too. We both wanted to order everything from the menu but pared it down to: grilled peaches ($10), spiced corn ($10), creamy spinach ($10), stuffed green tomatoes ($10), triple cooked fries ($10), and for my lone meat/seafood dish I got the seared scallops ($10). They also had a great sounding burger that a lot of people around us got but there wasn't any more room in my stomach for all this food. The waiter had recommended that we only needed to split 4 dishes, but clearly Lav and I were ambitious.
We started with the grilled peaches (although I would recommend you end with it since it's fairly sweet). It served with stracciatella, mint, honey and toasted almonds - fantastic sweet dish. I'm usually not a fan of grilled fruits but this had a nice combination of grilled smokey char and sweetness to it. Next I tried the creamy spinach and it's just really hard to not love a creamed spinach dish and this was no exception. I moved on to my scallop dish which had 4 scallops on a bed of sweat pea risotto and brown butter. The scallops had shrunk to a pretty small size but because there were a good number of them, it didn't really matter too much because it probably would have netted out to be the same amount of scallops if it were only 2 big ones. This was a classic seared scallop dish and I really enjoyed the pairing with the pea risotto - it was a fairly decent sized plate for 1 person to eat on their own. Next I tried the triple cooked fries with cheese and spring onions. Holy fuck - these were so super addictive. They were nice thick cut steak fries cooked perfectly crispy and then it had a nice gooey layer of cheese on top - but it wasn't the nasty velveta cheese kind but almost like a very gourmet swiss type. I was trying not to eat the entire dish but I could seriously see myself housing an entire plate on my own. Next I tried the spiced corn which was like a creamed corn dish - Lav and I agreed that while it was a good dish, it didn't blow us away like the other ones. Lastly I had the goat cheese and mozzarella stuffed green tomato in a spicy gazpacheo. It's a pretty unique take on green tomatoes (I feel like they are usually of the fried variety - or am I just thinking about the movie?!) and it was a surprisingly refreshing dish given that it was stuffed with 2 kinds of cheeses.
Not surprisingly, we left room for dessert and got the cheesecake. This is, unfortunately, where the meal went a bit south, not because the cheesecake was bad but because we waited forever for it to come out. I mean it got to the point where we just wanted to cancel it and get the check because we had assumed they forgot about it. Finally when we did ask for the check, the cheesecake mysteriously made an appearance. Luckily it was a solid dessert that didn't sour our meal. It was a light fluffy and warm cheesecake with a creme brulee top and served with this fantastic strawberry ice cream and puree. I don't know what it was about the ice cream but it tasted super fresh and very fruity - it wasn't too heavy on the cream or sweetness, it just tasted like real strawberries.
Overall, this place is a lovely place for dinner and it's far enough off the main drag of Bedford Ave that it's relatively quiet and not crowded. While I normally am not a huge fan of the small plate concept, it worked really well here because the dishes were really enough for 2 people to split and it was enough to make you satisfied as they were all more than just 1 tiny bite per person. My only complaint would be that the service was a bit disorganized and really dragged out at the end. Maybe it's just a clash of the impatient New Yorker and the very laid back Italian staff but it did kind of frustrate me in the end. Luckily the food and vibe of the place was good enough to keep it in the 4+ fork range. Total bill: $72/pp with tax, tip and drinks
Photo Credit: Yelp
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