Audio By Carbonatix
The question is not, is three Michelin star restaurant-experienced Chef
Elida Villarroel ready for Coral Gables, but rather, is Coral Gables
ready for her?
Pensive and profound, yet uncomplicated. Calculated with a penchant for impulse. The mother of two and a half year old Andrea at home, whom she refused to name Charlotte (despite a love for the name) since it sounded “too snobby,” is a lover of contrasts.
To
understand how Villarroel arrived at Charlotte’s
Bistro, her “other baby,” ironically parked on the Mile next to Le Provencal’s new home,
you need to know a few facts about her journey. It was a sprint to the
finish, but to get here, a beautiful story, chapters taking their own
sweet time to unfold.
Hailing from Caracas, Venezuela, our Miss
Universe
has traveled the world, studied the philosophy and literature of its
greatest thinkers, and lived in some of its grandest capitals like
London and Paris, to now rest her box of souvenirs in Miami a mere six
months ago.
How to explain Villarroel’s chocolate soup… Well, chocolate — Venezuelan
chocolate — is an obsession of hers. But more so of her guests after
they sample this dessert that can perhaps best be described as delirium
in a ramekin. But trying to come up with words for what
happens when a melting quinelle of chilled homemade coffee ice cream rests on the wafer-like crust of warm
chocolate espresso ganache is insanity personified. In fact,
it’s worthy of its own rehab center. Perhaps this temptress channels her passion, zapped from fingertip to silken, molten pool, in a powerful electric charge not even tempered chocolate can resist.
Most recently, the classically-trained chef cooked privately out of her own home in Caracas at Canta la Mesa
(“Sing the Table,”) a chef’s-table-only restaurant in her
garden with room for just one party a night.
“The client would come in and say ‘I have a deer’ or ‘I have huge
lobsters from Los Roques’… ‘What can you do with them?'” explains
Villarroel, of her ultimate collaboration with diners, where guests are
allowed into a space traditionally reserved for
farmers and suppliers. Concepts like this — although Villarroel will be
the first to shun the deduction of such an intimate experience into a commercial convention — are few and far between, reserved perhaps
for market-based restaurants abroad. We’re speaking of the spontaneous creations that happen when shoppers can bring their
spoils to stalls where cooks improvise a dish to be devoured on the
spot.
“I
would say ‘This is my menu today,'” she recalls of this most exquisite
of scenarios. “‘We have very beautiful weather there. It’s not too hot
and not too cold. It was romantic, like your own home. Well, it was
my home — and mi casa es su casa. Nobody knew about it at first, and
then once word got out, everyone wanted wanted to know what it was all
about.”
What drew parties from eight to 30 per nightly seating
is likely the same curiousity — the allure in both the mystery and
the challenge of improvisation — relished with gusto by Villarreol.
To say Charlotte Bistro opened up on a whim is no hyperbole. In Villarroel’s
case, the flitting moment was a stop in Miami on her way back to Paris, escaping disillusionment with politics at home. But the Magic City is a
familiar place, too, where a friend from her days in French culinary school, Angela Garcia of
Lovely Daze Dessert Bar, and her two older brothers, live. It has been her point of arrival and departure in the States
over the
years, for family holidays to New York, D.C., and Philadelphia.
New
Orleans made a bewitching, lasting impression, particularly its French Quarter. Villarroel’s playful approach to the culinary craft comes to life in a
image recalled from a stroll down Bourbon Street one afternoon. A girl was
swinging, legs popping in and out like a pendulum from where she was ensconced in a nook
in the storefront facade. Tick tock.
Her style is, well, not over-stylized. When asked of its most significant influence, she sings the praises of a buttoned-up Michelin-wielding mentor, Michel Bras, with whom she worked at his renowned Laguiole in the south of France. She would go out into the mountains with fellow young cooks to collect wild flowers for the restaurant. She finds beauty in the imperfections of nature, and its extraordinary details, letting ingredients speak for themselves. “I don’t work too much the food,” she shares. “Some one like Adria, you know at El Bulli, he works it, but that can be beautiful, too. But going natural speaks beautifully to me.”
Charlotte Bistro
(305) 443-3003
264 Miracle Mile
Coral Gables
Mon – Fri 11:30 a.m. – 3 p.m. (daily lunch specials)
Mon – Sat 6 -10:30 p.m. (dinner)
