100 Favorite Dishes: No 1. -- Trout Amandine From Rack's Downtown Eatery + Tavern

By John Linn Tue., May 31 2011 at 7:00 AM

As a countdown to the Best of Broward Palm Beach 2011, coming in June, Clean Plate Charlie is serving up a hundred of our favorite dishes in South Florida. Send your own nominations to Deirdra.Funcheon@BrowardPalmBeach.com.

No. 1: Trout Amandine from Rack's Downtown Eatery + Tavern

How do you pick something like the number-one dish out of a list of 100 greats? To me, it's got to boil down to something unexpected and memorable -- a dish that stays
with you long after you leave the restaurant, crawling into your head and leaving you wanting for days, imagining that you had just one more bite, one more crumb to savor. That's exactly the feeling this most unlikely of top 100 dishes leaves you with. I say unlikely, because, honestly, who'd have thunk it? Trout is a fairly boring animal, by fishy standards, with a "fresh water" taste that some people find too strong. It's oily and unrefined, better-suited for a fish fry than a five-star plate. And amandine (aka, almondine)? This antiquated preparation is something you'd find out of the tattered, yellowed pages of the Rainbow Room Cookbook. Yet despite all those factors, Rack's version of this vintage dish just frickin' works. The trout is supple and moist, pan-fried skin-on and coated with a thin sheen of bread crumbs and slivered almonds to add texture. And it's plated above the most beautiful bouquet of summer vegetables -- large butter and lima beans, succulent sweet corn, and wispy flourishes of grassy micro greens -- a mixture that completely tames the oily, pungent nature of the fish. To finish it off, there's the soy-apple emulsion; a rich, acidic, sweet, tangy, headstrong beast of a sauce that you'll want to swipe your outstretched forefinger through again and again. Yep, Rack's most winning dish may not be its most noticeable. But I'd be content to eat this dish a hundred times over; each time as great as that very first bite.

Rack's Downtown Eatery + Tavern
402 Plaza Real, Boca Raton

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Racks Downtown Eatery and Tavern

Mizner Park, 402 Plaza Real, Boca Raton, FL

Category: Restaurant

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almondine, Boca Raton, Mizner, New Orleans, Rack's Downtown Eatery, trout amandine

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Ashley

So sad that someone would spend so much of their time complaining about such trivial things. Isn't that the point of having your own blog, Dennis?

John

So sad that these clowns have to shill for bad places to make a few loser bucks

John L.

Maybe I hit a nerve here... you're really spinning out of control bud. Maybe the empty ad spaces on your website for the past year and a half are starting to get to you. Just keep trying, Dennis! Someday, someone might give a crap what you have to say! All you have to do is repeat yourself enough...

Paul

It seems legitimate to ask you to justify your selection. How many of the top 10 have you had John.? None? You have no integrity. You make stuff up. You shill on demand. You have no soul. You're a total tool.

I guess you couldn't find another job so you're back working for peanuts for the biggest joke publication in the country?

Fat Hand

I'm just shocked Dennis didn't agree with this choice.

John L.

The terms are pretty much interchangable - most Americans know it as Almondine, but you're right, it's also called Amandine.

Go eat this, then prepare to salt that hat.

Max

But it's not how THEY spell it on their menu, which it seems to me should be the deciding vote on which to use.I don't eat fish with nuts on it (a taste aversion initially triggered by the frozen halibut squares "Amandine" they used to serve in my high school cafeteria), but I'd go for Henry's Rainbow Trout Almondine (they do spell it that way) with wild rice pilaf before Rack's with lima beans. I also don't want soy butter. Men shouldn't eat soy. I prefer trout simply fried in butter (maybe brown butter or lemon butter), and now that I'm an adult I choose not to eat Lima Beans, period. BTW they have trout every day at Truluck's, Henry's and Season's 52 and it's a special 5 days a week at YOLO, so it's not all that unusual. Of course they don't use butter at Season's, so it's a real loser there. You can't eat trout if it's not cooked in butter.Now this is a serious question. How many of your "top 10" have you personally tried? If you've never had the Dover Sole Meuniere, then how would you know? From your review, you just seemed excited to have trout as if it was some. Sole is substantially better than trout, particularly dover sole.

John L.

Yep, you're right, I made all this stuff up because it makes me feel good. You're a moron, Dennis. Stop using the fake name, too - posting all your misinformed, angry comments under another name isn't going to help you fill those "Your Ad Here" boxes on your site any quicker.

John L.

Also: learn to read, dude. The bulk of your argument rest upon this line you quote me on, regarding trout being "rare on South Florida menus." That line does not exist in this post. Here's what it does say: "Trout is a fairly boring animal,by fishy standards, with a "fresh water" taste that some people findtoo strong."

Truth is, I don't need to dignify you with an argument no matter what you call yourself. After all, you're a guy who has frequently visited our site to spout racist, homophobic, sexist, or otherwise inane remarks towards just about everything you don't agree with, which is essentially anything that doesn't originate from your mouth. And the simple fact that you actually shut your trap long enough to consume food a couple times a day hardly makes you an expert on the subject. Furthermore, your claims that I've never tried any of the dishes I've put in this list are baseless and arrogant - why should I feel the need to defend myself from them? You have zero ground to stand on, just your own delusions, which certainly won't win an argument here any more than they'll fill the perpetually blank spaces on your website where ads are supposed to be.

Max

How many times do I have to explain the concept of screen names to you? Its really not complicated. Nobody else uses their real name. That's why they call it a screen name. Try to grasp this.Unlike you, I don't write about dishes I've never tried, or try to claim that something I've had is better than someone I've never tried, which is exactly the case here. It seems to me that the guy who claims that Trout is "rare on south florida menus" is the one who is misinformed. Maybe I'll just give all of your advertisers free advertising for a few months if they pull their ads here and you guys can work on your resumes. Frankly, if your employer wasn't such a low class organization you should be fired for posting a comment like that. Employees have to suck it up. Nobody cares who I am. But who wants to read what you have to say if you can't even defend your big choice without calling people names, which is always an indication that I've struck exactly the right nerve and you have nothing else to say.At least fix the name of the dish so you don't appear to be a twit in Google perpetuity. Countless times you guys get corrected by comments and you don't even fix it. Christ, it's your big #1 pick and you can't even copy the name of the dish off of the menu correctly.