M Bar Open on Las Olas; Prepare to Swoon Over the Sweetbreads

Photos by Melissa McCart

M Bar's excellent sweetbreads.

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M Bar has quietly debuted at the corner of East Las Olas and NE 13th Avenue as a sibling to the evergreen Italian restaurant Mancini's. Owner Jack Mancini closed his namesake restaurant a couple of doors down with plans to open it next door to M Bar in August.

At this spiffed-up corner hangout, M Bar's plate-glass windows and 360-degree bar offers a slew of vantage points for people-watching. Flat screens animate overhead at the bar. Orange accents, dark floors, and leather upholstery warm up the 3,500-square-foot space.

Apparently there's a garden as indicated by the Handcrafted Drinks From the Garden list, which features herbal, fruit-forward cocktails such as the East Las Olas with
Mount Gay

The fiddleheads special needed maple syrup.

​Eclipse, cilantro, mint, kiwi, lime, and simple syrup ($13). It's a salad in a pint glass that's big on flavor but needs a tweak of refinement; soggy greens aren't an ideal condiment. The drink menu also chronicles a solid collection of hand-crafted beers and wines by the glass as well as a laundry list of tinis.

"Have you had tapas?" asks our server, an effusive Midwest transplant who flexes her training on my dining companion Eric and me. The menu, arranged by small, medium, and large plates -- with callouts such as foie gras PB&J and lamb lolly pops -- makes it abundantly clear this tapas place isn't a Spanish joint.

Despite the riffs on childhood food, the cuisine at M Bar isn't child's play. Brother/sister chef team Kevin and Lauren Anderson showcase a huge menu with an extensive ingredient list in its first go-round of the farm-to-table concept, with ingredients that may be local but many of which are in season elsewhere. 

Take the fiddlehead dish ($8), baby fern spirals that signal the first signs of spring above the Mason-Dixon Line. The stunning presentation atop Swiss chard is a bitter on top of bitter disappointment, says Eric, who says it needs maple syrup or something sweet to offset the bite (it does). More compelling is the super-fresh hamachi with an umami miso butterscotch and shaved cucumber ($6), though at three bites, they're not kidding about small plates. 

The hamachi with a miso butterscotch.

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We swooned over the sweetbreads, a play on chicken and waffles garnished with a fried quail egg ($13). Despite that the dish is overdressed -- potatoes and hazel nuts and a waffle? It's pretty freaking delicious -- as guilty a pleasure as the plate that lends inspiration.

The texture was a bit off, but the pig ears were addictive just the same.

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I hoarded the dog-treats-gone-gourmet in the form of supercrunchy shredded pig ears ($5). With hope, they'll become more pliant as the chefs fine-tune the side: Some bites were hard enough to crack a tooth but maybe worth it. The stunner was our afterthought order: charred octopus, creamed fresh hearts of palm, and sea beans ($7). I had never had fresh hearts, which were a bright and savory complement to the protein.

The grilled octopus comes with creamy hearts of palm.

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On this first visit to M Bar, we opted for adventure. More conservative diners can gravitate toward flatbreads ($8 to $10), farm burgers ($8), or a good ol' New York strip ($38), though if the Andersens' ambition prevails, they'll be missing out on a series of compelling flavors.

As much as I look forward to a next time, I'm bothered by a series of questions: How local is the farm-to-table menu, a hallmark of the genre? How will the restaurant ensure quality control on a menu this large? And how will locals in South Florida respond to a higher price per dish for less food per plate than its competitors? We will soon find out.

The grand opening of M Bar is Thursday night.  

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Follow Clean Plate Charlie on Twitter: @CleanPlateBPB.