Karu&Y Restaurant Miami Organic Foods Restaurant

Karu&Y, which will feature alta cocina when it opens in early 2006, is having its own produce grown at a farm in Homestead.

Miami - America has a new food craze that isn’t crazy at all.  The buzz-word heard around restaurants today is ‘natural,’ with sales of organic food leaping from barely one billion dollars a decade ago to more than $10 billion in 2004. The Organic Trade Association expects sales to reach $15 billion in 2005 and $32 billion by 2009.hocolate textures.

Karu&Y, which represents the most significant restaurant investment in Florida’s history at $10 million and is slated to open this fall in Miami, will feature alta cocina, or cuisine of the Americas, and incorporate premium organic ingredients. “Natural food is a natural for creativity,” according to Alberto Cabrera, executive chef at Karu&Y.

Emphasizing the purity of flavor that defines author’s cuisine, Cabrera relies on organic produce grown exclusively for Karu&Y at a farm in Homestead.
 
The reasons for this surge in demand for natural food is not only a fear of carcinogens or the potential health concerns associated with eating food that is possibly tainted with chemical sprays and additives.  Most consumers agree that natural food tastes better and there is ample evidence that in most cases it’s more nutritious.  In the case of animal products, where weight is gained rapidly by birds and animals that hardly move and spend their days being practically force fed, it’s usually much leaner, too.

Along with the growth in sales, natural food has shed its lackluster image.  Gone are the days when natural food stands for dull and organic equals boring.  Soya beans, curds and wheat bran have given way to the flavors of organic passion fruit, mangos, carombola, jack fruit, black zapote, micro herbs and spices ranging in variety from basil and thyme to purse lane and pok choy.
 
In almost any town in America today, you’ll find restaurants serving free-range chicken, vegetables grown with no pesticides, animals raised without hormones, processed foods without preservatives, and even seafood which has been harvested at the right time in the right place and in ways that won’t damage flavor.  A growing number of fishing trawlers now process fish the moment they’re caught, so they wouldn’t be allowed to suffocate, which mars their flavor, while a majority of clams and oysters sold today are grown in the frigid and ecologically pure waters of America’s northern coasts. 


Alta cocina’s cuisine includes a combination of science and artistry. Dishes prompt you to experience and contemplate the purity of each flavor. “Experience” is the operative word in this type of cuisine. Flavors are carefully introduced through mechanisms like smelling napkins that have been spritzed with aromas to enhance the dining experience. The dishes incorporate unusual textures, aromas, flavor combinations, and contexts while stimulating the senses, pleasing the palate, and provoking thought.

“It’s different than traditional cooking. It’s like a science where everything is exact,” Cabrera said. “It's about taking fine ingredients and utilizing a progression of techniques, textures and temperatures in order to extract flavors without altering their taste. Once you have the unaltered flavor it can add new dimensions to accompanying ingredients.”

There are no rules and no boundaries with author’s cuisine, Cabrera explained, and it is not limited to a particular country or region.

 “Alta cocina, but it is not like fusion cuisine where different styles are combined into one dish,” Cabrera said.

Natural and organic doesn’t stop at entrée level.  For desserts, one of the most popular natural ingredients is chocolate.  Karu&Y offers no less than five different natural chocolate textures.

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