WINE ISSUE

FOOD

The 2nd Annual INDULGE 25 List Locals’ Guide to SOBEWFF

Fabio & Maria Trabocchi of Fiola in

Coral Gables

INDULGE FEBRUARY / MARCH 2019 / $6.95

MIAMIINDULGE.COM

THE LOCAL

23 COCKTAIL CULTURE Because drinks just taste better when your style is this cool.

24 NINE TO DINEFloral designs are a feast for the eyes on these pieces of fine china.

26 LAUNCHING NOWLincoln Road’s two new food halls; Aventura Mall’s smokin’ Michael Mina-Ayesha Curry restaurant; Miami Cocktail Company’s 100-calorie spritzes; Valentine’s Day getaways; Jaguar’s electric I-Pace.

30 CULTURESee what’s new at the Coconut Grove Arts Festival and Art Wynwood. Enjoy a laugh with Miami Improv Comedy Club. Support live arts at Miami Dade College.

32 BEAUTYNutrition expert (and pizza enthusiast) Monica Auslander Moreno takes a no-judgment approach to eating. Also: An Aventura couple takes its fragrance brand global.

34 MY 305 STYLEDr. Michael Cheng, interim dean of FIU’s Chaplin School of Hospitality & Tourism Management, lets us in on his favorite foodie musts.

36 PHILANTHROPYAt the glamorous Vizcaya Ball, INDULGE asked guests about the best meal they had in the past year.

42 SOURCEThe beloved but long-gone Lincoln Road kitchenwares store real.life.basic is back with a pop-up outlet on Biscayne Boulevard.

��in this issue

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12 INDULGE | FEBRUARY / MARCH 2019 | miamiindulge.com

acations to Miami and a Columbia University MBA led Simone Mayer toward a career that extends from the best restaurants in the world to home kitchens in Miami Shores and Coconut Grove.

“My family lived down here and every time I would come to visit, I would walk on Lincoln Road,” said Mayer, who was born

in South Africa. “I just knew that there were lots of opportunities to have a high-end, hip store.”

So she opened a high-end, hip store on Lincoln Road in the late ’90s called real.life.basic. It had a 2,000-square-foot kitchen where up-and-coming chefs like Michael Schwartz, Michelle Bernstein and Lorena Garcia came to host cooking classes (and, later, film TV pilots).

Professional chefs who shopped at real.life.basic lamented to Mayer the lack of design-minded, durable plates, bowls and other products available at wholesale.

“We had so many people coming from hotels and restaurants that were opening in South Beach, saying, ‘You guys should really do something for the industry because there’s really nothing,’” Mayer said. “So we did.”

She and business partner Mayda Perez in 2002 opened Front of the House (FOH), selling directly to industry professionals and shifting real.life.basic to an e-commerce site. A few years later, the company added room360 by FOH, which sells products for hotel rooms and bathrooms.

FOH now designs and manufactures some of the items it carries, and it is determined to be a good player in the hospitality community; it recently donated pantry items to a cooking school in Haiti.

Despite all the positive momentum, Mayer said her customers clamored for her to open another brick-and-mortar version of real.life.basic. In September she obliged, swinging open the doors to a real.life.basic outlet on Biscayne Boulevard that she plans to keep around for “a year or two.”

“It’s an opportunity for people to be able to get their hands on this really cool-looking product collection,” Mayer said. “People can get items that are really made for high-volume commercial use, but they are really, really well priced. I think that is what’s going to resonate for people.”

And FOH isn’t done. The business has purchased the space next door to real.life.basic and will be turning it into an event and cooking venue — or, as Mayer calls it, “a community center for chefs and foodies.”WORDS BY CHRISTIANA LILLY / PHOTOGRAPHY BY FELIPE CUEVAS

real.life.basic, 7646 Biscayne Boulevard, Miami; 305-987-2754; reallifebasic.com.

V

The beloved but long-gone Lincoln Road kitchenwares store real.life.basic has started

a second life as a pop-up outlet.

the local SOURCE

Now open in a temporary space on Biscayne Boulevard, real.life.basic sells the same items found in top restaurants and hotels.

UPPlate

42 INDULGE | FEBRUARY / MARCH 2019 | miamiindulge.com

Simone Mayer, top right in white jacket, stands

in real.life.basic with business partner Mayda

Perez, with whom she opened Front of the House

(FOH), which caters to restaurant professionals.

At real.life.basic, the same items that FOH

carries are available to the public.

SIMONE’S PICKS

1. The Kyoto pinch bowl is perfect for crudité, crackers, dips and condiments.

2. Palm wood slatted baskets are great for towels in a bathroom, to corral items in a pantry, or on an ottoman.

3. Made for heavy use, our porcelain accessories are fun essentials for everything from snacks to dinner parties.

4. Metroweave placemats — one of our core product lines since our start — are long-lasting and inexpensive.

Four faves from real.life.basic founder Simone Mayer:

‘People can get items that are really made for high-volume commercial use,

but they are really, really well priced. ’