What exactly does it foretell when a striking new hotel and its in-house restaurant employ a jellyfish as their graphic symbol? Such is the query one might ponder upon entering the stunning Victor Hotel on Ocean Drive and its equally arresting restaurant, Vix, which provokes another question – what exactly does Vix mean? Is it a diminutive for Vixen?
Beauty with a bit of a sting, perhaps – and the sting comes with the pricing: $18 for a top-shelf martini, $56 for a mere two stone crab legs, $45 for a cup of coffee (from the esteemed Blue Mountain Jamaican estate) – as well as from the gradual awareness that, no, there is no way in this lifetime, or what remains of it, that you will ever be as beautiful, as slender, as rich, as confident, as coiffed, as jewel-laden, as those dining around you.
Admittedly, it’s Friday night during high season, and the sumptuous dining room with its luxe upholstery and warm woods and sheer curtains and soft amber light is in full throttle like a zeppelin in flight. Bronzed boys sip martinis, their open-collared shirts hinting at their perfect chests while blond women in spangles, bangles and sequins stroll by in impossibly-high heels. There’s a table of ten cosmopolitan twenty-somethings, all of them too beautiful for their beautiful clothes, air-kissing and toasting while speaking in four languages on their shiny new cell phones. The room is full; the parade is on.
And when finally we are seated at our table, there’s an entirely new parade – of food, which is as colorful and enticing as that which whirls around us. This is food from around the globe: the bread is nan, from India, with four sublime dipping sauces, each evoking India’s numerous culinary traditions, and from there, it’s on to Italy, for gnocchi the size of a knuckle, with a piquant tomato sauce, and fragrant roasted garlic, and onward to China, where the vegetable chow mein is spiced so brightly as to merit a soothing cucumber salad to the side. Salads are clean and fresh: grilled asparagus with shitake mushrooms – and a chaser of vegetable consommé.
And then there’s dessert: deep fried mango fritters, with coconut ice milk, honey crisp, and a dipping combination of Indian spices and raw sugars called garam masala which bursts in the mouth with such an explosion of complementary sensations that you could be forgiven for dipping your finger again and again into the small delicate bowl.
Meanwhile, the table of beautiful young things has retired to the upstairs rooftop lounge, where there’s another deejay, apart from the one setting the tone in this dining room. And all through this fantasy-fueled mayhem, the phosphorescent jellyfish in the black-lighted recessed aquarium float up and down, their petticoat tails bobbing to the music of life.
Given the staff’s incredible professionalism and grace (as well as their almost unflagging enthusiasm), it’s no wonder that Vix has been cited as Newcomer of the Year by Zagat and New Times, as well as the recipient of a host of other awards, including a best chef nomination for James Wierzelewski. To dine at Vix is to be on the set of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, a film as surreal as life can sometimes be in South Beach. This is a room with legs – and boobs, and the combination is as intoxicating as the food.
NOTE: Vix @ The Victor has now been replaced by Bice Ristorante
