Adventurous dining in Palm Beach? In search of bizarre cuisine…

Adventurous dining in Palm Beach? In search of bizarre cuisine…

This week’s Stirring the Pot: Conversations with Culinary Celebrities at Guild Hall in East Hampton features Andrew Zimmern, a chef, food writer, teacher and television personality best known for the program  Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern on the Travel Channel, in which he explores strange dishes around the world.

Which led us to the question: does Palm Beach County have any unusual or daring regional cuisine? We didn’t find many local restaurants that ventured too far off the beaten culinary path – Palm Beach diners appreciate haute cuisine and seafood more than anything else – but we did uncover a few unusual dishes at some of the area’s top-ranked restaurants.

Chef Aaron Black of PB Catch, for example, offers salmon pastrami and octopus torchon. At Coolinary Café, Chef Tim Lipman serves some of the county’s most interesting and delectable dishes, such as rabbit tacos, and an innovative take on chicken and waffles: jalapeño-cheddar waffles served alongside preserved lemon and stellar Southern-style chicken. At Buccan, another local favorite, Chef Clay Conley serves innovative small dishes including hand-made squid ink orecchiete and stuffed quail with sweet potato, foie gras and cherries.

If you’re willing to go beyond Palm Beach County in search of novelty, Zimmern does have some suggestions – in this episode he discovers buccaneer-style bacon, chocolate anchovies, and crab juice roasted on ancient fire on Florida’s Conquistador Coast; in this episode he explores Miami’s Cuban sandwich, Joe’s Stone Crab and Pan Con Minuta; and he also drops by Key West in this episode, where he tries horse conch, hogfish and cooked iguana!

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