A stunning setting for impressive eats

BY VICTORIA PESCE ELLIOTT

velliott@MiamiHerald.com

CHERYL A. GUERRERO / MIAMI HERALD STAFF

Brosia's best includes Catalan-style shrimp.

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IF YOU GO

Place: Brosia.

Address: 163 NE 39th St., Miami.

Rating: *** (Very Good)

Contact: 305-572-1400; brosiamiami.com.

Hours: 8-11 a.m. (takeout), 11:30 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday-Friday; 5-11 p.m. Monday-Saturday; 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Sunday.

Prices (dinner): Appetizers $9-$12, entrees $17-$25, sides $5, desserts $5-$7.

FYI: Full bar; corkage $15. Metered street parking; valet $5-$10. Local delivery available at lunch. Reservations encouraged (opentable.com). Cigar and cigarette menu available. AX, DN, DS, MC, VS.

It's Brosia, not ''ambrosia,'' as anyone familiar with Greek mythology or Southern fruit salads might think.

''It doesn't mean anything, but it sounds Mediterranean,'' says owner Scott Engelman.

And though a meal here won't confer immortality or end with coconut-strewn canned fruit, a contented smile is almost guaranteed. Chef Arthur Artiles, a young and innovative protégé of Norman Van Aken, is serving up some impressive Mediterranean eats.

The not-yet-3-month-old spot is also notable for its stunning al fresco décor. Mosaic murals in an iridescent blue and green paisley pattern soar heavenward, forming a backdrop worthy of Architectural Digest. More than 30 tables are well-spaced along a 4,000-square-foot coral courtyard where century-old white oaks cast dramatic shadows and much-needed lunchtime shade.

And lunch is prime time at Brosia, as the crowds of neighborhood designers and their cellphone-chatting clients attest. They come for the fantastic feta and olive tapenade burger on a toasty ciabatta roll as well as the gently dressed salads festooned with delicacies such as tiny quail eggs, baby anchovies and young arugula so tender it rivals greens I've grown at home.

Smooth and spicy gazpacho and tender, raw slivers of jewel-like tuna dressed in little more than perfect sea salt and a squeeze of citrus also are alluring.

The menu is necessarily compact; the minuscule kitchen was meant to be an art-gallery office. Still, there are treasures to be had.

Skip the ramekin of OK white bean dip served with bagel chips and head straight for the stellar appetizers. In what should become a signature dish, the Catalan shrimp with tender clams the size of pencil erasers is studded with chorizo coins and diced red chiles and spiked with an almost creamy reduction of garlicky sherry.

Lamb sausage merguez on tiny skewers with a chunky yogurt tzatziki and Moroccan steamed mussels with coconut curry sauce are good starters to share. Skinny, herbed fries are another must try. If available, the meaty strip-steak empanada with fig jam is, too.

A side of creamy polenta with good Parmesan goes with anything. In fact, vegetarians could make a fantastic meal of it with the expertly sautéed, wine-and-shallot-laced spinach or grilled asparagus.

On the entree side, the pork tenderloin is exceptionally tender, pink and juicy, served with perfectly braised greens, pickled caperberries and cornichons and an apple-puree reduction.

The value-priced lobster pappardelle -- silken pasta loaded with chunks of tender claw meat and sprinkled with sprigs of mint -- is one more reason to like this unpretentious newcomer.

Too bad the service doesn't begin to rise to the same level. A truly clueless though nice-enough crew neglects diners and fails to grasp the subtleties of the menu. Thankfully, they exhibit little attitude beyond utter confusion.

The one exception was a surly bartender who cursed and rolled his eyes as a waitress asked him to ring up a dessert. On another visit, the staff kowtowed to a flashy woman claiming to be a restaurant critic while ignoring my husband and me. (Note to restaurateurs: Legitimate critics neither announce themselves nor solicit free meals.)

The wine list offers plenty of decent picks, with dozens of bottles under $50. A fine young Fra Guerau rosé for $38 (about 2 ½ times retail) goes with almost anything on the menu. A cough-syrupy sangria is only for the most intrepid. Teetotalers will be thrilled with the star anise blood-orange iced tea, even if refills are difficult to score.

Desserts like a chocolate-walnut cake are, like much of the rest of the menu, delicious in their simple and satisfying execution. Best of show is a Spanish-style flan with a twist of lemon and a smooth caramel finish.

'I would rather die of cancer than have my living self stripped away a bit at a time,' says Terry Pratchett

Comments (29)

"Some were from wellwishers, others had advice for me," he says.

"It was all so diverse - I wouldn't have a clue whether they were things I should take on board or not.

"We talk to one another on the internet and compare regimes. Part of me lives in a world of new age remedies and some of the science is a little like voodoo.

"But science was never an exact science, and personally I'd eat the a*** out of a dead mole if it offered a fighting chance.

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Devoted: Terry Pratchett with his wife of 40 years, Lily. The fantasy novelist was diagnosed with a rare form of early onset Alzheimer's last December

"Some of those who got in touch wanted to sell me snake oil and I'm not necessarily going to dismiss all of these, as I have never found a rusty snake.

"But I'm not reading any of the medical books about it. I don't want to follow guidelines.

"I read what people have to say on the internet, experienced sufferers who are keeping it at bay, and people doing research who seem to have become very senior despite being readers of my books.

"They give me their advice. So now I do a lot of walking, and I take more supplements than you get in the Sunday newspapers."

Pratchett lives near Salisbury, Wiltshire, with Lily, his wife of 40 years, in a six-bedroom, solar-powered house, with a large collection of rare scientific books and a private astronomical observatory. They have a daughter, Rhianna, who is also a writer.

When I meet Terry in a London hotel room, he is dressed, as he often is, in black jeans and jacket, and has his black fedora hat on the table in front of him.

He's amiable and inquisitive company, but also exhibits traces of control freakery. It's this streak, you sense, which dictates how he is going to deal with the disease.

He was diagnosed last December with a rare form of early-onset Alzheimer's, or posterior cortical atrophy, in which areas at the back of the brain begin to shrink and shrivel.

"I have a rare variant," he says.

"I don't understand much about it but apparently it means I'm going to be me for longer.

"Apparently if you're going to have Alzheimer's it's a good one to have. That's lucky, then..."

The hugely successful author - incredibly he has sold around 55 million books in 33 languages and is the second most read author in the UK after JK Rowling - recently donated £500,000 to the Alzheimer's Research Trust.

He is not exactly reluctant to talk about the illness, but you can tell he is annoyed the disease sprung itself upon him unannounced.

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Pratchett is the second most read author in the UK after J K Rowling. He has sold around 55 million books in 33 languages

"I thought: 'This is an unwarranted intrusion in my writing,'" he says.

"But actually, if I didn't know I had Alzheimer's, I wouldn't know I had Alzheimer's - I mean, it's only the fact that it's been diagnosed.

"Otherwise I could think I'm just exhibiting symptoms of growing older.

"I'm 59, nearly 60, and I'm not sure whether if I lose my keys that's something to worry about or not. Nor is anyone else."

We are talking in advance of the screening of Sky One's £7 million adaptation of Pratchett's novel, The Colour Of Magic, which stars Sir David Jason as the incompetent wizard Rincewind, and which is airing over the Easter weekend.

So how did Pratchett find out he was ill?

"I'd had a bad day," he tells me.

"There had been lots of phone calls and lots of mess. It was what I call a Clapham Junction day.

"I was writing and I looked at the keyboard, and I couldn't spell the word 'else'. I just said to myself: 'This is c**p.'

"I'd been told I was losing brain cells due to old age but I knew there had to be something else.

"So I went up for a day of tests at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, and the combination of a scan and a series of tests confirmed that I had early onset Alzheimer's.

"Apparently I've had Alzheimer's for two-and-a-half years and the only difference I've detected was the typing.

"I can no longer touch type - I have to keep one eye on the keyboard.

"All the other possible symptoms, like not being able to find my car keys and forgetting people's names, I put down to being nearly 60."

He was, he says, furious with the diagnosis.

"Apparently I reacted to this situation in a reasonably typical way, with a sense of loss and abandonment with an incoherent, or perhaps I should say, violently coherent fury that made the Miltonic Lucifer's rage against Heaven seem a bit miffed by comparison.

"That fire still burns. I want to go on writing.

"Admittedly, that means I have to stay alive. You can't write books when you are dead, unless your name is L. Ron Hubbard. It's a nasty disease, surrounded by shadows and small, largely unseen tragedies.

"People don't know what to say, unless they have had it in the family.

"People ask me why I announced that I had Alzheimer's. My response was: 'Why shouldn't I?'

"I remember when people died of 'a long illness'. Now we call cancer by its name, and as every wizard knows, once you have a thing's real name you have the first step to its taming.

"We are at war with cancer, and we use that vocabulary. We battle, we are brave, we survive. And we have a large armaments industry.

"For those of us with early-onset, in particular, it's more of a series of skirmishes.

"My GP is helpful and patient, but I don't have a specialist locally.

"It was interesting when I asked about having my dental amalgam fillings removed, because there is some suggestion that those kinds of fillings could be linked to Alzheimer's.

"There was a chorus of: 'Hrumph, no scientific evidence, hrumph. But if you can afford to have it done properly then it won't do any harm and you never know.'

"And that is where I am, along with many others, scrabbling to stay ahead long enough to be there when the cure, which I suspect may be more like a regime, comes along. Let's hope it's soon.

"There's nearly as many of us as there are cancer sufferers, and it looks as if the number of people with the disease will double within a generation.

"And in most cases, alongside the sufferer you will find a spouse suffering as much. It's a shock and a shame, then, to find out that funding for research is 3 per cent of that which goes to find cancer cures.

"Perhaps that is why, for example, I know three people who have successfully survived brain tumours but no one who has beaten Alzheimer's.

"I'd like a chance to die like my father did - of cancer, at 86.

"Remember, I'm speaking as a man with Alzheimer's, which strips away your living self a bit at a time.

"Before he went to spend his last two weeks in a hospice he was bustling around the house, fixing things.

"He talked to us right up to the last few days, knowing who we were and who he was. Right now, I envy him."

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Actor David Jason plays the incompetent wizard Rincewind in Sky One's £7m adaptation of Pratchett's novel, The Colour of Magic

In his books, Pratchett uses a fantastical setting to tell adult stories that have increasingly nudged up against social satire.

Yes, the Discworld series - Pratchett's most popular novels, set in a fantasy world - are full of wizards and magic but they never descend into spotty-boy geekery.

They're funny, wise and offer a skewed but totally recognisable version of our own world.

Over the course of his novels, Pratchett has tackled everything from religion and gender politics to the movies and postal system.

They have become darker of late, and you can't help but wonder if that might be because of his Alzheimer's. Yet he claims that his illness hasn't really affected his work or other elements of his life too much so far.

"If I'm editing and there's a phone call, it'll take me a bit longer to get back to where I was on the page and what kind of frame of mind I was in," he says.

"Line-by-line editing, which is how I work, takes immense concentration anyway, and a phone call now can really throw me.

"I have slowed down a little, mainly because I am just so busy. I'm thinking of getting my PA a PA.

"If I had to fly to America I could, but I'd have to carefully pack my luggage the day before instead of flinging it in at the last moment.

"It's worse when I have Clapham Junction days, let's put it that way.

"I've also had to knock off the beer.

"I'm on tablets called Aricept - the NHS kindly allows me to buy my own because I'm too young to have Alzheimer's for free, a situation I'm OK with in a wanttokick-a-politician-in-the-teeth kind of way - and, apparently, you can't drink when you're on them.

"I was never a big boozer but I used to like a bottle three or four times a week. And you know what, I don't really miss it."

Aside from the drugs, the other thing he is doing is walking a lot.

"I've always been a big walker," he says.

"But the doctor told me to walk an extra 15 minutes a day for brain exercise.

'I really love it.

"You have all these endorphins racing around your body and it makes you feel alive."

He certainly doesn't seem to be the type to let it get him down.

"It seems pretty obvious to me that if you're out meeting people, breathing in lungfuls of fresh air, getting your blood coursing around your body, you're going to be a lot better prepared to deal with something like Alzheimer's than if you just stay at home watching TV and moping," he says.

"You can't out-run the train but you can run and, who knows, if you can keep running for long enough, someone might find a way of blowing up the train."

• The Colour Of Magic is on Sky One at 6pm on Easter Sunday and Monday.

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