The Forge Restaurant | Wine Bar by Shareef Malnik

I took my wife here last Saturday. We had heard so much about the renovations and the reopening and since we used to like it there before we wanted to see what the “new” Forge would be like. Our experience was really wonderful. We shared the beef tataki as an appetizer and it was exquisite. I had the churasco steak and my wife had the duck. Both were amazing and actually the prices were much lower than I remembered at the old Forge. My wife could not stop talking about how she had never had duck that good. We did not wait long at all. The server and hostess were extremely knowledgeable and down to earth. It was also really nice to be able to try out different wines with the new wine machines they have as opposed to having to order a bottle of one wine. I’d highly recommend. We are going back next week with our friends…

Decided to try out the newly renovated Forge a few days after the re-opening. I was thoroughly impressed and would definitely come back again.

Gone is the opulent interior and outrageous furniture for a more modern and updated style. However, the stained glass ceilings and some of the original chandeliers remain the same, but still blend well with the new feel.

As soon as we walked in we were warmly greeted and decided to check out the bar first before we sat down for dinner. We didn’t try the different wine samplers, but would try it out the next time I come back considering it was reasonably priced.

For the appetizer we had the tuna tatare and was one of the best I’ve had. My meal was the 18oz steak with garlic mashed potatoes. The steak was a little over cooked on the outside, but was pretty decent. My girlfriend had the mushroom risotto and that was delicious. I found myself eating off her plate!

They still have a plenty of wines to choose from with many at good prices that won’t leave a hole in your wallet. I couldn’t believe how friendly the waiters, bartenders and maitre d were, hopefully it continues to stay that way. I would come back in the near future because the prices was very good and the food was superb.

Some restaurants are lauded for their cuisine, their decor, and their outrageous profits, but how about for the best bathrooms? Cintas Corporation is taking nominations now for America’s Best Restroom. Winner will be announced in September and win the coveted ABR plaque of recognition during a formal ceremony. Top five vote getters will win a place in the America’s Best Restroom Hall of Fame. Nothing to sniff at. Past winners include the WC at the University of Notre Dame, Wendell’s Restaurant in Westerville, Ohio and Jungle Jim’s International Market in Fairfield, OH. We nominate newly reopened The Forge Restaurant I Wine Bar for the lighting, decor (Helmut Newton on the wall!), modular toilets, well lit makeup mirrors, sleek sinks with one touch hot and cold buttons, and high tech trash cans that automatically open for you so you don’t have an unpleasant encounter with someone else’s throwaways. To nominate your pick, click here. [EaterWire]

More About The Forge [EaterWire]

Status: After almost a year of renovations, rumors and revamps, The Forge, or, rather, The Forge Restaurant I Wine Bar, is finally reopening on Wednesday, March 31. And although the stalwart, 40-year-old Miami Beach landmark is opening on a day which used to be its most popular, when nubile models, bedazzled beauties and assorted celebrities mixed with creaky octogenarians over Super Steaks consumed well past midnight amidst a sonic boom of disco, there’s nothing remotely old Forge about the new Forge. Even the restaurant’s staunchest disciples likely had a nip/tuck here and there during the restaurant’s absence from the scene. And like them, The Forge is ready for its close up. Say goodbye to that whole Dynasty meets 90210 vibe and say hello to the Kardashians, maybe The City, but by no means Jersey Shore. Ok, well maybe just a tad. The scripted reality that is the new Forge, featuring Dewey LoSasso in the kitchen, has already begun taking reservations.

Popular Miami Beach restaurant the Forge, which closed in April 2009 for renovations, reopened in late March following extensive changes to its dining and event spaces. The menu has also been revamped from predominately steak house fare to a more diverse selection of seafood, meats, salads, and pasta dishes.

The main dining room has doubled in size and can seat 130 in club chairs and loveseats at each table. The back section of the dining room also has a communal table for 20 near the sommelier station and Enomatic wine system, which allows guests to try different wines by the glass from an automatic pouring machine.

The bar, now adjacent the dining room, seats 36 and offers full dinner service.

The venue also has multiple areas for private events. The 18-seat boardroom off the main dining area has floor-to-ceiling glass doors looking out toward the butler’s station, which provides guests a behind-the-scenes look at the restaurant’s service. The 40-seat library is behind the butler’s station and is decorated with walls of books, dim lighting, stained-glass wall details, leather club chairs, and small wooden tables.

For larger events, the East Room can seat 200 or hold 300 for a reception and has a separate entrance. The room has French doors opening to a courtyard, which can be used as a prefunction or separate event space, with a separate bar and room for 100 guests.

For meetings or dinner parties, the wine cellar can seat 22.

The scaffolding at The Forge will come down in a week or two, signaling the end of a year-long, $10 million transformation of the iconic Miami Beach restaurant. Owner Shareef Malnik has changed nearly every aspect of the storied destination, a 1920s blacksmith shop turned celebrity hangout that over four decades attracted stars from Judy Garland to Madonna. Tuxedoed waiters are gone, but the friendly new staff will pamper you like a VIP even if you order the burger (albeit ground Angus steak with lobster marmalade and a Bordeaux tasting). The excellent service extends to the classy 36-seat bar.

While A-listers can still splurge on a five-course meal and an $800 cab, the after-work crowd can share $6 to $15 ‘‘snacks” and pay as little as $15 for a card to the Enomatic dispenser, which pours one-, three- and five-ounce samples of 80 wines (a sommelier is nearby if you have questions). Executive chef Dewey LoSasso (North One 10) has revived standards like the “super steak” and iceberg wedge, but has also created an ambitious, intriguing menu with a playful tone that suits The Forge’s new style.

Ambience: The cozy library and eight-room, 300,000-bottle wine cellar are still here, but the decor has gone from dark and gothic to bright and whimsical, with chains of glass bubbles, light woods and fanciful lilac and white chandeliers.

What Worked

• A complimentary bread basket loaded with wonderful macadamia nut bread, caramelized onion focaccia, asiago and cinnamon raisin flatbread with honey butter
• Red oak-grilled shrimp atop a classic waffle
• Roasted red and yellow beets in a perky citrus dressing dusted with crumbled goat cheese and aromatic fennel pollen
• Flavorful lobster, peanut butter and “jelly” sandwich – a grown-up snack of fresh lobster with onion marmalade and chopped unsalted peanuts mixed with kimchee, ginger, chives and tamari on toasted brioche
• Heavenly lobster bisque brimming with diced shellfish
• Perfectly textured wild mushroom risotto with an earthy mix of slow-cooked shiitake, portobello, porcini and crimini mushrooms spiked with truffle oil and Parmesan
”Coffee and Eggs” – a well-marbled rib-eye crusted with Colombian Supremo served with a small goat-cheese frittata
• Sublime grilled double-cut lamb chops seasoned with pink Japanese plum salt and plated with a crisp quinoa pancake, cool tangerine mint salad and golden ginger chutney
• Lovely mutton snapper steamed in a bag with crisp vegetables
• Moist and succulent spice-rubbed duck enhanced by a fruity sangria reduction
• Baked polenta with kale
• Fava beans with shallots
• Wasabi caviar butter
• Oh-so-good duck home fries (cooked in duck fat, with pieces of duck)
• Banana fluffernutters
• Soothing lemon panna cotta with a whisper of fennel, served with toasted almond gelato and biscotti

For American cuisine with a creative French twist, try the elegant Forge. Renovated in 2009, in honor of its 40th anniversary, the space is chock-full of eye-catching antiques and an eclectic mix of upholstered and metal furniture. The farm-to-table menu draws you in, offering tantalizing dishes such as herb-infused steamed local snapper “In a Bag” and grilled wild salmon with basil mashed hearts of palm. Beef is a favorite, and the 16-ounce aged oak grilled “Super Steak” has been named the nation’s number one steak by “Wine Spectator.” Speaking of wines, the cellar houses an enormous collection – more than 80,000 bottles of various vintages. Also, the Enomatic wine serving system, that serves wine by the glass, is great for sampling different wines by the ounce. Reservations requested.

A Blackbook Top Pick – The Forge Miami Beach Hot Restaurant

After a year of cosmetic and culinary improvements, the venerable steakhouse haunted by the ghost of Al Capone is refreshed and revamped with a stunning new look and new name: The Forge Restaurant Wine Bar. Despite the new look, that legendary Super Steak is still on the menu, but thanks to new execu chef Dewey LoSasso, so’s a thousand other dishes, from snacks and small plates to Grand Poobah-sized meals fit for the biggest egos–er, appetites in town. An enomatic wine system turns oenophiles into kids with unlimited funds at Chuck E. Cheese, allowing small, medium, and large tastes of some of the finest vintages from The Forge’s remarkable wine cellar. A gorgeous bar beckons boozehounds with its artisanal cocktails and prime views of who’s in the house. But unlike its previous incarnation, the new Forge isn’t about scene as much as it’s about eating, drinking and being merry on your own terms. No bachannalian parties here, just the boozy sophistication exuded by the been there, done that crowd that knows better.

For four decades the Forge was America’s most flamboyant restaurant, room after room filled with Tiffany glass, crystal chandeliers, and funhouse lighting. It looked like an Austin Powers set. The Miami Beach clientele wore diamonds and Lily Pulitzer dresses, the men wore pastel leisure suits with white shoes. Wednesday was for “Disco Night Dinners,” drawing the Tony Maneros and Crockett-and-Tubbs types in white suits. It also served the best steak in Florida.

In 1991 Shareef Malnik took the operation over from his father, and in 2009 shut it down for a $10 million rehab, keeping the Tiffany glass but toning down the glitz… a little. Now, with huge, varnished tables made from Indonesian wood, Papa Bear-sized wingchairs, and a state-of-the-art Enomatic wine wall where you can pour your own wines by the glass — from Château Haut-Brion to Opus One — the Forge is still a wild-and-crazy restaurant. But Malnik, who with his pencil mustache looks like a pumped-up Gomez Addams, wants a younger crowd that comes for chef Dewey LoSasso’s terrific food, starting with a witty lobster-peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich made with chunks of lobster, chopped peanuts, toasted brioche, and onion marmalade. His food is as lavish as the restaurant — try the grilled double cut Colorado lamb chips with plum salt, vanilla-pear-ginger chutney, quinoa pancake, and a mint-tangerine salad. And they still serve the 16-ounce prime “Super Steak,” but the “Coffee and Eggs” — ribeye, coated with ground coffee and served with a goat’s cheese frittata — is truer to form. (I had this the other night and was in awe!!!)

Everything is large here — the giant U2 shrimp cocktail, the platter of duck home-fries, the steaming hot soufflés — and of course the captains come running when you lift a finger, and Mr. Malnik is always there to make sure you’re having a hell of a time. Don’t be surprised if he spends time talking with you at your table. Fast cars, fashion, art and wine are always good topics.

Here are some very special images of the interior of Miami’s Hottest Restaurant, The Forge. We look forward to your visit.

The Forge is a place rich with Miami history. It’s where you go to see, and been seen. This iconic restaurant closed for a year for a makeover. Now they’re back and better than ever and of course our own Shireen Sandoval had to get a taste test.

Believe it or not, the iconic restaurant closed for one year: All to get a magnificent makeover and boy did they ever now The Forge is back and better than ever. Taste test anyone?

One Miami Beach icon has a new look. What’s old is new again at The Forge.

SHAREEF: “The new forge is paying an homage to where we came from and trying to bridge that to where we want to go.”

It’s still the kind of place where you go to see, and be seen.

SHAREEF: “I dont want this to only a special occasion restaurant where you are coming in for your wedding or anniversary cause its so special (right) i want you to come here a couple of times a week.”

They gutted 90 percent of the restaurant took out nearly half the seats and voila

SHAREEF: “I wanted to create a fabulous home where you would come and stay and live in it does feel very homey.”

The library has a collection from” books and books,” and the board room is: Well off with her head but this 42 year old institution is always about the food.

SHAREEF: “The menu reflects where we’re going w/ the restaurant and that is allowing you to choose your own path.”

Don’t freak out, they kept some of the old favs, but, the new chef wants you to find some new ones, too.

SHIREEN: “Talk a little bit about the menu. has it changed and if it has how would you describe it now.”

DEWEY LOSASSO: “There is a sense of lightens to the menu and when you look at all the blonde wood and everything thats going on in the restaurant. i think the food had to match that.”

The Forge is using local food to create some new and yummy menu items.

No you aren’t seeing things they let me in the kitchen. Pile fresh lobster on a sandwich with onion marmalade and pureed peanuts and they also have something called snapper in a bag, which really is fresh snapper cooked in a bag.

DEWEY: “Here i need you to tie the top for me.”

Everything on the menu is delish just leave room for dessert.

DEWEY: “This is banana flutternutters (omg) instead of bread we take banana bread that we make in house (thats ridiculous) homemade marshmallow a little peanut butter.”

Feeling thirsty?

SHIREEN: “Look at the bar (isn’t it an amazing bar) its so. its gigantic. its ginormus (and its its just a place to eat to hang out its perfect.”

DEWEY LOSASSO: “The concept is really a neighborhood restaurant you go to and you have this living space where you hang out and read a great book, have something to eat and have a glass of wine.”

Speaking of wine red or white? It all depends on your appetite: And on the new “forge wine ap.”

SHAREEF: “Well if you werent sure you wanted to try you can pick up the i touch which is also available as the i app on your iphone.”

The wines are categorized by flavor the app even helps you pair it with food. The box of wine in my fridge doesn’t give me that much info

SHAREEF: “Then you can twitter it and then shireen toasts you with a glass of cab at the Forge.”

Just get one of the forge’s pre-paid wine cards and la-chigh-em. 3 ounces is a taste, 5’s a swig or just go for the glass.

SHAREEF: “People today dont need to be spoon fed things. if you walk into an apple store people are busy doing things on their own-so here you can be your own somali.”

We didn’t want to pry on the bathroom going customers — but the powder rooms are to die for. Can you say hollywood dressing room?