MIAReview
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Our circadian rhythm is what wakes us up without an alarm and lets us know when it’s time to sleep. Maybe you learned this in high school biology or maybe like us, you were too busy trying to remember the difference between a ribosome and mitochondria. Eating at Blue Collar works similarly. It isn’t somewhere we go to on a weekly basis, but whenever we find ourselves with a strong, unconscious craving for braised meat or shrimp and grits, we always end up on at this diner on Biscayne Boulevard without even knowing how we got there.
photo credit: Karli Evans
The menu at this small Upper East Side spot feels like it was created by someone booking random flights around the country and sourcing suggestions from the first person they met outside the airport. If a diner left the family business to go travel the world and find itself, you’d get Blue Collar.
During lunch or dinner here, you can eat jambalaya, latkes, braised brisket, rainbow trout, veal parm, mac and cheese, spicy oxtail, and a dozen other things that someone, somewhere is going to be very excited about. But the variety isn’t the reason why we’ll happily wait for a table here. It’s because all the food is great.
photo credit: Karli Evans
The latkes are incredibly crispy little discs that come with homemade chunky applesauce. The daily braised options - which alternate between brisket, oxtail, pork shoulder, chicken, veal, and pot roast - are just about always worth ordering and have that deep, rich flavor you only get with foods that cooked for longer than a Ken Burns documentary. The cheeseburger features a NY Strip patty on a sturdy Portuguese muffin, which stands up to the patty’s juices better than 99% of the buns we’ve ever met. And the rotating chalkboard of roasted, grilled, and sautéed vegetables are usually the first things we finish every time we eat here.
Chances are, whatever you have for brunch, lunch, or dinner at Blue Collar will be the sort of big, heavy meal you don’t want on a first date or before going to a bar. It’s going to leave you full enough to not think about this place for a while. But then one day, you’ll be driving down Biscayne and a thought will sneak up on you like a truck with broken brake lights: it’s time for another trip to Blue Collar.