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Azul chef Clay Conley serves up Mediterranean fare with an Asian flair, such as seared
scallop and foie gras with a celery-root “hoecake” and black plums, and Japanese himachi “tiradito” with Peruvian chilies, ginger, soy vinaigrette and crispy lotus-root salad.
Conley dazzles with Azul favorites such as black-olive-crusted wild salmon with six-hour-roasted fennel, stewed sweet peppers and saffron potatoes. |
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CLAY CONLEY
AZUL
The Mandarin Oriental, Miami, is home to the most magnificently cosmopolitan dining experience in town. Under Azul’s voluminous ceilings lies a dining room bedecked in opulent mahogany woods, lace metalwork, gleaming white marble and a wall of windows offering stunning views of the Miami skyline and Biscayne Bay. Limerick, Maine native chef Clay Conley works the sizzling open kitchen, churning out organic meat and fish dishes that nod to the Mediterranean, Caribbean, South America and Asia, such as miso-marinated duck breast and “New England clam chowder revisited” (made of crispy clams, confit of pork belly, and a malt-vinegar-spiked broth).
Sumptuous staples: “We have a few classic dishes that have been on the menu since I started: the study in tuna, which consists of three different preparations of raw tuna; the steak and egg, an appetizer of beef tartare topped with crispy egg yolks served with fontina toast, baby artichokes and truffle vinaigrette; and the Moroccan lamb—three preparations of Colorado lamb, all infused with the flavors of Morocco, including a mint-marinated chop, a curry-scented, braised shank and golden-raisin bastilla wrapped in phyllo dough and a harissa-marinated loin.”
Hare-raising flavor: “I love to cook rabbit and have done it every way imaginable. It’s such a delicious, versatile meat. For rabbit Parmesan, I braise the hind leg of the rabbit in a fresh porcini-mushroom braise, then take its front legs, confit them, shred the meat, mix them with sausage and make a stuffing. I take that stuffing and stuff the boned-out saddle of the rabbit and roast it. We top the roasted saddle with fresh buffalo mozzarella, gratin it and serve it with roasted-tomato emulsion.”
Ubiquitous inspirations: “For me, there is inspiration everywhere. It can be going out to eat at a restaurant that costs $300 a person, or it can be at a place where I [bought something] for three bucks. The lobster and salt-cod dish I made at last year’s South Beach Wine & Food Festival was inspired by a Taco Bell commercial, of all things! I also take a lot of inspiration from my travels. Every time I return from a trip I am recharged and full of ideas.”
Eastern curiosities: “I’m using a lot of Indian ingredients right now: mustard oil, chat masala, garam masala. I’ve always loved good Indian food but was a little mystified by all the spices. An Indian friend who works prep at Azul has been helping me unlock the secrets.”
An exercise in taste: “The palate is like a muscle: The more you use it, the better it gets. That being said, the naturals in the kitchen are not young kids with amazing palates, they’re the people who can work under intense stress and put out incredible food. Cooking is a trade that has an artistic component, but in this business, it’s not enough to be creative. You need to be a tradesman of sorts to be able to deliver during crunch time.”
500 Brickell Key Drive, Miami
305-913-8358
mandarinoriental.com/miami
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Chef Michelle Bernstein’s Upper East Side eatery, Michy’s, is one of the city’s favorites, thanks to its charming, shabby-chic setting and its
sumptuous eclectic fare, including: blue-cheese and jamón croquetas with fig marmalade; seafood linguine with tiny diced fresh seafood, roasted tomatoes and seafood broth; and beef short ribs falling off the bone over creamy mashed potatoes. |
MICHELLE BERNSTEIN
MICHY’S
Miami’s homegrown star chef Michelle Bernstein is the long-time sweetheart of the city’s culinary scene. Her own eponymous dining room on the mainland’s “Upper East Side” serves up exquisite French- and Mediterranean-influenced seafood dishes amid a charming, late-‘60s, shabby-chic milieu awash in mother-of-pearl chandeliers and mismatched thrift-store-bought chairs. Come for signature succulent plates of blue-cheese and ham croquetas with fig marmalade, duck breast with Oaxacan mole, and the steak frite au poivre with a side of over-the-causeway attitude (read: none).
Attitude-free: “I am not a ‘celebrity’ anything. I am a cook, a chef and the owner of the restaurant. Just because I have done a few shows doesn’t mean I am above working in the kitchen or spending time at my place. It hasn’t changed my attitude or given me an ego. I am more approachable than ever, and I know all too well that people come to my place to eat—not to see me.”
Fixin’s for a good meal: “Fennel is good for the belly: It’s so delicious [whether] raw, cooked, sweetened, salted. Yum! Ginger also makes everything taste so good, and I can’t cook or bake without sea salt. Good oil makes everything go down better and silkier and taste even more delicious.”
A life of good taste: “When I was younger, I read every M.F.K. Fisher book about the philosophy of food and eating, and lots of Julia Child and Madeleine Kamman. Now, I love cookbooks I pick up from my travels—usually in other languages or using ingredients I have to look up to understand the meaning of. I use them as a guide: I don’t usually follow other people’s recipes unless it’s for pastry. We chefs are stubborn about the way we do things. My cookbook is due out early next year. It’s my life, in recipes—from childhood to Michy’s.”
Snail overdose: “I had my most memorable food experience when I was eight. I ate my first escargot and fell madly in love. I told my mother that for my ninth birthday I wanted the whole escargot/snail dish set, and for her to teach me how to make them. She did, and I ate two-dozen escargot, then never ate them ever again.”
Flavor explosions: “Michy’s is a strange bird: I don’t really have signature dishes, but a few things on the menu I could never take off. For one, the blue-cheese and jamón croquetas, which are a nightmare to prepare. It is a béchamel [milk, flour, olive oil and onions] mixed with jamón Serrano all minced up and [served with] melted Gorgonzola dolce. They’re piped out, cooled, cut into small pieces, dusted in flour, then cooled. Then they’re breaded, frozen and then fried to order in peanut oil. If not made perfectly, they explode—which I hate to say happens quite a bit thanks to a hot kitchen that makes the piping part quite challenging. When making croquetas, you can’t make anything else during that whole block of time.”
6927 Biscayne Boulevard, Miami
305-759-2001
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Nobu is one of the hottest dining spots in town, thanks to chef Thomas Buckley and his Latin American-infused Japanese dishes, including: fresh ginkgo nut, matsutake mushrooms, shrimp, mitsuba, chawan (Japanese egg custard), Mano de Leon
scallop and caviar; sashimi tacos with tuna, lobster, tofu, yuzu sauce, avocado miso, jalapeño salsa and cilantro; and octopus carpaccio, toro jalapeño and salmon-kelp rolls. |
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THOMAS BUCKLEY
NOBU
Nobu Matsuhisa’s in-house Asian restaurant at The Shore Club has long been one of the hottest tables in town—from the electrifying, young-Hollywood-drenched dining scene to the mouthwatering menu. While the sushi here is fresh and particularly divine, chef Thomas Buckley—originally from Scarborough, England—knows Nobu’s Latin American-infused Japanese specialty dishes are the main attraction: Local die-hard diners wave away the menus and get right down to business, ordering plate after plate of addictive rock shrimp, creamy spicy crab, new-style salmon and black cod with miso.
Michelin memories: “Two revelatory events in my culinary life changed my perceptions. When I was 18, I went to France to work a summer at a three-Michelin-star restaurant in Valence. It was a very famous, family-run place called Pic. For the very first time, I tasted black truffles and foie gras and worked in a kitchen run like clockwork with a lot of high-caliber chefs, true passion and professionalism. My second experience was working at El Bulli in Roses, Spain. It was just as they had received their third [Michelin] star and were getting a lot of press. The way [chef] Ferran Adrià did things and the way he thinks are completely unique and infectious. I was blown away by the fact he broke all the rules and came up with new ways of doing basic things. It’s like a lesson in creative thinking: Forget what you have learned and start new. There are no rules—only your imagination, which has no limits.”
Succulent simplicity: “Out of all the menu items, I must say that I like the simplicity of a good sunomono [the Japanese translation of ‘things in vinegar’]. It’s a Japanese classic, a mix of cucumber, wakame, fish and shellfish in a sweet-vinegar sauce (amazu) topped with a little sesame seed. It lets the ingredients speak for themselves and is a good reminder that Japanese food is simple.”
Yuba tube: “I’m into by-products right now. Sake kasu, the rice ferment left over from making sake, has a great fermented flavor. Yuba—which is soymilk skin, from boiling soymilk to make tofu—both fresh and dried. The fresh stuff is really good: I serve it with sweet summer heirloom tomatoes, as it has the consistency of burrata [cheese] with no fat. The dried yuba makes a great wrapping agent and tastes good steamed or fried.”
Palate provocation: “I realized fairly early on that I could pick up on [tastes] others couldn’t, but I didn’t have the knowledge to help me recognize those flavors. The palate is connected with memory and, like the memory, can be trained to a certain point. I like to build my flavor bank as much as I can, so I’m open to new tastes and smells from all over the world. It’s great when you can provoke somebody’s memory by giving them a certain flavor—maybe a candy from their childhood, which, in turn, excites the palate.”
Cuisine with a side of scene: “Sometimes, since we have that ‘star factor’ and a lot of hype surrounding the Nobu restaurants, people may feel it’s just a scene. Maybe we have all that, but the challenge is to look past it all and get into the food, which stands alone as being excellent and of the best quality. It’s our pursuit to make everyone 100-percent happy, which is hard when you’re doing 600 or 700 [covers] a night—but that’s our challenge, and we rise to it every day. My advice? Let go, have a cocktail and some sake and relax. You’re in our hands: Let us do our thing.”
1901 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach
305-695-3232
noburestaurants.com
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