Michelle Bernstein: Hardest Working Woman at the SoBE Wine & Food Fest

It’s no surprise that local heroine, Michelle Bernstein, has been participating in the South Beach Wine and Food Festival since its inception 13 years ago. “The first year was at Florida International University, there were only locals cooking and the ‘festival’ was a dinner for just a couple hundred people. That was it,” Bernstein remembers. “It was very small, very intimate. There was no Food Network, none of that stuff. But it was just as thrilling back then as it is now.”

The James Beard Award-winning Bernstein, born and bred in Miami, enjoys promoting the flavors of the Magic City and its surrounding area at her restaurant Michy’s, and she believes that the annual food and wine festival helped raise the profile of Miami chefs across the nation. “SOBE helped put Miami on the food map. It got more people to come here as a destination for our food more for than just our delicious weather and beaches. And it’s brought such a flavor to Miami, people like Gaston Acurio from Peru,” she marvels. “We all serve ceviche and we all think we do it as well as they do it in Peru, but Gaston Acurio comes to town and teaches us how it’s done. All the chefs that I’ve always wanted to meet eventually get here one year or another. And it’s amazing the relationships that have forged from it.”

Workhorse and SOBE supporter that she is, Bernstein is participating in three major events at the festival. She is hosting Spice It Up, a dinner at the Four Seasons in collaboration with spice-master, Lior Lev Sercarz of La Boîte à Epice. “This dinner, to me, is a celebration of him and his spices, and a lot of the flavors of Israel and the Mediterranean,” she says. “It’s the first of its kind that we’ve ever done at the festival and it’s very exciting because it’s really, truly about the ingredients.” 

She is also hosting Swine and Wine, a pig roast where the chefs BYO caja china, a Cuban-style roasting box. Bernstein’s secret to the best roast pig? “To me, there’s nothing better than marinating it in some kind of citrus, breaking down the meat to get it really tender and juicy, and then just taking a really long-ass time to cook it,” she said. “Cook it until it’s crackly on the top and juicy on the inside. The trick is not to overcook it, but to slow cook it. It takes about eight hours to finish the pig. It’s a long time, but we’re sitting outside in the sun and the weather is usually pretty cool and breezy, and we’re sipping mojitos.”

Next, Bernstein comes full circle…

Coming full circle, Bernstein is also participating with other Florida chefs for a dinner at FIU, where it all began. Along with Norman van Aken, Mark Militello, and Allen Susser from the original “Mango Gang,” a wave of fine dining chefs who first drew attention to the Miami dining scene, Bernstein will cook alongside Cindy Hutson from Miami’s Ortanique and Hedy Goldsmith, from Michael’s Genuine Food & Drink.

While Bernstein says that she was inspired by those original members of the “Mango Gang,” she adds that her Jewish/Argentine heritage has also influenced her cooking. “I don’t know how to start a soup without making a sofrito first,” Bernstein said. “That’s how I was raised, but it is also how I taught my cooks, and my cooks are now chefs teaching their cooks, and it’s just instilled in them. And let’s face it, half of the cooks in the kitchens are Latin, whether they’re the chefs or the prep cooks. All of their hands influence everybody’s food.”

Bernstein said her first cooking mentor was her mother. “Mom made, every week, a puchero, a chicken soup that you make in five different pots, with sweetbreads and beef in one, cabbage and vegetables in another, a whole chicken in another…and then you eat all the protein, and then you drink the broth with the vegetables. It’s really delicious.”  

Though she started cooking at the age of 4, she originally followed a different career path, setting out as a young student to become a dancer. “My biggest problem, I think, was that I was supposed to be starving myself,” Bernstein said. “And so, once I realized that, the dancing ended.” She ended up following her heart and majoring in nutrition in college.

“I think I did it because I loved the food so much, but I didn’t realize that I could actually be a chef,” she said. “Let’s face it, you didn’t hear about Alice Waters down here back then. And you didn’t hear about any women, really, that were in kitchens. All I knew was that you had to be French and you had to be kind of big and strong. I know it was ignorant, but what did I know? I was a Jewish kid from Miami.” From there, she enrolled in culinary school, and, as she said, “That was it. I never looked back.”

Today, Bernstein, mother of a 2 year-old, continues to look ahead in the culinary world. “I have four huge plans coming up…. But I’m not allowed to talk about any of them now,” she said, coyly. “But things are getting crazy. I always told everyone, once I put my son in school, get ready to see what I’m doing next. He just started Montessori, so mom is getting back to work.”