Reality check

Miami's Top Chefs

There are a lot of great things about Miami. The sea. The sunshine. The Latin vibe. The Art Basel buzz. “But it’s not what it’s all about,” says Michael Schwartz, chef/owner of the Design District’s Michael’s Genuine Food & Drink. It’s also about the foodie-fun wave that Miami is riding high on, he explains, thanks in part, to reality television and the huge success of culinary shows on channels like the Food Network.

Every time you turn on the tube, it seems there’s one Miami chef or another, warming up a skillet, dishing out a new wave of cuisine, or judging top chefs on a star-studded panel. Heck, sometimes Miami chefs even show up on non-culinary reality shows. Just ask Sean Brasel chef/co-owner of Meat Market (previously of Touch Restaurant) whose adrenaline-loving self made a special appearance on The Playboy Channel’s Sex Lives and another one on Miami Ink, where he traded a tattoo with the infamous inkstress Kat for cooking lessons.

There is a long list of others who are on the culinary reality show track. In 2008, Michael Jacobs, of the Miami Beach-based Strategic Hospitality Group, was filmed for the Food Network’s Big Bash Caterers Challenge. Michael Schwartz appear as a judge on Season 3 of Top Chef. Also making an appearance on Season 3 as a contestant was Howie Kleinberg from Bulldog BBQ. Most recently, on the just-started-to-air Season 7 of Top Chef, Andrea Curto- Randazzo takes up the baton in representing Miami’s cuisine.

Curto-Randazzo was perhaps the most reluctant contestant of the above mentioned. She runs food operations at the recently opened Water Club in North Miami Beach; she also co-owns a catering company called Creative Tastes Catering with her husband, Frank Randazzo; runs the kitchen at the Garden Café at Fairchild Tropical Gardens; and plates up savory favs at Talula restaurant in South Beach. So, it’s not as if she doesn’t have enough on her plate. “These days working hard and doing great food is not enough,” says Curto-Randazzo. “You have to be in the spotlight… the television spotlight.”

Despite the initial reluctance; the fear of losing her privacy and becoming a celebrity, she has already seen a massive influx of support and emails from new fans and old schoolmates on Facebook and other social media outlet. She says, “Her cast mates (well most of them) were awesome. I have made friendships with that will last a lifetime.”

Although she can’t tell us, because she is under a signed contract, who won the competition, she can say that her hope is that the show will stimulate business and give her career a boost. Curto-Randazzo’s career was skyrocketing before she decided to slow it down and have three little girls. “They are the focus of what [my husband and I] work so hard for, so whatever happens is for them,” says Curto-Randazzo.

Meanwhile, Miami’s got its fingers crossed that Curto-Randazzo’s characteristic American with a twist cuisine shines on the television screen as much as it does on the plate.

Others who have gone through the full experience already, are able to reveal more. Michael Jacobs says his experience was fun, and that it brought him probably more credibility and recognition than he even thought he wanted or needed. Jacob says he might have some irons in the fire for future reality television gigs. But, he admits that the whole pre- and post-production thing can be time consuming. “They try to put you off your game with questions and comments from the other contestants; they love drama!” says Jacobs.

Brasel agrees. “Reality TV,” he says, “takes a long time to film. Not a lot of reality in reality television. Basic scenes like coming into a store or opening a door to say hello to somebody can take 7-10 takes,” he says.

But it’s not all tedious takes. Definitely, having the best in the business call your cooking the best, takes the cake, so to speak. And it did just that for pastry chef Hedy Goldsmith of Michael’s Genuine Food & Drink. This past June, her desserts were featured on the Food Network's The Best Thing I Ever Ate.

“Though I love what I do it’s the joy my cooking brings to others that makes it all worth it. Having folks in the industry I respect sound off like this means a lot to me,” says Goldsmith. It can even change your life. In Howie Kleinberg’s case, his experience on Top Chef made him realize that although he was classically trained, he wanted to cook food that everyone could afford, which is how his restaurant Bulldog BBQ came about and the recently opened Bulldog Café. And, in the fall, he will add Bulldog Burger.

“The Miami food scene gets more and more exciting every day, thanks in part to the huge food focus of shows like Top Chef,” says Kleinberg. “When all is said and done we (Miami) get high marks compared to any city. I wouldn’t want to be working and living anywhere else. This is home.”

Vanessa Garcia