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Michelle Bernstein
Cooking Up Inspired Fusion Cuisine
Susan Josephs
In Michelle Bernstein’s restaurant kitchen, it’s okay to wear lipstick
and handle people with care. “I run my kitchen like a big Jewish mama,”
she says. “When I’m upset with my employees, I just pull them aside
and give them a touch of Jewish guilt. And when they get sick, I make them a
big pot of soup.”
The 36-year-old Bernstein, an award-winning chef and recipient of the Jewish
Museum of Florida’s Glass Ceiling Award, has blazed her own distinctive
path in an industry dominated by strong male personalities. As the owner of
the Miami hotspot restaurant Michy’s, author of a forthcoming cookbook
and a consulting chef for Delta Air Lines and for acclaimed restaurateur Jeffrey
Chodorow’s Social restaurant chain, Bernstein continues to draw on her
Latin-Jewish background for culinary inspiration. “I grew up with a real
mix of Latin, Italian and Jewish food,” she says. “All these different
flavors came together in my family’s meals.”
The daughter of an Argentine-Jewish mother and a father with Italian-Jewish
roots, Bernstein spent her childhood training to be a professional ballerina.
At 16, she graduated from high school and received a scholarship to study at
the prestigious Ailey School in New York. Before an injury and homesickness
led her back to Miami and to study nutrition at Emory and Georgia State universities,
“all I ever wanted to do was dance,” she says.
Bernstein credits her mother, her “greatest mentor,” for jump-starting
her career. “I was home from college, helping my mother bake for the Jewish
holidays and she says to me, ‘Michy, all you really want to do is cook.’
’’
At her mother’s suggestion, Bernstein signed up for cooking classes at
Johnson & Wales University and almost immediately started working in restaurants.
At times, “it was really hard to be a woman in these kitchens,” she
recalls. “I’ve had chefs throw pans at me when I’d do something
wrong, but somehow I found this internal strength that I never knew existed.
Cooking is like dancing. It’s the same kind of discipline and hot, laborious
work.”
For Bernstein, 14 years of a culinary career has passed “in the blink of
an eye” and for good reason. After graduating from cooking school, she
trained with famed chef Jean-Louis Palladin and worked as a sous chef in New
York restaurants such as Le Bernardin and Alison on Dominick. She achieved celebrity
status among Miami foodies when she became the chef at Azul at the Mandarin
Oriental hotel, dazzling diners with her signature contemporary American fusion
cuisine. She has appeared on the Today show, been featured in numerous publications—ranging from Bon Appetit to the New York Times—and co-hosted the Food Network’s Melting Pot show for two years. And when she appeared on the network’s Iron Chef America, she competed with Bobby Flay and won.
“I never did any of these things to be famous,” says Bernstein. “I
did them because I was following my heart. For me, the greatest satisfaction
comes from watching people eat my food and seeing that they’re happy.”
Though she’s professionally “extremely satisfied,” Bernstein,
who is married, hopes to have children. She also dreams of one day opening a
cooking school for mentally impaired people. “Anyone can turn raw ingredients
into something beautiful,” she says. “It’s incredible to me that
I can wake up with an idea in my head, run to work and within hours see my dreams
come true.”
Susan Josephs is a freelance writer based in Venice, California.
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FALL ISSUE 2006
Wendy C. Drucker