In March, acclaimed chef Michael Mina opened the newest location of his steak house concept, Bourbon Steak, inside The Seagate Hotel in Delray Beach. Born in Egypt but raised in Washington state, Mina’s personal biography can be felt in the bold, balanced food he has crafted across his career and in his new cookbook, My Egypt: Cooking from My Roots. PBI recently spoke with the James Beard Award winner about his background and vision.
PBI: What are some of your earliest memories of cooking?
Mina: I grew up in an Egyptian household with like seven aunts and uncles who all lived right around us. Food was the highlight of everybody’s everything. We’d have 20, 30 people in our home on the weekends, and my mom cooked every day, mostly Middle Eastern food. But what happens when your palate gets used to Middle Eastern food, [which] is very bold in flavor, you learn a lot about balance. … So, a lot of my early cooking was with my mom and a lot of it was with very bold flavors. Even though as I started cooking, worked in restaurants, went to the Culinary Institute of America right out of high school, worked in New York in three-star restaurants and Michelin-starred restaurants, and opened my first restaurant, Aqua, in 1991 in San Francisco—my style always went back to good technique, good product, innovation, but really bold, balanced flavors.
What sets this new Delray Beach location of Bourbon Steak apart?
The design. This is the first steak house Martin Brudnizki has done for me, and I’m so excited because he’s one of my favorite designers in the world. With Bourbon Steak, you’ve got your classics … and then [we] create some dishes around that, and it’s always based on the product. Then it’s really about the specials. Here, you’re going to get a lot of fish specials because of where we are. We’re going to get those great snappers, pompanos, stone crabs—the seafood cart will be much more aligned to Florida. Seafood is that big differentiator from Bourbon Steak to Bourbon Steak because we have this beautiful fish cart that has shellfish and fish and raw and cooked. We utilize a lot of local product, so it changes a lot.
What do you feel is your culinary signature?
It’s balanced bold flavors. Of course, I’m going to use things that are in season [and] technique. But I’m going to take acid, sweet, spice, and fat, and I’m going to think about what gives this dish the acid? What’s giving it the sweetness? What’s giving it the spice? What’s giving it the fat or the richness? How are they balanced together? How do they taste together? That’s how you create bold, balanced food with a lot of flavor. And I think that’s how you create food that creates memories and makes people crave it. It’s its own umami.
What culinary trends, themes, or innovations are you excited about?
The globe. You’re always going to have your great Sicilian Italian restaurant [and] your great Japanese restaurant. But people are using the globe more than ever. What I loved about Aqua was it was a fish restaurant, but I wasn’t boxed into anything. Bourbon Steak is another restaurant where I don’t have to get boxed into anything. … We’ve got to have great steak and side dishes, but we can have a lot more fun with it. We don’t have to make creamed spinach; we can do a very technique-driven creamed spinach soufflé where it’s a beautiful soufflé and the cream gets poured in it and it’s just light and airy and innovative, but you still get that satisfaction of creamed spinach. That’s what I love. That’s where I think food should go and is going. Nothing is better than being the melting pot that the U.S. is, and it should be that way with food too.
Facebook Comments