Audio By Carbonatix
It’s no surprise that Sam Gorenstein was nominated
for a James Beard award. Not only is the young chef a budding talent on Miami’s
food scene, but his selection was accidentally leaked two weeks prior to the announcement. Nevertheless, the Colombian-born toque is producing creative dishes out of the kitchen of BLT Steak at the Betsy Hotel on Ocean
Drive. As the chef de cuisine under Laurent Tourondel, Gorenstein executes the
steak-heavy menu with aplomb. The daily
blackboard menu, which includes local
fish, is the main reason he was nominated as a
Rising Star Chefs in the country.
The
25-year-old Johnson & Wales grad has had several important mentors.He first worked with Tourondel in New York City (at Union Pacific and
BLT Fish). In 2006, he moved back to Miami, where he toiled at Centro and then
learned under Michael Schwartz at Michael’s Genuine in the
Design District. Last year, Gorenstein and Tourondel were reunited for the
launch of BLT Steak in Miami Beach.
New Times:What was your first reaction to the James Beard nomination?
Sam Gorenstein: Disbelief. It caught me off-guard.
I was not expecting that. It’s a great honor to be nominated.
NT: There
was some controversy with your nomination, in that it was leaked a few
weeks before.
SG: Somehow the information was leaked onto
Eater.com. I don’t know how. It was unofficial, so it was a misunderstanding.
NT: Did
Laurent Tourondel call you?
SG: Of course. It’s a really good thing for the restaurant, aside
from any personal satisfaction. They mentioned my
name, but I have 35 people working alongside me.
NT: Do you
think your youth will be a factor in the competition?
SG: I don’t know. It’s supposed to be a rising
star chef, so it’s for chefs under 30 years old. It’s definitely one of the
best things that can happen to an aspiring chef.
NT: In your
category, you are the only chef from Florida. Why is that?
SG: In Miami, the gastronomic scene is not the
same as in New York or Chicago. Big chefs that were leading the pack in Miami
never developed their sous chefs or chefs de cuisines. They didn’t nurture the
new wave. Laurent has opened 18 restaurants in the company, and he makes sure
he develops his chefs de cuisines. Then those chefs will open their own place
one day. This never happened in Miami. New talent was never developed. The
dining scene got stuck. Miami was a tourist trap. Restaurants were more
centralized in seeing how they could extract more money out of the tourism
rather than let’s put the best product out there. That’s changing now. Michelle
Bernstein and Michael Schwartz are doing a great job with this. New talent is
being nurtured finally.
NT: Have you
eaten at any of your competition’s restaurants?
SG: No. There is no one here locally. I work so
hard that I barely have time to experience the restaurants in town.
NT: Are the
James Beard Awards the culinary equivalent to the Oscars?
SG: I guess. It’s my first nomination. It’s a
great honor. I’d love to win the prize and be number one, but just the fact
that my name came up on the list is hugely satisfying.
NT: How will
you celebrate if you win the Rising Star Chef award?
SG: I don’t know. I’m not planning for that yet. I’ll go out somewhere and
celebrate. We are so busy right now, there’s not much time to celebrate.
NT: Since
BLT Steak has 18 other locations, how much of the menu is set and how much can
you play with food concepts?
SG: We have a daily blackboard with seasonal
specials. All of the daily blackboard specials come from me. Right now, I’m
running Portuguese octopus and we’re doing it with smoked eggplant. I like to
work with the freshest ingredients. You get tired of cooking the same menu
everyday, so this is my happiness. My love is cooking fish. We are a modern
steakhouse but we have a lot of seafood here. It’s good to have both options on
the menu.
NT: What
type of fish do you work with?
SG: I get so excited when I see the fisherman coming with a huge fish. The
main thing for me is fresh. Most of the time, they bring the fish with the hook
still attached to it. On Friday, I got a 65-pound cobia in. I was like a child
playing. We did a ceviche with it and we filleted it.
NT: How many
servings does a 65-pound fish yield?
SG: It depends what you do with it. At the
restaurant, I like to cut seven-ounce pieces of fish. So, it yields about 40
filets. Sixty-five pounds looks like a lot but once you filet it, it’s gone in
two days.
NT: Do you
need to run the specials by Laurent or do you have full autonomy?
SG: It’s pretty much up to us to keep it
interesting for the local clientele. It has to keep the line of the restaurant,
and he oversees everything that goes on in the restaurant.
NT: What’s
your favorite dish on the regular menu?
SG: The Chinese five-spice duck. We buy Long
Island ducks and spice it up. We age the whole duck for two weeks. Then we cut
off the breasts and pan-sear them. There’s mango chutney, foie gras and duck
jus. It’s a really well-cooked dish. There’s creaminess from the foie and the
mango chutney has good acidity. Every single ingredient blends well together.
BLT Steak
1440 Ocean Drive, Miami Beach
305-673-0044
Tomorrow, in part two of our Q&A with Sam
Gorenstein, we get more in-depth on why there are too many steakhouses
in Miami, the South Beach Wine & Food Festival and being hit on by cougars.
