Basil Park: Tim Andriola's Long-Awaited Followup Will Change How You Eat

At Basil Park in Sunny Isles Beach, the Parmesan sprinkled over crisp emerald kale chips is cashew-based. The nuts are pulverized and then mixed with nutritional yeast to mimic the piquant cheese. A dash of sea salt finishes the disguise. Vegetarians have long refashioned a cornucopia of seemingly animal-based products. Yet Tim Andriola — who opened this healthful restaurant in May adjacent to his long-standing Mediterranean spot, Timo — isn't a tofu evangelist. Here, fat slabs of grass-fed Uruguayan beef are salted, seared, and topped with sprigs of microbasil before being served. Inside a beaming rotisserie, nearly a dozen crisp-skinned chickens from Joyce Farms perform a slow, perpetual barrel roll behind a thick beech counter that fronts the open kitchen. Andriola, who two years ago found himself sluggish and overweight from kitchen life, espouses a philosophy of "intact foods" that eschews processed wheat and sugar. Animals, he says, should be grazed and untainted with hormones or antibiotics. "If you look back hundreds of years to what we were meant to eat as humans, it's not what we're eating now," he says. Buying into this theory is easy. Building a restaurant around it isn't. Andriola has lined up a patchwork of purveyors and has spent hours shuttling among markets and suppliers. Basil Park is partly stocked by owner-partner Tamer Harpke's Hollywood farm, where microgreens and wheatgrass are grown for juicing. A recently acquired 1.5 acres in Dania Beach that has been sown with Fresno chilies, arugula, mustard greens, and lacinato kale may soon supply up to 30 percent of the restaurant's produce. Read the full review of Tim Andriola's Basil Park on Short Order.