The Best Celebrity Chef-Owned Restaurants in Miami

Scott Conant is a man of many trades: chef, cookbook author, James Beard Award recipient and a judge on Chopped. He’s also the supremo behind Scarpetta, an Italian restaurant with locations in everywhere from Las Vegas to the Hamptons. In Miami, Conant uses an array of pastas, seafood and vegetables to create dishes that reflect the Florida landscape, with his classic spaghetti twirled with tomato sauce and basil a particular favorite. Other droolworthy options include yellowtail crudo, squat ravioli shielding duck and foie gras, and roasted branzino with sunchokes and eggplant.

Chef Francis Mallmann’s only restaurant outside of South America is stationed in Miami Beach, where he continues to flaunt his love for live-fire cooking. Mallmann is known for his quick rise to fame as a 19-year-old restaurant owner and for his featured episode of Chef’s Table. The restaurateur brings Argentinian breakfast, lunch and dinner to the lavish dining room. The open-fire kitchen allows guests a front-row seat to the action: the white-suited chefs flip orange olive oil pancakes, sear cast-iron tiger prawns, and slide crimped empanadas filled with prime filet or pecorino and caramelized onions into the wood-fired oven. On Sundays, the restaurant boasts an Argentinian open-fire barbecue (called an asado), where friends and family are encouraged to gather for a buffet of traditional South American dishes.

Soon after opening Michael’s Genuine Food and Drink, the then-rising star Michael Schwartz won a James Beard Award for Best Chef in the South. Housed in the Design District, Michael’s focuses on showcasing local ingredients, depending on what’s in season. There might be a salad tossed with Florida strawberries and ribbons of ricotta salata, or wood-oven roasted snapper drizzled with mint salsa verde and flush with local squash. Produce often arrives from nearby farms such as Bee Heaven Farm, Teena’s Pride and Palmetto Creek Farms. Stick around for dessert to spoon silky key lime pie hiding under a cloud of torched meringue.

Touting over 30 restaurants in his award-winning restaurant group, Michael Mina’s contribution to the Miami culinary scene is a splashy steakhouse tucked in the Fontainebleau Hotel. The restaurant dazzles and delights by hauling out hunks of meat from the on-site ageing room and seafood towers glistening with lobster, shrimp, oysters and tuna tartare. Veal chops, rib eyes and Australian tomahawks – some painted with truffle butter, others bubbling with smoked blue cheese – are shepherded from the wood-burning grill to the table. Each can be paired with classic chophouse sides: creamed spinach, parmesan truffle fries and crispy brussels sprouts. For dessert, there’s the sweet potato bread pudding made à la minute, soaked in maple and crowned with brown butter-pecan ice cream.

A couple of years after winning season nine of Top Chef, chef Paul Qui opened Pao by Paul Qui in the ritzy Faena Miami Beach owned by Alan Faena, the designer behind the restaurant’s dome. At Pao, Qui exhibits a penchant for fusing cuisines by crafting a menu with Filipino, Spanish, Japanese, Thai and French influences. The menu is slimmed down and changes seasonally. You’ll see Japanese and Spanish accents in the smoked short-rib asado flanked by pickles and Japanese sweet potato puree; Filipino classics such as sisig (a traditional dish that dates back to the 17th century), folded with crispy pork, toasted garlic rice and a fried egg; and Thai and French features in the whole aged duck, paired with tom ka rice. Qui’s disposition for food as art is firmly on display throughout his dishes, each meticulously plated and beautifully presented.

Chef Adrianne Calvo brings a touch of California’s Napa Valley to her Miami restaurant. Calvo, a culinary expert on local TV and former Chopped competitor, first fell in love with food on a trip to Napa. Soon after, she opened Chef Adrianne’s Vineyard Restaurant and Wine Bar, her first restaurant, in 2007. Here, the menu is split up into categories: starters, salads, seasonal small plates, seafood and meats, with specialities including sweet corn tamalitos, mahi-mahi slick with lemon caper butter and a truffle-infused rack of lamb. The wine list is just as California inspired, peppered with wines from Napa Valley.

It’s all about pork at this Asian-influenced restaurant, operated by Sergio Navarro and José Mendín (the latter of whom was nominated for a James Beard Award for Best Chef). The sleek space is outfitted with brick walls, and dishes are often served on funky wooden boards or in intricately painted pottery. For the pork fanatics, opt for the pork-belly bao buns swiped with butterscotch miso, or the Pubbelly ramen, bobbing with barbecue pork, noodles and bean sprouts.