Chef Andrew Carmellini has a license to do whatever he wants -- it's the American way.
Though the man behind the impressive restaurant The Dutch (at the W South Beach) admits a love of Italian and French cooking, "I'm more inspired by what grandmothers are cooking," he says. "Not only mine and not only yours, but like, the guy from Puebla that works for us in New York, and my grandmother, she was Italian but they lived in Miami for like 50 years. And the Cuban people who moved in down the street, I was interested in what they were cooking. That's all part of what I think American cooking is, which gives us license to do whatever we want."
Carmellini, a two-time James Beard Foundation Award winner who opened the original Dutch in 2011 near his home in New York City, sat down with Chat Chow TV to talk about the two things on the menu at every classic American restaurant, the city he wishes he grew up in, and his own very nefarious "evil thoughts" (watch above to find out what they are).
But he also gushed about Miami's most unsung resource: its local farms.
"That actually blew me away when we first opened, how much local farming's going on in Miami," he said. "I sort of knew it was going on...but I didn't know how awesome it was."
Originally posted on Chat Chow TV.