Food & Wine Shout Out to Schwartz

Photo by John Mariani

December's Food & Wine Magazine gives a shout-out to Miami chef Michael Schwartz and the Design District in a recipe-laden article by Victoria Pesce Elliot. Elliot credits Schwartz, who opened Michael's Genuine Food & Drink last year, with aiding and abetting a Design District Renaissance -- before Michael's nobody much ventured there after dark, at least not without a protective talisman of fabric swatches clutched in one hand. Now there are good restaurants -- Pacific Time, Fratelli Lyon, and Brosia -- and hot shops like Yohji Yamamoto's Y-3 and gargantuan Italian design Mecca, Driade.

The article also includes nine Schwartz recipes guaranteed to jump start your next party: a BLT salad with artisanal bacon (Schwartz cures his own, the show-off); grilled skirt steak with a fennel and orange salad; and slow-roasted and spiced short ribs, which Schwartz likes better than the yucky sweet braised ribs that have taken restaurant menus hostage lately.

So if you live too far north, like me, to eat bi-weekly at Michael's with the rest of the D-D regulars, you can whip up your own Genuine Food & Drink at home -- just make yourself a cardboard cut-out of Jennifer Aniston and you'll never tell the difference.

-- Gail Shepherd