14 November 27 - December 3, 2025 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | Month XX–Month XX, 2008 miaminewtimes.com MIAMI NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | FILM | ART | STAGE | NIGHT+DAY | METRO | RIPTIDE | LETTERS | CONTENTS | Tales From the Floribbean How Norman Van Aken drew the first map of Miami cuisine. BY MICHELLE MUSLERA B efore Miami was a dining destination — before Michelin stars and celebrity-backed steakhouses — there was Norman Van Aken, the Midwestern cook who decided that Florida deserved a cuisine of its own. In the mid-1980s, long before “farm-to-ta- ble” or “fusion” were part of the culinary lexi- con, Van Aken was sitting on the back deck of Louie’s Backyard in Key West — a waterfront spot that would eventually become one of the island’s iconic restaurants — staring out at the Gulf. The restaurant wasn’t open yet. He had a stack of French and Moroccan cookbooks next to his coffee. Then he saw a boat sailing toward Cuba and thought: Why am I cooking as if I’m somewhere else? “I realized I was oblivious to where I was living,” he recalls. “Why wasn’t I focusing on the ingredients and stories right around me?” he shares with New Times. Plus, “New Or- leans had its own cuisine. California had one. The Southwest had one,” he says. “America was starting to celebrate its regional food movements. So why not Florida?” That quiet realization became the seed of what he would later name New World Cui- sine — a style rooted in the ingredients, cul- tures, and stories already alive in South Florida. He put away his European cook- books and began exploring Key West with a notepad, documenting the preparation of Cu- ban, Bahamian, and Haitian dishes. The idea arrived quietly, but its impact would be enormous. Long before he became the chef who would define South Florida’s food identity, Van Aken was a young man in Illinois, drift- ing through odd jobs with no plans of becom- ing a cook. Then he spotted a classified ad that read, “Cook wanted. No experience nec- essary.” “I had no idea what I was doing,” he says. But the heat, the rhythm, the camaraderie — it grabbed him immediately. That diner kitchen became his entry point into a world he hadn’t expected — but quickly knew was his. He didn’t attend culinary school, though he would ultimately receive an honorary doctor- ate from Johnson & Wales University. Instead, he learned in real kitchens, absorbing tech- nique from the cooks around him and shaping a philosophy centered on instinct, place, and story rather than rigid classical training. By the early 1980s, Van Aken had moved to Key West, which was deeply influenced by Cuban, Bahamian, Haitian, and Southern cooking. At Louie’s Backyard, he began to un- derstand the power of food rooted in place. “I realized I was oblivious to where I was living,” he says. “Why wasn’t I focusing on what was right around me?” When he moved to Miami in 1991 to open A Mano at the Betsy Ross Hotel, he arrived with a sharpened vision. Inside the small kitchen, he hung a hand-drawn circular map of the Americas over the pass and told his cooks, “See that map? That’s where our food is coming from now.” From Florida to Brazil, the Caribbean to the American South — the map defined the parameters of the cuisine he wanted to ex- plore. It was the first attempt to give Florida a distinct culinary identity. The national press quickly caught on. Time, The New York Times, Bon Appétit, and The London Times pro- filed him. His 1988 cookbook Feast of Sunlight helped bring national at- tention to his Flor- ida-first cooking approach, and he went on to be the only Floridian chef inducted into the “Who’s Who of Food & Beverage in America” by the James Beard Foundation. If New World Cuisine was his thesis, “fu- sion” became its shorthand — a word that had existed for centuries, but one Van Aken was the first to apply publicly to cuisine. In 1989, at a symposium in Santa Fe with chefs like Emeril Lagasse and Lydia Shire, he delivered a short talk titled “Fusion: The Syn- ergy of Culture and Cuisine.” It was the first time the term had been used in a formal culi- nary setting, and it quickly entered the na- tional vocabulary. “I wanted to describe what happens when one culture meets another and they make something together that’s better than either alone,” he says. “It’s like laying down a salsa beat and layering another melody on top. When it clicks — that’s magic.” The term stuck — and quickly became part of the way America talked about food in the 1990s. After A Mano, Van Aken opened Norman’s in Coral Gables in 1995, where his cooking matured into a blend of street-food soul and fine-dining precision. Yuca-stuffed crispy shrimp with mojo and habanero tartar sauce and sofrito filet mignon — these dishes de- fined an era in which Miami’s dining scene became both local and world-class. Over the years, Van Aken’s kitchens be- came incubators for a generation of Miami talent. Michelle Bernstein (Michy’s; Café La Trova), Michael Beltran (Ariete Hospitality Group), Miguel Massens (ex–Three; now de- veloping his own project), and Phil Bryant (ex–the Local; now culinary director for Mi- chael White’s group) all passed through his doors. “They all share that sense of being true to themselves and to their culture,” Van Aken says. “That’s what makes Miami so interest- ing — it’s not one voice, it’s many.” Over the years, his dining rooms became magnets for high-profile guests. Paul Mc- Cartney visited (always vegetarian). Mem- bers of the Rolling Stones came through. So did Robert De Niro, Toni Morrison, and Da- vid Letterman. “Some guests came two nights in a row for the exact same dish,” he says. “That’s the best compliment a chef can get.” Van Aken has watched Miami reinvent it- self over and over — from the sleepy dining scene of the ’80s to the Art Deco revival of the ’90s to today’s high-gloss boom. Over the last five years, he has seen an influx of big-money restaurant groups from New York, bringing glitz and spectacle but often little connection to Miami’s culture or local ingredients. “It’s starting to feel like Vegas — a lot of flash, not enough heart,” he says. “The risk is that we lose Miami’s voice.” He points to chefs like Michael Beltran (Ariete) and Michael Pirolo (Macchialina) as examples of the opposite: chefs who cook from where they stand and whose food re- flects the land, seasons, and sensibilities of South Florida. ▼ Café Norman Van Aken photo James Beard Award winner Norman Van Aken in his kitchen in Key West at MIRA in 1988. “SOME GUESTS CAME TWO NIGHTS IN A ROW FOR THE EXACT SAME DISH. THAT’S THE BEST COMPLIMENT A CHEF CAN GET.”
