Jonathan Waxman is taking over Harry's for one night.

​Jonathan Waxman, chef/owner of Barbuto in New York, Top Chef Masters alum, and author is taking over Michael Schwartz's Harry's Pizzeria Wednesday, February 1.

Waxman is hosting a pop-up dinner event, featuring dishes from his book, Italian, My Way: More Than 150 Simple and Inspired Recipes That Breathe New Life into Italian Classics. The evening will feature welcome cocktail, hors d'oeuvres, four courses, a signed copy of Waxmam's cookbook, wine and beer. Tickets are $160 and include tax and gratuity. You can purchase them here, or you can win a pair!

Short Order is giving away a pair of tickets to Waxman's special pop-up. Just post a comment on our Facebook page convincing us why you should win. Most convincing plea will win the tickets. We'll announce a winner tomorrow at noon.

We spoke to Jonathan Waxman about the pop-up, his favorite Miami restaurants, and Top Chef Masters. Here's what he had to say:
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​On a past episode of Food Network's Chopped, Ronnie Vincent lost a closely matched dessert round. The executive sous chef at Joe's Stone Crab comes from Overtown. Despite the loss, his appearance has since brought him many accolades.

Raised by a single father who worked three jobs to support his family, Vincent saw drugs and violence -- the rough life -- growing up but has always maintained a positive attitude. His own brother was shot five times but survived.

Once he graduated from high school, his athletic prowess earned him a scholarship to play football for Glenville State College in West Virginia. Running 4.48-second 40-yard dashes and majoring in education, he was well on his way to having a robust football career. After tearing his ACL and having his first child during his sophomore year in college, he decided to not pursue football but instead focused entirely on his culinary career, reading books, teaching himself, and practicing cooking in his own kitchen.
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Photo by Marguerite Gil

Hosea Rosenberg at Seminole Coconut Creek Casino

A couple years back, a soft-spoken, rock-solid chef from Boulder bowled over the competition on Top Chef Season 5, beating a couple flashier competitors in New Orleans to take the coveted TV title.

Born in Taos, New Mexico, Rosenberg received his degree in engineering physics and wanted to become an astronaut. He might have been orbiting the earth at some point, checking out the stars but cooking got in his way and he's not sorry about that.

Short Order caught up with Rosenberg on Tuesday at the Seminole Casino Coconut Creek, where he was playing some charity poker. Turns out astrophysics and gourmet cooking aren't all that different.
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Food Network

Victory is sweet and savory.

After Sunday night's epic holiday meal battle in Kitchen Stadium against chef Elizabeth Falkner, Geoffrey Zakarian -- who recently opened the Tudor House restaurant in South Beach -- prevailed using the secret ingredients as his allies (beef crown roast, candy canes, clementines, acorn and butternut squash, salt cod, Brussels sprouts, unfiltered apple cider, and parsnips) and three surprises from the Chairman (cranberries, use of the ice-cream machine, and a holiday-themed cocktail in a martini glass).

Zakarian spoke with New Times about his recent victory. But before we start: Which one of you is doing Next Iron Chef Season 4: The Remake? We here at Short Order are hungry and ready.

New Times: What was your gut feeling walking into your first Next Iron Chef challenge?
Geoffrey Zakarian: Oh, my God... Well, they told me we had to go out to the mountains and we were like, "Really?"... I was shocked when they told us what the geography was, but I was like, "OK, carry on."
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Photo courtesy of Jillian Rachel Photography

STK's Aaron Taylor.

​STK has finally replaced Ralph Pagano (who left the top toque position in October to take over at Gulfstream Park in Hallandale) with new executive chef Aaron Taylor. He's worked at Pierre's restaurant in Islamorada, and the Keystone Ranch in Colorado, but most recently honed his steak skills in the kitchen at Meat Market. Taylor heard through the grapevine that the job was opening, and One Group contacted him to see if he would be interested in taking over at STK. The rest is restaurant roulette history.

We wondered how different the steak technique could possibly be between the two restaurants, and whether Sean Brasel gave Taylor the finger, or a hug, upon his departure for a SoBe steakhouse competitor. Is there kitchen rivalry? Keep reading.

New Times: Was the audition tough?
Aaron Taylor: No, the audition was not tough, but when you are doing a tasting in a kitchen and you don't know where anything is, it can be really stressful.
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Photo by Joni Williams

Exterior of the new Rusty Pelican.

​They may have kept the old name, but everything else at the Rusty Pelican is new. And there isn't a tiki in sight.

The menu has been overhauled and now features trendy items like the ahi tuna taco, eel foie gras and duck-fat fried Australian lamb loin.

And the interior? It's just as on trend, in a New York City-meets-Miami kind of way. There are clean lines and sophisticated furnishings that manage not to compete with the restaurant's best asset: an ever-present and downright amazing water view.
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Chef Michael Gilligan. Serve him.

​There's a lot of chatter surrounding the Rusty Pelican, the Key Biscayne landmark that finally reopens today after a multimillion-dollar restoration, and its salty chef, Michael Gilligan.

Inquiring minds wanted to know why the heck he flew the coop after serving as executive chef at the W for ages. And, of course, we had to ask if the strange, old-school name of his new home was off-putting. As he explained in the current issue of Miami magazine: "I thought, I just can't get past the name. But then a friend asked, 'Where do we go in New York?' Spotted Pig. My favorite restaurant in England? Fat Duck." He said, "It's a Miami landmark -- everyone knows the Rusty Pelican. I'm gonna take this job."

We sat down with the British chef just after he was hired for the gig to hear what he had been planning.
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​Camillus House has a lot to be thankful for on Thanksgiving, particularly for having food service director Frank Ferrara around to prepare its biggest meal of the year. With a little help, he expects to serve up to 1,000 turkey dinners today for needy families and individuals across Miami.

But cooking isn't his only forte. Aside from managing a staff of cooks and volunteers, and coordinating nearly a thousand meals on a daily basis at the shelter, he is also a writer, a teacher, and a certified tennis instructor. Oh yeah, he's also a retired New York City police officer of 21 years.

"And I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up," he says jokingly.

At the suggestion of a friend and a bit of indecisiveness over what to study in college, he signed up with the NYPD. But 21 years of service was merely a segue into his true calling of serving the public on its most basic level.
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​After a successful opening week at his new restaurant the Dutch, chef Andrew Carmellini stepped out of the kitchen for a bit and headed to the Miami Book Fair Saturday to talk about his other new project, American Flavor.

In his second cookbook, Carmellini describes his journey as an American chef, including tales of his extensive road-tripping across the United States and discovering "the cultural medley that constitutes American cooking." This book was made to be used. Carmellini even went as far as to ensure the binding allows the book to lie flat on the counter while you cook. Featuring some dishes from his restaurants, such as the Asian White Boy Ribs served at the Dutch, American Flavor is a collection of recipes as diverse as the culinary landscape of America itself.

We caught up with Carmellini, who grew up frequently visiting his family in South Florida, to talk about the new book and his childhood pie-baking lessons with grandma in Little River.
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Banana cream pie from Baketress

​Richard Hales's Sakaya Kitchen was a pioneer in both locale (midtown, then a ghost town in terms of eateries) and concept -- affordable, chef-driven, Asian-inspired small plates (pre-Gigi, Wok Town, Pubbelly, etc.). Hales was also right at the intersection of the original food truck courts; his Sakaya Kitchen Truck, then Dim Ssäm à Gogo truck were and remain two of the best. His new set of wheels, just now rolling out, is the Baketress dessert truck, with pastry chef Vanessa Paz at the helm.

Hales emailed me recently concerning something I had written awhile back about food truck roundups; he wasn't happy about the direction things were going. So I asked a few questions about that subject -- and also inquired about Baketress desserts.

New Times: What do you think about the current state of the food truck roundups?
Richard Hales: We (Latin Burger, Fish Box, and Dim Ssäm à Gogo) started the first roundup on 65th and Bird Road a year ago and sort of wish we didn't. Roundups became a crutch for crappy food trucks to survive without going through what we did and especially what Latin Burger and GastroPod went through developing a customer base through good food and social media. The bottom feeders took over the industry and effed it up.
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