Star chef Michelle Bernstein has lately felt nostalgic about the iconic South Florida restaurants that raised her.
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Maybe it’s because America’s 250th birthday this month made her reflect on local history. Or because Bernstein has been a regular since childhood at longtime gems like Jaxson’s Ice Cream Parlor & Restaurant in Dania Beach, Arbetter’s Hot Dogs in Miami and Joe’s Stone Crab in Miami Beach.
Or perhaps it’s because, as a chef-owner herself, she’s hyper-aware of the high-rise sprawl and chainification in the region, and she feels responsible for spotlighting the family-owned classics that still have soul.
Really, it’s all of the above. Which is why she and South Florida PBS have turned the cameras on eight SoFlo institutions for the new Bernstein-hosted documentary “Legacy on a Plate: The Restaurants That Built South Florida.”
The hourlong travelogue, streaming starting July 17 on YouTube.com and PBS.org and airing July 23 on WXEL-Ch. 42, showcases icons that shaped the neighborhoods around them, spanning from Miami to West Palm Beach:
• Okeechobee Steakhouse, West Palm Beach
• Jaxson’s Ice Cream Parlor & Restaurant, Dania Beach
• Knaus Berry Farm, Miami
• Arbetter’s Hot Dogs, Miami
• Islas Canarias Restaurant, Miami
• Clive’s Cafe Little Haiti, Miami
• Jackson Soul Food, Miami
• Joe’s Stone Crab, Miami Beach
“We’re 250 years old, so I thought it’s a perfect time to celebrate the restaurants that keep our history alive,” the James Beard Foundation Award-winning Bernstein tells the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “These are icons that keep our communities rich, who have dug their heels into this ever-changing world to keep going. It’s a hard industry, but surviving up to a century means you invested everything — your children, your grandchildren — to make it happen.”
If the chef affectionately known as “Michy” sounds like a SoFlo romantic, it’s because, through her own busy career, she recognizes the true grit of struggle that legacy eateries share. The foodie and restaurateur sees it when dishing on local eateries for PBS’ “Check, Please! South Florida” and WPLG-Ch. 10’s “SoFlo Taste.”
And the recognition is there in this film, when she tips back a café con leche at 49-year-old Cuban restaurant Islas Canarias and says she can’t function without it. Or when she stabs a piece of tender oxtail at 51-year-old Caribbean spot Clive’s Cafe in Little Haiti and asks, with a breezy laugh, if someone will share the family recipe.
“That would be my grandma,” Clive Murray, grandson of Clive’s co-founder Pearline “Miss Pearl” Murray, says in the documentary. “She puts her whole foot in it.”
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At these restaurants, Bernstein also sees the “incredible family values on display.”
“The younger generations want shiny and Instagrammable things, but to me there’s no better Instagram picture of true courage than these restaurants,” says Bernstein, who owns the acclaimed Cafe La Trova in Miami and Sweet Liberty in Miami Beach. “It’s something we have to take our children to because it’s the history of our cities. If people don’t highly regard and realize what we’re beholding, we’ll never have this again.”
When diners make a sweet pilgrimage to the 70-year-old Jaxson’s Ice Cream Parlor and see license plate-accented walls, nostalgia candies and “Kitchen Sink” sundaes, it’s like they’re “walking into a timewarp,” owner Linda Udell Zakheim says. Which is intentional: She made a promise to her late father Monroe, who founded Jaxson’s, to preserve everything as it was.
“He’d say things like, ‘Please don’t ever change the pickles or the marble rye bread,’ ” Udell Zakheim recalls. “Dad was a mad scientist Willy Wonka who invented our sodas and ice cream flavors and whipped creams, and I was very close to him. I’m honored this place is mine to preserve.”
Bernstein, whose mother is Argentine-Jewish and father is Russian-Jewish, says she learned something new when she visited Jaxson’s with the PBS crew. Udell Zakheim shared on camera that her father, as a Jewish man, couldn’t own business licenses in the segregationist South of the 1950s, so he pretended to be gentile — and even quietly hired Black employees at Jaxson’s.
“I really identified with everyone’s stories, but especially that one,” Bernstein says. “Monroe changed the whole world around his ice cream shop. He struggled, and every legacy restaurant struggled. That’s why it’s important to celebrate them.”
The South Florida PBS documentary “Legacy on a Plate: The Restaurants That Built South Florida” starts streaming Friday via WPBT’s YouTube channel (YouTube.com/wpbt2) and the PBS App. It is scheduled to air on WXEL-Ch. 42 at 10 p.m. July 23.
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