Creating Miami's Food Culture

Zak the Baker's Zak Stern will co-host a South Beach Wine & Food Festival dinner with chefs Michael Beltran and Jose Mendin

Zak Stern, Michael Beltran, and Jose Mendin Photo courtesy of SOBEWFF

Zak the Baker’s Zak Stern has become one of Miami’s most beloved culinary figures. Stern, who got his start by selling bread at local farmers’ markets, first opened his Wynwood bakery in 2014 after enlisting the support of the Miami community in a Kickstarter campaign.

The shop has since earned a Michelin Bib Gourmand, and is a current James Beard semifinalist in the Outstanding Bakery category.

Stern is a household name in Miami for so much more than his breads and baked goods. The baker also participates in many community programs including one that traded backyard mangos for bread and another that asked people to write a Haiku poem about Miami in exchange for a loaf.

Stern’s goal is to help create a sense of community and define Miami’s young and ever-evolving food culture. The city, although just over a century old, is a rich melting pot of people from all over the world, with especially strong Latin American and Caribbean influences.

“I am looking for the beauty in Miami. It’s a personal journey of loving where I am and loving everything about it. There’s no reason why we can’t have a food culture as interesting as that of Northern Italy or as specific as Lyon or Alsace. Miami is a young city in the modern world with a lot of money and great weather,” he says.

Stern says that the combination of different people calling Miami home combined with local ingredients is the catalyst for a defining Miami food culture. “All of the ethnicities and tribes bring their flavors and histories and culture and combine it with what can grow in this region and what comes out of that becomes the food culture of the region.”

As an example, Stern uses local fruits like mangos, bananas, and guava instead of more traditional stone fruits like prune and apricot in his hamantashen, a cookie that traces back to the Ashkenazi Jewish communities to celebrate the holiday of Purim. “We are doing our part,” he says of his bakery. “We’re just telling the story and celebrating what we do rather than looking everywhere else to import our culture. Let’s look right here. We’ve got one. I know that New York is cool and Paris is amazing, but I believe that Miami can have a food culture as unique and compelling. The question is — do we want to celebrate it?”

On Saturday, February 24, Stern will celebrate Miami’s food culture in tandem with two of the city’s other lauded chefs, Michael Beltran and Jose Mendin, at a dinner at Miami’s Regener8 Farm as part of the South Beach Wine & Food Festival.

The farm, located southwest of the City of Miami, specializes in growing leafy greens, herbs, roots, tomatoes, cucumbers, squashes, broccoli, beans, cauliflower, fruits, and more.

The dinner will feature all three culinarians cooking dishes made with ingredients sourced locally. “We’ll be getting much of the food for the dinner from the farm,” says Stern who says that even his baking will be wheat-free. “We’ll be shaving yuca down, squeezing out the water, and drying it out to make cassava bread.”

As part of the self-imposed rules, the chefs cannot use olive oil from Spain or Italy. “If we need fat, maybe we’ll use coconut oil or chicken fat.” The dinner will also take advantage of Miami’s rich bounty from the sea. Stern describes the dinner as going back to basics. “Let’s pretend it’s 250 years ago and we didn’t have Sysco trucks. What would we be eating? Bananas and avocados and mangos and fish. Doesn’t that sound delicious?”

Stern adds a thank you to the festival, for supporting the dinner which is both geographically and ideologically far from the usual champagne and tequila-fueled soirees. “Lee [Schrager] has always been extremely supportive of me and every wild idea I’ve come to him with.”

Stern says that he just wants to start a conversation on Miami’s growing food culture. “I’m not proselytizing regional cuisine, but I hope it will inspire people to look around them. We have a food culture. This is not the most popular story in Miami, but I still think it’s a good one and it continues to grow.”

To purchase tickets to the SOBEWFF Dinner hosted by Zak Stern, Michael Beltran, and Jose Mendín on Saturday, February 24 from 7 to 10 p.m. at Regener8 Farm ($300 each), click here.