Michael Mina Biography
When Michael Mina began his love affair with San Francisco, the earth moved. Literally. On his second day in the City, the Loma Prieta earthquake struck, but the 22-year-old chef was unfazed; he’d been given the opportunity of a lifetime to help design an upscale seafood restaurant from scratch, and he threw himself into it heart and soul. The now legendary Aqua opened to widespread acclaim in 1991 and quickly became a destination restaurant in a city that knows a thing or two about food. And Michael Mina’s reputation as one of the culinary world’s most innovative and talented chefs was born.
Now, 20 years and 19 restaurants later, the award-winning chef and restaurateur is bringing back the magic that made Aqua one of San Francisco’s top restaurants. He has opened the eponymous Michael Mina in Aqua’s former location — for him, hallowed ground.
“When we got ready to create Michael Mina in the space where Aqua was formerly located, I brought in not only the original architects and interior designers, but every single subcontractor we had used 20 years ago. My team has a special understanding of the significance of this restaurant — to me and to the City. One of our plumbers literally came out of retirement to help. I said, ‘It’s 20 years later and this has got to be the most beautiful restaurant in San Francisco,’ which is what Aqua was when it opened. I couldn’t stand to lose the magic. We removed every single thing in the restaurant and then restored it like you would restore an old car. It was a beautifully designed space that has been refreshed and is now magical. We have transformed it from a white-tablecloth-style environment to a beautifully textured, elegant setting with a subtle Asian influence. Everything has been reconsidered from scratch, even the custom china.”
Michael's secret ingredient? Balance.
According to Michael, “Balance in everything creates memories and experiences.”
It’s deliciously counterintuitive, but Michael says the key to unlocking fantastic flavors and irresistible combinations in fine dining lies in balancing four basic elements: spice, sweetness, acidity and richness. “If any one of those is out of balance, the food is not memorable. You don”t feel like you have to finish it. Even something as simple as vinaigrette succeeds or fails on balance — too much oil, and it will be thick and boring. Too much vinegar feels sharp on the tongue. Surprisingly, it is balance that actually makes a dish exciting.”
Fresh, organic ingredients are the mainstays of his menus, but his penchant for juxtaposing unexpected flavors and accents lifts his dishes above the commonplace. For example, the signature dishes he calls “trios” take a primary ingredient (a Dover sole, for example) and “accessorize” it in three different ways on the same plate, artfully arranged and complemented with, perhaps, a vegetable puree, a butter-and- champagne sauce, and aioli. “The trio concept allows me to use peak seasonal ingredients to create pure flavors,” Michael explains. “I call it complex simplicity.”
And it’s not only all about the food. Michael feels that creating balance in a restaurant means not overemphasizing the food. “I don’t believe in whisper joints. You’re not in my restaurant to worship the food, but to have a fantastic dining experience.” Michael is known for innovative tableside preparations that involve the server with the guests. “The right tableside preparation creates a memory. For example, we deconstructed the Ahi tuna tartare years ago and it has become one of our signature dishes. We mix the tuna, pear, Scotch bonnet peppers, sesame oil, and a quail’s egg yolk tableside. However, you can’t overdo this — you can’t do too many dramatic things tableside if it means other guests’ food is getting cold or if it interferes with the larger experience.“
“Remember,” adds Michael, “it’s all about balance.”
Balance in life
Michael’s passion for food and creating memorable dining experiences is palpable, but he also tries to keep a larger sense of balance as well. Michael and his wife have two young sons, and they enjoy working together in their family garden, harvesting and preparing its produce in their home kitchen. Also in pursuit of balance, Michael likes to make sure the boys understand and are exposed to the family business. “Anthony and Sammy often join me on the weekends, and they even enjoy coming out of the kitchen to meet our guests. It makes them part of the team.”
Michael was born into a close-knit family in Egypt in 1967. When he was two, his parents left Cairo for the United States. They settled with Michael and his older brother and sister in the tiny central Washington town of Ellensburg, where his father worked in the business office of Central Washington University, and his mother worked as a chemist.
In a curious turn, a disappointment in one of Michael’s early sports passions actually led to his cooking career. “I loved basketball and I played it all the time. But when I was about 15 my high school coach wouldn’t play me. So I quit. I came home and told my father and he was angry. He said, ‘Look, you don’t just quit things. To succeed you have to commit, and if you won’t play basketball, go get a job.’”
Michael found a small short-order restaurant in Ellensburg willing to take a chance on a teenage fry cook. To his surprise, he was instantly and completely smitten with cooking. “I fell in love with the intensity and the timing you need to be effective in the kitchen.” His hoop dreams evaporated as he increasingly focused instead on haute cuisine, and Michael soon found a second job cooking at a fancier French restaurant (“Steaks served with a dollop of composite butter,” he says, smiling).
The Minas were happy with Michael’s industriousness, but they placed a high value on education. “The choices for me were the big three — doctor, lawyer, engineer,” Michael recalls. His attending college was nonnegotiable, even though by the time he was a senior he knew he wanted to go to cooking school. “The crystallizing moment was when I was about 17 and I was watching Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Robin Leach did a story about Jeremiah Tower and his Stars restaurant in San Francisco. I saw that show and I realized that was what I wanted to do. I wanted to run my own restaurant in San Francisco.”
Michael enrolled at the University of Washington, but his heart was still in the kitchen. “By Thanksgiving, I had a job cooking at the Space Needle and it’s all I talked about when I came home.” By now, his father could see that Michael did not have a commitment problem — when it came to cooking, he had quite the opposite. And there was no point standing in his way. Unbeknownst to Michael, his father had been researching cooking schools, and he concluded that the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, was the best place for him. And that’s where Michael went.
During those 18 months of formal schooling, Michael spent his weekends in Charlie Palmer’s kitchen at the upscale Aureole in New York City. After graduating, Michael moved to California, where he worked with the Executive Chef of the Bel Air Hotel in Los Angeles, George Morrone. It was with George that Michael went to San Francisco in 1989 to develop a concept to create a menu for an upscale seafood restaurant in San Francisco that would become Aqua, where Michael was the executive chef from 1993 to 2002.
Broadening the Experience
Aqua spent many years on San Francisco’s A-list. Michael was awarded Rising Star Chef of the Year in 1997 and Best California Chef in 2002 by the James Beard Foundation. But by 2002, Michael was anxious to expand and try new things. After a chance meeting with tennis star Andre Agassi, who described his first meal at Aqua as “one of the most amazing meals of my life,” Michael formed the Mina Group in partnership with him. He then began to design concept restaurants around the country. Today, the Mina Group has opened 18 concept restaurants and a lounge concept. In San Francisco the properties include Michael Mina, Clock Bar, RN74, and Bourbon Steak. San Jose, California, is home to Arcadia. In Southern California, Michael opened Stonehill Tavern in Dana Point. In Atlantic City, Michael introduced Seablue, and then brought the concept to Las Vegas, where he has also opened Michael Mina, American Fish, Stripsteak, and Nobhill Tavern. Michael has brought the Bourbon Steak concept to Miami, Scottsdale, and Washington, D.C., as well as Detroit, where Michael also introduced Saltwater. During this incredible expansion, Michael continued to impress the food world: by 2005, Bon Appétit named him Chef of the Year, as did San Francisco Magazine, and he was the International Food and Beverage Forum’s 2005 Restaurateur of the Year.
Michael says Aqua influenced his subsequent restaurants in two ways. First, there is his devotion to the concept of balance in food and experience, a principle that is embodied in all of his establishments. However, he also believes Aqua succeeded because of its attention to beauty. “It’s about lighting, design and texture. If you feel you look good, you’ll feel better in the restaurant, and then you’ll have a better experience overall.”
How lightning strikes twice
According to Michael, once you have experienced a heavenly dining experience at one of his restaurants, it is his job to make sure you can experience it again and again. “We have gone to extremes to give our work associates the tools they need to create a fantastic experience, and then to recreate it again and again. If you have a wonderful meal, you want to be able to go back and be confident that you can repeat it. That is a function of attention to detail and the training of our staff. This is extremely important to us, and we have invested in the technology to make sure lightning strikes twice, a half dozen times, or however many times our guests return to our restaurants.”
Today there is an extensive collection of videos within the Michael Mina intranet that allows all restaurant personnel to see the dishes being made. That helps new chefs as well as the servers understand the food and its preparation in more depth, so that they can share it with guests. These videos teach the chefs how to plate the food and show the wait staff how to prepare it tableside.
A changing, growing food world
Michael has been excited to see the steady growth and evolution in the American dining public’s appreciation for and interest in unique and outstanding dining experiences. “There are people who live to eat and people who eat to live,” says Michael. “I think about 70% of the people I meet are now in the first category. Food has taken off. I credit a lot of it to the cooking shows and the emergence of the Internet, where you can learn so much about food — from its origins, to recipes, to cooking techniques.”
The growing appreciation of the public for fresh, flavorful food has also elevated the professionalism and prestige of his field. “There was a time when people ‘ended up’ being chefs,” says Michael. “Like me, they needed a job and fell into it. Now I have CEOs calling me and saying, ‘Can you let my son shadow you in the kitchen?’ or ‘My daughter has found her passion and this is what she wants to do — can you talk to her about how to go about it?’ Being a chef is now looked at as a true profession, a good and noble thing to do.”
The food world is constantly evolving, with technology playing a bigger and bigger role. These days diners and reviewers Tweet from the table and Yelp new finds and sensations at the speed of light, but Michael finds his deep belief in balance, beauty and excellent service is a timeless recipe for success.
Seattle diners are the most recent to experience Michael Mina’s balanced and beautiful approach to dining. In June 2011, he returned to his Pacific Northwest stomping grounds with RN74 Seattle, which opened in the landmark Joshua Green building at 4th and Pike in Downtown Seattle. Like its San Francisco namesake, RN74 will emphasize regional French specialties made with seasonal, local and sustainable offerings. “We have developed relationships with local farmers, ranchers, even cheese makers, as well as regional winemakers. It is so exciting to bring what I’ve learned back to my roots in the Pacific Northwest,” he says.
Awards and special customers
Michael has been honored with numerous accolades, including the Michelin one-star award, and the San Francisco Chronicle’s four-star award for Michael Mina in San Francisco, and Michelin’s one-star award for Michael Mina Bellagio in Las Vegas. He was named Gayot.com’s Restaurateur of the Year in 2011, and HauteLiving.com’s Top Chef in San Francisco and Top Celebrity Chef in Las Vegas (#2) for 2010. Michael has been featured in numerous national print media outlets, including Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, Gourmet, Food Arts, Cigar Aficionado, Newsweek, TIME, Robb Report, Travel & Leisure and Wine Spectator. In addition, Michael has been featured on the Food Network’s After Midnight, Fine Living Network’s Opening Soon, Pat O’Brien’s The Insider, The Early Show on CBS, The Today Show on NBC and Fox’s syndicated Good Day Live. He has been a featured guest chef at the James Beard House numerous times, cooked for First Lady Laura Bush, and has been a guest speaker at the C.I.A. in Hyde Park, and at other culinary institutes in California.
Among the highlights of his life, Michael says, has been the opportunity to cook for not just one, but three Presidents of the United States. He cooked for Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and in April 2011 for President Barack Obama. “My career path was not one embraced by Middle Eastern culture,” Michael told President Obama. “Boys did not grow up to be chefs. I would never have been able to fuel my culinary passion if my parents had not moved here. I am indeed living the American dream.”