“My sister has always meant home to me, and Mei is a way to invite St. Pete into our version of home,’” says Chamberlain. “Our goal at Mei is to make you feel like you’re visiting a lifelong friend, sitting around a dinner table and sharing a meal and bottle of wine reminiscing over shared memories and plans for new ones.”
Chamberlain’s background includes time in Denver at MICHELIN-starred Beckon, where he trained in classical French and Nordic cuisine.
That experience now shapes Mei’s approach, which combines European techniques with Japanese ingredients and cooking methods like binchotan grilling, alongside in-house fermentation, koji aging, dry aging, and fire-based cooking.
“After coming back to Florida, I’ve found the community in St.Pete to be one of the most supportive and interesting cities in the state,” says Chamberlain. “I really wanted to bring my experiences from Colorado, the ethos and intentionality of service, to the same areas that I grew up in.”