\u2022 Okeechobee Steakhouse, West Palm Beach<\/p>\n
\u2022 Jaxson\u2019s Ice Cream Parlor & Restaurant, Dania Beach<\/p>\n
\u2022 Knaus Berry Farm, Miami<\/p>\n
\u2022 Arbetter\u2019s Hot Dogs, Miami<\/p>\n
\u2022 Islas Canarias Restaurant, Miami<\/p>\n
\u2022 Clive\u2019s Cafe Little Haiti, Miami<\/p>\n
\u2022 Jackson Soul Food, Miami<\/p>\n
\u2022 Joe\u2019s Stone Crab, Miami Beach<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re 250 years old, so I thought it\u2019s a perfect time to celebrate the restaurants that keep our history alive,\u201d the James Beard Foundation\u00a0Award-winning Bernstein tells the South Florida Sun Sentinel. \u201cThese are icons that keep our communities rich, who have dug their heels into this ever-changing world to keep going. It\u2019s a hard industry, but surviving up to a century means you invested everything \u2014 your children, your grandchildren \u2014 to make it happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
If the chef affectionately known as \u201cMichy\u201d sounds like a SoFlo romantic, it\u2019s 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\u2019 \u201cCheck, Please! South Florida\u201d<\/a> and WPLG-Ch. 10\u2019s \u201cSoFlo Taste.\u201d<\/p>\n And the recognition is there in this film, when she tips back a caf\u00e9 con leche at 49-year-old Cuban restaurant Islas Canarias and says she can\u2019t function without it. Or when she stabs a piece of tender oxtail at 51-year-old Caribbean spot Clive\u2019s Cafe in Little Haiti and asks, with a breezy laugh, if someone will share the family recipe.<\/p>\n PBS \/ Courtesy<\/p>\n Chef-host Michelle Bernstein and Okeechobee Steakhouse owner Ralph Lewis in a scene from the new PBS documentary, \u201cLegacy on a Plate: The Restaurants That Built South Florida.\u201d (PBS\/Courtesy)<\/p>\n \u201cThat would be my grandma,\u201d Clive Murray, grandson of Clive\u2019s co-founder Pearline \u201cMiss Pearl\u201d Murray, says in the documentary. \u201cShe puts her whole foot in it.\u201d<\/p>\n At these restaurants, Bernstein also sees the \u201cincredible family values on display.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe younger generations want shiny and Instagrammable things, but to me there\u2019s no better Instagram picture of true courage than these restaurants,\u201d says Bernstein, who owns the acclaimed Cafe La Trova<\/a> in Miami and Sweet Liberty in Miami Beach. \u201cIt\u2019s something we have to take our children to because it\u2019s the history of our cities. If people don\u2019t highly regard and realize what we\u2019re beholding, we\u2019ll never have this again.\u201d<\/p>\n When diners make a sweet pilgrimage to the 70-year-old Jaxson\u2019s Ice Cream Parlor and see license plate-accented walls, nostalgia candies and \u201cKitchen Sink\u201d sundaes, it\u2019s like they\u2019re \u201cwalking into a timewarp,\u201d owner Linda Udell Zakheim says. Which is intentional: She made a promise to her late father Monroe, who founded Jaxson\u2019s, to preserve everything as it was.<\/p>\n Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel<\/p>\n The “Kitchen Sink” is the signature ice cream dessert at Jaxson\u2019s in Dania Beach, one of eight iconic restaurants featured in the new PBS documentary “Legacy on a Plate: The Restaurants That Built South Florida.” (Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel file)<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019d say things like, \u2018Please don\u2019t ever change the pickles or the marble rye bread,\u2019 \u201d Udell Zakheim recalls. \u201cDad 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\u2019m honored this place is mine to preserve.\u201d<\/p>\n Bernstein, whose mother is Argentine-Jewish and father is Russian-Jewish, says she learned something new when she visited Jaxson\u2019s with the PBS crew. Udell\u00a0Zakheim shared on camera that her father, as a Jewish man, couldn\u2019t own business licenses in the segregationist South of the 1950s, so he pretended to be gentile \u2014 and even quietly hired Black employees<\/a> at Jaxson\u2019s.<\/p>\n \u201cI really identified with everyone\u2019s stories, but especially that one,\u201d Bernstein says. \u201cMonroe changed the whole world around his ice cream shop. He struggled, and every legacy restaurant struggled. That\u2019s why it\u2019s important to celebrate them.\u201d<\/p>\n The PBS documentary \u201cLegacy on a Plate: The Restaurants That Built South Florida\u201d starts streaming Friday via WPBT\u2019s YouTube channel (YouTube.com\/wpbt2<\/a>) and the PBS App<\/a>. It is scheduled to air on WXEL-Ch. 42 at 10 p.m. July 23.\u00a0<\/p>\n PBS\/Courtesy<\/p>\n Restaurant owner Stephen Sawitz and chef-host Michelle Bernstein at a table at Joe’s Stone Crab in Miami Beach. (PBS\/Courtesy)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Star chef Michelle Bernstein has lately felt nostalgic about the iconic South Florida restaurants that raised her. 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