McInnis<\/a> competed in \u201cTop Chef: New York,\u201d the fifth season of the reality show in 2008-2009, and made it all the way to episode 10. (In part one of the finale, the Florida native was brought back but did didn\u2019t make it to part two.) Meanwhile, Booth<\/a> competed in \u201cTop Chef: New Orleans,\u201d the 11th season that aired in 2013-2014, and made it to episode 4 before being eliminated in a team challenge. (In the \u201cTop Chef\u201d spin-off web series, \u201cLast Chance Kitchen,\u201d the Australia native won four challenges in a row,\u00a0but didn\u2019t make it back into the main competition.)<\/p>\n The dynamic duo\u2019s culinary empire includes Stiltsville Fish Bar in Miami Beach, Roots Coastal Kitchen in Puerto Rico and Root & Bone in North Carolina and Indiana.\u00a0Booth also has Sunny Side Up Lifestyle<\/a>, a Miami-based beauty and wellness company.<\/p>\n Florida Room is owned and operated by film producer Shona Tuckman<\/a>,\u00a0who is half of another creative couple: Her husband, Brad Tuckman<\/a>, co-owns The Fort along with business partner Rich Campillo.<\/p>\n \u201cSo, these guys, they\u2019re real people, and we can have real conversations,\u201d Brad Tuckman said of the chefs. \u201cI think that it evokes in their menu, the layers of flavor they have. And I think the key is to get people who understand the vibe and the culture that we\u2019re trying to create. Janine and Jeff, they have that. When you work with good people, good things come.\u201d<\/p>\n He said the couple \u201cwere open to hearing our input,\u201d adding, \u201cThis menu came together because they were open-minded. \u2026 When Jeff and Jannine started, I gave them a mood board and I said, \u2018I\u2019m never going to come up to you again other than this one time.\u2019 And I gave him a whole bunch of pictures of food, right? I said, \u2018My job is done. It\u2019s now in your hands.\u2019 And that\u2019s what you have to do. You have to bring people around you that you trust and are amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n Here is more about Florida Room in a Q&A session with Booth and McInnis that has been edited for brevity and clarity.<\/p>\n The Florida Room restaurant at The Fort pickleball complex in Snyder Park on Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025. (Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n Sourdough flatbread with black truffle, caramelized onion, fontal cheese,aged balsamic vinegar, king trumpet shrooms, watercress at the Florida Room restaurant at The Fort pickleball complex in Snyder Park on Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025. (Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel<\/p>\n Chef Jeff McInnis unveils his Barbequed & Br\u00fbl\u00e9ed Smokey Ribs. (Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n The Florida Room restaurant at The Fort pickleball complex in Snyder Park on Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025. (Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel<\/p>\n The dining room at the Florida Room restaurant. (Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel<\/p>\n The Watermelon + Feta salad, with chilled summer melon, French feta cheese, cucumber, Aleppo pepper, mint, and extra virgin olive oil. (Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel<\/p>\n Sourdough flatbread with black truffle, caramelized onion, fontal cheese, aged balsamic vinegar, king trumpet shrooms and watercress served at the Florida Room restaurant in Fort Lauderdale. (Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n The Double Buttermilk Crispy Fried Chicken, 24-hour brined bird, rosemary lemon dust, hot honey at the Florida Room restaurant at The Fort pickleball complex in Snyder Park on Thursday, November 20, 2025. (Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n The Florida Room restaurant at The Fort pickleball complex in Snyder Park on Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025. (Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel<\/p>\n A view of the Florida Room restaurant at The Fort in Fort Lauderdale. (Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n Peachwood Old Fashioned, with Jack Daniel\u2019s Bonded Tennessee Whiskey, cr\u00e8me de peache, vanilla simple, angostura bitters at the Florida Room restaurant at The Fort pickleball complex in Snyder Park on Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025. (Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n The Florida room restaurant is open at The Fort, Fort Lauderdale\u2019s new pickleball complex at Snyder Park, Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025. (Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n Husband-and-wife celebrity chefs Jeff McInnis and Janine Booth at the Florida Room restaurant at The Fort complex in Fort Lauderdale on Thursday, Nov 20, 2025. (Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel<\/p>\n Co-owner Brad Tuckman with husband-and-wife celebrity chefs Janine Booth and Jeff McInnis at the Florida Room in Fort Lauderdale on Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025. (Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel<\/p>\n Get a view of the new pickleball stadium from inside the Florida Room restaurant at The Fort in Fort Lauderdale. (Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel<\/p>\n The Florida Room in Fort Lauderdale offers an array of cocktails. (Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n The Florida Room restaurant at The Fort pickleball complex in Snyder Park on Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025. (Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n Show Caption<\/p>\n 1 of 17<\/p>\n The Florida Room restaurant at The Fort pickleball complex in Snyder Park on Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025. (Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n Expand<\/a><\/p>\n Q: How would you describe the overall vibe of Florida Room?<\/p>\n Booth: When you kind of walk into the dining room, it\u2019s very lush and green. It kind of plays into, maybe, your grandma\u2019s Florida room in her home. And it really kind of plays into the ambience of the restaurant as well. \u2026 We get this gorgeous breeze off the lake. We can open up the windows and so you truly do feel like you\u2019re in a Florida room. \u2026 I didn\u2019t grow up in Florida, but we do have a similar kind of indoor-outdoor dining in Australia, and it does kind of take me back to those childhood memories, but with a really modern take.<\/p>\n McInnis: We preach the gospel of Southern hospitality. We try to give the best service we can and take care of our customers. We believe that if we take care of our customers and feed them right, that everything else kind of falls into place.<\/p>\n Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel<\/p>\n A view of the Florida Room restaurant at The Fort in Fort Lauderdale. (Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n Q: What can you tell readers about the \u201cSouthern American and coastal comfort food\u201d culinary direction of the menu?<\/p>\n McInnis: I love the word nostalgia. I love when I remember something from taste. And I think it\u2019s an important part of the restaurant business, to be able to bring that to people, to not just feed them but bring them something comforting and something that\u2019s a memory. \u2026 I was blessed to grow up in North Florida, in a town called Niceville. I spent my first real culinary career, where I was a professional, in Charleston, South Carolina. I think that\u2019s where I really started getting into it. So, all of those flavors \u2014 my grandma teaching me how to make biscuits and fried chicken \u2014 all of that stuff reigns very heavily with me as North Florida food. You get down into Miami and people kind of look at you crazy when you\u2019re cooking biscuits, but it does work and people like it. So to me, the answer is we cook from our hearts and soul.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know if I want to just start naming dishes that \u2026 fit that Florida Southern comfort. But if I did, it would definitely be some of our fried chicken that we do a lemon dust on. \u2026. Our ribs are to die for. We kind of smoke them tableside with rosemary in it. \u2026 Then, of course, we have some upscale dishes. We have a lot of seafood on the menu, but we tried our best to pay respects to good grits and good chicken and good ribs first.<\/p>\n Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel<\/p>\n Chef Jeff McInnis unveils his Barbequed & Br\u00fbl\u00e9ed Smokey Ribs. (Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n Booth: I think Jeff kind of touched on some of the more comforting kind of items. Outside of that, we have kind of directed this menu with a focus on local mangoes, Florida avocados and really fresh produce \u2026 We have this beautiful mango salad with a sesame vinaigrette. We kind of char the mangoes and dice them up, and it\u2019s kind of this earthy, salty, sweet tart, very balanced salad, but really kind of focusing on making the Florida mango shine. \u2026 So we do have this comforting kind of side of the menu, and then we have this light and bright and fresh side of the menu.<\/p>\n Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel<\/p>\n Sourdough flatbread with black truffle, caramelized onion, fontal cheese, aged balsamic vinegar, king trumpet shrooms and watercress served at the Florida Room restaurant in Fort Lauderdale. (Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n Q: Chef Booth, what about you Aussie influences?<\/p>\n Booth: Yes, the sausage rolls are one of my prized possessions, I guess. Jeff comes from this Southern background where he\u2019s bringing the fried chicken. I\u2019m bringing the sausage rolls. So we have an Australian lamb sausage roll. It\u2019s wrapped in puff pastry, topped with some sesame seeds, and they\u2019re a golden puffy delicious [dish]. And we topped them off with a mango chutney, so there\u2019s a little spice in the lamb. So it\u2019s a little bit of heat, but it\u2019s more of like those warming spices. And with the mango chutney, it just all comes together. It\u2019s like a really fancy Australian pigs-in-a-blanket minus the ketchup and you\u2019ve got your mango chutney.<\/p>\n Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel<\/p>\n The dining room at the Florida Room restaurant. (Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n Q: Is it true that you are both very conscious of not using seed oils, a growing trend among foodies?<\/p>\n McInnis: Honestly, I think that it\u2019s a trend that\u2019s here to stay. I think that the conversation of health has turned. It\u2019s not just, let\u2019s eat less fat. It\u2019s more of, what are we putting in our bodies that\u2019s going to give us longevity? \u2026 I really believe that a lot of the issues that we\u2019re seeing today with our children, with Alzheimer\u2019s, with cancer, it\u2019s all what we\u2019re putting in our bodies. And I think just taking a stand against seed oil is a big one. I think that the world\u2019s waking up to it.<\/p>\n Q: And this is also a very personal issue for you two, right?<\/p>\n McInnis: One of our children battled with issues with gluten for so long. And what we found out was that it wasn\u2019t gluten. It was poison that was hurting her. And it\u2019s poison that\u2019s hurting all of us. I think a lot of these ingredients that are really inexpensive are really inexpensive for a reason. And if you just put the extra effort to the research and make your bread from scratch and everything, you\u2019ll see a lot of these people will start having a lot less issues. And yes, of course, during that travail of figuring out what was going on with our daughter, we did live a gluten-free lifestyle for a long time. But now we\u2019ve been able to reintroduce it by just using real ingredients, whole foods. We do that for our family at home, why wouldn\u2019t we do it for our guests?<\/p>\n Q: What about the desserts?<\/p>\n Booth: There\u2019s an amazing baked Florida, a [take on a] baked Alaska, which has a very nostalgic feel. I would say it\u2019s basically a Buddhist Hand citron cake on the bottom and then we mix a combination of a vanilla bean ice cream and a lemon sorbet. So you get that kind of citrus creamsicle vibe going on, and then it is topped with a piped meringue and it\u2019s torched and finished with the Buddhist Hand zest. It is absolutely divine and something that you should not sleep on for sure. We have a beautiful panna cotta that\u2019s topped with a passionfruit jelly. \u2026 You could just come in for a cocktail and dessert and leave completely blown away.<\/p>\n Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel<\/p>\n Get a view of the new pickleball stadium from inside the Florida Room restaurant at The Fort in Fort Lauderdale. (Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n Q: Is there something you just can\u2019t wait for guests to experience?<\/p>\n Booth: From the moment you walk in the door, you\u2019re kind of hit with this gorgeous restaurant. There\u2019s amazing art \u2014 it\u2019s almost like something out of a gallery. You could literally just stand there and look at the works of art, which our designer [and chief development officer], Chris Romero, he created these beautiful works of art himself. And he\u2019s in charge of all of the little touches, from the napkins to all of the furniture design. \u2026 As you walk in, you\u2019re seeing all these little touches of elements of design \u2026 even down to the silverware, the plateware, everything was so elegantly picked out for the purpose of how it feels.<\/p>\n McInnis: The temperature just dropped outside, and the dining room was always beautiful, but for the first time a few days ago, we started opening this huge wall that was designed on the bar. It brings the inside outside and vice versa. And it\u2019s really magical. Especially \u2026 when the sun\u2019s setting. We just started doing that, with the fresh air coming in. It really does feel like this nostalgic Florida room to me.<\/p>\n Florida Room is at 891 SW 34th St., Building B, Fort Lauderdale. Visit floridaroomftl.com<\/a> or call \u00a0754-295-4141.<\/p>\n Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel<\/p>\n The Florida Room in Fort Lauderdale offers an array of cocktails. (Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel) Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel<\/p>\n The Watermelon + Feta salad, with chilled summer melon, French feta cheese, cucumber, Aleppo pepper, mint, and extra virgin olive oil. (Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n \t\t\t![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/TFL-L-Florida-Room-The-Fort-014.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"Sourdough](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/TFL-L-Florida-Room-The-Fort-013.jpg?w=620\")
<\/p>\n![\"Chef](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/TFL-L-Florida-Room-The-Fort-02.jpg?w=620\")
<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/TFL-L-Florida-Room-The-Fort-09.jpg?w=620\")
<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/TFL-L-Florida-Room-The-Fort-05.jpg?w=620\")
<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/TFL-L-Florida-Room-The-Fort-06.jpg?w=620\")
<\/p>\n![\"Sourdough](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/TFL-L-Florida-Room-The-Fort-010.jpg?w=620\")
<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/TFL-L-Florida-Room-The-Fort-03.jpg?w=620\")
<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/TFL-L-Florida-Room-The-Fort-011.jpg?w=620\")
<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/TFL-L-Florida-Room-The-Fort-012.jpg?w=620\")
<\/p>\n![\"Peachwood](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/TFL-L-Florida-Room-The-Fort-015.jpg?w=620\")
<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/tfl-l-the-fort-pickleball-tour-06.jpg?w=620\")
<\/p>\n![\"Husband-and-wife](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/TFL-L-Florida-Room-The-Fort-01.jpg?w=620\")
<\/p>\n![\"Co-owner](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/TFL-L-Florida-Room-The-Fort-04.jpg?w=620\")
<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/tfl-l-the-fort-pickleball-tour-09.jpg?w=620\")
<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/TFL-L-Florida-Room-The-Fort-08.jpg?w=620\")
<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/TFL-L-Florida-Room-The-Fort-07.jpg?w=620\")
<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/1765369283_817_TFL-L-Florida-Room-The-Fort-012.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Chef](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/1765369283_849_TFL-L-Florida-Room-The-Fort-02.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Sourdough](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/1765369284_979_TFL-L-Florida-Room-The-Fort-010.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/1765369285_190_TFL-L-Florida-Room-The-Fort-05.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/1765369285_597_tfl-l-the-fort-pickleball-tour-09.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/1765369286_61_TFL-L-Florida-Room-The-Fort-08.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/1765369286_381_TFL-L-Florida-Room-The-Fort-06.jpg\")
<\/p>\n