Taste of our journeys

I was born in Hollywood, Florida. When I was 1½, our family moved to Miami Shores, and we didn’t leave until I graduated high school…. I went to Johnson and Wales [to study culinary arts]. I went away to Atlanta. I went to school to study biochemistry and nutrition at Georgia State and then Emory University.

Before that, I was a professional dancer, and I moved to New York. I got a summer scholarship with Alvin Ailey [American Dance Theater], and I was hoping to dance with either Baryshnikov or Balanchine. By the time I was 20, I was told that I had the talent, but I was too short, and my legs were too strong, so that I should go be a modern dancer or a Vegas dancer. I was so let down that I quit everything, and I came back to go to college.

Who says I’m not still dancing?

I dreamt of becoming a great cook. I was hoping to combine cooking and my nutrition schooling. The cooking stuck, nutrition was there, but became more of a background. I fell in love, wanted to be better, be a better cook, a great cook; I never thought I had the talent to be a chef until I was offered the opportunity and went for it. The rest came together like a 300- piece puzzle.

I am fully Jewish and very Latin. Our background from South America is Argentina. Although my grandmother was from Chile, she moved to Argentina very young, and she met my grandfather. His side is about five generations Argentine. We were some Jewish gauchos. My dad [David Bernstein] is from Minnesota. His family all came from Ukraine, but some of them came to [the] United States, and some of them actually went to Uruguay. When Daddy… went to meet for the first time the Bernsteins — or as we call them, the Ber-en-stines – in Uruguay, he met my mother [the late Martha Bernstein, who was from Buenos Aires and vacationing in Uruguay at the time]. They fell in love and moved to Minnesota only [for] a couple of years, because he was ready to get out of the cold. So they came to South Florida.

Always. So, it’s funny. Going to North Miami Senior High in the late ‘80s, where a lot of Cubans arrived, they stuck me in a beginners’ Spanish class. When I started speaking to my teacher — I’ll never forget Mr. Guerra — he says to me, “Why are you here? You’re obviously not born in this country.” I was like, “Of course I was born in this country. I’m American. I’m super gringa!” He says, “Well, why do you have an Argentine accent? You need to be with the Spanish speakers who were born in Latin countries.” I’m like, “No, no, no. Don’t do that to me.” Sure enough, I got stuck in there.

However, moving forward, I got my first TV gig with Food Network on a show called Melting Pot, and I was only strictly doing Latin food — whatever it was. My take on a lot of different typical Latin-culture food. People would write in saying, “Why is this Jewish woman talking about our culture, when Jewish people would know nothing about the Latin culture?” … My argument was, “You know that you can be both, right?” …. I married a Mexican Catholic, and he got it.

The TV part came to me, it wasn’t something I ever thought I would be good at. Luckily, all the stage work I did with ballet prepared me for my TV debut. I might not be the best TV personality, but I am definitely very, very comfortable doing it. I love it in fact. As for the restaurants, that is thanks to my husband, David. He really gave me the strength, cojones and confidence that allowed me to leave a cushy job and venture into our own. We never looked back.

It’s more about the flavor. … Let’s say I’m making my mother’s arroz con pollo. The chicken and rice dish, to me, it couldn’t be more Latin. But when some people eat it, especially some people who happen to be Jewish, they tell me that it tastes a little on the Jewish side, which I think is so funny. I debone a chicken [At my Miami restaurant, Café La Trova], we would sous vide it a little bit in a marinade, which maybe is where the Jewish flavor comes from, ‘cause it did have a lot of dill in it. And to me, the dill and fennel flavors and caraway flavors are more, obviously, on the Jewish side. You know, rye bread. And then you’d push it on the plancha [grill] really hard to get it super crisp on one side. Then we’d slice a half a chicken over the rice, which by the way, was very Latin. It had a little bit of jerez [sherry], and it had sofrito. So I don’t know.

My matzo ball soup, I make mine with chayote and corn. Sometimes, I’ve even done it pozole [Mexican stew]-style, and it’ll have cilantro and lime. Now that’s not Argentine at all, but it’s the flavors that I grew up with in my later career, probably thanks to my husband, David, and traveling to Mexico. So, yeah. Not only is it my background, but let’s face it: The way you cook is also where you’ve been and the cultures that you’ve been exposed to. It all kind of combines into one big mishmosh, which happens to be my nickname.

We do not observe Shabbat, but I do cook for other people’s Shabbat. I get asked a lot to make people Shabbat food, and I love, especially nowadays, to gift people Shabbat dinners. It could be anything from my mother’s delicious mustard-crusted brisket that I now do on the grill with a splash of a mustardy chimichurri sauce, it could be a whole roast duck, even, with glazed peaches. We turn it very much into our style when we do food for the holidays. Israeli couscous always is on the table, which I come very close to burning on purpose, ‘cause that’s how my son loves to eat it, where you toast it in oil until it’s brown, brown, brown, and then saute vegetables into it and mushrooms and sometimes dried apricots, and it’s just lovely. Finished with a lot of fresh herbs and a squeeze of lemon, it’s really creamy and delicious. So I try to combine a little bit of my heritage with the traditions of the holidays, ‘cause the High Holidays are such a favorite time for us to cook together, now over Zoom. So it’s bittersweet.