Chefs Jeff McInnis and Janine Booth to open Miami Beach restaurant in 2016

Top Chef alums and former Miami Beach chefs Jeff McInnis and Janine Booth are coming back to the beach to open a restaurant called Sarsaparilla Club in the Shelborne Wyndham Grand, 1801 Collins Ave. 

Sarsaparilla Club, serving “American dim sum,” is projected to open early next year in the recently renovated hotel. It will replace Morimoto South Beach, which operated for a year before closing last month. 

McInnis and Booth, who decamped to New York last year to open the well-received Southern restaurant Root & Bone, previously worked together at Gigi in Miami and Yardbird in Miami Beach.

McInnis, born in Florida’s Panhandle, had been chef de cuisine of DiLido Beach Club at the Ritz-Carlton South Beach before being a contestant on Top Chef: Season 5. The Australian-born Booth had been sous chef at Khong River House on Lincoln Road before appearing on the show’s 11th season.  

Sarsaparilla Club will be the couple’s second restaurant together, following Root & Bone, where he serves as executive chef and she as chef de cuisine. 

Evan S. Benn is Miami Herald food editor: @EvanBenn

This story was originally published October 20, 2015 at 4:10 AM.