This Michelin-star restaurant is opening a French spin off in downtown Miami
Look at the photos of the food that will be served at the upcoming French Brasserie Laurel to see which restaurant the first Miami-born chef with a Michelin star is coming for.
The beef wellington is encased in perfect pastry lattice. The foie gras sits cleanly in a plate au jus in a mulberry reduction. The escargot, the frog legs, crepe Suzette — all classic dishes — are paired with a traditional, upscale wine list of full-bodied Bordeaux wines and Champagne.
No need to even squint your eyes. This is Ariete chef Mike Beltran’s direct shot at The Surf Club, that other Michelin star restaurant across town by the godfather of American cuisine, Thomas Keller. Brasserie Laurel, Beltran’s Miami-flecked version of a high-end French brasserie is open now in the new $4 billion Miami Worldcenter development downtown with the excellence of the Surf Club in its crosshairs.
“I can’t say that you’re wrong,” Beltran said. “Someone asked me what restaurant I would compare it to and I immediately said The Surf Club. But that’s a good bar to set.”
Beltran was awarded one of Florida’s inaugural Michelin stars for his Coconut Grove restaurant, Ariete, where he experiments with the idea of what Cuban cuisine could have been if it had been allowed to evolve without the isolation of the revolution. Dishes are experimental, using a host of techniques and crossing the culinary color wheel into various cuisines. It represents what you might call New Miami Cuisine.
Brasserie Laurel will be different. It will focus on recreating classic dishes with the highest quality ingredients and exacting cooking techniques as the star of the plate: “Not a lot of stuff on the plate, great product, great execution,” Beltran said.
The restaurant will feature a rotisserie with a (yes, rotating) featured meat, from guinea hen to rabbit. It’s a pain-staking and potentially cumbersome addition. But like the duck press and the candy-cap mushroom flan at Ariete, Beltran admits he likes taking risks.
“I definitely don’t like easy things,” he said. “It’s something that matches the restaurant super well.”
Brasserie Laurel won’t be the kind of restaurant that could easily be plucked from another city, he says. It will use local ingredients such as sweet, ripe mulberries for the reduction in foie gras and seasonal herbs, vegetables and citrus fruits.
“Ariete is a little more curveball. This is a fastball,” he said.
Beltran’s appointed chef at the restaurant, Ashley Moncada, was hired for this restaurant two years ago and trained at Ariete since then, throughout the pandemic. This restaurant is as much her first full project.
“She’s influenced everything she’s touched,” Beltran said. “Her influence is felt all throughout the restaurant.”
Dark wood, blue leather and gold accents will trim the restrained restaurant, he said. But there’s one Miami element, unexpected: a ventanita on the side to serve Worldcenter locals, with croquetas, pastelitos and Cuban coffee dubbed Chug’s Express, after his Coconut Grove downscale restaurant that was also highlighted by the Michelin Guide.
Not long after, a cigar bar will follow with full liquor selections and light bites, from charcuterie and cheese boards to mussels and gruyere burgers.
Together the restaurants touch on Beltran’s different interests and his devotion to Miami-first cuisine.
“We’ve definitely set the bar very high for ourselves,” he said.
Brasserie Laurel
Address: 698 NE First Ave., Suite G-170, on the ground floor of the Miami Worldcenter
Hours: 5-10 p.m. Sunday-Thursday; 5-11 p.m Friday-Saturday
More info: arietehospitality.com
