For one night, a cornerstone of South Florida dining history is stepping back into the spotlight. On Friday, May 1, James Beard Award-winning chef Allen Susser will revive the spirit of his seminal restaurant, Chef Allen’s, with a multi-course pop-up at Sunness Supper Club in Fort Lauderdale. Consider it a 40-year anniversary celebration that’ll double as a reminder of how far the region’s culinary scene has come.
“Forty years ago, 1986, the restaurant scene was very different,” Susser tells New Times. “There wasn’t much of a restaurant scene… it was a lot of flash, but there really weren’t restaurants that had good food and good service using high-quality ingredients.”
The Blueprint for South Florida Cuisine
His answer at the time was to build something new. The result was a distinctly South Florida cuisine rooted in fresh fish, tropical fruits, Caribbean spice, and Latin ingredients. “I wanted to do a Miami cuisine… that brought in the local resources,” he says.
Former New Times food critic Jen Karetnick reviewed Chef Allen’s in 1994. “Passover comes just once a year, but the chef sees to his customers’ dietary requirements nightly, with a menu that is frequently revised and rotated,” she says. “Susser’s dishes reflect a tropical outlook, forgoing fats in favor of light, fresh fare cooked with a minimum of oil — foods that are comfortable to eat in this heavy humidity. One of five salads listed on the menu, a cool mix of organically grown arugula and endive, was the perfect embodiment of this philosophy.”…