Mina’s Touch: Renowned Chef Michael Mina Comes Full Circle

“It was everything I hoped it would be,” he said. “Every detail was thought through. Now we’ve signed the lease and it’s ours. Now we’ve got to live up to [it.] It wasn’t about living up to any hype, because honestly, nobody is going to be harder on us in that space than we are going to be on ourselves.”

For him, MICHAEL MINA is sort of a cumulation of his past 20 years of experience.

“The food at MICHAEL MINA is kind of what I’ve taken over the last 20 years, [refined] and made into my style of cuisine,” he said. “It’s not a steakhouse or a fish restaurant or an Italian or French restaurant. [It]was a very calculated decision to keep it without a theme because that’s not how I cook.”

Mina creates dishes based on four principles: acidity, sweetness, spice and fat. The menu at MICHAEL MINA very much reflects that. The menu has several dishes that are simply new takes on old classics; in fact, Mina’s favorite dish on the menu right now is the pork & beans.

Over the past 20 years, Mina has come a long way. And when it comes down to it, he couldn’t be happier with how things turned out.

“I am blessed, 100 percent blessed,” he said. “I went from being in a situation where there was constant uncertainty to being in a situation where Andre Agassi is my partner. Honestly, its very rare when you can take the top five human beings you’ve ever met in your life, everything ethically, everything about them. If you can do that and then have one of them be your sole partner, you’re pretty damn lucky.”

We’d say there’s luck all around in this case.

Additional reporting by Mollie Lichy