Another Top Chef winner is diving into the restaurant business! Jeremy Ford, who was the victor of season 13 of the Bravo show, recently announced he plans to open an eatery in Miami.
The new restaurant, which is actually Ford’s second, will be called Afishonado, and as the name suggests, it will boast a seafood-focused menu. The establishment will occupy a 7,000-square-foot indoor and outdoor space overlooking Biscayne Bay, according to Eater, and will be part of a new 9.5-acre development that will provide more than 100,000 square feet of retail, services and restaurant space known as Regatta Harbour in the Coconut Grove neighborhood.
Afishonado will be designed by New York-based Celano Design Studio, and it is expected to feature an open kitchen and raw bar as well as a waterfront cocktail bar. Per the website, Ford’s sophomore restaurant will offer a “casual, refined ocean-centric dining experience with coastal cuisine.” It is slated to open at some point in 2020.
“As a chef, I am always seeking innovative ways to showcase the best seasonal ingredients paired with a unique style of dining,” Ford said in a statement to Bravo. “Being situated directly on the water, this location provides the perfect palette for Afishonado, enabling us to unite culinary prowess with Coconut Grove’s deep-rooted culture and community.”
After winning Top Chef in 2016, Ford headed to South Beach and opened Stubborn Seed the following year. That restaurant has earned rave reviews from critics and diners alike, but the experience of running his own eatery has certainly been a challenging one for Ford. “Everything breaks,” he told Eater in 2018. “The hardest part for me I think so far is dealing with all the things that as a partner in a business has to deal with. There are so many things that just happen, the A/C breaks all the time or something in the plumbing is messed up because it’s older.”
Still, Ford is thankful for his stint on the reality TV show because it has benefited him in the long run. “I think of my experience with the show and how that impacts us now. I definitely work better under pressure since the six, eight weeks of filming that was, that was the toughest,” he continued. “I think that even great chefs don’t do well on there and I’m just happy that I pulled through and did good on it and I kind of retained how to keep it under control through these pressured times.”
