Family-Style Eating
Michael Mina infuses his personal experiences into two International Market Place restaurants, Stripsteak and The Street.
✏️ MARTHA CHENG
📸 MINA GROUP
マイケル・ミーナが全米とドバイに30のレストランをオープン。その内2店舗はインターナショナル マーケットプレイスのコンセプトレストランで、3階グランド・ラナイに位置する「ストリップステーキ」と、1階サックス・フィフス・アベニュー近辺に位置する「ザ・ストリート マイケル・ミーナ・ソーシャルハウス」。
“It’s rare to have like 20 lifetimes in a career and not come close to learning everything,” says chef Michael Mina. “You think you know everything, and then you open a book, you travel to a new country.” “It’s rare to have like 20 lifetimes in a career and not come close to learning everything,” says chef Michael Mina. “You think you know everything, and then you open a book, you travel to a new country.”
Two decades ago, at age 22, Mina took the helm of Aqua, San Francisco’s trailblazing fine-dining seafood restaurant. Today, he has opened 30 restaurants across the United States and in Dubai with Mina Group, which he founded with tennis star Andre Agassi in 2002.
But Mina’s love of food required no travel to take root. Rather, it began at home. Mina was born in Cairo, Egypt in 1969 and raised in Ellensburg, Washington, where his mother cooked every day for her family and her brothers and sisters in the area. He was working in a French restaurant in his hometown by 15. “I enjoyed the fact that you’re constantly using all of your senses, your mind—mental, physical, emotional—it’s just really stimulating,” Mina says. “And then you get such immediate gratification out of it when you make something and people love it. The restaurant felt like family.” For the chef, the hospitality business is about family and celebration, and this is reflected in his new concepts at International Market Place, Stripsteak and The Street. “The menu at Stripsteak is the exact menu I like to eat when I’m out with my family,” Mina says. Rather than favoring the standard steakhouse meal, it lends itself to a dining experience that starts with a few small plates of raw fish, like yuzu kampachi or ahi crudo with a roasted garlic ponzu, and then a shared steak, perhaps a rib eye or dry-aged New York strip.
Two floors down from the elegant, open-air Stripsteak, on the first floor of the International Market Place, is The Street. It is like an upscale, festive food court, with its indoor gathering space, food stalls, multiple bars, and live music nightly. According to Mina, it is one of the most exciting projects of which he has been a part.
It was inspired by the street-market settings where Mina and his chefs end up every year during food trips they take together to countries like Turkey and Singapore. At night, they walk up and down alleys and hit different stalls or restaurants or bars. Mina long thought it would be fun to create something similar. So, for The Street, he partnered with chef friends and “let them do what they want to do,” he says. “The majority of them did something from their childhood, from their heritage.”
There’s Aloha Ice, which serves Hawai‘i’s favorite frozen dessert, shave ice, as reimagined by Michelle Karr-Ueoka: shavings of actual frozen fruit layered with goodies like mochi ice cream and haupia tapioca. For a stall across the way, International Smoke, Ayesha Curry designed a barbecue menu with international flavors ranging from Korean ribs to jerk chicken. And then there’s Mina’s own concept, Little Lafa, which revolves around a flatbread his mom used to make. He tops the yogurt-based Israeli bread, a cross between a pocket bread and naan, with a range of Mediterranean flavors, from chermoula-roasted salmon to harissa chicken.
Locals and visitors alike gather in the convivial atmosphere, sharing plates from the various stalls and cheering when flaming punch bowls are served from The Myna Bird tiki bar. “You realize you’re really lucky,” Mina says. “Food is a big part of everybody’s life, and we get to be a part of that.”
Stripsteak is located on The Grand Lānai on Level 3, and The Street is located near Saks Fifth Avenue on Level 1.
