25922: Hermantin(News)Haitian chef opens cozy cafe featuring his homeland's cuisine (Miami)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Haitian chef opens cozy cafe featuring his homeland's cuisine

By Deborah S. Hartz
Food Editor
Posted August 4 2005

Sun Sentinel



Pork Griot (twice cooked pork) with Piclise (spicy slaw) and pressed plantains. 
Whole snapper braised with sweet red peppers in a buttery sauce served with 
boiled green plantains. A pheasant cooked in red wine sauce or perhaps a plate 
of penne with chicken, tomatoes and pepperoncini studded with black olives.

That's what Wilson Gayo, 36, dreams about.

And making these dishes at his Pines Café in Pembroke Pines is his dream.

A graduate from the Florida Culinary Institute of West Palm Beach in 1992, Gayo 
has worked in private clubs including the Tower Club in Fort Lauderdale and 
Kiawah Island Club in South Carolina.

Only recently did he and his wife, Michelle Lamont, open their storefront 
eatery that seats 24 people in a cozy atmosphere of lantern light and oil-cloth 
table covers.

Of course, the whiteboard menu had to have Haitian dishes on it. "That cooking 
is in my blood," says Gayo, who was born in Haiti but came to Naples with his 
godmother when he was 11.

And because the French have a strong influence in Haiti, and he studied French 
cooking, he put some French items on the menu, too. "I put my own flair into 
them," he says.

He worked with Italian chefs so he put a taste of that cuisine on the menu as 
well.

"Florida is a melting pot so I didn't want people to have to go to an Italian 
place to get pasta," he says.

In his tiny kitchen on this hot summer morning, he choreographs his cooking 
like a dance. Moving from the stainless steel table where he chops, minces and 
slices with his mandoline, he goes to the six-burner behemoth where he braises 
a whole snapper, simmers the pork butt that he'll later fry crisp into griot 
and boils the green plantains. Later, he whips up a pasta dish "a la minute."

In his smiling eyes you can almost see the young man working as a busboy at the 
Eagle Creek Country Club in Naples. "I was inspired by the way the club's Chef 
Kenny did flavors and presented the food. Anything he touched he turned into an 
art piece," says Gayo, recalling one of his first jobs as he slices carrots 
into gaufrettes to garnish his plates. "Without the carrot garnish, a plate 
looks naked, too plain," he explains demonstrating his mentor's influence on 
him today.

Chef Kenny must have recognized raw talent because he promoted Gayo to cook in 
the club's kitchen, where he poached whole salmon and garnished it with capers, 
lemons and hard-boiled eggs for display on the seafood buffet. When Gayo 
mentioned he would like to go to culinary school, it was Chef Kenny who helped 
him get admitted.

After graduation, Gayo returned to work in Naples. By 2000 he had made his way 
to South Florida where he was buying used restaurant equipment and storing it 
in his garage. Driving down Pembroke Road, he saw a storefront for rent and by 
April 2003, he had signed a lease and had a place to put his equipment and his 
dreams.

Today, Wilson and Lamont, a legal secretary, run the Pines Café. "I like owning 
my own business. In America, if you have the desire and ambition, you can 
succeed and make your dream come true," Gayo says.

Pines Café, 6813 Pembroke Road, Pembroke Pines, 954-963-9499.