Top Chef in South Florida Celebrate Your Kids! - HERLIFE Magazine

inspirations
Making of a Chef
ichelle
Bernstein
By Kristen Doyle
Photography by Dana Ashton France
and Rochelle Haisley of Sugar
Belle Photography
Hair and Makeup by Dana France
and Rochelle Haisley
I
f you would have asked Michelle
Bernstein when she was a young
girl, what she was going to be
when she grew up, professional chef
most certainly wouldn’t have been a
career on her mind.
From the age of three, Michelle
loved to dance. She would dance in the
lobby as her sister participated in dance
class. She would dance at home. And
finally, when a Russian ballet teacher
took notice of Michelle’s love for dance,
she was welcomed into an official dance
class herself. “Dance meant the world to
me,” shared Michelle. “Throughout my
formative years, I devoted everything I
had to dance.”
Michelle was a talented dancer, performing
with the renowned Alvin Ailey
Dance Company in New York, but she
always lacked in one area important to
dancers. “I was never thin enough,” says
Michelle. “My mother was such a great
cook and I loved to eat what she made. I
would be disciplined enough all day, but
you know what? My dance teacher didn’t
come home with me at night and I had a
really difficult time following the rules of
not eating. I was always the last person in
our family sitting at the dinner table and I
would finish off what ever was left.”
It was in college that Michelle
started to focus on a potential career
10 HERLIFEmagazine.com