After being completely obsessed with The Bear, I found myself captivated by another restaurant series last year: Knife Edge: Chasing Michelin Stars. I didn’t know it then, but production was actively filming Season 1 while I was attending the 2024 Northeast MICHELIN Guide Ceremony in New York. 

By the time the 2025 ceremony rolled around, this time in Philadelphia, Season 1 had just finished airing. And suddenly, some of the chefs walking into that room weren’t strangers to me anymore. One in particular was Chef Jacob “Jake” Potashnick of Chicago’s Feld. Knife Edge had followed Potashnick and his team through their pursuit of a MICHELIN Star. The series ended without Feld receiving one. Then, just over a week after the finale aired, I was sitting in the audience in Philadelphia when his name was called. Feld had earned its first MICHELIN Star. And a Green Star. I watched Potashnick walk onto that stage, visibly emotional, and understanding the weight of that moment differently because I’d watched the story that came before it. Without Knife Edge, I wouldn’t have known his story or understood quite as intimately as what that moment represented for him and his team. And yes, I absolutely looked around the room to see whether I could spot the Knife Edge cameras. Too hard to tell.

That’s what hooked me about this show in the first place. These aren’t characters. These are real restaurants and real people letting deeply personal stories unfold in front of the cameras. There is no script. The work is real. The ambitions are real. So are the pressure, dreams, and, at times, failures.

Now Knife Edge is back for Season 2. And this time, it’s coming to South Florida with restaurants I know very well: COTOA, Calusso, and Stubborn Seed.

It’s no surprise that all three have already earned spots on my Top 25 South Florida Restaurant Palette Awards list.

A Spoiler-Free Note

The latest MICHELIN Guide Florida ceremony has already taken place, which means the current distinctions for these restaurants are public information. If you want to know how everything turns out, the internet will happily ruin it for you in approximately four seconds (including my very own reporting). But for this article, I won’t link it here. Part of what made the first season of Knife Edge so compelling was following each restaurant’s journey without knowing its outcome. So while I’ll give you some background, along with my own experiences and opinions, I’m leaving the results out of this story.

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Let’s meet the restaurants.

COTOA: Ecuadorian Roots, Without the Theater

COTOA describes its cooking simply as “Ecuadorian Born, Globally Inspired,” combining traditional Ecuadorian recipes and ingredients with global cooking techniques. That description gets to the heart of what chef and co-owner Alejandra Espinoza is doing in North Miami. What has always interested me about COTOA is how little it seems concerned with “performing” fine dining.

I first visited more than a year before Knife Edge. What struck me then, and again later, was the restaurant’s emotional connection to Ecuador. Plantain, cacao, palo santo, and other familiar ingredients aren’t there merely as calling cards. They’re woven into food that can feel nostalgic even to someone who didn’t grow up eating it. Espinoza’s cooking is progressive and creative without disconnecting itself from where it came from.

Miami has no shortage of restaurants designed to announce their importance the moment you walk through the door. COTOA operates on a much more intimate frequency. The room is small (although a new expansion is currently in the works), the experience approachable, and the cooking carries much of the storytelling. It’s precisely the kind of restaurant that makes an interesting subject for Knife Edge: ambitious without being flashy about it. And yes, I remain fiercely loyal to that pan de yuca.

Will COTOA remain a MICHELIN recommended restaurant, move up to the Bib Gourmand category or receive a Star?

CALUSSO: Broward Goes Big

If COTOA is intimate, Calusso enters from practically the opposite direction.

Located at the newly reimagined posh Pier Sixty-Six in Fort Lauderdale, Calusso was conceived as a polished waterfront dining destination with marina views. The menu moves comfortably through crudo, foie gras, seafood, and substantial preparations such as its aged bistecca for two.

But I paid attention for a different reason. It was Chef Jonathan Kaiser. Kaiser’s résumé includes the kind of kitchens that make you sit up a little straighter, with experience at Joël Robuchon in Las Vegas, Ocean Reef Club in the Florida Keys and, most recently, MAASS in Fort Lauderdale. When I first visited Calusso, it was still very much a new restaurant finding its footing. But even then, the ambition was obvious. What came out of the kitchen gave the glamorous setting substance.

That’s significant for Broward. For years, conversations about South Florida’s highest-end dining have overwhelmingly centered on Miami. Calusso is part of a larger shift I’ve been watching north of the county line, where Fort Lauderdale is increasingly making a case that serious destination dining doesn’t require driving south.

And now, Calusso finds itself on the Knife Edge. Will it become a new addition to the Florida MICHELIN Guide?

STUBBORN SEED: The One I’ve Been Watching Since 2017

Stubborn Seed is the veteran of the group.

I first wrote about Jeremy Ford’s South of Fifth restaurant in 2017, years before MICHELIN even announced it was coming to Florida. Today, the restaurant describes its approach as centered on seasonal ingredients, evolving tasting menus, and precision. Sustainability has also become increasingly central to the operation, including Ford’s Farm and the restaurant’s work with Compost for Life.

But what’s especially interesting to me about seeing Stubborn Seed through the Knife Edge lens is history. I’ve watched this restaurant evolve for nearly a decade and attended when it first received its star in 2022. What a night! But when I first walked through its doors, there was no Florida MICHELIN Guide to chase. There was simply a newly opened restaurant from a chef many people knew from winning Top Chef, trying to establish what Stubborn Seed would be. That gives its Knife Edge story a different context than the newer restaurants in this group.

Restaurants aren’t frozen in time when they achieve recognition. They keep changing. Expectations change. Chefs change. The dining city around them changes. Stubborn Seed has been around long enough to plant itself as a Miami OG and I’ve been fortunate to watch that evolution firsthand. Will it level up to Two Stars or retain the one it already has?

Three Restaurants, Three Very Different Stories

Putting these restaurants side by side makes South Florida an especially interesting new destination for the show. There’s the charming Ecuadorian restaurant in North Miami, a major new luxury opening helping redefine Fort Lauderdale’s dining ambitions, and an established Miami Beach restaurant I’ve watched evolve since day one. Now everyone else gets to follow along.

Who gets a Bib Gourmand? Who gets a star? Who retains a star? Who goes home empty-handed?

Last year, I watched Knife Edge from my couch, completely invested in restaurants thousands of miles away. I gasped, cried, and celebrated along with each episode. This season, things hit considerably closer to home. I’ll be watching closely. And so should you.