Michael Mina Gave Away 30,000 Recipes. That’s the Point.
Observer ·
Michael Mina, a 2026 Nightlife & Dining Power List honoree, on sharing 30,000 recipes, running restaurants inside other people’s hotels and the street cart he still wants to open.
Michael Mina runs 33 restaurants and bars, almost all of them as operating partner inside someone else’s building, from the Four Seasons and Ritz-Carlton to Bellagio and the Westin St. Francis. Mina, who co-founded The Mina Group with Andre Agassi , takes on a hotel’s entire food-and-beverage program: the restaurants, the three-meal service and in-room dining. Eleven of his rooms are Bourbon Steak, the steakhouse brand he started in 2008, which added Delray Beach, Orlando and San Francisco locations in 2025.
Mina made his name in San Francisco with Aqua in the early 1990s, and that’s where his year started. In October 2025, he opened The Eighth Rule, a bourbon bar, with Stephen Curry at the Westin St. Francis. In January, he brought Acqua Bistecca to Salt Leaf in Estero Bay, Fla. In July, with Ayesha Curry , he opened Sweet July Cafe at the Ritz-Carlton in Charlotte, N.C., the first piece of a hotel program that adds Bourbon Steak and a second Eighth Rule this winter. In October, he took over all food and beverage at the Heathman Hotel in Portland, Ore., starting with Bar Sprezzatura. Abroad, he runs Mina Brasserie in Dubai and is culinary partner at Taleed in Diriyah, Saudi Arabia. His kitchens have also produced names of their own, among them James Beard Award winner Michael Rafidi in Washington, D.C., and winemaker Rajat Parr .
Mina, a 2026 Nightlife & Dining Power List honoree , talked to Observer about why he gives his recipes away, what Agassi brings to a restaurant company and the koshari he still wants to serve from a street cart.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Everyone is free to take anything they want. They earn that by putting in the hard work each day. Everyone learns differently, so I find it imperative to give people access to educate themselves the way that works best for them. We have the tools and ability to help people absorb concepts quicker, so it’s our job to make it accessible. That is what makes our restaurants so great. No recipe is truly anyone’s at this point. The days of writing a menu and handing it to a chef are gone. It’s about collaboration, and that was the whole idea behind Recipe Exchange and why we named it that. These are everyone’s recipes that they worked on together, and that is our secret sauce.
Our systems and standards. It’s truly a collaboration, and the one thing I won’t do is work with a partner who won’t collaborate. There will always be bumps in the road in any real partnership, but it’s how we work together that matters in the end.
Andre Agassi embodies everything it takes to be successful. His determination to win makes him the most competitive person I have ever met, and he applies that to everything he does. If he had become a chef, he would have absolutely been the very best at it, true story. But even more than his drive and determination, he is so intelligent and has an incredible business mind. He loves food, he loves people, he loves education, and he has a way of bringing things together like nobody else can. He embodies what it means to be hospitable.
Words cannot accurately describe how I felt having the opportunity to put two of my passions, food and sports, together in one place that has so much history for me. And not to mention, with arguably the greatest basketball player of all time, and without a doubt one of the best people of all time. My younger self would say to me: one, you are very lucky, and two, I wish you had had Stephen as a role model!
In both Michael Rafidi and Rajat Parr I saw extreme talent, great palates and an absolute hunger and desire to be the best at what they do. The best thing anyone who has ever worked for me has done is to go and become successful at what they do. If they feel The Mina Group had something to do with that, that is the greatest compliment I can ever receive. It’s not just what they learned from working with me, but that they were able to learn from the entire company and take that to build their next success.
Middle Eastern flavors have a lot in common, so it was more about the style of food and the way the ingredients went together. Cooking Hijazi food taught me techniques my mother didn’t use. It’s not that American restaurants didn’t teach me something. I learned Middle Eastern cooking from my mother, and I learned Hijazi cooking from being in Diriyah.
Traditional koshari from Egypt, just the way my mom would make it. I have had koshari on our menus, but I’ve never done it exactly how my mom made it. I’ve always done an elevated version of the dish. I would love to open a street cart one day and offer it just how I grew up eating it.
See all of Observer’s 2026 Nightlife & Dining Power List honorees.