Featured chef from Menu Extra!

Chef Dean Max's book - on sale online!

My love of food is fed from the fond memories of smells and tastes of my childhood.

When I smell the stem of a vine ripe tomato, I can visualize myself running through the large rows of tomato plants as my brother and I played hide and seek.

The taste of a cucumber brings to mind my father who used to carry a salt shaker and pocketknife through the fields to enjoy the simplicity of such a subtle vegetable.

The smell of a leek reminds me of sitting with my mother and helping sort the seedlings to be replanted.

So many smells and tastes zoom my mind to childhood memories. The excitement of having an omelet from a double yolk chicken egg … the simple taste of a sunfish from the pond… the neighbor get-togethers to feast on local clams and blue crabs … the fresh pomegranate my brother and I grabbed from Mr. Beasley’s tree on the way back from fishing…

I have to attribute my fearlessness toward hard work to the not-so-fond memories of being on a farm.

You have never prayed so hard for rain until you have to move sections of irrigation pipe over sixty acres of peppers every four hours at the age of ten.

I would have to miss cartoons on Saturday mornings so I could cultivate the field with the tractor before the sun became too strong.

Through the hard work of growing up on a farm, I have found serenity and comfort in the preparation of food. When I am stressed, I would much rather turn a case of artichokes or filet sixty pounds of fish. That is my thinking zone—that is my spa.

Chef Dean James Max

"Modern American seafood is like America itself ... diverse, expressive, colorful and infused with influences from around the world. At 3030 Ocean those influences - whether from Japan, Italy and France, South America or regions throughout North America, are celebrated and complemented ."

Chef Dean James Max
3030 Ocean
Sample recipe (PDF)


For Chef Max, the flavor and freshness of the ingredients are paramount. "We create dishes that are simple and elegant, arranged on the plate and, while they are presented with simplicity, we're not building towers out of mashed potatoes or creating similarly fussy architectural achievements. There is a difference between playing with your food and enjoying your food."

The result is a cuisine as expansive as the Great Plains and as distinctly American as Five Spice Seared Tuna served with a crispy rice cake, black radish, snap peas and a ginger vinaigrette or the perennially popular Roasted Maine Lobster accompanied by Yukon puree, pea sprouts and spring vegetables.

Never fear, for those whose tastes lean more to a topside menu than one from the ocean depths, 3030 Ocean offers dishes to delight the most dedicated meat eater. Indeed, Chef Max's signature Rack of New Zealand Lamb served with red wine cabbage, potato gratin, green beans and a Cabernet sauce, ranks among his most popular dishes from coast-to-coast.

Menu offerings like Grilled Kansas City Strip Steak, Grilled Beef Tenderloin and Braised Short Ribs or a Belle & Evans Chicken Breast served with Goat Cheese Polenta, pinenuts and asparagus are among the other non-seafood entries on the 3030 Ocean entrée list.

Talk to Chef Max about fresh ingredients and the subject invariably turns to produce. Perhaps it's his famous roots, but this is one chef who handles the selection, if not the actual picking of the fruits and vegetables on his menu, personally. Whether the subject is microgreens, pea tendrils, shitake mushrooms, cipollini onions, heirloom tomatoes or the mangoes, hearts of palm and Anjou pears he serves, Chef Max shows the same passion for perfection and preparation as he would for the most delicate ahi tuna or the rarest imported oyster.

Chef Dean Max's new book, A Life by the Sea, can be purchased online at the 3030 Ocean website







Marriott's Harbor Beach Resort & Spa

3030 Holiday Drive
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33316
Phone 954.765.3030