Rosita Fleurimar: The Caesar Salad Legacy at Christy’s
Ceaser Salad Maestro, Christy’s Restaurant
Anyone who has gone to Christy’s Restaurant for dinner knows that its Caesar salad is the best in the Gables. The dressing is so good that patrons actually order it by itself – at $15 a pint – and some 6,000 of the salads are served each year at the restaurant. Each one of them is made by Rosita Fleurimar, who came to Miami from Port-au-Prince, Haiti in 1992 to join her older sister here.
Back then, she worked at the restaurant in Grove Isle until she was tapped by Christy’s to do prep work there — then given the job of mixing their proprietary Caesar salad dressing that was created in 1978, along with preparing tuna tartare and shrimp cocktails. Today, the secret Caesar recipe remains just that, says Christy’s owner Chris Klaic, so it won’t get stolen by a competing steak house.
GREAT, THAT’S ALL I CAN TELL YOU. I KEEP IT IN MY HEAD….”
Latest Achievement
Fleurimar is celebrating her 25th anniversary with Christy’s, along with “my other blessings,” she says, mainly her three children – one an engineer, one currently a pre-med student at UM, and one still in high school. “I’m very proud but the money [needed for school] gives me a headache. I have to keep working.
What She Say
“I like my job. They take good care of me here,” says Fleurimar, who works five nights a week in Christy’s kitchen. “But I can’t tell you the secret to the sauce. It’s great, that’s all I can tell you. I keep it in my head. I mix it here… I wait till no one is looking, when no one is here.” As for her time off, Fleurimar says her greatest pleasure is going to church. “I, of course, believe in God. I go to church every Sunday in a Baptist church in North Miami,” she says. And for fun?“Dancing at church. It’s a place to celebrate…. And people do come back and tell me how great (the Caesar salad) is. That gives me great satisfaction.”
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