Thanksgiving David Foulquier’s Way

Thanksgiving at the Miami Beach home of Michelin-starred restaurateur David “Fooqs” Foulquier is a celebration of food, family, and free spirits

Thanksgiving at the Miami Beach home of Michelin-starred restaurateur David “Fooqs” Foulquier is a celebration of food, family, and free spirits. Photography by Jerry Rabinowitz
Thanksgiving at the Miami Beach home of Michelin-starred restaurateur David “Fooqs” Foulquier is a celebration of food, family, and free spirits. Photography by Jerry Rabinowitz

Putting together the perfect holiday meal varies from table to table. And while there are some universal staples in any Thanksgiving spread—the turkey, of course, and sides like potatoes, gravy, and stuffing—there’s plenty of room to insert dishes that reflect and celebrate your family heritage. So leave it to restaurateur David Foulquier (who is of French and Persian descent) and his fiancée, Danielle Hultman (who is Swedish-American), to create a celebratory feast that kicks off with uni toast and caviar and is rounded out with lingonberries, pomegranate seeds, and Champagne. 

Thanksgiving at the Miami Beach home of Michelin-starred restaurateur David “Fooqs” Foulquier is a celebration of food, family, and free spirits 1
Thanksgiving at the Miami Beach home of Michelin-starred restaurateur David “Fooqs” Foulquier.

“Thanksgiving is when I pull out all the stops,” Foulquier says as he preps ingredients, wearing an apron dotted with Grateful Dead bears. “Although I am American—and proudly so—my heritage is not. My dad is French and my mom was Persian. Thanksgiving is about giving thanks and celebration. And being French gourmands, we always go above and beyond. We celebrate by using the most beautiful ingredients and treating them with extra love. We’ve got the uni for my Japanese friends, pomegranate for my Persian side, foie gras in tribute to the French side, and the rest is pure American food.”

Originally from Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Foulquier became one of Miami’s youngest restaurateurs at the age of 25 when he opened Fooq’s in 2015—an eclectic eatery that made its mark in downtown Miami’s burgeoning Arts & Entertainment District at a time when not much else was drawing people to the neighborhood. With a father from Paris and a mother born in Tehran but raised in Lausanne, Switzerland, Foulquier grew up speaking French and Farsi until he attended kindergarten in New York City. 

At Foulquier’s Miami Beach condo, the fall-inspired table pops against the waterfront view.
At Foulquier’s Miami Beach condo, the fall-inspired table pops against the waterfront view.

Hultman’s mother is American and her father is Swedish. She was born in Uppsala, Sweden, and grew up shuttling between there and Miami. She and Foulquier met in 2018 at the three-year anniversary of Fooq’s, a fitting meet-cute for two people obsessed with delicious food and hospitality. 

“She walked into the restaurant and the first thing she asked was, ‘Is there any vegetarian food?’” recalls Foulquier. He’s an avowed omnivore but also the consummate host; he reassured Hultman that yes, the restaurant could accommodate vegetarians and vegans. “She was there with some French DJs. I started flirting with her in French and we instantaneously hit it off,” he adds. 

Foulquier preps ingredients in one of his prized Grateful Dead aprons, festooned with the band’s signature dancing bears on a tie-dyed background
Foulquier preps ingredients in one of his prized Grateful Dead aprons, festooned with the band’s signature dancing bears on a tie-dyed background.

Since then, the couple has been nearly inseparable, managing Foulquier’s culinary ventures and traveling to music festivals together (Foulquier is die-hard Grateful Dead fan). They’ve attended Burning Man in Black Rock Desert, Nevada, for the past four years. They plan to wed in Ibiza this summer. 

A gourmand-worthy appetizer spread of caviar, foie gras, and uni toast
A gourmand-worthy appetizer spread of caviar, foie gras, and uni toast.

With the charm of an old-school maître d’ and the gruff stamina of a seasoned line cook, Foulquier has held positions in both the front and back of the house, with stints at Michelin-starred restaurants like Manhattan fine-dining staple Daniel and at the culinary education center Restaurate Hoffman in Barcelona. Foulquier is also a certified sushi chef from the Tokyo Sushi Academy, an accolade that eventually led him to open his second concept, Sushi Noz in New York City. Together with his brother, Josh, they started the restaurant group We All Gotta Eat. They opened Sushi Noz and Noz 17 in New York City, which both received Michelin Stars within the first year of opening. 

After closing Fooq’s here in the Magic City during the pandemic, Foulquier regrouped and opened Eleventh Street Pizza in the same location in 2021. The spot was ranked as the No. 2 pizzeria in Florida by Barstool Sports founder (and celebrated pizza vlogger at One Bite Pizza on YouTube) Dave Portnoy just two months after opening. The We All Gotta Eat group recently opened a second Eleventh Street Pizza in downtown Dadeland and has plans for multiple concepts in New York City, Los Angeles, and Miami—including a revival of Fooq’s in 2024. 

Foulquier and fiancée Danielle Hultman enjoy appetizers with Fooqie, their 9-year-old border collie mix
Foulquier and fiancée Danielle Hultman enjoy appetizers with Fooqie, their 9-year-old border collie mix.

For his personal Thanksgiving feast, though, Foulquier does what he’s been doing since he was a teenager—cook the entire meal himself. In fact, it was a 6-year-old Foulquier who convinced his parents to celebrate the American holiday in the first place. 

The Bohemian table setting was inspired by a tie-dyed wall hanging created by Courtenay Pollock
The Bohemian table setting was inspired by a tie-dyed wall hanging created by Courtenay Pollock.

“I couldn’t have cared less about the holiday,” explains Foulquier’s father, Olivier Foulquier. “My wife and I had a tradition of taking the family to Acapulco on the holiday break. November was the best time of year there,” he says with a laugh. “And then David broke our vacation tradition!” He adds that reading the story of the first Thanksgiving at the table became a new family tradition. “I had to educate myself on the story—the history of immigrants coming to America. We had to learn about the pilgrims, and we would read the story at the table.”

Before the younger Foulquier learned to cook the dishes himself, his family had the dinner catered by none other than celebrity chef Daniel Boulud. The famous French toque is a family friend, dating back to the Foulquiers’ early years in New York City. “My mother and Daniel’s first wife went to middle school together in Lausanne,” explains Foulquier. And once they relocated to New York the school friends reconnected as part of a close-knit French community in Manhattan. 

A guest’s plate is piled high with turkey, salmon, and all the Foulquier fixings
A guest’s plate is piled high with turkey, salmon, and all the Foulquier fixings.

“So back in the day, Daniel used to make these beautiful dinners, and I’ll never forget once he came to our house and cooked,” Foulquier recalls. “And then when I was around 14 years old, after my bar mitzvah, I took it upon myself to try and do it; pretty much since I was 15 I’ve been doing it myself. These are all classics from that repertoire.”

Pumpkin cheesecake made by Foulquier’s soon-to-be mother-in-law, Michelle Kantzler, is a sweet finish to the gourmet holiday meal
Pumpkin cheesecake made by Foulquier’s soon-to-be mother-in-law, Michelle Kantzler, is a sweet finish to the gourmet holiday meal.

Foulquier starts the night with passed bites of uni toast topped with shaved truffle, plus foie gras terrine and Ossetra caviar from Caviar Russe. “From the time we opened Sushi Noz, we tried to incorporate authentic Japanese cooking into our Thanksgiving feast,” he says. “Sometimes we’ll have king crab legs, uni, or toro tuna tartare. Basically, anything that is luxurious and Japanese. And right now we love these uni and black truffle toasts.”

For the main meal, there’s a 12-pound roasted turkey from Sunshine Purveyors, a 4-pound roasted Ora King salmon, cornbread stuffing with apple sausage, sweet potato mash with truffle butter, potatoes gratin, green beans, and roasted carrots. 

After topping the roasted turkey with a generous amount of shaved truffles, Foulquier sabers a bottle of Champagne and adds pomegranate seeds to the sweet potato mash, plus lingonberry sauce on the side as a nod to Hultman’s Swedish roots. Guests serve themselves buffet-style from painted Mexican platters that Foulquier salvaged when Fooq’s closed, sitting down to eat in the couple’s two-bedroom apartment in South Beach with floor-to-ceiling views of Biscayne Bay. 

“We love the vibe here on the beach,” says Hultman. “We love the sunsets. We love waking our dog in the neighborhood.” 

Mains of roasted turkey and Ora King salmon are flanked by cornbread stuffing with apple sausage, sweet potato mash with truffle butter and pomegranate seeds, potatoes gratin, lingonberry sauce, green beans, and roasted carrots
Mains of roasted turkey and Ora King salmon are flanked by cornbread stuffing with apple sausage, sweet potato mash with truffle butter and pomegranate seeds, potatoes gratin, lingonberry sauce, green beans, and roasted carrots.

The cozy apartment is decorated with nods to the couple’s shared interests—Persian cookbooks and Burning Man photography books along with a colorful, oversize mandala batik that anchors the dining room wall. A gift from Foulquier’s brother, the piece is no ordinary wall hanging—it’s an O.G. piece by artist Courtenay Pollock, who is credited with inventing the art of tie-dye in the 1960s and is widely known for the many backdrops he created for the Grateful Dead.  

For dessert, there’s pumpkin cheesecake and apple crumble courtesy of Hultman’s mother, Michelle Kantzler, who is a Miami native and admits to having become Foulquier’s holiday sous chef. “We
have a great time in the kitchen,” says Foulquier of his future mother-in-law. 

“We have something in common:  Thanksgiving is a favorite holiday for both of us,” adds Kantzler. “It’s about food, family, and gratitude.”

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