Jeff McInnis Out, Clay Miller In As Executive Chef At Miami's Yardbird

Yardbird Southern Table & Bar is becoming renowned as one of the best restaurants in the country, and over the past three years Jeff McInnis has made a name for himself as head chef, serving classic and refined Southern cuisine. McInnis has left the restaurant, however, according to a release, and Clay Miller has been brought on board to replace him. He'll be introducing new items to the menu in late August.

Yardbird opened in October 2011, and since then has been named one of Bon Appétit's 50 Best New Restaurants of 2012 and was a semi-finalist for the James Beard Foundation Awards' Best New Restaurant 2012 category. It was also named one of the 101 best restaurants in America by The Daily Meal this year. Pittsburgh native Miller has been in the industry for 18 years, and has logged hours at Daniel, The French Laundry, and Tabla (under Floyd Cardoz). He was also executive chef and partner at Clifton, Va.'s renowned Trummer's on Main (where he won a Rising Star Chef award from StarChefs.com), and most recently was executive chef at Michael Mina's Wit & Wisdom in Baltimore.

McInnis told the Miami New Times that the reason he left was "to get back to why I fell in love with this industry in the first place," and Yardbird's CEO and founder John Kunkel is confident that the restaurant won't skip a beat.  "We're thrilled to have chef Clay Miller on board," he said in the release. "Clay is a rare culinary talent, and as Yardbird enters its third year of business, he is precisely the type of chef that will take our success to the next level."