Acclaimed Philadelphia restaurateur Tyler Akin recreated his childhood memories by re-opening the restaurant where his family celebrated big occasions—the Green Room, in the Hotel DuPont in Wilmington,Delaware. He grew up watching his southern grandmother in the kitchen. He went to law school (his father was a lawyer and later a judge) but dropped out to attend culinary school. His talent was obvious — he staged at José Andrés Minibar in Washington and worked for other noted chefs before opening...
Jul 29, 2025•41 min
Chef Suzette Gresham has been a pioneer in fighting for the place of women in the long-male-dominated world of high-end cooking for forty years. And she’s also one of the greatest chefs working today. She holds two Michelin stars at her San Francisco restaurant Acquerello, where her seasonal tasing menus sparkle with the freshest, often unusual, dishes such as rabbit- mortadella filled cappellacci and quail with fennel confit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
Jul 22, 2025•54 min
On Food and Wine’s list of America’s top restaurants for 2025, Canlis came in at number two. That, after decades as a Seattle landmark and a nationally known pinnacle of fine dining. It is also a time of great challenge for Canlis – a new Executive Chef; the departure of Mark’s brother, who had been his business partner for twenty years; and the tough post-covid economic environment that has hit the restaurant industry extremely hard. Yet Mark Canlis says he is not concerned – rather, he is comm...
Jul 15, 2025•41 min
Born and raised in Japan, Chef Julia Momosé developed a respect and love for hospitality watching her mother entertain at home. Her motivation for entering the culinary world was a visit she made to a bar in Kyoto watching the bartender hand making ice spheres for use in drinks. She pursued that newfound passion while attending college in the U.S., working at bars and local restaurants, before making a big name for herself as a bartender in Chicago, working for celebrated chefs and restaurateurs...
Jul 08, 2025•44 min
Pioneering chef Jordan Kahn holds Michelin stars at two different Los Angeles area restaurants— two stars at Vespertine, and one star at Meteora. Appropriately, the Michelin Guide calls his rise in the food world “meteoric.” Kahn worked under legendary chefs Thomas Keller and Grant Achatz before striking out on his own, He is known for crafting not just a meal, but a multi-sensory experience intended to connect the diner with the natural world, featuring a range of what he calls “exceptional ing...
Jul 01, 2025•56 min
Chef Anita Jaisinghani grew up in India and, while she loved food, she didn’t make it a career at first. She became a microbiologist, worked in that field when she and her husband moved to Canada, and only decided to enter the restaurant business when they moved to Houston. There, she opened what she describes as an Indian diner, Pondicheri, and in the space above it, a bakery, infusing even traditional baked goods such as croissants with Indian spices and flavors. She has received multiple Jame...
Jun 24, 2025•37 min
Laurent Tourondel is a Michelin star winning French chef who opened an affordable New York steakhouse, Skirt Steak, that became a Tik Tok sensation. Born in Auvergne, France, he has worked all over the world in a storied 40-year career (and even says his time in Moscow was a great culinary learning experience). He has earned a Michelin star, three stars from the New York times, founded the BLT Restaurant Group, and now owns LT hospitality, running a range of restaurants including Skirt Steak, wh...
Jun 17, 2025•33 min
Marisa Baggett had never seen sushi, never tasted sushi, when a customer asked for it at her Starkville Mississippi café. And that launched her quest to master the age old Japanese culinary tradition, graduating from the California Sushi Academy, and championing creativity that remains true to the fresh and local soul of sushi, such as her southern influenced sushi made with ingredients including pickled okra, catfish, and collard greens. She says anyone can learn to make their own sushi at home...
Jun 10, 2025•40 min
Chef Eric LeVine was so taken by cooking that before he even attended culinary school, he wrote a letter to groundbreaking chef David Burke at the legendary River Café in New York – and got hired. He credits Chef Burke with setting him on the path to culinary achievement and, after graduating from the Culinary Institute of America, Chef LeVine cooked at a variety of restaurants, winning a three-star review from the New York Times. He then began opening restaurants of his own, building a restaura...
Jun 03, 2025•41 min
Amy Mills grew up surrounded by barbecue. Her father Mike Mills owned 17th St. Barbecue in Murphysboro, Illinois and was the first pitmaster ever named Grand Champion three times at the “super bowl of swine,” the Memphis in May barbecue competition. Her father passed away a few years back and Amy now runs the growing operation which includes two restaurants, a sauce factory, and catering. She’s kept the quality and the flavor up to her father’s standards and reveals some of the secrets for creat...
May 27, 2025•46 min
James Beard Award winning chef Alon Shaya, born in Israel and raised in Philadelphia, was cooking for his family at the age of seven. When he began getting into trouble as a teen, his high school home economics teacher intervened, getting him his first fine-dining cooking job when he was just 16. He says she saved his life. He went on the Culinary Institute of America, then cooked in a variety of restaurants, become an executive chef at 21. He won the 2015 James Beard award as Best Chef South fo...
May 20, 2025•40 min
Chef Alycia Wahn Martindale is cooking up southern flavors north of the border at Conejo Negro (Black Rabbit in Spanish), the massively popular Toronto restaurant she owns with her husband and their good friend. The menu is a combination of Creole, Caribbean, and Latin American cooking. And she is making everything possible from scratch— bacon, butter, pickles and much more. The former punk rock musician says she wants diners to feel the love in her food, which should feel like something someone...
May 13, 2025•36 min
Often cited as America’s best deli, Katz’s has been a lower East Side institution in New York for more than 137 years this month. Owner Jake Dell’s father and uncle bought the deli from the original Katz family in 1988. Jake joined in 2009. He refuses to change anything about the customer experience there—from the ancient decor to the scratch made pastrami, corned beef, chopped liver, knishes and everything else on the expansive menu. He is, however, working to bring his food to even more people...
May 06, 2025•40 min
Cara Tobin got her first restaurant job at the age of 17 by lying about her cooking experience in the job interview—she had none at all. In the years that followed she went to culinary school, graduating number one in her class, then worked her way up the cooking ladder at several restaurants before falling in love with Eastern Mediterranean cuisine when she worked at Oleana in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Now she is cooking that cuisine at two restaurants she co-owns in Burlington, Vermont—Honey R...
Apr 29, 2025•39 min
Chef André Bienvenu spent more than a quarter-century as executive chef at America’s highest grossing independent restaurant, Joe’s Stone Crab in Miami Beach. He considered that the pinnacle of his long career and was looking ahead to retirement, but those plans changed dramatically. Given an unexpected opportunity to partner on a new restaurant, he began a second chapter in his professional life as an owner, opening Catch & Cut in Fort Lauderdale, an old school seafood and steak restaurant ...
Apr 22, 2025•37 min
Named a Food & Wine Best New Chef for 2024, Karyn Tomlinson has won raves for her restaurant Myriel in St. Paul, Minnesota. Her menu, combining elements of French, Nordic, and Midwestern cuisines has been dubbed “Grandma Chic.” A major advocate of local, seasonal cooking, she sources all her ingredients from local farms, which she visits every week. But she is pragmatic about getting people to eat better, encouraging them to simply do as well as they can (and she herself admits to enjoying a...
Apr 15, 2025•42 min•Ep. 38
After coming to the United States from Peru in his teens, Diego Sanchez found a sense of belonging in restaurant kitchens. He cooked under some of the world’s greatest chefs before striking out on his own and now owns his own restaurant on the Jersey shore, 39 Degrees North in Manahawkin, NJ—a diner he has reimagined his way, adding items like handmade gnocchi and lomo saltado to the traditional diner menu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
Apr 08, 2025•40 min•Season 1Ep. 37
Chef Mary Nguyen grew up in a Vietnamese immigrant household in Denver, went on to work as an investment banker, then decided to make a major career change—into the world of food. She began by working three culinary jobs at once, and becoming one of America’s first female sushi chefs, before opening the first of several restaurants in her hometown, including Olive & Finch, which is now a growing restaurant group. It offers chef-driven, scratch-made food without the fine dining prices. Learn ...
Apr 03, 2025•31 min•Season 1Ep. 36
Michelin star winning chef John Fraser worked for Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Thomas Keller, and in some of the most storied restaurants in France, before opening a restaurant of his own and then continuing to build a culinary empire. He has won Michelin stars at two different restaurants, including the vegetarian Nix in New York city. His restaurants focus on a range of cuisines, including French, Greek and Turkish, and vegetable-focused California style cooking. Learn more about your ad choi...
Mar 25, 2025•43 min•Season 1Ep. 35
Sheila and Duffy Witmer bought the Pioneer Saloon in Ketchum, Idaho nearly half a century ago. And they’ve kept it a jam-packed favorite ever since, with scores of repeat customers including Clint Eastwood, Sandy Koufax, and Ernest Hemingway’s grandchildren. The menu is beef-heavy, featuring steaks and their legendary prime rib. And scraps from preparing the prime rib are the key ingredient in the Jim Spud, a massive twenty-two ounce baked potato stuffedwith teriyaki beef, cheese, sour cream, ca...
Mar 18, 2025•36 min•Season 1Ep. 34
Carlos Gaytán has earned a Michelin star (the first Mexican-born chef ever to receive one) at two different restaurants. He is noted for combining regional Mexican cooking with classic French techniques. After working his way up from dishwasher in a hotel kitchen, he now owns restaurants in Chicago, Mexico, and recently opened several in the Downtown Disney District adjacent to Disneyland. He has appeared on Top Chef and as a judge on numerous cooking competition shows in the U.S. and Mexico. Le...
Mar 11, 2025•31 min•Season 1Ep. 33
Called the Soul Food Scholar, Adrian Miller is renowned for his knowledge of African American and southern cooking. Author of multiple books, he won James Beard awards for two of them: Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time , and Black Smoke: African Americans and the United States of Barbecue . Yet culinary history was not his original career path. He was a lawyer, worked for the Clinton White House, and then for the governor of Colorado, before turning to c...
Mar 04, 2025•40 min•Season 1Ep. 32
Chef Katie Button is a James Beard winner for her Asheville, North Carolina Spanish restaurant Cúrate, which is the flagship of her restaurant group. Button discovered her deep love for food when she was living in Paris, studying for a master’s degree in biomedical engineering. The awakening was so profound that she changed careers, worked for two of the world’s greatest chefs, Ferran Adrià and José Andrés, before opening tapas-based Cúrate, then building a culinary empire that includes a Catalo...
Feb 25, 2025•47 min•Season 1Ep. 31
Melissa Reagan and Stephen Gonzalez met at Culinary School in Austin, Texas two decades ago, then followed their own culinary journeys through a variety of restaurants. Today she’s cooking at an upscale restaurant in North Carolina (but by contract she can’t name it) and with supermarkets challenging many restaurants by offering meals cooked on site, he is working for the H-E-B grocery chain, a major player in Texas. Both feel deeply about getting average folks cooking at home. Which is the impe...
Feb 18, 2025•44 min•Season 1Ep. 30
Nok Suntaranon remembers eating like royalty growing up inThailand, even though her family was poor, thanks to her mother’s skills in the kitchen. And it’s the food of her childhood that she is cooking at her Philadelphia restaurant Kalaya, named for her mom, which she did not open untilthe age of 50. She had been enjoying life as a housewife but says there’s only so much Pilates, yoga, and lunching a person can do. Just a few years later, she won the 2023 James Beard Award as best chef in the m...
Feb 11, 2025•34 min•Season 1Ep. 29
Named the 2024 James Beard Awards best chef in the mountain region, Matt Vawter began his culinary education going to restaurants with his grandparents and being taken into the kitchen to meet the chef. He got his first cooking job at the age of fourteen and worked his way up to big success in his hometown. Born in the Breckenridge, Colorado area, Vawter began culinary school while still in high school, cut his teeth in Denver working for celebrated chef Alex Seidel, then came back to Breckenrid...
Feb 04, 2025•42 min•Season 1Ep. 28
Victoria Shore grew up in an adventurous culinary family (few American kids fall in love with Basque food but she did) and ended up cooking professionally because she could not get the job she wanted, culinary journalist, without kitchen experience. She’s always loved to cook—she was the kid making French fries in her dorm room—and has now worked her way up from positions in catering and restaurants to become the Executive Chef of all the restaurants at the Thompson Savannah Hotel in Savannah, G...
Jan 28, 2025•38 min•Season 1Ep. 27
Born and raised in New Orleans, Michael Gulotta began cooking for his family at the age of nine. He grew up to attend culinary school in his hometown, then trained under legendary chefs in Europe, before coming back to N’awlins and opening three restaurants that combine, to varying degrees, Asian, Italian, Cajun, and Creole flavors. He is a five-time James Beard Award semifinalist who has drawn raves from the most esteemed culinary publications. And he runs “no yelling, please-and-thank-you” kit...
Jan 21, 2025•44 min•Season 1Ep. 26
Amelie Kang grew up in northern China, moved to Beijing, and then to the U.S., where she graduated from the Culinary Institute of America. She worked for Michelin starred chefs, before going on to open the Málà Project in New York, where she offers food as eaten in China, and a more upscale dining experience than the typical American Chinese restaurant. Which makes her a pioneer in the movement being called Chinese 2.0. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
Jan 14, 2025•37 min•Season 1Ep. 25
Despite never having trained as a chef, Christopher Kimball has taught millions of Americans how to become better home cooks. He started a magazine devoted to perfecting recipes, turned that into the America’s Test Kitchen media empire, then moved on to found another, Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street, which includes a magazine, a TV show, a podcast, cookbooks, and more, and has expanded Kimball’s work to perfecting recipes from many other countries. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megap...
Jan 07, 2025•39 min•Season 1Ep. 24
