Mecha Mucho roughly translates to “lots and lots.” For Chef and Owner Ryan Ota that means lots and lots of smiles, lots and lots of people saying, “Damn this is good!” and lots and lots of sandwiches sold. If you haven’t discovered it, Mecha Mucho is cranking out amazing egg salad sandwiches on Shokupan (Japanese milk bread) with additional protein options from chicken katsu, to spam to sometimes even wagyu beef, out of the little street side window at Osaka-Ya on 10th street. Ryan tells us abou...
Jun 07, 2024•58 min•Ep. 36
To say Oliver Ridgeway is well traveled is a gross understatement. After getting his start washing dishes in his dad’s restaurant, at 20 years old he got a job cooking on the Queen Elizabeth II cruise liner, which traveled from England to New York city. That ship took him all over the world over two years, and taught him how to cook and how to organize. That organization would be vital as he went on to cook for Athletes and VIP sponsors at the Olympic Games in Sydney Australia 2000 and the Winte...
May 16, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 35
Amanda Bridger started cooking food at home during COVID as a way to pass the time and to comfort herself, her partner Chris and friends. Little did she know that in going back to the Hawaiian flavors of her childhood evenings visiting her grandmother, she would stumble upon a new found talent and passion for cooking Hawaiian cuisine. She and her partner Chris Tocchini moved to Sacramento and started a pop up with the recipes she developed and it was such a success that they ultimately opened Ka...
May 03, 2024•53 min•Ep. 34
Billy Ngo of Kru Contemporary Japanese Cuisine got his start at an old-school Japanese restaurant on Broadway in Sacramento, spending hours washing dishes and painstakingly preparing shrimp for the week’s service. After a stint at Mikuni he understood how sushi could become something that mixed his passion for creativity and attention to detail. Billy headed to culinary school in San Francisco and came back to work at The Kitchen for a year, where he learned the importance of good ingredients an...
Apr 18, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Season 2Ep. 33
It all started when a disastrous failed potato crop led Jody Bogle’s grandfather, Warren Bogle to try planting wine grapes on the acreage he purchased on Merritt Island. In 1968 he planted 10 acres of Petite Syrah and 10 acres of Chenin Blanc. He got the Chenin Blanc clippings from a guy named Skinny in Lodi! Today, Bogle has grown to become the Bogle Family Wine Collection, a brand that stretches worldwide, which includes several different labels, styles and price points of wine. We talk to Jod...
Oct 24, 2023•47 min•Ep. 32
Greg Gearhart and Victor Mihalchuk were sipping coffee and having lunch with their colleague Cameron Tyler of Moonracer films when they thought, “the food scene in Sacramento is so amazing…what if we filmed it.” That nugget of an idea launched what is now one of the most beautiful celebrations of Sacramento and its food you will ever see called Breaking Bread. On Tuesday September 5 there was a very special premiere of the amazing limited series and the next day we sat down with Greg and Victor ...
Sep 08, 2023•48 min•Ep. 31
Before Robert Masullo became a Sacramento pizza icon, he was the son of a Sac Bee journalist and a stay at-home mom. His mom was a major influence on his life as she taught him the values in hard work and making recipes from scratch. His Sacramento food orgin story is epic, with him riding a Vespa to Biba to wash dishes when he was 16. His love of food took him to the CIA in New York and then a little over a decade stop in Minnesota. He worked as a baker, learning the art and craft dough and how...
Sep 02, 2023•56 min•Ep. 30
Ben Roberts grew up in Grass Valley where he loved skateboarding and punk rock. He dreamed of getting out of the small town but had no real plan, but after he met his future wife at a record shop, he followed her to Sacramento as she went to UC Davis and he looked to take any job he could find. That is the perfect recipe (pun intended) for a young kid to make his way into a kitchen. He got his start at R15 and then Shady Lady where a mentor showed him the right books to buy and Ben dove in head ...
Aug 26, 2023•57 min•Ep. 29
Chloe Booth got a taste for interesting food at a young age when her mom went to culinary school. But it was years later as a teenager when her grandmother bulldozed a job path for Chloe at Del’s Pizza in Fair Oaks. There she learned the ins and outs of the pizza business, from interacting with the regulars to managing 20 pizzas at a time in the ovens. After a break from restaurants Chloe saw a Facebook post about a new pizza place opening in Midtown. She went in for a stage shift and has never ...
Aug 18, 2023•47 min•Ep. 28
Alison Clevenger moved from Arizona to Oregon to go to culinary school without ever checking out the campus, her mom just signed her up, drove her up there and dropped her off. That move set her life on a course where she would land in Sacramento and ultimately help build one of the premiere sweet treat destinations in the city, Ginger Elizabeth’s. Alison talks about taking naps on giant bags of flour, the growth of Ginger Elizabeth, perfecting the perfect ice cream sandwich (in Max’s opinion,) ...
Jul 20, 2023•48 min•Ep. 27
Matt Brown loves to cook. That may seem obvious given he’s spent the last 20 years as a chef. But many chefs don’t cook between shifts…not Matt. He loves nothing more than cracking open a cookbook, a bottle of wine and spending a day off grilling in the summer or roasting in the winter. Matt got his start at pizzeria as a teenager and spent time at several other spots in Sacramento that are no longer in existence (Matt swore their closing wasn’t his fault.) After moving to Idaho for five years t...
Jun 15, 2023•46 min•Ep. 26
Taylor Lovelace is the head chef at J.J. Pfister Distilling Company but her love affair with cooking started when she interned at The Kitchen while in culinary school. It was actually years before when she would chauffeur her parents to the famed restaurant that she got to try the food when the staff would feed her the menu in the back of the restaurant while her parents dined. Taylor went on to hit Sacramento hot-spots like Localis, Echo and Rig and Camden Spit and Larder before landing at J.J....
May 10, 2023•44 min•Ep. 25
In place of a usual episode, Max and Neill take turns asking each other food questions to give you insight into the minds of your favorite local food podcasters! What food are you embarrassed to say they don't like? What's the one meal you would make to impress someone? If you could only eat one cuisine for the rest of your life what would it be? And more!! This episode is in place of an episode that was supposed to be with Polo Adamo of Adamo's Kitchen but the audio was lost during a computer c...
Mar 30, 2023•26 min•Ep. 24
Eddie Torres learned the power of food connecting families at an early age when he would have Sunday dinners with more than 20 members of his extended family, most of whom lived in the same apartment complex. But it wasn’t until the great recession, which buckled the car industry where he was working, that he decided to go to culinary school. After school he bounced around town until making his way to Ella pretty quickly, starting at the bottom and working his way up to the line. Then, he heard ...
Mar 12, 2023•48 min•Ep. 23
Dennis Sydnor first fell in love with cooking in his family home, smelling bbq and parker house rolls that his dad made. Then when he got his first kitchen job back in Cleveland at 17 he realized that his ability to cook impressed the girls and gave him some juice as the new kid in town. Soon he moved to the front of the house and fell in love with hospitality and being front and center watching people experience what he knew would become lifelong memories. Eventually, he longed to get back into...
Feb 24, 2023•43 min•Ep. 22
Max and Neill sit down with Rebecca Campbell, owner and chef of Sac City Brews in Tahoe Park. They talk about Rebecca’s unconventional and even accidental move to running a kitchen. It’s not often you find someone with two Masters degrees running a kitchen, but she has taken her background in community development to create an amazing spot for the neighborhood of Tahoe Park and frankly for all of Sacramento. She talks about how growing up on a small farm in the foothills gave her an appreciation...
Feb 10, 2023•51 min•Ep. 21
Greg Desmangles got his start as so many do, in the dish pit of a family owned restaurant. But from his first weekend working on his feet all day bussing tables and washing dishes during beer week, Greg knew he wanted to be in a kitchen. Greg went on to stage at Taylor's kitchen soaking up all he could before going back to his uncle's restaurant Pangaea Beir Cafe and working prep. Today Greg has helped the family business grow to four restaurants, including Pangaea, Urban Roots Brewing and Smoke...
Dec 20, 2022•49 min•Ep. 20
Today we talk about the wild world of cheese! How does blue mold bloom? Does what the animal eats change the taste of cheese? Strange food combinations to eat with cheese, headless spiders that create a rind on cheese. All these questions and odd facts are answered and discussed with our guest Julie Cassotta. Julie is a Certified Cheese Professional and one of only eight people with that certification in Sacramento. That means she knows her stuff when it comes to cheese. Julie creates gorgeous c...
Dec 02, 2022•46 min•Ep. 19
Chris Sinclair fell in love with cocktails when a salty San Francisco bartender schooled him on what a real martini was. Since that moment Chris has dedicated his life to teaching other aspiring bartenders and guests, wherever he has worked, the art of the craft cocktail. Chris is from New York but has made Sacramento his home having spent the last decade working at the likes of Red Rabbit, La Cosecha, Kasbah, Sail Inn, Jungle Bird and more. He is also the founding president of the Sacramento ch...
Oct 12, 2022•46 min•Ep. 18
Jonathan Kerksieck has been working in restaurants in Sacramento for 30 years. He got his start making pizza at original Pete’s out of high school. He considered culinary school but a conversation with Rick Mahan when he was working at Paragary's and set his course on learning to cook by working long hours in kitchens all over Sacramento. After all that training, head chef jobs, running hotel food programs and even doing food research and development, Jonathan met an old colleague who helped him...
Sep 16, 2022•44 min•Ep. 17
Scott McCumber has not had the traditional path to becoming a head chef here in Sacramento. Most chefs start young, finding the discipline and camaraderie in the kitchen intoxicating. Scott loves that about the kitchen too, but for him it was consecutive layoffs in his corporate sales career that led him to completely shift his life’s course. Scott took six months of severance pay and with his wife’s blessing went to work in a kitchen as a volunteer prep cook, and less than eight years later fou...
Sep 01, 2022•47 min•Ep. 16
This week Max throws back to an episode of his college podcast where he talked to Nicole McDavid, the garden coordinator at the Capital Public Radio garden. McDavid tends to the large garden which produces roughly 2,000 pounds of produce per year to the Associated Students, Inc. food pantry and other food banks. McDavid does it all using organic gardening techniques and passes on her 10 years of experience with urban farming to listeners. Wondering what to plant this fall? When to water? How to ...
Aug 19, 2022•23 min•Ep. 15
WARNING: Make sure you’re not hungry before listening to this episode This week we are back with an episode all about the Sac Hot Chicken battle that took place earlier this summer. We interviewed all the chefs, tried all the sandwiches and got reactions from people on site as about 1000 people came out and enjoyed spicy chicken sandwiches and beer and cider. We also talked to the event organizer Misty Alafranji as well as one of the judges Benjy Egel from the Sacramento Bee. So kick back and li...
Aug 11, 2022•53 min•Season 1Ep. 14
Shannon McElroy has one of the best restaurant jobs in town. He works 8 a.m. to 3 p.m everyday at one of the best, most respected pizzerias in town, making the pizza dough and the desserts. But Shannon’s career has spanned everything from high end restaurants in Napa, cooking pizzas in the redwood forests of Mendecino and serving surly customers in some of Sacramento’s “finest” dive bars. We talk about how Shannon went from culinary school, to bartending and then back to the kitchen at Masullo, ...
Jul 04, 2022•36 min•Ep. 13
In 1986 Karen Bond and her husband Malcolm bought a 10 acre almond orchard in Winters to fulfill a dream of living in the country. At the time they never would have guessed that they would be selling prized olive oil made from trees imported from Italy. After removing their almond trees, they were visiting Sicily where Karen tried freshly pressed olive oil for the first time and she fell in love. More than 15 years later Bondolio produces some of the most sought after and award winning olive oil...
Jun 21, 2022•49 min•Ep. 12
Today we welcome Bobby Coyote, owner of Dos Coyotes and his long-time executive chef Mark Casale. Dos Coyotes is unique in so many ways. It’s uniquely Sacramento, it blends Mexican, southwest and farm-to-fork California cuisine and it’s one of the original concepts to offer restaurant quality food that’s fresh, fast, ordered at a counter but “served on a cool plate.” Bobby tells the harrowing story of trying to open his first location. Everything went wrong, from his contractor having to stop wo...
Jun 01, 2022•55 min•Ep. 11
Neill Little has a been a server and bartender since he was 21. He's spent over a decade working at places in Sacramento including DeVere's, Empress Tap Room and Camden Spit and Larder. Neill and I talk about the good, the bad and the ugly of working as a server. Mostly, we talk about the good and how being a server allows you to connect with people, have great conversations and make lifelong friends with co-workers and guests. We also talk about how apparently, the grocery store you were raised...
May 27, 2022•47 min•Ep. 10
In this episode Max throws back to an interview he did in the summer of 2020 with Shaun Holkko, a peer from Sac State who worked at In-N-Out burger for nearly three years. Max and Shaun get into all the In-N-Out lore including if you have to be religious to work there, what are all the secret menu items, how many patties can you put on one burger and of course...what's with the fries!? Links: Shaun and Von podcast Visit the podcast website at dineonesix.com Follow me on Twitter and Instagram Com...
May 17, 2022•31 min•Ep. 9
Ray Ballestero is the co-owner of Alaro Craft Brewery along with his wife Annette. Alaro is located in the old Rubicon Brewing Co. location which was a Sacramento institution for almost 30 years. Alaro is a labor of love and combines decades of experience in home brewing paired with Ray’s upbringing eating food influenced from his Spanish background. Combine that with his wife’s background as a co-owner of River City Brewing Company, a master Head Brewer in Chris Keeton and great tapas by Chef D...
May 10, 2022•38 min•Ep. 8
Today I talk with professional food photographer Taylor Gillespie, who runs Food in Focus here in Sacramento. Taylor comes from a family of entrepreneurs and food people. Her mom was a chef when she was younger and her grandparents started Sunrise Natural Foods. I love Taylor’s story because it is a story of a business that could only be created in the last 10 years. She built her business on Instagram and now photographs for Style Magazine in Folsom and for restaurants all over Sacramento. We c...
May 04, 2022•39 min•Ep. 7
