Chef's PSA

Abraham Salum has one rule he wishes every restaurant would adopt. A friend of his makes everyone pile their phones in the middle of the table before dinner starts. First person to reach for theirs pays the bill. Nobody ever touches their phone. That same instinct for reading a room runs through the whole conversation. […]

Nick Walker is an FSR 40 Under 40 chef who oversaw the James Beard nominated Meridian and now leads 11 Whiskey Cake locations across Texas and Florida. He started in a kitchen at 15, under the table, and cut his thumb open on his first real shift when a slamming office door caught his hand […]

Tim Laielli will not call himself a chef. He is clear about it every time someone assumes otherwise, including his own father, who is one. Eighteen months after posting his first cooking video, Tim was on set cooking against professional chefs for Gordon Ramsay on Next Level Chef. He built Bare Food Tim, over a […]

Matt Lambert earned a Michelin star at The Musket Room in New York in four months, a goal he’d given himself three years to hit. He describes what followed as treating the star like a religion, the Church of Michelin, and says he’s never felt that emotional high again, chasing it in different forms for […]

Bryan Caswell has cooked inside three very different kinds of rooms. Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s kitchen in the early 2000s, where he learned that a quiet, organized kitchen beats a screaming one. Seventeen restaurant openings of his own, roughly half of them his own concepts, from Reef to his new restaurant Latuli in Houston. And, less known, […]

Rosana Rivera runs three businesses under one roof: a bakery storefront, a wholesale bread program, and a catering and events company called Gatheria Studio. Most operators would guess wholesale wins on volume alone. It doesn’t. Catering does, by a wide margin, sometimes 30 to 40 percent margins in a good season, more than either of […]

Eduardo Osorio moved to Dallas from LA less than a year ago. Then Kent Rathbun, Dallas royalty, ate at Meridian and posted about it, and the walk-ins started within days. It’s the kind of endorsement that doesn’t happen for just anybody. He’s built a career on adapting fast. Restaurant Daniel in New York, where a […]

Enrique Lozano is a Chopped champion, James Beard nominee for Best Chef Texas, and executive chef at Aguazul in San Antonio, with roots at Benny Frank’s in El Paso and Mija opening soon in San Elizario. He’d been trying to get on Chopped for over a decade before the call finally came, right after his […]

Matthew Cutolo is a third-generation chef at Gargiulo’s, the Coney Island restaurant his family has run since 1965 and that has fed Brooklyn since 1907. In 1977, The New York Times gave it three stars, unheard of at the time for a restaurant outside Manhattan. He learned to bake from Mike the Bake, the restaurant’s […]

Bobby Hicks read roughly 800 mid-century cookbooks to write one, and what he found was not a list of bad recipes. It was the exact point where American home cooking lost its thread. The Great Depression ran into World War II with almost no recovery in between. Two generations of mothers cooked without butter, without […]

Chef Toby Archibald is the New Zealand-born chef and owner of Quarter Acre, a Michelin Guide restaurant on Lower Greenville in Dallas. Texas Monthly named it one of the Best New Restaurants in 2023. D Magazine ranked it a Top 5 restaurant. He spent twenty years working through Michelin-starred kitchens in London, Canada, New York, […]

About Hanalei Souza Hanalei Souza is a line cook turned sous chef, the creator of Lady Line Cook, one of the most widely followed culinary community accounts on Instagram, and the author of the self-published memoir “Nice Work, Boys!” She started cooking professionally in 2018 and built her career in restaurant kitchens while simultaneously creating […]

About RJ Yoakum RJ Yoakum is an Orange County, California native who grew up watching his aunt cook and discovered professional kitchens at 19 as a dishwasher. Within months his ability stood out and he earned a recommendation to the Culinary Institute of America at Hyde Park. While at the CIA he traveled extensively through […]

About Todd Duplechan and Jessica Maher Todd Duplechan and Jessica Maher are the husband-and-wife chef team behind Lenoir, the celebrated South First Street restaurant they opened in Austin in 2012 that has become one of the city’s most enduring and critically recognized dining destinations. The two met while working in adjoining David Bouley kitchens in […]

About Brian Lewis Brian Lewis is the chef and owner of Full House Hospitality Group, one of the most recognized independent restaurant groups in the Northeast. He grew up in Somers, New York, and discovered cooking at thirteen after a football injury ended his athletic career and sent him to the kitchen of Mona Trattoria, […]

About Jason Dady Jason Dady is a Kearney, Nebraska native, Texas Tech University BA graduate in Restaurant, Hotel and Institutional Management, and California Culinary Academy alum who has been one of San Antonio’s defining culinary forces since 2001. After staging at Stars Bar and Dining in San Francisco and honing his skills at Beringer Wine […]

About Matt Peters Matt Peters is a Meadville, Pennsylvania native, Le Cordon Bleu Pittsburgh graduate, and the first American chef in history to win gold at the Bocuse d’Or. He built his classical foundation at the Ritz-Carlton in Naples, Florida before moving to New York City to cook at Alain Ducasse’s Adour. In 2009 he […]

Evan LeRoy is the co-owner and pitmaster of LeRoy and Lewis Barbecue in Austin, Texas. A Michelin star recipient in the MICHELIN Guide Texas 2024, number two on Texas Monthly’s Top 50 BBQ Joints in 2025, and 2025 James Beard Award Semifinalist for Best Chef Texas, LeRoy has spent nearly a decade redefining Texas barbecue […]

About Phillip Frankland Lee Phillip Frankland Lee is the co-owner and executive chef of Scratch Restaurants Group, the Michelin-starred hospitality company he operates with his wife and executive pastry chef Margarita Kallas-Lee. The group includes Sushi by Scratch Restaurants, Pasta|Bar, NADC Burger, and Shokunin, with locations across California and a growing national footprint. Lee is [&#8...

Chef Josh Sutcliff is the Corporate Executive Chef and Partner at 55 Seventy, a private members club for wine lovers with locations in Dallas and Houston. A Le Cordon Bleu graduate, CultureMap Dallas Rising Star Chef of the Year, and Zagat 30 Under 30 honoree, his career includes chef de cuisine at FT33, executive chef […]

About David Bull David Bull is a Culinary Institute of America graduate, Food & Wine Best New Chef 2003, two-time James Beard Foundation nominee, Austin’s first Iron Chef America competitor, and the Regional Vice President of Food and Beverage at La Corsha Hospitality Group. He grew up in his grandparents’ Italian-American restaurant in upstate New […]