Menu Talk

Daru is a Hindi term for moonshine, and it’s also the name of a cocktail bar with a robust food menu that chef Suresh Sundas and beverage director Dante Datta opened in August of 2021 in the H Street neighborhood in Washington, D.C. It soon gained local and national acclaim thanks to its creative drinks, such as a Dirty Martini made with achar, a tangy type of Indian pickle, and food like paneer p...

Gregg Horan knows steakhouses. As a longtime partner in Gibsons—one of Chicago's most iconic steak destinations—he's spent years mastering the art of high-end dining. But a little over a year ago, he took a bold step: opening The Greggory in South Barrington, Illinois, bringing fine dining to the suburbs. And it's working. Want more from Pat Cobe? https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.c...

B.J. Lieberman grew up in Washington, D.C., and worked in restaurants up and down the East Coast before settling down in his wife’s hometown of Columbus, Ohio.  He had developed a reputation as a capable chef working at Husk in Charleston, S.C., under Sean Brock and running the kitchen at Rose’s Luxury in D.C. In Columbus, he opened Chapman’s Eat Market during the pandemic in 2020 and used the res...

Lion’s Choice has built a reputation and a steady stream of regulars for its legendary roast beef sandwiches in its hometown of St. Louis and beyond. The quick-service menu offers several choices, including the original Famous Roast Beef, the French Dip and The Remix—the last a favorite of CEO Fred Burmer. Burmer joins us on the podcast to talk about the menu and more. Lion’s Choice sources the to...

Nicholas Poulmentis took a remarkably straightforward approach to entering the world of food TV: He filled out an application. It was apparently a very good application because it got him a spot on the Food Network’s competition show “Chopped,” where he ended up winning, leading to other television appearances. But he also has cooked in restaurants all his life and is now preparing for his own ven...

Attorney Kevin Kelley set out to create a restaurant that would be the kind of place he could feel at home in. The result is Kitchen + Kocktails, an affordable, chef-driven restaurant with elevated Southern food, great cocktails and a warm, welcoming vibe that has grown to seven locations across the U.S. Kelley’s lifelong passion for hospitality, food and drink is powering the restaurants’ expansi...

Strickland’s is a family-owned ice cream shop that opened in Akron, Ohio, in 1936, and the original operation is still using its original equipment.  It has since expanded to five locations in its home state, all franchised except for the original shop, and it recently opened a franchised location in Costa Mesa, Calif. (not its first location in that state — it previously had a franchise on the ca...

Chef Sungchul Shim’s dream was to have a restaurant in Times Square, and he realized that dream just about a year ago when he opened Gui Steakhouse. The Culinary Institute of America graduate set out to make his steakhouse unique by infusing Korean flavors and techniques into the menu. Steaks are dry-aged and cooked over live fire fueled by a combination of wood and Korean charcoal. Along with cla...

Danny Lledó is the chef and owner of Xiquet and Taller de Xiquet. The former is a Michelin-starred, tasting-menu restaurant in Washington, D.C., and the latter offers similar food in an à la carte setting downstairs.  Born in the United States, Lledó  comes from a family of cooks—his father is an accomplished chef from Dénia, Spain, located between Valencia and Alicante, and he focuses on that reg...

Our guest on this week’s Menu Talk is Ahu Hettema, chef-owner of Istanbul Hawai’i restaurant in Honolulu.  Chef Hettema came to California to study art and psychology but was unable to return to her homeland of Turkey because of a string of immigration snafus. She visited Hawaii and fell in love with the culture and climate, which reminded her of Southeast Turkey. Chef Ahu Hettema and her mother r...

Billy Dec is the owner of Sunda New Asian, a Pan-Asian concept with a heavy bent toward Dec’s own Filipino heritage. The original location in Chicago’s River North neighborhood is 17 years old, and the concept’s fifth location, in Detroit, is slated to open in a couple of weeks.  There are also Sunda locations in Nashville and Tampa. The décor of the Detroit location reflects Dec’s own heritage mo...

Dozens of menu trend forecasts came in towards the end of 2025 from culinary and restaurant industry experts. Included in that pile were the top trends from market researcher Technomic, the sister company of Restaurant Business and Nation’s Restaurant News.  Lizzy Freier, senior director of menu research & insights at Technomic, has her finger directly on the pulse of chefs and menu developers...

When it comes to Mexico and spirits, most people think of tequila, which has now surged past whiskey and even vodka to become the most widely consumed alcohol in the United States. But Max Reis goes well beyond that, and not just into mezcal (now ubiquitous enough that you can get it at Applebee’s) or even lesser-known indigenous Mexican spirits such as sotol, raicilla and bacanora. At his Los Ang...

Kevin Lee grew up in a Korean-American family in Oklahoma City, a place not known as a dining destination 20 years ago. There were the usual chains, Korean mom-and-pops and some chef-driven restaurants, but few if any places that focused on global cuisines.  Lee majored in hospitality management at UNLV, and while there, he worked part-time in a restaurant and fell in love with cooking. That chang...

David Burke has been working in kitchens since graduating from the Culinary Institute of America in 1982, and he’s still going strong, currently running 10 restaurants up and down the East Coast, including his latest, SeaHawk Prime by David Burke at Nautilus 220, a luxury residential tower on the Intracoastal Waterway of West Palm Beach, Florida. It’s his first restaurant in the state.  Burke also...

To earn her own way through theater school in Philadelphia, Tai Ricci bussed tables at one of Stephen Starr’s restaurants. With her naturally outgoing personality and drive, she moved up the ranks to become a high-earning server and realized the restaurant business was her true calling. That calling took her to LA and eventually San Francisco, landing at one of Michael Mina’s restaurants and meeti...

Te’Sean Glass is chef de cuisine of True Laurel, a cocktail bar in San Francisco’s Mission District where he takes a farm-to-table approach to dishes such as chicken katsu topped with Caesar salad and patty melts.  Originally from St. Augustine, Florida, Glass grew up in a family of enthusiastic family cooks, but he had a dream early on of running his own restaurant. His first job in a professiona...

Our guest on this week's Menu Talk is Isabel Coss, executive chef at Pascual, a contemporary Mexican restaurant in Washington, D.C. A native of Mexico City, Chef Coss actually studied ballet—not cooking—as a way to get into arts school and become a filmmaker. But once there, she realized she was more passionate about cooking than film, and enrolled in culinary school. She quickly landed an ext...

Nelson German was born and raised in the Dominican-American community of Washington Heights in New York City, but he mostly cooked classic fine-dining food until recently. After working at New York City venues such as Joseph’s Citarella, the Gramercy Park Hotel, Absinthe Wine Bar and Jerry’s Café, he moved to San Francisco in 2010, and debuted his first restaurant there, AlaMar, in 2014, serving a...

With an early focus on cold coffee, energy drinks and a flavor-forward menu, Dutch Bros has established itself as a leader in the increasingly competitive beverage segment. CMO Tana Davila joins the Menu Talk podcast to share how the brand combines menu innovation and hospitality to create a culture that connects with guests.  Customization continues to be a key trend valued by consumers, and Dutc...

Menu Talk: The sommelier also oversees neighboring restaurant Cafe Yaya

Shake Shack takes pride in being the first in its category to launch on-trend menu items, according to Nancy Combs, SVP of culinary and calendar innovation at the fast casual. Although Shake Shack was founded in New York City by Danny Meyer and his Union Square Hospitality Group in 2001 and still has headquarters in the Big Apple, the chain recently built a second headquarters in Atlanta. Combs is...

David Utterback wanted to be a punk rocker, and like many aspiring musicians he started working in restaurants to make money. He was quickly hired at Blue Sushi Sake grill, which was the coolest restaurant in Omaha, Nebraska, at the time, because, with a Japanese mother, he looked the part.  But it turns out that he also liked working in restaurants, and was good at it, so he stayed with that comp...

Zaxbys has been in the chicken finger business since 1990, six years before Raising Cain’s and decades earlier than Wendy’s. But with the competition getting fiercer with every new chicken tender or wing to hit the market, the fast casual had to build more awareness about its DNA. Enter Patrick Schwing, chief marketing & strategy officer for the Atlanta-based fast casual and this week’s guest...

Jeffrey Bank is CEO of Alicart Restaurant Group, which owns Carmine’s and Virgil’s in New York City, as well as one location of seafood concept Mermaid Oyster Bar. Carmine’s is an Italian-American concept that was founded on Manhattan’s Upper West Side 35 years ago and now also has restaurants in Times Square as well as in Las Vegas; Atlantis in the Bahamas; Atlantic City, New Jersey; and Washingt...