Menu Talk

The Korean Wave or “Hallyu” has popularized barbecue, fried chicken, K-pop and K-dramas in the U.S., but Bonyeon in Chicago set out to elevate the trend. Kate Park, co-founder of the restaurant and the guest on this week’s Menu Talk, discusses how she and Chef Sangtae Park are introducing guests to a higher-end experience. In traditional Korean barbecue restaurants, diners cook meat, seafood and o...

Frankie Solarik’s sources of inspiration range from molecular gastronomist Ferran Adrià to Marco Moreira, the chef of Tocqueville, a fine-dining restaurant in New York City, where he was deemed too scruffy to work in the front of the house and was shunted into the kitchen.  He's the author of “The Bar Chef: A Modern Approach to Cocktails,” published in 2013, and was a judge on the Netflix seri...

Levain Bakery, a New York City obsession among cookie lovers, started as a bread shop 30 years ago. The famous gooey and crispy 6-ounce cookies came about by accident. The founders, Connie McDonald and Pam Weekes, were triathletes as well as bakers, and they developed an oversized chocolate chip walnut cookie to fuel them during training. Word got out about that cookie and lines formed around the...

Scott Conant has been working in restaurants for 40 years, since he was an eager 15-year-old teen in Waterbury, Connecticut. Since then he has opened restaurants in New York City, Miami, Las Vegas, Toronto, and elsewhere, as well as a new restaurant in the Bahamas at the Baha Mar resort slated to open later this fall.  His restaurant L’Impero won the James Beard Foundation Restaurant & Chef Aw...

Brooklyn-born Eric LeVine started cooking in restaurant kitchens at the age of 12, working the fry station at a neighborhood diner. Although that would be considered illegal child labor today, he loved the work and never looked back. LeVine fueled his passion as a student at the Culinary Institute of America and as a member of the kitchen team at Brooklyn’s renowned River Café, where celeb chef Da...

Stephanie Izard has a streak of fearlessness in her. She went from being a sous chef to a restaurateur at age 27 and hasn’t looked back. Closing that restaurant, Scylla, in 2007 after a three-year run, she went on to compete in and win season four of Bravo TV’s Top Chef in 2008. From there she launched her goat-themed restaurant empire, now comprised of two Girl & the Goat locations in Chicago...

Amanda Toups, partner with her husband Isaac Toups in New Orleans’ Toups Meatery, flew into action when COVID-19 closed the restaurant back in March, 2020. The couple cooked and handed out to-go meals for their employees and their families and anyone else who showed up in need. Within a few days, 500 people wrapped around the block. Through the end of 2020, they prepped and distributed 100,000 mea...

Jet Tila is known as a TV chef these days, thanks to his many appearances on the Food Network and elsewhere, but he has actually been working in the restaurant industry for pretty much his whole life. Having grown up working in his parents’ Thai restaurants in Los Angeles, he then attended culinary school and went on to cook at a wide variety of foodservice operations, including Compass Group subs...

Chef and restaurateur Victor Steinbrueck shook up the Seattle seafood scene when he opened LocalTide in 2020. The restaurant refuses to fall into typical seafood or restaurant categories, like fish and chips or fine dining sole. It’s serving up sustainable, sophisticated dishes that work just as well as takeout or while enjoying the hip vibes of Local Tide. Steinbrueck and guest host Gloria Dawson...

Douglas Keane originally opened Cyrus in Healdsburg, California, earning two Michelin stars and many accolades. But during the pandemic, a burned-out Keene did not want to reopen it as a traditional fine dining restaurant with an upscale tasting menu. So he sat down and figured out how to change the business model and staffing model to provide a living wage for all his team members and a distincti...

Raheem Sealey is the corporate chef of Kyu Restaurant, which has locations in Las Vegas, Miami, and New York City. Sealey is based in Miami, where he moved from the U.S. Virgin Island of St. Croix in 2009. He attended culinary school at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts and worked in a variety of restaurants, including Caribbean concept Sugarcane and Zuma, which offers modern Japanese food i...

The average workplace catering order size is up 12% to about $420. That’s good news for restaurants, said Cindy Klein Roche, chief growth officer for ezCater, a platform that connects workplaces with dining concepts.  But restaurants must optimize their online presence and present an appealing menu to get a piece of that growing pie. About 59% of those who place workplace orders are swayed by the...

Marc Sheehan has long been interested in the history of food. A graduate of the Culinary Institute of American in Hyde Park, N.Y., the Massachusetts native worked at Blue Hill at Stone Barns, Dan Barber’s farm, restaurant, and hotbed for culinary innovation in upstate New York, before working at Menton, a French-Italian restaurant by Barbara Lynch. Previously, he earned national acclaim at Loyal N...

Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality, visited Atlantic City’s Ocean Casino Resort, which just opened two new concepts from restaurateur Stephen Starr. Bret had a chance to sample menu items from Sunny’s, a breakfast-lunch spot, and Chez Frites, a bistro offering the familiar French plate of steak and fries along with a selection of se...

Chef and restaurateur BJ Lieberman discussed his career evolution, from his time at Husk and Little Pearl in Charleston, SC, and Washington, DC, to the launch of his restaurants in Columbus, Ohio. He opened his first Columbus restaurant, Chapman's Eat Market, at a difficult time — August 2020 — but that restaurant was later listed as  one of the most exciting restaurants by the New York Times...

Luckin Coffee is a massive concept based in China that is widely regarded as Starbucks’ chief global rival, although it just recently arrived in the United States.  Pat Cobe, senior menu editor of Restaurant Business and co-host of Menu Talk, checked out one of the two New York locations, ordered a pineapple-and-coconut drink, and gave her impressions of the place: The drink was tasty, and the ven...

Menu launches haven’t slowed down coming off the July 4 holiday weekend. Pat Cobe, senior menu editor of Restaurant Business, and Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality spotted many new items this week. The beverage category continues to see a lot of action. Bret pointed out Starbucks’ release of a super limited-time Fireworks Frappucci...

Much of the country suffered from a punishing heat wave last week, including New York City, where Menu Talk co-hosts Pat Cobe, senior menu editor of Restaurant Business, and Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality, both live. Earlier in the week, Bret went to Chili’s launch of three new premium frozen Margaritas, made with Patrón tequila...

Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality, recorded Menu Talk from Boston, where he checked out some of the city’s restaurants and took a short oyster tasting tour. He stayed at the Lenox Hotel, where Willow & Ivy is the on-premise restaurant. The two editors also talked about the surge in shakes, beverages and desserts inspired by the...

Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality, joined the podcast fresh off of a trip to Las Vegas where he attended Starbucks’ Leadership Experience 2025, where 14,000 managers from the coffeehouse chain, as well as its top executives and other leaders, gathered to reinvigorate the brand, which has faced declining sales for the past year, mak...

McDonald’s had been teasing the return of its chicken Snack Wraps on social media, but Popeyes beat them to the punch with the launch of similar wraps of their own.  That was the big menu news this week that was discussed by hosts Pat Cobe, senior menu editor of Restaurant Business, and Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality. Bret disda...

Peaches, guava and Persian flavors are trending on menus this week, according to Pat Cobe, senior menu editor of Restaurant Business, and Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality, co-hosts of the Menu Talk podcast. Bret observed that peach-themed drinks are making a comeback this summer. Chick-fil-A returned its Peach Milkshake for the 16...

Bret and guest co-host Heather Lalley discuss the latest food and beverage trends and share an interview with Susan Bae, executive pastry chef of Moon Rabbit in Washington, D.C. With the National Restaurant Show in the rearview mirror, Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality, welcomed a guest co-host to the podcast, Heather Lalley, manag...

The annual National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago concluded Tuesday, and both editors spent the last four days walking the Show floor, sampling food and drinks from the thousands of exhibitors, recording podcasts and video interviews and attending events. Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality, was on stage at the 2025 MenuMast...

Ube, the photogenic purple sweet potato from the Philippines, has been trending gradually in the United States. It got a boost recently when it made it onto the menu of the three Starbucks Reserve Roastery locations in Chicago, New York, and Seattle where it’s added to a coconut cold foam and spooned over an Espresso Martini. Pat Cobe, senior menu editor of Restaurant Business, and Bret Thorn, sen...