Pan Con Podcast

July 11, 2021 brought an eruption of protests on the streets of Cuba. Mike Beltrán and Nick Jiménez got together to record some reaction and reflection on those events. Note that this podcast is being released more than 24 hours after it was recorded and the situation in Cuba is changing rapidly. We also talk about changes in Ariete's tasting menus and the beginning of live Pan Con Podcast recordi...

Nidal Barake is the founder of Gluttonomy, a marketing firm specializing in digital strategy for the dining world. As he notes in this episode of Pan Con Podcast, “Big agencies, they don’t know anything about food. They have no clue about what happens at a restaurants, what’s behind the production process, or what drives the consumer.” Nidal, by contrast, is passionate about dining and has leverag...

Chef Pablo Zitzmann was one of our very first guests on Pan Con Podcast in 2019. Nearly two years later, he’s also our first repeat guest (not counting the short interviews we did at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic). This time, he’s here to talk about the success he’s found on the other side of lockdown with Zitz Sum, a new Asian inspired concept he opened in Coral Gables shortly before we rec...

A May 8 Washington Post story by Laura Reiley bearing the headline “As his restaurants’ customers return, a Miami chef is missing a critical ingredient: Workers,” examines the widespread difficulty restaurants and other hospitality businesses are having in staffing their businesses to meet the demand of an economy that is recovering — even if slowly — from the impact of the COVID-19 pand...

Nedal Ahmad was one of the co-founders of Pincho, the Miami-born fast casual chain we discussed at length on Pan Con Podcast with previous guest (and Nedal’s cousin) Otto Othman. Nedal has since moved on to other ventures, including a healthy meal delivery service and a digital food hall — a term that describes something eerily similar to the ghost kitchen model that’s been a hot button issue...

Whether painting for live audiences at nightclubs, showing his work at galleries or creating hand-drawn covers for the zines he bought from Miami record stores, Kiki Valdés has been making art consistently since he was a kid. His work has been inspired by religion, cartoons, secret societies, and the color characters he encountered while painting at those clubs. Along with his brother, he also cre...

Ike Shehadeh is the founder and face of Ike’s Love & Sandwiches, the San Francisco-based sandwich chain with about 80 locations, known for its extensive menu, unusual flavor combinations and quirky sandwich names. Miami is home to the first Ike’s location on the east coast — a franchise store in Aventura — and Ike says the company has aggressive expansion plans that include another 4...

María Cabré is the general manager at Miami’s J. Wakefield Brewing. In this conversation with Michael Beltrán, she talks about her experience as a pastry chef, how those skills have served her in a career in brewing, and what it’s been like for her to find success in the beer business as a woman. Also in this conversation: what the COVID pivot looked like for J. Wakefield, Mike’s impression of che...

Pincho — perhaps better known in South Florida by its original name, Pincho Factory — is a distinctly Miami fast casual restaurant brand that’s grown to 10 locations serving kebobs and burgers. Co-founder and CEO Otto Othman joined us on this episode to talk about his own path from marketing to restaurants, how his Palestinian and Brazilian heritage came together with time growing up in...

Luciana Giangrandi and Alex Meyer are the chefs behind Boia De, a Miami restaurant that Mike has recommended on Pan Con Podcast numerous times. The two made their long-overdue appearance on the podcast to talk about their respective culinary careers, toast to their being named 2021 Star Chefs Rising Stars, and discuss the wave of New York City restaurateurs that has hit Miami at the tail end of th...

Both in her childhood and her early professional life, Carolina Quijano moved around a lot. “Living on planes” — especially when she was working as a management consultant — led her to all kinds of food. She joined Mike Beltrán on this episode of Pan Con Podcast to talk about how that led to her love of chocolate, how she taught herself (with some help from YouTube videos) to make her ow...

Katherine Manning and Tung Nguyen and widely regarded as the restaurateur duo responsible for popularizing Vietnamese flavors in Miami at Hy Vong. The two met when Katherine, then a University of Miami grad student, volunteered herself and her home to help resettle refugees after the end of the Vietnam War. Their new memoir, Mango and Peppercorns (published by Chronicle Books), tells the story of...

It took 23 years for the brewery Manny Portuondo dreamed of opening to become a reality. It took patience, passion, and some legal battles with the Cuban government, but Cervecería La Tropical — Cuba’s first beer brand — has been revived in Miami with an investment from Heineken. On this episode of Pan Con Podcast, Manny and Mike talk about the history behind La Tropical beer, how the br...

Lucy López has been a Miami radio fixture since she joined Power 96.5 FM back in 1996; she’s been with the station all this time and now hosts Power 96’s morning show. She joined Mike Beltran on Pan Con Podcast to talk about the state of her industry, Miami’s music, and how Miami mayor Francis Suárez’s efforts to lure tech industry transplants to Miami might change the city. The two also discuss b...

A chance encounter with a great burger at a Miami pizza joint led Sef González to snap a photo of it on his Motorola Razor. That grainy flip phone photo was the beginning of Burger Beast, one of Miami’s first and best known food blogs. Sef joined Mike on this episode of Pan Con Podcast to talk about food media, his burger museum, his burger book, his events, frita history, skydiving, and the Chug...

Derek Kaplan had a decade-long career as a firefighter, but he started honing his dessert skills in high school when, as he told Mike Beltrán on this episode of Pan Con Podcast, he would make pies for himself and his friend when they had the munchies. Today, Fireman Derek’s Bake Shop has two Miami locations and delivers baked goods nationally. On this episode, Derek and Mike discuss the business o...

Drew Estate is one of the biggest names in premium cigars. And Willy Herrera, the company’s master blender, is the man responsible not only for developing new cigar blends, but also for ensuring that the blends in the company’s portfolio maintain consistency year over year. In this conversation with chef Michael Beltran on Pan Con Podcast, Willy talks about how he got into the cigar business at hi...

Simon Kim is the restaurateur behind Cote, a one-of-a-kind, Michelin-starred Korean steakhouse in New York City, which is set to open its Miami location in early 2021. In this conversation with chef Michael Beltrán on Pan Con Podcast, Simon talks about how visiting fine dining restaurants with his dad in South Korea and his adolescence in his family’s Korean restaurant in Tribeca led to his fallin...

Carlos Frías is the James Beard Award-winning food editor at the Miami Herald. Before moving into food at the Herald, Carlos was covering sports at The Palm Beach Post, where he also wrote a series about his first trip to Cuba that would later become the framework for his memoir, “Take Me With You: A Secret Search for Family in a Forbidden Cuba.” He joined Michael Beltrán on Pan Con Podcast to tal...

Dave Arvelo is the director of MMA athlete development at First Round Management, which represents some of the biggest names in combat sports (e.g., Jorge Masvidal, Jon Jones, Demetrious Johnson, Yoel Romero), along with a roster of NFL clients. Dave joined Mike (who also happens to be his neighbor) on Pan Con Podcast to talk about about his recent move to Miami, how he got his start in the fight...

Larry Carrino, president of Brustman Carrino Public Relations, is the Miami publicist with the stress-inducing distinction of having our host Michael Beltran as his client. Ove the time Larry has been working with Mike, the two have become friends. On this episode of Pan Con Podcast, Mike and Larry talk about food journalism, influencers, social media, food festivals and the ghost kitchens. In the...

Our "Ask Mike Anything" episode is the last of 2020, and we opened it up to questions from listeners for chef and eighth grade basketball MVP Michael Beltran. There are even more questions and answers in our extended Patreon-only episode. Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/DADEmag Follow Pan Con Podcast everywhere: Facebook: www.facebook.com/panconpodcast/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/pancon...

David Foulquier is the restaurateur behind Fooq’s, a Miami restaurant built on French-Persian cuisine, and Sushi Noz, the Michelin-starred Manhattan sushi restaurant named for its chef, Abe Nozomu. Pan Con Podcast’s last guest of 2020, David joined Mike at the Ariete Patio for a conversation about his culinary influences, the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, how he found his way into...

Ryan Pfeffer of Infatuation Miami joined Michael Beltran and Nicolás Jiménez to talk about his writing career, what he’s learned from covering the Miami restaurant scene and the ethics of freebies. Also on the agenda for the night: butthole tattoos, pasta, and what it might take for Miami to further mature as a food city. Finally, we ask our listeners to give what they can to The Hungry Post’s #Fe...

Mike Betrán and Nick Jiménez got together to offer their ham-handed, but hopefully helpful update on the protests and repression that have continued after the Nov. 9 arrest of Cuban dissident rapper Denis Solís and other members of Havana's San Isidro Movement. If you missed our initial discussion of these events, check out this episode from Nov. 30. http://www.dademag.com/features/2020/11/30/pan-...