CLE Foodcast

Tom McIntyre is proud to be a fishmonger. The second generation owner of Kate's Fish at the West Side Market often takes some heat for using a loud voice and some "Fighting Irish" tenacity to sound the alarm on the conditions of the 100+ year-old West Side Market. Tom and the Kate's Fish Team should be celebrating the 20th year of business but instead they are trying to salvage a future at the ven...

Pie-loving Cleveland DJ (and educational philanthropist) connects with an accomplished pie maker (and pie blogger) on Twitter. A debate ensues. Crumble or flaky top crust? Others weigh in. Ideas flow. Ice cream is added (of course). A grass-roots fundraiser is born. Jimmy Malone is a longtime supporter of College Now Greater Cleveland , an organization that helps kids with guidance and resources t...

For the past 14 years, Brandon Chrostowski has been in the life changing business.  EDWINS Leadership Institute and Restaurant was founded in 2007 with the belief that every human being, regardless of their past, has a right to a fair and equal future. The program gives formerly incarcerated adults a foundation in the culinary and hospitality industry, teaching skills in the culinary arts, empower...

Starting a business takes courage, wisdom and lots of time. People in their 50s or 60s typically have all of those things. Pat Bennett had several careers and raised a son to adulthood before thinking about becoming an entrepreneur. The successful founder of Pat's Granola shares how she turned a family recipe into a small batch artisan snack food that's sold online and in Northeast Ohio stores. Pa...

Since 2014 a team of scrappy (pun intended) environmentally-minded superheroes has been gathering food waste from restaurants and homes and turning it into a nutrient-dense soil that can grow more food.  Daniel Brown is a co-founder of Rust Belt Riders and Tilth Soils and in our interview he reminds us that there is no "away" when it comes to waste—our trash will always find a home in so...

Ben Bebenroth is a respected chef, restaurant owner, farmer and businessman who has reemerged from the pandemic with a new vision for his life and restaurant. After closing Spice, his flagship restaurant in Gordon Square, Ben took some time to reevaluate what he wanted out of life for himself, his family and his legion of customers and fans. In addition to being one of Cleveland's most beloved and...

Chef Eric Wells doesn't own a brick and mortar restaurant space and that's just fine with him.  A flexible business model helped him stay busy throughout the 2020 pandemic. Chef Wells was the first African American graduate of ICASI in Chesterland, Ohio, in 2004. He's known for taking the road less traveled, guided by faith, family and a desire to leave an imprint. Skye LaRae's Culinary Servi...

Tricia McCune has a big personality, a hearty laugh and 45,000 followers. The creator of the wildly successful CLE Foodies Instagram account is known to many for her quirky, offbeat video posts about food. She and partner Ster-Fry are out most days of the week chronicling their adventures, making videos and sharing them on social media where people can't seem to get enough of the duo enjoying all...

This is a follow up interview with Ohio farmer, Lee Jones and chef Jamie Simpson. Farmer Lee Jones and food writer Kristin Donnelly have just released a 600+ page book that is the quintessential encyclopedia of vegetables. The Chefs Garden, A Modern Guide to Common and Unusual Vegetables with Recipes shares decades of knowledge about the most familiar vegetables and those that might be new to us l...

Farmer Lee Jones knows a thing or two about vegetables...and not just the ordinary ones like carrots, potatoes and peas. For more than 30  years his Huron, Ohio farm has been growing the most interesting, nutrient-dense, and beautiful vegetables for the prestigious restaurants around the country. Vegetables from The Chef's Garden are a staple ingredient for well-known chefs that include Danie...

Kristian Campana has been blogging about festivals for more than a decade, attending more than 500 community festivals, fairs, and events both large and small. As we head into Memorial Weekend 2021 I talk to Kristian about his hobby and some of the festivals that have announced plans to return this year. We also talk about how festivals here in America compare to those in other countries, the diff...

Does Akron have the best burgers in the country?  Listen to find out!  Prompted by COVID-induced job uncertainty and the prospect of homeschooling two kids, Akron Ohio-based photographer Shane Wynn embarked on a journey of a lifetime. Shane, her husband filmmaker Josh Gippin, and their children Amelia and Malcom, left Akron in September of 2020 to travel the country exploring the food, c...

In this episode I talk to Jeremy Umansky, chef and owner of Larder, about how he and his partners, Kenny Scott and Allie LaValle-Umansky managed to steward their popular neighborhood deli through the uncertainty of the past year. The tight-knit team had unknowingly created a model that was able to adapt quickly to the take-out environment and thrive while other concepts struggled. In just a few sh...

For a lot of us, 2020 was a year of introspection and course correction. While we probably won't look back on the year with great fondness, it's fair to say that once the initial shock wore off, COVID-19 ushered in a strange and sudden opportunity to rest, think and evaluate. Early this year, Penny Barend Tagliarina stepped away from Saucisson, the successful butcher shop she and partner Melissa K...

Listen in as I ease in to my first podcast episode with my friend Crystal Angersola, the person behind the popular blog Eat, Drink, Cleveland. I met Crystal a decade ago when she attended a blogger event I was hosting and we immediately forged a friendship over our shared interests of food and travel.  We talk about how we navigated the past year—particularly how we both tried to support loca...

CLE Foodcast serves up food conversation with the people growing, cooking and sharing food here in Northeast Ohio and beyond. We start where the pretty instagram picture ends, digging deeper and getting to know members of our food community through their own words. Each Wednesday (or Thursday) we release a conversation with the people making delicious things happen and we're talking about importan...