Culinary Characters Unlocked

Ashwin Vilkhu’s Master’s thesis was a roadmap to get his family into the restaurant business by opening Saffron in New Orleans. He and his father were named semi-finalists for the 2025 James Beard award as Best Chef South for their cooking there, marrying Indian cuisine with New Orleans favorites. And now they’ve added a second restaurant just down the street, The Kingsway, where as Executive Chef...

Sue Zemanick decided she wanted to become a chef when she was fourteen and began cooking professionally at fifteen. Her love of  seafood, nurtured at the Culinary Institute of America, brought her to New Orleans, where she worked at Commander’s palace and Gautreau’s, where she rose from line cook to Executive Chef, before opening her own place, Zasu, creating a menu featuring seafood, global flavo...

Chef Perry Hoffman and his partners are turning the small northern California town of Boonville into a culinary destination. He grew up in the restaurant business, as a young child helping his grandmother in the kitchen of the French Laundry in Yountville, California, which his grandparents founded, and cooking in his uncle’s Boonville Hotel and Restaurant after high school. He went on to a high-l...

Bethany and Dano Heinze recently received a Michelin star for their Charleston Restaurant Vern’s. He’s the chef. She handles front of the house and a superb wine program built around little-known family-owned vineyards. Their innovative seasonal menu features unique presentations of local produce and charcoal-grilled proteins sourced straight from the farm. They’ve been working together for years...

Ken Frank was a pioneer in the creation of fresh and local California cuisine as a young chef in Los Angeles. He became famous not just for his food but also for standing up to and calling out restaurant owners he says didn’t live up to his standards. He’s won a Michelin star 14 times at his own restaurant in the Napa Valley, where he’s still in the kitchen five days a week. And he’s become Americ...

Maeve Webster is the woman big companies rely on to understand what’s happening—and what’s about to happen—in the culinary world. A trained chef and former café owner, she is president of the culinary research firm Menu Matters and in this episode she predicts the next hot cuisine—not one you might expect, explains how restaurateurs have gone wrong chasing trends, why consumers are becoming bored...

Mariena Mercer Boarini invents 300 cocktails a year as Master Mixologist for Wynn Resorts, North America. She supervises the drinks programs at nearly 40 venues at Wynn’s flagship in Las Vegas, treating drinks as culinary creations, collaborating with chefs to match drinks with specific dishes, and often employing incredible molecular gastronomy techniques. She explains some of her best loved cock...

Born in Jamaica, now living in Buffalo, NY, Chef Darian Bryan has elevated Jamaican cuisine to the fine dining level at his restaurant, and through his work as a private chef. He has also amassed a roster of Buffalo Bills NFL players including MVP Qquarterback Josh Allen as clients, as an in-home private chef, preparing ready-to-heat meals, and as a special event caterer. He is engaging, entertain...

Eater Editor-In-Chief Stephanie Wu is probably the most influential person in American food. She was raised in the Taiwan capital of Taipei, one of the world’s great food cities. After college in New York, she began a meteoric magazine career that now sees her in charge of the editorial content at Eater, which just celebrated its 20th anniversary, and has grown from a single blog focused on dining...

Chef Jordan Rubin got into sushi by accident when the sushi chef’s assistant didn’t show up for work at the restaurant where he was making salads. From there, he’s worked his way up to owning his own sushi restaurant, Mr. Tuna and being named a 2025 Best New Chef by Food & Wine. That climb began when he turned a hot dog cart into a sushi cart and began peddling sushi and sashimi on the streets of...

Matt Rebhan is the third-generation owner of his family’s Alpine Steakhouse and Butcher Shop in Sarasota, Florida. And a master of making the turducken – a turkey stuffed with a chicken, stuffed with a duck, which runs circles around a plain ol’ turkey for Thanksgiving. He first got national exposure for his turducken on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives back in 2007 and now sells hundreds each holiday...

A Michelin starred brewery! Cousins Jared Rouben (a graduate of both culinary school and brewing school) and Jeremy Cohn, a Wharton business grad, began by opening Moody Tongue Brewing in Chicago, then expanded into restaurants. The one they run above their brewery, featuring a hyper-seasonal tasting menu with a beer pairing for each course, has earned a Michelin star. And their sushi restaurant i...

Growing up in a military family, Chef Amy Mehrtens explored new tastes in various places around the world. She trained at the Culinary Institute of America, then worked her way up to Sous Chef at the legendary Commander’s Palace in New Orleans. She is now Executive Chef at Copper Vine in NOLA, where she is expanding her repertoire beyond traditional New Orleans standards and going beyond the dinin...

Northern Ohio native Vinnie Cimino is reinventing traditional midwestern cuisine as “modern grandma” cooking at his Cleveland restaurant Cordelia. His signature dishes include a box of pull-apart smashburgers topped with Kool-Aid pickles, steak tartare done as an homage to the Galley Boy cheeseburger at famed local chain Swensons, corned beef reimagined as corned lamb, and deep fried saltines, a t...

Chef Diane Moua grew up a child of refugees in the tight knit Hmong community, which at the time limited a woman’s professional opportunities. Still, she followed her culinary dreams and became a wildly successful pastry chef in Minneapolis. Then she took on an even greater challenge – opening a restaurant of her own and adding savory Hmong cooking to her lauded baking. Now her restaurant, Diane’s...

After training under legendary southern chef Frank Stitt, then working his way up to sous chef at New York’s famed Gramercy Tavern, Kyle Knall has become one of the hot young chefs turning once-sleepy Milwaukee into a culinary hotspot. His Birch restaurant features a farm to table menu and open fire cooking. And his French inspired Cassis will be opening soon. Learn more about your ad choices. Vis...

New Orleans baker Kelly Jacques was just named a Food and Wine Best New Chef for 2025. After making her mark in New York, she is now running her own bakery in New Orleans, re-defining what to expect from baked goods with signature dishes that include the boudin boy, a highly elevated hot pocket—a croissant stuffed with boudin sausage and a boiled egg; a king cake named the best in New Orleans by t...

Chef Casey Wall cut his teeth at New York’s legendary Spotted Pig and Le Cirque, before moving to Australia and opening a string of successful restaurants and bars. Now he’s come back to the states and settled in Austin, where his Le Calamar, blending French technique with Texas ingredients, has debuted to glowing reviews. And where his deboned and sweetbread stuffed chicken wings are a sensation....

It’s a double helping of great eating off the beaten path. Erica Curry, who runs the Tennessee Pass Cookhouse at an altitude above 10,000 feet in Colorado explains how diners have to hike, snowshoe, or ski a mile to reach it. Once there, they enjoy four course meals featuring local ingredients, such as elk tenderloin with blueberry, sage, and port reduction. Then in Anchorage, Alaska, owners Patri...

Born in southern India, a region rarely represented on Indian restaurant menus in the U.S., Chef Vijay Kumar was raised in rural poverty. His culinary aspirations surfaced early and he attended culinary school in India then worked on cruise ships and in restaurants in a variety of locations before coming to the United States and finding a culinary foothold in San Francisco, where he led the kitche...

Chef Kelly Franz developed her taste for great food growing up in Europe as part of a military family. She made her name during the culinary boom in Charleston, rising to Executive Chef at the storied Magnolias restaurant, which took low country cooking upscale. Now she has returned as Culinary Director to freshen up the menu, mindful that there are some iconic dishes that simply cannot be changed...

Bobby Stuckey entered the culinary world as a teenaged dishwasher and worked his way up through a range of front of the house positions until he achieved the rarely awarded rank of Master Sommelier and became a multi-award-winning restaurateur. The centerpiece of the restaurant group he co-owns, Frasca Food and Wine in Boulder, Colorado, which holds a Michelin star, has just won the James Beard Aw...

Classically trained chefs Jeanie Janas Ritter and Adam Ritter shared a culinary journey working at great and Michelin-starred restaurants throughout the US and internationally before coming back to their midwestern roots and working in Minneapolis, first for someone else, then taking the risk of opening a place of their own. Their venture, Bûcheron, French for lumberjack, was an instant hit, embra...

Chef Cathy Whims was at the forefront of the culinary revolution in Portland, Oregon and decades later she retains that position there. Her Nostrana Italian restaurant continues to dish up the kind of regional cooking truly enjoyed in the small towns and villages of Italy, bolstered by great Oregon ingredients, and her pizza is listed among America’s fifty best. She reminisces about truly discover...

Chef Thomas Bille describes his cooking at his suburban Houston restaurant Belly of the Beast as driven by “a love for food that warms your soul and speaks to our ancestors.” A child of Mexican immigrants, Bille grew up with great food – his father was a professional chef and his mother a fabulous home cook – and as a self-described latchkey kid he was making French toast and spaghetti for himself...