Joiners

This week’s guest is Rosemary Waldmeier, a true hospitality lifer -- raised in downtown Chicago in the orbit of the Drake Hotel, then pulled (inevitably) toward the dining room’s gravity. After two summers hosting at Gibson’s and a formative management internship at Shaw’s, she found her long-term home at Lettuce Entertain You, rising through Shaw’s and onto the opening team at Oyster Bah before s...

Much ink has been spilled on The Wiener's Circle as a Chicago institution -- known for late-night hot dogs, sharp tongues, and the kind of chaos you can only get away with if there’s real love underneath it. And Poochie, who joins us for this week’s episode, has been at the center of it for nearly three decades, turning that corner of Clark into something closer to a stage than a storefront. But i...

The first guest of 2026’s origins might be modest, but the results are anything but. From deciding to cook as a nine-year-old so he didn’t have to eat the same meal every night, to bootstrapping a BBQ restaurant from a single Weber grill (the small version!) into one of the NYT's top 50 restaurants in the country , Chef James Sanders is very much the real deal. His South Side BBQ hotspot, Sanders...

We round out 2025 with Bret Heiar, a true original of the hospitality world. These days, he’s the Wine Director at Avec River North, and he's gearing up to open a new Avec location in Highwood, bringing One Off Hospitality’s wine ethos north to the suburbs. Bret got his start as a teenager slinging fries at I-80’s World’s Largest Truck Stop in Walcott, Iowa, before bouncing through back-of-house g...

It didn’t always seem inevitable that Margaret Pak would end up running one of Chicago’s most thoughtful and distinctive restaurants. She studied statistics, built a long career in finance and analytics, and spent years inside corporate systems where stability and structure were the goal. But alongside that work she fostered a quieter obsession for the culture surrounding food and food service. Af...

Before he became a hospitality lifer, Paul Abu-Taleb was considering a PhD in History -- he’s the type who could absolutely have ended up teaching undergrads how to think, argue, and spot patterns. Instead, he’s applied that same mindset to restaurants: building places that don’t just serve people, but actually hold communities together. We get into how Paul went from a restaurant-family childhood...

Chase Bracamontes grew up chasing triple axels as a competitive figure skater, but these days her rink is the bar and the dining room. She is the former wine and spirits director at The Publican and now partner and beverage director at Chef’s Special Cocktail Bar in Chicago, whose path from junior-elite ice rinks to a Chinese American cocktail bar says a lot about how she thinks about pressure, co...

This week, we sit down with Martin Kastner, the award-winning designer responsible for some of the most iconic objects in modern gastronomy. From Alinea’s game-changing serviceware to the now-legendary Porthole Infuser, Martin has spent his career reshaping how we experience food and drink — and the rituals around them. He takes us from his early days as a Czech metalsmith, to conceptual art schoo...

This week, we sit down with Bailey Sullivan, executive chef of Monteverde Restaurant & Pastificio and a Top Chef: Destination Canada finalist, who seemed almost pre-programmed for a life in restaurants: raised at Goldyburgers, her family’s Forest Park burger joint, and glued to Food Network and Top Chef as a teen. She walks us through a career that runs from early gigs at Noodles & Company...

This week's guest is an icon, a chef’s chef, and a tireless culinary educator -- it's not hyperbole to suggest that the entirety of food media as we know it, a food media that respects food and the process of making it as a skill to be fostered and shared, is in his profound debt. Raised in his parents’ restaurant near Lyon, Jacques Pépin went from unpaid apprentice and presidential chef for Charl...

This week, we’re enjoying some poured wine (his favorite) with the indefatigable Ken Fredrickson -- Master Sommelier, restaurateur, and founder of High Road Wine and Spirits, whose career runs from Charlie Trotter’s and Spago to Jackson Hole, Denver, Las Vegas, and Chicago’s most intentional wine lists. He went from Idaho ranch kid to the 40th American Master Sommelier in just five years, then bet...

This week, we’re thrilled to be joined by Chef Curtis Duffy, the culinary dynamo behind Ever and After. He's earned a constellation of Michelin starts for his meticulous, innovative approach to fine dining, where every dish showcases his obsessive attention to detail and zero-waste philosophy. He has a new book out called Fireproof: Memoir of a Chef , which chronicles his journey from a turbulent...

This week we’re joined by Ryan Castelaz -- founder of Discourse (Milwaukee’s boundary-pushing coffee bars) and co-creator of Agency, a reservation-only cocktail lounge known for its made-to-order “dealer’s choice” program (and equally serious non-alcoholic builds). A former opera singer turned flavor obsessive, Ryan went from Door County pop-ups to running one of the Midwest’s most inventive bever...

This week, it’s all smoke and discipline with the pitmaster–entrepreneur himself, Chef Charlie Mckenna. He’s the founder behind Lillie’s Q, known for Memphis in May-winning pork shoulder, as well as his regionally faithful Lillie’s Q sauces and rubs. He tells us about the journey from CIA grad and Michelin-line cook to Chicago barbecue, and what his Air Force family’s “six Ps” instilled in his lea...

Joe is an Executive Chef, Culinary Director, and Director of Restaurants with SMG x PRG Restaurant Groups, where his reach spans multiple acclaimed Chicago concepts, new ventures at O’Hare Airport, and forthcoming projects across the city. A meticulous craftsman and systems thinker, Joe’s culinary journey has taken him from small-town Illinois to the helm of some of Chicago’s most innovative dinin...

This week, we’re firing up the pit with Heather Bublick, co-founder and CEO of Soul & Smoke, alongside her husband and business partner, Chef D’Andre Carter. A writing major-turned-restaurateur with front-of-house and sommelier chops, Heather blends fine-dining rigor with neighborhood warmth to power one of Chicago’s favorite barbecue brands. She joins us to talk about Soul & Smoke’s evolu...

This week on Joiners, we’re talking to Chef Rodolfo Cuadros, the executive chef and owner of the critically acclaimed Chicago restaurants Amaru and Bloom. Growing up in Cali, Colombia, before moving back to Queens and then New Jersey, he’s known for his bold, Pan-Latin cooking at Amaru and his award-winning plant-based philosophy at Bloom. Amaru brings together the flavors, history, and passion of...

Since his days as a kid housing full packs of double-stuffed Oreos and torching his tongue with bootleg Chinese Warheads, Chef Josh Kulp has always been chasing big flavors. It makes sense, then, that the moment he and his business partners first dipped their fried chicken in honey butter felt like a huge eureka -- salty, crunchy, sweet, and creamy all at once. That unlikely pairing grew into Hone...

We complete the holy trinity of Maxwells Trading by sitting down with their Executive Chef, Chris Jung. Born in Korea, raised across Alaska, Jersey, and Virginia, he ditched pre-law for the kitchen and never looked back -- and we’re lucky he did, because his food plays a major role in defining Maxwells’ compelling identity. He tells us all about that journey, from grueling training in Japan and ce...

This week, we’re nestling into the proverbial PDR at Michael Jordan’s Steak House with Josh Zadikoff, a central figure in the hospitality scene and the guiding force behind Cornerstone Restaurant Group. After earning his degree at the University of Illinois and working his way up -- from assistant manager at SolToro Tequila Grill, to Food & Beverage Manager at Hyatt Regency Chicago, to Assista...

This week, we’re thrilled to sit down with the resilient and razor-sharp Thai Dang. A chef who rose meteorically through the fine-dining world -- from cooking under Laurent Gras at L2O to opening his own ambitious restaurant at just 26 -- Thai joins us to unravel the saga of Embeya: the dazzling debut that collapsed into chaos after his business partner disappeared in an international manhunt stra...

This week, we’re riding into the dog days of ice-cream summer in conversation with Dana Cree — award-winning pastry chef, molecular enthusiast, and the creative force behind Pretty Cool Ice Cream. Serving up about 11,000 frozen delights weekly, Dana crafts everything from ice-cream bars and sandwiches to vegan pops and tricked-out popsicles, all from her flagship shop. With stints at spots like Al...

This week, we’re busting through the saloon doors with the affable chap Tony Selna — founding partner, operator, and bartender extraordinaire behind local favorites Little Victories and Spilt Milk. Tony takes us through his cross-country journey, from a coin-flip that sent him to Los Angeles, to the serendipitous find of a 1920s pharmacy space in Logan Square that became home to Spilt Milk’s timel...

This week we’re keeping things fresh with a member of a family business devoted to just that. Supreme Lobster & Seafood is one of the largest seafood distributors in the Midwest, with operations in Las Vegas and Chicago supplying restaurants, hotels, and markets nationwide. Jonathan Stramaglia, a third-generation vice president of the company, joins us in the studio to share the inside story o...

This week we have a remote conversation with Alexis Readinger, an LA-based hospitality designer and the founder of Preen, Inc., a studio known for its soulful, story-forward spaces that translate a chef’s vision into architecture. In this episode, she joins us to talk about building Preen, designing from essence over aesthetic, and what it means to create spaces that hold meaning. We get into: lig...