Menu Talk

From casual tacos to caviar and champagne — discover how restaurateur Marc Falsetto transformed Fort Lauderdale's dining landscape and pivoted to luxury during a pandemic. As founder and CEO of Falsetto Hospitality, Marc Falsetto has been instrumental in shaping Fort Lauderdale's restaurant scene. Starting with casual concepts under Handcrafted Hospitality — including the popular Tacocraft Mexican...

From dishwasher to award-winning mixologist, Tara Wong's journey through Detroit's hospitality scene is a masterclass in passion and perseverance. Starting in professional kitchens as a teenager two decades ago, she made the leap to bartending and never looked back. Through mixology competitions, self-taught expertise, and an obsession with creating unforgettable guest experiences, Wong ho...

From first-time restaurateur to hospitality empire builder, Jeremy Sasson's journey is a masterclass in passion-driven entrepreneurship. Despite zero restaurant experience, he opened Townhouse Birmingham in 2011, fueled by a childhood spent dining out and a deep love for the hospitality experience. Today, his Heirloom Hospitality Group operates six thriving concepts across Michigan and Nashvil...

Adrienne Cole is co-founder and owner of House of Marigold in Louisville, Kentucky, a full-service breakfast, brunch and lunch restaurant she opened with her husband, Kris, in 2023. She started her restaurant journey operating a small corporate café in a busy downtown office building, eventually expanding into an elevated, Southern-inspired catering company with Kris as chef. Now the pair is growi...

Meet Tom Berry, Chief Culinary Officer of COJE Management Group! 🍽️ Tom oversees 11 unique restaurants across Boston, spanning everything from Mexican and Chinese to Peruvian, Mediterranean, Cuban, French, and classic American steakhouse cuisine. A passionate traveler and chef, Tom draws inspiration from his adventures around the globe—and from the beautiful island of Nantucket, where he honed his...

Dimitri Zafeiropoulos has been global beverage director of Greek seafood concept Estiatorio Milos since 2022, having joined the company in early 2019. He worked his way up fromthe role of sommelier at Milos’s second New York City location, at Hudson Yards, to general manager of that location, to wine director for New York, and then to his current role. Now he coordinates supply of Greek and other...

Bryan O'Kelly didn't start his culinary career in culinary school—he started washing dishes at a Charleston restaurant to pay for college. But once he got behind the stove, he never looked back. He dropped out of college to pursue his passion for cooking, and it led him to some of the most celebrated kitchens in the South. In This Episode: 🔪 From McCrady's to Husk: How working under l...

Eric Dale has spent more than 21 years shaping Denver’s pastry scene at Rioja, where he has built a reputation for creative desserts, sourdough baking, and innovative pastry techniques. In this podcast episode, Dale discusses his unconventional journey from studying fashion design to becoming one of Denver’s most respected pastry chefs. Before joining Rioja, Dale attended culinary school and later...

Join Pat Cobe, Senior Menu Editor at Restaurant Business, for an exclusive conversation with Chris Simms, CEO of Lazy Dog Restaurants. Discover how this innovative casual dining chain is navigating 2026's challenging landscape while staying ahead of food trends. 🍽️  What You'll Learn: How Lazy Dog balances affordability with premium dining experiences The strategy behind their $15 Fireside...

Spike Gjerde has long been one of the most committed regionalists in American cooking — so committed that for a while his Woodberry Kitchen in Baltimore didn’t serve lemon, black pepper, or vanilla because they don’t grow in the Chesapeake Bay region. Instead he used local vinegar, fish pepper, and other ingredients from Maryland and Virginia. He has modified his stance on that and expanded his bu...

The Michelin-starred Washington, D.C. restaurant is steeped in a rich culinary heritage shaped by the bounty of the region and the chef’s vision.  When Chef Jeremiah Langhorne opened The Dabney in 2015, his goal was to make it a showcase for the bounty of the Mid-Atlantic region. Washington, D.C. was going through a restaurant renaissance 10 years ago, he said, and the timing was right to introduc...

Daru is a Hindi term for moonshine, and it’s also the name of a cocktail bar with a robust food menu that chef Suresh Sundas and beverage director Dante Datta opened in August of 2021 in the H Street neighborhood in Washington, D.C. It soon gained local and national acclaim thanks to its creative drinks, such as a Dirty Martini made with achar, a tangy type of Indian pickle, and food like paneer p...

Gregg Horan knows steakhouses. As a longtime partner in Gibsons—one of Chicago's most iconic steak destinations—he's spent years mastering the art of high-end dining. But a little over a year ago, he took a bold step: opening The Greggory in South Barrington, Illinois, bringing fine dining to the suburbs. And it's working. Want more from Pat Cobe? https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.c...

B.J. Lieberman grew up in Washington, D.C., and worked in restaurants up and down the East Coast before settling down in his wife’s hometown of Columbus, Ohio.  He had developed a reputation as a capable chef working at Husk in Charleston, S.C., under Sean Brock and running the kitchen at Rose’s Luxury in D.C. In Columbus, he opened Chapman’s Eat Market during the pandemic in 2020 and used the res...

Lion’s Choice has built a reputation and a steady stream of regulars for its legendary roast beef sandwiches in its hometown of St. Louis and beyond. The quick-service menu offers several choices, including the original Famous Roast Beef, the French Dip and The Remix—the last a favorite of CEO Fred Burmer. Burmer joins us on the podcast to talk about the menu and more. Lion’s Choice sources the to...

Nicholas Poulmentis took a remarkably straightforward approach to entering the world of food TV: He filled out an application. It was apparently a very good application because it got him a spot on the Food Network’s competition show “Chopped,” where he ended up winning, leading to other television appearances. But he also has cooked in restaurants all his life and is now preparing for his own ven...

Attorney Kevin Kelley set out to create a restaurant that would be the kind of place he could feel at home in. The result is Kitchen + Kocktails, an affordable, chef-driven restaurant with elevated Southern food, great cocktails and a warm, welcoming vibe that has grown to seven locations across the U.S. Kelley’s lifelong passion for hospitality, food and drink is powering the restaurants’ expansi...

Strickland’s is a family-owned ice cream shop that opened in Akron, Ohio, in 1936, and the original operation is still using its original equipment.  It has since expanded to five locations in its home state, all franchised except for the original shop, and it recently opened a franchised location in Costa Mesa, Calif. (not its first location in that state — it previously had a franchise on the ca...

Chef Sungchul Shim’s dream was to have a restaurant in Times Square, and he realized that dream just about a year ago when he opened Gui Steakhouse. The Culinary Institute of America graduate set out to make his steakhouse unique by infusing Korean flavors and techniques into the menu. Steaks are dry-aged and cooked over live fire fueled by a combination of wood and Korean charcoal. Along with cla...

Danny Lledó is the chef and owner of Xiquet and Taller de Xiquet. The former is a Michelin-starred, tasting-menu restaurant in Washington, D.C., and the latter offers similar food in an à la carte setting downstairs.  Born in the United States, Lledó  comes from a family of cooks—his father is an accomplished chef from Dénia, Spain, located between Valencia and Alicante, and he focuses on that reg...

Our guest on this week’s Menu Talk is Ahu Hettema, chef-owner of Istanbul Hawai’i restaurant in Honolulu.  Chef Hettema came to California to study art and psychology but was unable to return to her homeland of Turkey because of a string of immigration snafus. She visited Hawaii and fell in love with the culture and climate, which reminded her of Southeast Turkey. Chef Ahu Hettema and her mother r...

Billy Dec is the owner of Sunda New Asian, a Pan-Asian concept with a heavy bent toward Dec’s own Filipino heritage. The original location in Chicago’s River North neighborhood is 17 years old, and the concept’s fifth location, in Detroit, is slated to open in a couple of weeks.  There are also Sunda locations in Nashville and Tampa. The décor of the Detroit location reflects Dec’s own heritage mo...

Dozens of menu trend forecasts came in towards the end of 2025 from culinary and restaurant industry experts. Included in that pile were the top trends from market researcher Technomic, the sister company of Restaurant Business and Nation’s Restaurant News.  Lizzy Freier, senior director of menu research & insights at Technomic, has her finger directly on the pulse of chefs and menu developers...

When it comes to Mexico and spirits, most people think of tequila, which has now surged past whiskey and even vodka to become the most widely consumed alcohol in the United States. But Max Reis goes well beyond that, and not just into mezcal (now ubiquitous enough that you can get it at Applebee’s) or even lesser-known indigenous Mexican spirits such as sotol, raicilla and bacanora. At his Los Ang...

Kevin Lee grew up in a Korean-American family in Oklahoma City, a place not known as a dining destination 20 years ago. There were the usual chains, Korean mom-and-pops and some chef-driven restaurants, but few if any places that focused on global cuisines.  Lee majored in hospitality management at UNLV, and while there, he worked part-time in a restaurant and fell in love with cooking. That chang...