Pan Con Podcast

Henry Gómez is the VP of strategic planning at Zubi Advertising Services, a Miami based firm founded by the late Tere Zubizarreta, a pioneer of Hispanic advertising and an Advertising Hall of Fame inductee. In this conversation with chef Mike Beltrán, Henry talks about his own career trajectory, his role on the team that won a Cannes Lion for bold Burger King campaign, and the parallels between th...

When the pressure of COVID restrictions in Los Angeles pushed chef Phillip Frankland Lee to set up shop in Austin, Texas, it didn’t take long for the gamble to pay off. Sushi by Scratch Bar was a hit. But it was a push from an early Austin guest — Joe Rogan — that sent things into another stratosphere for Phillip’s company. In this conversation, Phillip tells Mike Beltrán about how his career...

Florida has its first Michelin Guide, with eleven Miami restaurants taking Stars and a number of others being awarded Bib Gourmands and recommendations. In this episode, chef Michael Beltrán recaps the inaugural Florida ceremony, recalls what it was like for him and his team at Ariete Hospitality Group to win a star at Ariete and a Bib at Chug’ s Diner, and talks about the significance of the Guid...

Lee Schrager is the senior vice president of communications and corporate social responsibility for Southern Glazer's Wine & Spirit of America. He’s also the founder of the New York City Wine & Food Festival and the South Beach Wine and Food Festival. Mike Beltrán’s criticisms of SOBEWFF are no secret. In fact, if you’ve hear enough other episodes of this podcast, you’ve heard a lot of the...

Val Chang is a member of what Miami diners affectionately call “the Chang gang.” She, her father Fernando and her brother Nando are the engine that drives Itamae (which began as a stall and recently opened as a standalone restaruant), B-Side Sushi, and Raya. Like our host Michael Beltrán, Val and Nando were named 2021 StarChefs Rising Stars. In this episode of Pan Con Podcast, Val and Mike talk ab...

Danny Serfer is the chef behind two of Miami’s favorite restaurants: Mignonette and Blue Collar. In his first appearance on Pan Con Podcast, Danny told Mike about his experience with addiction and getting clean. In this latest episode, Danny opens up about his having relapsed during the early stages of the pandemic and what it took to get clean all over again. Become a patron: https://www.patreon....

Chef Manny Arredondo has been referenced a lot on Pan Con Podcast. The Ariete chef was walking by when Mike Beltrán and Nick Jiménez were recording this episode. So he was pulled in to recap a recent dinner that the Ariete team executed with a crew from Washington, D.C.’s Bresca (including chef-owner Ryan Ratino, who was our guest on the last episode of the podcast). Become a patron: https://www.p...

Ryan Ratino is the chef-owner or Washington, D.C. restaurants Jônt (two Michelin Stars) and Bresca (one Michelin Star). Ryan and Pan Con Podcast host Michael Beltrán became fast friends when they met — spurred largely by the fact that they're in a very small group of American chefs running restaurants with duck press programs. In this episode of the podcast, Ryan talks with Mike about his career,...

When a Miami social media personality went South-Florida-viral for posts about New York-based Café Habana’s plans to open a Miami location, the news of that brand’s story — namely, its having taken inspiration from Fidel Castro’s revolution and its using images of figures like Che Guevara — felt like a punch to the guts of many Cuban exiles and their descendants. How did Cuban Miami resp...

Martha Bueno is an entrepreneur, activist and candidate for a seat on The Miami-Dade County Commission. Though she’s running without party affiliation, she calls herself a libertarian and had previously worked on Hispanic voter outreach for Libertarian Party presidential candidate Jo Jorgensen’s 2020 campaign. Martha joined Michael Beltrán at Ariete for a discussion on why she’s involved in local...

Ali Noorani is the CEO of National Immigration Forum. After dinner at Ariete, he joined Mike Beltrán for a conversation about food, culture, and immigration policy. The two also discuss Ali’s upcoming book, Crossing Borders: The Reconciliation of a Nation of Immigrants. In the Patreon-only extended cut, you’ll find out where Ali goes for his favorite doughnuts (hint: it’s in California and it is n...

In this episode of Pan Con Podcast, chef Michael Beltrán get together to recap a James Beard Foundation dinner built around food created by the Ariete team in collaboration with Itamae chef Valerie Chang, lament the Miami Dolphins’ failure to make the playoffs, and wonder whether Nick will somehow screw up this episode since it was recorded with new gear. [Spoiler, Nick only screwed it up a little...

Miami chef Raheem Sealey has an impressive résumé, with his most recent restaurant gig as the executive chef at Kyu being the one he’s best known for. Raheem parted ways with Kyu — which he’d helped open about six years ago — a month before this recording. These days, he says he’s as excited about food as he’s ever been. He’s got projects in the works that he wasn’t ready to talk about p...

This episode was a long time coming; screenwriter Nick Zayas and eighth grade basketball MVP Mike Beltrán have been friends since kindergarten. Nick has been living in L.A. for the last 16 years or so, where he spent years working for movie producer Scott Rudin before making a tansition to writing for TV, including series like Major Crimes and Star Trek: Picard (to name just some of the work that...

Mike and Nick didn’t do any planning for this episode, so it’s all over the place. We talk about changes that are coming to the Chug’s Diner menu, Mario Cristobal’s being hired as the University of Miami’s football coach, boxing’s renaissance, golden chicken wings, what kind of lettuce belongs on sandwiches, and more. In the Patreon-only extended cut: Mike takes lightning round questions and we ta...

We’ve mentioned on the podcast that Mike was invited to travel to Napa to speak and demo his food at the Worlds of Flavor International Conference & Festival at the Culinary Institute of America. In this episode that we recorded in an awkward new set up in Mike’s house, Mike recaps his experience with the conference along with some of the meals he had and people he met while in California —&nb...

Carlos Escanilla is a psychologist and a musician; we delve into both mental health and music — along with his and Mike Beltran’s experiences with weight loss — in this episode of Pan Con Podcast. Along the way, the podcast is crashed by past guest John Falco, whose restaurants and brewery also serve as a frequent venue for Carlos’ gigs. In the Patreon-only extended cut, Carlos answers l...

Tattoo artist Jessica Suárez — better known as Pooka, a nickname whose origin she explains in this interview — has some of her work on our host, Mike Beltrán, including a pine cone that Mike admits he got for the sake of getting in Pooka’s good graces and a mamey hanging from a branch on his arm. In this episode, Pooka talks about her creative process and what it’s been like for her to s...

This episode was recorded Sept. 22, 2021 at Maxwell Bros. Clothing Co. in front of a live audience, whose members were also enjoying a special menu born out of a collaboration among the teams at Maxwell Bros., Crybaby Creamery (both owned by John Falco’s Firepit Hospitality) and Ariete (which is, of course, our host Michael Beltrán’s flagship restaurant). This absolute shit show of a podcast is a...

Mike Beltrán first saw Robby Ramos in New York, where the actor was playing a chef in an early iteration of Amparo, the play written and directed by past guests Vanessa García and Vicky Collado. Now, Robby is a member of the cast of Heels, a Starz drama about professional wrestlers, where he plays Diego Cottonmouth. He also hosts his own podcast called Dropping Character. In this episode of Pan Co...

Health issues in his family led José Manuel Perrone to ditch a job at a major tech company and look for a way to put his career in service of combating disease and giving people the tools they need to lead healthier lives. Eventually, that motivation inspired Cura Market, the company he cofounded as a way to give people more control of their nutrition and the quality of their food. For now, Cura g...

Louie Estrada left Miami for New York knowing that he wanted to make his mark by starting a business of his own. After years picking up experience working in restaurants, bars and clubs, he planted his flag in a tiny corner of Brooklyn. From the roughly 150-square-foot kitchen at My Cuban Spot, Louie’s been cranking out Cuban classics the city’s Cubans were sorely missing at a level of quality tha...

Miami native chef Giorgio Rapicavoli (known for Eating House and, most recently, Luca Osteria) has been a James Beard Award semifinalist, a Chopped winner, and a perennial favorite of Miami diners. In this episode, Giorgio joins Mike Beltran to talk about the maturation of his cooking, moving beyond “stoner food,” their mutual admiration for the precision and consistency of restaurants like Hillst...

We recorded this episode of Pan Con Podcast at Chug’s Diner shortly before its Sept. 8 reopening. In this conversation at a booth in the Chug’s dining room, Mike Beltrán talks about the restaurant’s new space, team and menu, along with some of the challenges he faced in designing a restaurant from scratch for the first time. Also, the new Suicide Squad movie was pretty good, Mike did a thing with...

Pan Con Podcast recorded an episode with a live audience for the first time ever, and we brought in a special guest for the occasion. Chef Norman Van Aken was one of Mike’s early interviewees. He’s also Mike’s longtime culinary mentor and the author of at least one cookbook that changed the course of Mike’s career in food. This episode was recorded at Ariete in front of an audience of other past g...