The CHEF Radio Podcast

For this episode we head out to the Rocky Mountains, where chef Caroline Glover of Annette restaurant in Aurora, Colorado, joins us to talk about her journey, which started as an improbable cook and has culminated in a 2022 James Beard Award for Best Chef. See, what Caroline innately possesses that allowed her to achieve what she has, is an amazing work ethic, and as she says it, while working at...

If you want to be a great chef someday, you are going to have to put in the time. Period. It's simply a tough job, and Evan sums it up perfectly. He can pay you $120,000 a year to be a line cook, but it is still going to be hard; you're going to have to work more than you want to, you'll still get burned, and you'll still have a long list. It's just a hard job. It doesn't matter if you're working...

Often the words resilience, hard work, and creativity are used to describe the key skill sets required to be successful in this industry. But, there's one more really important skill set that can be easily overlooked, and that would be resourcefulness. Resourcefulness is defined as "H aving the ability to find quick and clever ways to overcome difficulties". In fact, arguably the most resourceful...

Traveling opens up our eyes to other cultures and new cuisines, allowing us to experience the world through a different lens and appreciate what it has to offer. Especially for chefs, learning the history of food and tasting local products can change how we view food. Today's guest spent years living and working in Bergamo, Italy, which fed his love for Italian cuisine and changed the trajectory o...

Once an award-winning chef at Ubuntu making acclaimed vegetable-focused food, Chef Jeremy Fox was struggling to deal with his anxiety and imposter syndrome. He spent years stuck in the persona he felt he was expected to be, building a bad reputation along the way.  Today, Jeremy joins host Eli Kulp to discuss his past and lessons learned, career highlights, and more importantly, his future. He rec...

If you think back to the early days when you first started in this industry, you'll probably remember fondly some of those early memories of working on the line, battling it out with your fellow cooks and friends, just hoping to get to the end of service without running out of mise en place. But those are the moments that you forged really close bonds with your colleagues as you would finish servi...

All too often, it's the loud, brash, and cocky chefs that snatch the headlines while the truly dedicated, food-obsessed chefs toil away in their kitchens cooking their asses off and calculating every move. In a restaurant world dominated by big egos, Chef Eli Collins of a.kitchen quietly lets his food speak for itself.  Eli is what you might call a chef's chef, which means that the admiration and...

Would you believe me if I told you anchovies fell from the sky in San Francisco? Well, that is literally what has happened there, and it couldn't have been a better omen for our one of our guest's restaurants, The Anchovy Bar.  Chef Stuart Brioza was named one of the Best New chefs by Food & Wine magazine in 2003, and is also the founder, partner, and chef of State Bird Provisions, The Progress, a...

After sustaining a major life-altering injury, Christopher Kearse, now chef and owner of Forsythia restaurant in Philadelphia, pushed through the odds and graduated college as the valedictorian, while still recovering from his injury, and then pushed himself to work at some of the best kitchens in the country. Not only did he work with some of the best chefs and restaurants, he ended up opening hi...

True passion for cooking cannot be faked. It takes something special to withstand the grueling work and hours while perfecting the craft. The restaurant industry isn't kind to all, but those built for it, last. It takes a love that will take you around the world tasting everything, talking to chefs and locals, learning the land where the food is grown, tasting, experiencing, and everything in betw...

"Often restaurants are comprised of a bunch of broken toys that have never had the sense of belonging" This statement rings true for many restaurants which is why culture plays a big role in whether a restaurant succeeds or fails, and unfortunately the current kitchen culture is a bit broken. From line cooks at the local diner, to Michelin star restaurants in France, the broken kitchen culture per...

Working your way up from dishwasher to chef to restaurant owner is the ultimate success story, but no easy task. Something our guest can be proud to say he has achieved, not only as an owner of one restaurant, but two successful establishments that we can't stop raving about. In today's episode, Philip Krajeck, owner of Rolf and Daughters and the newly opened Folk in Nashville, Tennessee, sits dow...

What's the first thing people think about when the great city of Philadelphia is mentioned? What's the single most common reference to Philadelphia? Oh so often, it is the cheesesteak. The ubiquitous hot meat sandwich, covered with cheese whiz that so many Philadelphians love, but some even loathe.  It's often mentioned before such historical giants as the declaration of independence, the writing...

In the third and final interview of the CHEF Radio LIVE! event, Eli sits down with Chef Kurt Evans of Everybody Eats, which is a group dedicated to increasing food security and building community and their mission is to nourish hungry people and lead the community in the fight against hunger.  Chef Kurt is also fighting for reform in the US criminal justice system – using food as his medium.   Thr...

In the second of the three part podcast, CHEF Radio Live!, Chef Jenn Carroll joins Eli on stage to discuss her latest venture where she brings exciting and meaningful events to life with her company, Carroll Couture Cuisine, as well as all the amazing online work that she's doing to teach aspiring chefs and home cooks different recipes and techniques. They dive into her history working with such g...

Coming to you LIVE! from the kitchen at MANNA, acclaimed Thai chef, Nok Suntarnanon, sits down with Eli in front of an audience of 130 people at CHEF Radio LIVE! , which raised over $19,000 for the life saving work that the team at MANNA does.  Listen in as we get some of the latest info on her new restaurant, her recent trip to Thailand and the one, very Philly food, that she has yet to try. 

As a chef, when you are able to successfully apply your point of view to a cuisine that may be often overlooked or antiquated, it can easily translate into pure gold. That is exactly what the husband-and-wife duo, Angie Rito and Scott Tacinelli, have done with their genre-bending menu at their Michelin starred restaurant, Don Angie in New York City. A Caesar salad made with chrysanthemum leaves, B...

Imagine it's April 20, 2020, and finally your dream of owning your own place becomes a reality. You've worked really hard to someday have the opportunity to be your own boss, so you grab the entrepreneurial spirit by the balls and go for it, signing your name on the dotted line, not knowing what's lurking just around the corner. Well, this is the story of Huda, Chef Yehuda Sichel's debut restauran...

It's not breaking news that opening a restaurant is hard, but opening one in the middle of a pandemic is borderline insanity. However, when you open a restaurant with such a hyper focus on the primal aspect of food and root to snout cooking over open flames, it's borderline brilliant. Chefs David Feola and Scott Calhoun opened up their love letter to offcuts, Ember and Ash, in South Philadelphia,...

There's nothing better than a homegrown success story, and this next podcast is proof of that. Justin Rosenberg, founder of Honeygrow restaurants, has quite the story to tell. It's a story of resilience, courage in business, and great leadership, because it wasn't always sunny in Philadelphia for this local brand. Established in 2012, Honeygrow was on an explosive trajectory, growing outside the P...

In this can't miss podcast, one of the greatest culinary minds America has ever produced, Chef Wiley Dufresne, sits down with Eli to discuss his journey as a chef and modernist cuisine champion. Curiosity has been a leading edge for everything Chef Wiley does, and as one of the first chefs to start asking questions about the chemistry and science behind cooking, he began to develop his own New Yor...

In this episode, Eli sits down and chats with the incredibly talented and passionate chocolatier, Christopher Curtin, to talk about his journey of learning, which has led him around the globe in search of finding the best skills and techniques, as well as finding the best and most rarest cacao for his tremendous chocolate. His creative flavors and methods have put him and his chocolates amongst th...

As an absolute technician in the kitchen, Chef Ron McKinlay has ushered the Toronto stalwart, Canoe Restaurant, into a new era with his breath-taking craftsmanship that combines old-world technique with modern day sensibilities. After taking over Canoe four years ago, Chef Ron has continued to push the narrative and shine a spotlight on the amazing ingredients coming from the forests, oceans, and...

As a chef who has kept an open mind throughout his career, which has had many different influences on him, Tyler Akin describes his journey, from falling in love with Southeast Asian cuisine to opening his beloved Pho spot, Stock, to his current love affair with modern, French brasserie cooking at the recently updated and re-launched Le Cav, in the storied Hotel Du Pont in Wilmington, Delaware. Ch...

Chef, author, inventor and all around food enthusiast, Alex Talbot, sits down with Eli to discuss his journey with his dynamo doughnut brand, Curiosity Doughnuts, where their boundary pushing doughnuts are flipping the script on the industry. Eli also reminisces about the days as a young chef when he would spend hours pouring over Alex's (and his wife, Aki's), Ideas In Food, food blog where they w...