The Dine One Six

Max and Neill are back for a sit down with a bucket list guest for them in Patricio Wise from Nix Taco Mexican Kitchen and Distillery. They dig into Patricio's history in the world of high finance, starting his cooking career by preparing dishes out of the French Laundry cookbook for groups of friends in his hometown, and what brought him to Sacramento and why he left a lucrative career to start m...

Josh Milholm joins the Dine One Six to discuss his food upbringing, moving from Denver to Sacramento, and early restaurant work from dishwashing to making pizza dough. He recounts serving at Spaghetti Factory and spending 10 years at the Hard Rock Cafe, then attending law school before leaving because he was miserable and returning fully to hospitality, including Harlow’s, Red Rabbit and ultimatel...

Mandy Hwang started taking photos of her food and writing about her experiences simply for her own enjoyment and memory making. Little did she know that her personal food journal would eventually turn into an influential Sacramento food instagram page.    We talk about Mandy’s deep love of food and Sacramento, the great friends she has met through her instagram page, and the best way to eat cheeto...

We’re back!! It’s been a long road back to the podcast for us (Max and Neill) but we are so excited to get going again. WE already have a bunch of interviews recorded and will get back to posting them every two weeks.  This week we re-launch with an interview with Molly Dennis. Molly has worked all over Sacramento (and the country) and know works for Diageo, a liquor distributor which is responsib...

Mecha Mucho roughly translates to “lots and lots.” For Chef and Owner Ryan Ota that means lots and lots of smiles, lots and lots of people saying, “Damn this is good!” and lots and lots of sandwiches sold.  If you haven’t discovered it, Mecha Mucho is cranking out amazing egg salad sandwiches on Shokupan (Japanese milk bread) with additional protein options from chicken katsu, to spam to sometimes...

To say Oliver Ridgeway is well traveled is a gross understatement. After getting his start washing dishes in his dad’s restaurant, at 20 years old he got a job cooking on the Queen Elizabeth II cruise liner, which traveled from England to New York city. That ship took him all over the world over two years, and taught him how to cook and how to organize.  That organization would be vital as he went...

Amanda Bridger started cooking food at home during COVID as a way to pass the time and to comfort herself, her partner Chris and friends. Little did she know that in going back to the Hawaiian flavors of her childhood evenings visiting her grandmother, she would stumble upon a new found talent and passion for cooking Hawaiian cuisine.  She and her partner Chris Tocchini moved to Sacramento and sta...

Billy Ngo of Kru Contemporary Japanese Cuisine got his start at an old-school Japanese restaurant on Broadway in Sacramento, spending hours washing dishes and painstakingly preparing shrimp for the week’s service. After a stint at Mikuni he understood how sushi could become something that mixed his passion for creativity and attention to detail.  Billy headed to culinary school in San Francisco an...

It all started when a disastrous failed potato crop led Jody Bogle’s grandfather, Warren Bogle to try planting wine grapes on the acreage he purchased on Merritt Island. In 1968 he planted 10 acres of Petite Syrah and 10 acres of Chenin Blanc. He got the Chenin Blanc clippings from a guy named Skinny in Lodi! Today, Bogle has grown to become the Bogle Family Wine Collection, a brand that stretches...

Greg Gearhart and Victor Mihalchuk were sipping coffee and having lunch with their colleague Cameron Tyler of Moonracer films when they thought, “the food scene in Sacramento is so amazing…what if we filmed it.” That nugget of an idea launched what is now one of the most beautiful celebrations of Sacramento and its food you will ever see called Breaking Bread.  On Tuesday September 5 there was a v...

Before Robert Masullo became a Sacramento pizza icon, he was the son of a Sac Bee journalist and a stay at-home mom. His mom was a major influence on his life as she taught him the values in hard work and making recipes from scratch.  His Sacramento food orgin story is epic, with him riding a Vespa to Biba to wash dishes when he was 16. His love of food took him to the CIA in New York and then a l...

Ben Roberts grew up in Grass Valley where he loved skateboarding and punk rock. He dreamed of getting out of the small town but had no real plan, but after he met his future wife at a record shop, he followed her to Sacramento as she went to UC Davis and he looked to take any job he could find. That is the perfect recipe (pun intended) for a young kid to make his way into a kitchen.  He got his st...

Chloe Booth got a taste for interesting food at a young age when her mom went to culinary school. But it was years later as a teenager when her grandmother bulldozed a job path for Chloe at Del’s Pizza in Fair Oaks. There she learned the ins and outs of the pizza business, from interacting with the regulars to managing 20 pizzas at a time in the ovens.  After a break from restaurants Chloe saw a F...

Alison Clevenger moved from Arizona to Oregon to go to culinary school without ever checking out the campus, her mom just signed her up, drove her up there and dropped her off. That move set her life on a course where she would land in Sacramento and ultimately help build one of the premiere sweet treat destinations in the city, Ginger Elizabeth’s.  Alison talks about taking naps on giant bags of...

Matt Brown loves to cook. That may seem obvious given he’s spent the last 20 years as a chef. But many chefs don’t cook between shifts…not Matt. He loves nothing more than cracking open a cookbook, a bottle of wine and spending a day off grilling in the summer or roasting in the winter.    Matt got his start at pizzeria as a teenager and spent time at several other spots in Sacramento that are no...

Taylor Lovelace is the head chef at J.J. Pfister Distilling Company but her love affair with cooking started when she interned at The Kitchen while in culinary school. It was actually years before when she would chauffeur her parents to the famed restaurant that she got to try the food when the staff would feed her the menu in the back of the restaurant while her parents dined.    Taylor went on t...

In place of a usual episode, Max and Neill take turns asking each other food questions to give you insight into the minds of your favorite local food podcasters! What food are you embarrassed to say they don't like? What's the one meal you would make to impress someone? If you could only eat one cuisine for the rest of your life what would it be? And more!! This episode is in place of an episode t...

Eddie Torres learned the power of food connecting families at an early age when he would have Sunday dinners with more than 20 members of his extended family, most of whom lived in the same apartment complex. But it wasn’t until the great recession, which buckled the car industry where he was working, that he decided to go to culinary school.  After school he bounced around town until making his w...

Dennis Sydnor first fell in love with cooking in his family home, smelling bbq and parker house rolls that his dad made. Then when he got his first kitchen job back in Cleveland at 17 he realized that his ability to cook impressed the girls and gave him some juice as the new kid in town.  Soon he moved to the front of the house and fell in love with hospitality and being front and center watching...

Max and Neill sit down with Rebecca Campbell, owner and chef of Sac City Brews in Tahoe Park.  They talk about Rebecca’s unconventional and even accidental move to running a kitchen. It’s not often you find someone with two Masters degrees running a kitchen, but she has taken her background in community development to create an amazing spot for the neighborhood of Tahoe Park and frankly for all of...

Greg Desmangles got his start as so many do, in the dish pit of a family owned restaurant. But from his first weekend working on his feet all day bussing tables and washing dishes during beer week, Greg knew he wanted to be in a kitchen.  Greg went on to stage at Taylor's kitchen soaking up all he could before going back to his uncle's restaurant Pangaea Beir Cafe and working prep. Today Greg has...

Today we talk about the wild world of cheese! How does blue mold bloom? Does what the animal eats change the taste of cheese? Strange food combinations to eat with cheese, headless spiders that create a rind on cheese. All these questions and odd facts are answered and discussed with our guest Julie Cassotta.    Julie is a Certified Cheese Professional and one of only eight people with that certif...

Chris Sinclair fell in love with cocktails when a salty San Francisco bartender schooled him on what a real martini was. Since that moment Chris has dedicated his life to teaching other aspiring bartenders and guests, wherever he has worked, the art of the craft cocktail.  Chris is from New York but has made Sacramento his home having spent the last decade working at the likes of Red Rabbit, La Co...

Jonathan Kerksieck has been working in restaurants in Sacramento for 30 years. He got his start making pizza at original Pete’s out of high school. He considered culinary school but a conversation with Rick Mahan when he was working at Paragary's and set his course on learning to cook by working long hours in kitchens all over Sacramento.  After all that training, head chef jobs, running hotel foo...

Scott McCumber has not had the traditional path to becoming a head chef here in Sacramento. Most chefs start young, finding the discipline and camaraderie in the kitchen intoxicating. Scott loves that about the kitchen too, but for him it was consecutive layoffs in his corporate sales career that led him to completely shift his life’s course.  Scott took six months of severance pay and with his wi...