World of Mouth podcast

Roberto Solís is the chef and restaurateur of Nectar and Huniik in Merida, Mexico. He began his professional cooking career in 2003, when he founded Néctar, a restaurant focusing on Yucatán cuisine, in his hometown of Mérida. Years later he worked at top restaurants like The Fat Duck, Noma, Per Se in New York and Les Créations in Tokyo. Roberto Solís has experimented with ingredients used in the t...

Tam Chudaree Debhakam is the owner and head chef at Baan Tepa in Bangkok. She grew up in a big Thai family, eating her grandmother’s food made with old Thai recipes. After studying food science, Chef Tam decided to change her career to become a chef. She graduated from The International Culinary Center in New York City and worked for Chef Dan Barber at Blue Hill at Stone Barns for two years, learn...

Julien Royer is is the chef and co-owner of Odette, a three Michelin-starred modern French restaurant located at the National Gallery in Singapore. He also is chef-patron of Claudine, a French neo-brasserie in Singapore, and Louise in Hong Kong. Born into a family of 4th generation farmers in Cantal, France, Royer spent his childhood foraging and harvesting. Those childhood experiences, combined w...

Elena Reygadas is the chef at Rosetta in Mexico City. She was born in Mexico City in 1976, first studied English literature, but switched to cooking during her studies, moved to London and worked at Locanda Locatelli for many years. After moving back to Mexico City she opened Rosetta in the Roma district and now runs four other restaurants, including a bakery, Panaderia Rosetta. She is also involv...

Dabiz Muñoz is the chef and restaurateur of DiverXO in Madrid. He has built a reputation as the youngest member of the group of creative Spanish chefs that have changed the culinary world since the 1980’s. At DiverXo, Dabiz Muñoz takes his guests on an ever evolving hedonistic and creative gastronomic journey. In the podcast we will hear how Dabiz Muñoz at the age of twelve became obsessed with le...

Manu Buffara is the chef and restaurateur of restaurant Manu in Curitiba, Brazil. She grew up on a farm in Southern Brazil with her family of Italian and Lebanese ancestry. Aged 15, she moved to Curitiba, earned a degree in journalism and studied hotel management and gastronomy in Curitiba and in Piedmont, Italy. She worked as a trainee at Noma in Copenhagen and at three-star Alinea in Chicago. In...

Sean Sherman is an activist and the chef at restaurant Owamni, Minneapolis. He is also an educator, an author and a member of the Oglala Lakota Sioux tribe. He was born and raised on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and as a teenager began working in restaurants and also worked as a field surveyor for the forest service, where he gained knowledge of native plants. After moving to Minneapolis and...

Paul Ivic is the chef at Tian in Vienna, Austria. Born in Tyrol with Croatian roots, he learned his trade in top gastronomy in Germany, Austria and Switzerland before starting his vegetarian restaurant Tian in Vienna 2011 and later TIAN Bistro am Spittelberg. The Michelin-starred chef has now become a pioneer of vegetable cuisine and an advocate of biodynamic agriculture. In the podcast we will he...

Merlin Labron-Johnson is the chef and restaurateur of Osip in Somerset, England. He was raised in Devon, worked in several Michelin starred restaurants before becoming sous chef at Kobe Desramaults restaurant In de Wulf in Belgium. In 2014 he moved back to the UK to launch Portland restaurant and later Clipstone in Fitzrovia. Merlin Labron-Johnson now resides in rural Somerset where he splits his...

Genie Kwon is the chef and owner of Kasama in Chicago. She grew up in New Orleans, studied at university and then decided to become a baker and chef. That led her to working in some of the best restaurants in the world, among them Eleven Madison Park and Oreole in the US and with Janice Wong and Andre Chiang in Singapore. In 2020 Genie Kwon opened Kasama, a modern Filipino restaurant by night and...

Sat Bains is the chef and owner of restaurant Sat Bains in Nottingham, England. His parents moved to England from India and he grew up with Indian, mostly vegetarian cooking. As a teenager, he picked a cooking class in school by random, became a cook and after a few years of work decided to make a change and become one of the best. Today, he has been running his 2 Michelin Star restaurant for 25 y...

Joris Bijdendijk is the executive chef of restaurants RIJKS, Wils and Wils Bakery Café in Amsterdam. His interest for cooking started while spending his childhood weekends in the countryside at his family’s vegetable garden. As a teenager he apprenticed with chef Ron Blaauw and got his education while working at restaurants in the Netherlands and France. In his cooking he blends the best of Dutch...

Jason Atherton is one of the most respected British chef-restaurateurs with tens of restaurants as part of The Social Company. Atherton started working in the late 1980’s for legendary chefs like Pierre Koffmann, Marco Pierre White, Nico Ladenis and Ferran Adria, before joining Gordon Ramsay in 2001 and launching ‘Maze’, first in London and then another five globally. He left Gordon Ramsay in 2010...

Jordy Navarra is the Chef at Toyo Eatery in Manila, the Philippines. He entered the culinary scene quite late and worked in kitchens worldwide, and while working in the UK he started to miss miss the rice based Filipino meals of his youth. Back in Manila, he opened Toyo Eatery in 2016 and it soon became a pioneer of modern Filipino cuisine. In 2018, the restaurant entered Asia’s 50 Best Restaurant...

Stuart Brioza is the chef and co-owner of State Bird Provisions, The Progress and The Anchovy Bar in San Francisco. Born and raised in California, he worked in restaurants while still in high school. After culinary school, he worked in Chicago and France and then returned to California working at Rubicon before opening State Bird Provisions with his wife, pastry chef Nicole Krasinski in 2011. In t...

Chef Johanne Siy is the chef at restaurant Lolla in Singapore. She grew up in the Philippines in a Chinese-Filipino family. She left her corporate career and went to culinary school in the US and worked at Le Bernardin and Café Boulud in New York, Restaurant Andre in Singapore and later at Noma, Relae in Copenhagen and Faviken in Sweden. Returning to Singapore, she became the head chef at Lolla, w...

Niklas Ekstedt is a chef who gained recognition already at the age of 21 when he opened his first restaurant in Helsingborg, in the south of Sweden. Nowadays, he is one of the most famous fire-cooking chefs around. At the Ekstedt restaurants in Stockholm and London, everything is cooked over open fire, mostly using birch wood - no gas or electricity allowed. We will hear the story of Niklas Eksted...

Massimo Bottura is the chef and restaurateur at Osteria Francescana in Modena, Italy. He is known as one of the world’s most innovative culinary figures and together with his team runs a group of restaurants in Italy and the rest of the world. His three-Michelin-starred restaurant, Osteria Francescana, has twice been voted Best restaurant in the World. Bottura's restaurant career began in 1986, he...

Kristian Baumann is the chef and restaurateur of Koan and Juju in Copenhagen. He was adopted from Korea and grew up in Denmark with a traditional Danish upbringing that embraced his Korean heritage. Initially passionate about sports, he discovered his love for cooking and worked at various top kitchens in Copenhagen, among them Noma, Manfreds and Relæ. During Covid, inspired by his Korean roots, K...

Gunnar Karl Gíslason is the chef and restaurateur at restaurant Dill in Reykjavik, Iceland. He grew up on a farm in the small Icelandic town of Akureyri, where he started his restaurant career as a dishwasher. He worked his way through many of the best restaurants on Iceland, Norway, Denmark and New York and then returned to Iceland to open his own restaurant, Dill, in Reykjavik in 2009. We w...

Varun Totlani is the chef of Masque in Mumbai, India. He is known for his daring approach to Indian cuisine, and has reinvented many classic Indian dishes in his restaurant. He also uses many foraged and forgotten ingredients in his cooking, like Indian seabuckthorn. In the podcast we will hear about Varun Totlani’s love for street food in Mumbai, about the rise of the Indian cuisine and which Ind...

Josh Niland is the chef and restaurateur of Saint Peter in Sydney, Australia. He’s a pioneer of whole fish cookery, renowned for his nose-to-tail approach to seafood and his methods of creating sustainability in the use of fish in his kitchens. As a young chef, he worked at some of the best restaurants in the world, like the Fat Duck, and opened his own restaurant in 2016. We will hear Josh Niland...

Sarah Thompson is the executive chef of Casa Playa, a coastal Mexican restaurant in Las Vegas. She was raised in Boston and attended culinary school in New York before working at Michelin-starred Italian seafood restaurant Marea. She moved on to work at Cosme, the famous eatery opened by Mexican chef Enrique Olvera, and was fascinated by the flavours and ingredients of the regional Mexican cuisine...

Tekuna Gachechiladze is the chef and founder of Café Littera in Tbilisi, Georgia. She has been called the godmother of Georgia’s culinary revolution and fuses thousand year old Georgian flavours with contemporary international influences. We will hear how Tekuna Gachechiladze, to her family’s disappointment, switched her academic career to chef-restaurateur and how important the ceremony arou...

In the first episode of the World of Mouth Destination guides, recorded in Helsinki not far from the World of Mouth headquarters, we’re meeting local chefs and World of Mouth experts Helena Puolakka from restaurant Savoy, Ina Niiniketo from Canvas Canteen and Tom Hansen from Restaurant Kuurna. In the podcast they will tell what makes Helsinki unique as a culinary destination and guide you to the b...