A Michelin starred brewery! Cousins Jared Rouben (a graduate of both culinary school and brewing school) and Jeremy Cohn, a Wharton business grad, began by opening Moody Tongue Brewing in Chicago, then expanded into restaurants. The one they run above their brewery, featuring a hyper-seasonal tasting menu with a beer pairing for each course, has earned a Michelin star. And their sushi restaurant in West Palm Beach, Florida got a Michelin Guide recommendation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Growing up in a military family, Chef Amy Mehrtens explored new tastes in various places around the world. She trained at the Culinary Institute of America, then worked her way up to Sous Chef at the legendary Commander’s Palace in New Orleans. She is now Executive Chef at Copper Vine in NOLA, where she is expanding her repertoire beyond traditional New Orleans standards and going beyond the dining room to cater to guests at the newly opened inn attached to the restaurant. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Northern Ohio native Vinnie Cimino is reinventing traditional midwestern cuisine as “modern grandma” cooking at his Cleveland restaurant Cordelia. His signature dishes include a box of pull-apart smashburgers topped with Kool-Aid pickles, steak tartare done as an homage to the Galley Boy cheeseburger at famed local chain Swensons, corned beef reimagined as corned lamb, and deep fried saltines, a throwback to his grandmother’s past in Alabama.     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chef Diane Moua grew up a child of refugees in the tight knit Hmong community, which at the time limited a woman’s professional opportunities. Still, she followed her culinary dreams and became a wildly successful pastry chef in Minneapolis. Then she took on an even greater challenge – opening a restaurant of her own and adding savory Hmong cooking to her lauded baking. Now her restaurant, Diane’s Place has been named Food and Wine’s 2025 restaurant of the year. It’s on the New York Times list of America’s Fifty Best as well. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After training under legendary southern chef Frank Stitt, then working his way up to sous chef at New York’s famed Gramercy Tavern, Kyle Knall has become one of the hot young chefs turning once-sleepy Milwaukee into a culinary hotspot. His Birch restaurant features a farm to table menu and open fire cooking. And his French inspired Cassis will be opening soon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New Orleans baker Kelly Jacques was just named a Food and Wine Best New Chef for 2025. After making her mark in New York, she is now running her own bakery in New Orleans, re-defining what to expect from baked goods with signature dishes that include the boudin boy, a highly elevated hot pocket—a croissant stuffed with boudin sausage and a boiled egg; a king cake named the best in New Orleans by the Times Picayune; muffaletta breadsticks; and a jalapeno cornbread cookie.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chef Casey Wall cut his teeth at New York’s legendary Spotted Pig and Le Cirque, before moving to Australia and opening a string of successful restaurants and bars. Now he’s come back to the states and settled in Austin, where his Le Calamar, blending French technique with Texas ingredients, has debuted to glowing reviews. And where his deboned and sweetbread stuffed chicken wings are a sensation.     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s a double helping of great eating off the beaten path. Erica Curry, who runs the Tennessee Pass Cookhouse at an altitude above 10,000 feet in Colorado explains how diners have to hike, snowshoe, or ski a mile to reach it. Once there, they enjoy four course meals featuring local ingredients, such as elk tenderloin with blueberry, sage, and port reduction. Then in Anchorage, Alaska, owners Patricia Brown Heller, Heidi Heinrich-Lervagg and Carolina Stacey tell the 70-year story of their Lucky Wishbone restaurant, winner of a 2025 James Beard America’s Classics Award and renowned for its famous fried chicken. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Born in southern India, a region rarely represented on Indian restaurant menus in the U.S., Chef Vijay Kumar was raised in rural poverty. His culinary aspirations surfaced early and he attended culinary school in India then worked on cruise ships and in restaurants in a variety of locations before coming to the United States and finding a culinary foothold in San Francisco, where he led the kitchen team at Rasa and earned a Michelin star for five straight years. He got a chance to open his own restaurant, Semma in New York in 2021, featuring his version of the Southern Indian food he grew up with, and has now won a Michelin star there, as well as being ranked the number one restaurant in New York for 2025 by the New York Times and being named the 2025 James Beard Award Outstanding Chef for New York state.     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chef Kelly Franz developed her taste for great food growing up in Europe as part of a military family. She made her name during the culinary boom in Charleston, rising to Executive Chef at the storied Magnolias restaurant, which took low country cooking upscale. Now she has returned as Culinary Director to freshen up the menu, mindful that there are some iconic dishes that simply cannot be changed.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bobby Stuckey entered the culinary world as a teenaged dishwasher and worked his way up through a range of front of the house positions until he achieved the rarely awarded rank of Master Sommelier and became a multi-award-winning restaurateur. The centerpiece of the restaurant group he co-owns, Frasca Food and Wine in Boulder, Colorado, which holds a Michelin star, has just won the James Beard Award as America’s Outstanding Restaurant, the fourth James Beard Award it has accumulated since 2008. Earlier in his career, Stuckey worked at The French Laundry, where his team earned that esteemed restaurant a James Beard Award for Outstanding Wine Service. Frasca features the cuisine – and wines – of Italy’s sub-alpine Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, created and served through the lens of Colorado.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Classically trained chefs Jeanie Janas Ritter and Adam Ritter shared a culinary journey working at great and Michelin-starred restaurants throughout the US and internationally before coming back to their midwestern roots and working in Minneapolis, first for someone else, then taking the risk of opening a place of their own. Their venture, Bûcheron, French for lumberjack, was an instant hit, embracing the French bistronomy movement that marries fine dining with comfortable surroundings. And they embrace a further marriage—French techniques and Minnesota ingredients in creating a menu that features such standouts as Fois gras, venison tartare, even eel. And yes, they were recently named the Best New Restaurant in America in the 2025 James Beard Awards.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chef Cathy Whims was at the forefront of the culinary revolution in Portland, Oregon and decades later she retains that position there. Her Nostrana Italian restaurant continues to dish up the kind of regional cooking truly enjoyed in the small towns and villages of Italy, bolstered by great Oregon ingredients, and her pizza is listed among America’s fifty best. She reminisces about truly discovering Italian cooking on her first visit there, and about being taught by Marcella Hazan who, after dining at Whims’s first Portland restaurant, invited the chef to study with her in Venice. Whims now owns multiple restaurants in Portland and recently released her first cookbook.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chef Thomas Bille describes his cooking at his suburban Houston restaurant Belly of the Beast as driven by “a love for food that warms your soul and speaks to our ancestors.” A child of Mexican immigrants, Bille grew up with great food – his father was a professional chef and his mother a fabulous home cook – and as a self-described latchkey kid he was making French toast and spaghetti for himself by the age of 8. He went on to attend cooking school, then got most of his experience in Los Angeles before moving to Texas and opening Belly of the Beast. He was on the verge of financial disaster when, finally, recognition came, and with it, the crowds. Then he had to rebuild after a hurricane ravaged his restaurant. In awarding Belly of the Beast a Bib Gourmand, the Michelin Guide, noted that the “twists and turns” in his Mexican inspired cooking, “make for immensely satisfying courses that feel bold and balanced.” And where else will you find Wagyu birria?   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This special bonus episode comes from the folks at Gravy, a production of the Southern Foodways Alliance. Gravy shares stories of the changing American South, and in this episode, producer Eve Troeh takes us to Brennan’s, an iconic restaurant in the heart of New Orleans’ French Quarter, where spectacle and tradition come together over a flambé pan. At Brennan’s, servers don’t just deliver dessert; they ignite Bananas Foster tableside in a performance perfected over decades. But behind the fire and flourish is a demanding skillset and an old-school apprenticeship that’s anything but simple. We meet the servers who’ve mastered the flame, and explore how this tableside ritual continues to evoke an era of elegance, even as restaurant culture evolves. For more stories from the South, follow Gravy wherever you get your podcasts or visit southernfoodways.org.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ali Clem says she was shocked when her La Barbecue restaurant in Austin, TX was recently awarded a Michelin star. She was mentored by members of a legendary Texas barbecue family, the Muellers of Louis Mueller Barbecue in Taylor, Texas and married founder Louis Mueller’s granddaughter, LeAnn Mueller. They worked together until Mueller’s untimely death and Clem now runs the restaurant alone, honoring the legacy of Mueller and her family through the barbecue she is making today. And unlike many in the barbecue world in Texas, she is excited about pushing the envelope, experimenting with new flavors and dishes, even making pickles and the Korean favorite, kimchi.     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Chang siblings, born in Peru, emigrated to the U.S. as children, and now living in Miami, have locked up the James Beard award for Best Chef South for two straight years. Valerie won last year for her cooking at her Peruvian restaurant, Maty’s. Her older brother and co-owner Nando just won the 2025 award for what he does at his restaurant within that restaurant, the Michelin-star-winning Itamae AO. It is a ten-seat counter at which he serves his interpretation of the Peruvian-Japanese cuisine known as Nikkei, based mostly on raw fish and highlighting bold flavors. Chef Chang did not attend culinary school. In fact, he began working in restaurants to subsidize a music career that he pursued throughout his twenties before turning to the culinary side full-time.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Born in Cannes, France, and raised in a food-centric French-Italian family, Nicholas Fanucci has run some of the greatest and best-known restaurants in America, including the French Laundry, Bouchon, Le Cirque, Le Bec-Fin, and more. Previously, he worked in Europe at legendary establishments including Alain Ducasse’s Louis XV. The restaurants he has worked at have amassed a total of more than 20 Michelin stars. His journey has been remarkable, including one arc that took him from GM of The French Laundry, to cooking in a food truck, to his current incarnation as the owner of two restaurants in L.A.     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chef Yotaka Martin had never heard of the James Beard awards until she was nominated for the 2024 competition. She grew up in a small village in the north of Thailand and has only been in the U.S a few years. But she is well aware now. She didn’t win last year but she was just named the 2025 James Beard Best Chef Southwest for her cooking at the Phoenix restaurant Lom Wong, which she runs with her husband Alex. They met after he visited Thailand while in college and fell in love with the country, then with her. Their travels throughout Thailand and elsewhere in Asia fueled their mutual love of food, and they developed a vast knowledge of regional dishes rarely seen in the U.S., which they now feature. They are committed to spreading not just food knowledge but also cultural understanding and encouraging the enjoyment of food to bring people together, which is a hallmark of Thai cuisine.       Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Acclaimed Philadelphia restaurateur Tyler Akin recreated his childhood memories by re-opening the restaurant where his family celebrated big occasions—the Green Room, in the Hotel DuPont in Wilmington,Delaware.  He grew up watching his southern grandmother in the kitchen. He went to law school (his father was a lawyer and later a judge) but dropped out to attend culinary school. His talent was obvious — he staged at José Andrés Minibar in Washington and worked for other noted chefs before opening a variety of restaurants with cuisines and influences from Corsica, Sardinia, Croatia, Israel, France, Vietnam, Thailand, and more.     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices