Menu Talk

Kelly Whitaker had no intention of going back to Oklahoma. He was born in Tulsa and had spent time in Oklahoma City growing up, and he didn’t love it.  

He didn’t hate it, but as far as the restaurant scene went, he didn’t see it going anywhere. 

“I said, ‘It’s not gonna turn a corner and all of a sudden someone’s going to think of Oklahoma City as like a Portland or an Austin or something,’” he said.  

But he now says he was wrong.  

“I'll say it out loud again: I th...

Steven Clarke, VP of marketing for Golden Krust, has worked his way up the family-run Jamaican fast-casual restaurant group. The first location opened in Bronx, N.Y. in 1989 by his uncle, Lowell Hawthorne, and Clarke continues to follow his uncle’s mission to bring a taste of Jamaica to the world. Golden Krust now numbers 100 units and has introduced generations of Americans to foods like braised oxtail, jerk chicken, curried goat, and Jamaican beef patties.

Every patty that Golden Krust serves has a piece of Jamaica in it — the Scotch bonnet peppers and thyme are grown on the...

We Got Company is a subtly music-themed bar in the trend-forward neighborhood of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, New York.

The founders, Jify Shah, Ian Everall, and Paul Ramirez met when working at the Cameo Gallery, a beloved music venue in Williamsburg owned by Shah that closed in 2015. They opened We Got Company four years later, and Ramirez, who had tended bar at Cameo and elsewhere, ended up as the head bartender.

The cocktails are almost all named after a song, but not necessarily a well-known or popular one. Instead, they’re often inspired by the songs of...

Menu Talk: The executive chef followed his passion, pivoting from a teaching career to the restaurant world, and is making waves with his inspiring seafood menu.

Josh Hunt, executive chef at Cordelia Fishbar in Washington, D.C., started out as a high school Spanish teacher. After several years on the job, he realized his true passion was cooking — a passion he developed from a foundational memory of mom and grandma in the kitchen.

Although he had no formal culinary training, he landed a job at Hog & Hominy in Memphis, Tennessee, a lucky break since the re...

Ryan Poli opened the first restaurant where he was the boss just three years ago. Before that, he’d spent decades running other people’s restaurants in Chicago — Butter, Perennial, Tavernita — as well as Catbird Seat in Nashville, but Iggy’s, an Italian restaurant in the Nashville neighborhood of Wedgewood-Houston, is the first one that he fully owns, with his brother Matthew Poli. Ryan’s the chef, and Matthew, a certified sommelier and cicerone, runs the front of the house.

Ryan Poli is highly credentialed, having trained at The French Laundry in the Napa Valley under Thomas Keller as we...

JoJo Hernandez worked as a chef at country clubs and fine-dining kitchens, but his culinary heart was always with his family’s Filipino cooking. He began introducing those cherished dishes to the Jacksonville, Florida, community through pop-ups at events, eventually operating a food truck while still helming the stove at his day job. But his lifelong dream was to have a brick-and-mortar restaurant with a menu highlighting Filipino recipes. 

That dream became a reality in 2023, when, with his wife’s support, he took the plunge and opened Abstrakt Filipino Essence. It’s one of several Filipino restaurants in Jack...

Eric Leveillee is the culinary director of The DeBruce, a 12-roomboutique hotel in the Catskills community of Livingston Manor, N.Y., where he has worked since 2020, offering a seasonal tasting menu as well as regular à la carte service.

He spent his formative culinary years in Philadelphia aftergraduating from Temple University with a degree in economics. He started at a Mexican restaurant called El Camino Real, where he fell in love with his waitress and got a job in the kitchen to try to get to know her better. It worked — they’re still married — and Leveillee went on to p...

Christian Nuñez, owner of Buena Vista Restaurant & Barin New York City, was raised in a restaurant family, but he swore he wouldnever get into the business himself. All that changed when he was recruited ata Penn State college career fair by Chipotle Mexican Grill to become a managerin training.

He took his Chipotle experience home to his father’srestaurant, helping to turn it around into a profitable enterprise. He changedthe name, introduced a Latino happy hour, and upgraded the venue.

But in 2018, Nuñez wanted a place of his own with a moreupscale Euro-Latin menu...

Justin Devillier has been running the award-winning New Orleans restaurant La Petite Grocery for around two decades, and he’s about to branch out for the first time.

Although born into a Navy family in California, his family has been in Louisiana for generations and he moved to New Orleans in the early 2000s, before every city in the country had an interesting culinary scene, to pursue his career as a chef.

He eventually landed at La Petite, as he calls it, and worked his way up through the kitchen and, eventually, bought a majority st...

Don Conner is CEO of Whiskey ‘N Rye with several locationsin California’s Central Coast. The full-service “modern smokehouse” is differentiated by its California-style barbecue, which is a melding of different regional American styles. The restaurant concept is also known for its wide selection of brown spirits, many of which are sourced from local distilleries and are crafted into both classic and inventive cocktails.

In 2025, Conner opened ‘Que by Whiskey ‘N Rye, an outpost in the Santa Barbara Public Market that’s a fast-casual version of its older sibling. For both menus, he and his team traveled across the U.S...

Michael Zentner has followed a fairly normal career path in the restaurant industry, but in many ways has had an unusual level of success. He started by washing dishes in restaurants in his native Rhode Island and then attended The Culinary Institute of America before working in restaurants in Idaho, Boston, and Washington, D.C., including a stint with chef and restaurateur Michael Schlow.

He moved to Charleston, South Carolina, to be closer to his wife Courtney’s family, cooking at Charleston Grill under chef Michael Weaver.

That came to an end with the pandemic, an...

Magnolia Bakery started as a small neighborhood bake shop in New York City’s Greenwich Village and quickly rose to fame as a cupcake destination, thanks to “Sex and the City.” Today it numbers 53 locations and franchises are popping up around the U.S. and the world.

Bobbie Lloyd has been with the company 20 years, joining when there was just that one original shop. She has served in a number of capacities, including president and COO, CEO, and now chief baking officer, sharing that title with her other role as chief brand officer. She admits that you wouldn...

Veteran restaurateur Joey Campanaro opened Little Owl 20 years ago in New York City’s West Village to nearly instant acclaim with his legendary pork chops and meatballs. He has since expanded his business to include three other restaurants and an event space.

The Philadelphia native with family roots in the Italian regions of Calabria and Molise got his start washing dishes on the Jersey Shore and went on to work for restaurateurs Jonathan Waxman and Jimmy Bradley as well as the Patina Restaurant Group. He now draws inspiration from cuisines across the Mediterranean as well as incorporating Mex...

Shah’s Halal started out as a food cart on the streets of Queens in New York City in 2005, selling gyros and rice bowls with Afghan flavors. The simple menu used 100% halal ingredients, a rarity at the time, but the demand for halal food kept growing. 

Although the quick-service menu now is more extensive, it’s still very simple, said CEO Khalid Mashriqi during the podcast. Burgers, chicken sandwiches, wings, and falafel are options along with the rice bowls and gyros, and Shah’s differentiates from other Middle Eastern concepts by its focus on halal ingredients and signatu...

Join chefs and restaurateurs Joe Giacomino and John Vermiglio as they share their remarkable journey transforming Detroit's dining scene. Since opening Grey Ghost in 2016 as just the second destination chef-driven restaurant in the city, these Chicago-trained culinary partners have witnessed—and helped drive—an extraordinary urban revival.

From navigating a dangerous street where early guests faced armed robberies to thriving in today's vibrant, walkable Brush Park neighborhood, Joe and John offer a front-row perspective on Detroit's ongoing transformation. Discover how they've expanded their restaurant empire to include a beer-and-shots bar, the Izakaya-style Basan, and Little Ghost burger join...

From casual tacos to caviar and champagne — discover how restaurateur Marc Falsetto transformed Fort Lauderdale's dining landscape and pivoted to luxury during a pandemic.

As founder and CEO of Falsetto Hospitality, Marc Falsetto has been instrumental in shaping Fort Lauderdale's restaurant scene. Starting with casual concepts under Handcrafted Hospitality — including the popular Tacocraft Mexican restaurants, chef-driven gastropubs, and sandwich shops — Falsetto built a reputation for approachable, quality dining. He also breathed new life into Runway 84, a 40-year-old Italian-American institution, updating everything from décor to ambience.

Then came the pandemic — and a bold pivot. Recognizing an influx...

From dishwasher to award-winning mixologist, Tara Wong's journey through Detroit's hospitality scene is a masterclass in passion and perseverance. Starting in professional kitchens as a teenager two decades ago, she made the leap to bartending and never looked back. Through mixology competitions, self-taught expertise, and an obsession with creating unforgettable guest experiences, Wong honed her craft one cocktail at a time.

Now behind the bar at Saksey's, she's redefining classic cocktails with a modern twist—think Harvey Wallbanger reimagined as a milk punch, or her signature Coco Noir, an elevated Espresso Martini featuring bourbon, coconut rum, cold br...

From first-time restaurateur to hospitality empire builder, Jeremy Sasson's journey is a masterclass in passion-driven entrepreneurship. Despite zero restaurant experience, he opened Townhouse Birmingham in 2011, fueled by a childhood spent dining out and a deep love for the hospitality experience. Today, his Heirloom Hospitality Group operates six thriving concepts across Michigan and Nashville, including the acclaimed steakhouse Prime + Proper and Italian-California hotspot Mad Nice.

In this episode, Sasson shares his unconventional path into the restaurant world, his philosophy on creating genuine connection and community through food, and why Detroit has emerged as one of America's most exciting...

Adrienne Cole is co-founder and owner of House of Marigold in Louisville, Kentucky, a full-service breakfast, brunch and lunch restaurant she opened with her husband, Kris, in 2023. She started her restaurant journey operating a small corporate café in a busy downtown office building, eventually expanding into an elevated, Southern-inspired catering company with Kris as chef. Now the pair is growing the restaurant arm of the business, planning additional House of Marigold locations in Louisville and moving into dinner service.

Listen as she describes Marigold's innovative Southern-inspired menu, how she built House of Marigold into a welcoming community h...

Meet Tom Berry, Chief Culinary Officer of COJE Management Group! 🍽️

Tom oversees 11 unique restaurants across Boston, spanning everything from Mexican and Chinese to Peruvian, Mediterranean, Cuban, French, and classic American steakhouse cuisine.

A passionate traveler and chef, Tom draws inspiration from his adventures around the globe—and from the beautiful island of Nantucket, where he honed his skills working with fresh local seafood and produce. He's also a regular at the Nantucket Wine & Food Festival! 🌊

After graduating from Johnson & Wales, Tom got his big break working alongside legendary chef Ming Tsai at the flagship r...

Dimitri Zafeiropoulos has been global beverage director of Greek seafood concept Estiatorio Milos since 2022, having joined the company in early 2019. He worked his way up fromthe role of sommelier at Milos’s second New York City location, at Hudson Yards, to general manager of that location, to wine director for New York, and then to his current role. Now he coordinates supply of Greek and other wines to markets as wide ranging as Dubai, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

He arrived in New York City in 2012 to study photography, paying his bills, as many as...

Bryan O'Kelly didn't start his culinary career in culinary school—he started washing dishes at a Charleston restaurant to pay for college. But once he got behind the stove, he never looked back. He dropped out of college to pursue his passion for cooking, and it led him to some of the most celebrated kitchens in the South.

In This Episode:

🔪 From McCrady's to Husk: How working under legendary chef Sean Brock and mentor Ben Norton shaped O'Kelly's culinary philosophy🍤 Modern Southern Cuisine: Reimagining classics like shrimp and grits, pimiento cheese, and cornbrea...

Eric Dale has spent more than 21 years shaping Denver’s pastry scene at Rioja, where he has built a reputation for creative desserts, sourdough baking, and innovative pastry techniques. In this podcast episode, Dale discusses his unconventional journey from studying fashion design to becoming one of Denver’s most respected pastry chefs.

Before joining Rioja, Dale attended culinary school and later graduated from Johnson & Wales University’s Denver campus with a 4.0 GPA. He eventually became pastry chef at Rioja, one of the acclaimed restaurants founded by Jennifer Jasinski and Beth Gruitch. Known for his meticulous bread program and in...

Join Pat Cobe, Senior Menu Editor at Restaurant Business, for an exclusive conversation with Chris Simms, CEO of Lazy Dog Restaurants. Discover how this innovative casual dining chain is navigating 2026's challenging landscape while staying ahead of food trends.

🍽️ What You'll Learn:

Key Topics Covered: ✅ Cravable Classics vs. Approachable Innovation ✅ Value-driven menu engineering in challenging times ✅ Small plates strategy (Korean fried chicken bao buns, tik...

Spike Gjerde has long been one of the most committed regionalists in American cooking — so committed that for a while his Woodberry Kitchen in Baltimore didn’t serve lemon, black pepper, or vanilla because they don’t grow in the Chesapeake Bay region. Instead he used local vinegar, fish pepper, and other ingredients from Maryland and Virginia.

He has modified his stance on that and expanded his business into what he calls the Ecco Project, a group of restaurants that reflect food trends but with a regional accent. Woodberry has been transformed from a large rest...

The Michelin-starred Washington, D.C. restaurant is steeped in a rich culinary heritage shaped by the bounty of the region and the chef’s vision. 

When Chef Jeremiah Langhorne opened The Dabney in 2015, his goal was to make it a showcase for the bounty of the Mid-Atlantic region. Washington, D.C. was going through a restaurant renaissance 10 years ago, he said, and the timing was right to introduce something other than a steakhouse or French or Italian restaurant. 

He builds dishes around local seafood, like Cape May scallops and Chesapeake Bay oysters and crab, as well as pro...

Daru is a Hindi term for moonshine, and it’s also the name of a cocktail bar with a robust food menu that chef Suresh Sundas and beverage director Dante Datta opened in August of 2021 in the H Street neighborhood in Washington, D.C. It soon gained local and national acclaim thanks to its creative drinks, such as a Dirty Martini made with achar, a tangy type of Indian pickle, and food like paneer pesto tikka with honey and rhubarb and a blue cheese kebab with cashew and sour cherry.  

They followed that success with the opening of Tapori, also...

Gregg Horan knows steakhouses. As a longtime partner in Gibsons—one of Chicago's most iconic steak destinations—he's spent years mastering the art of high-end dining. But a little over a year ago, he took a bold step: opening The Greggory in South Barrington, Illinois, bringing fine dining to the suburbs.

And it's working.

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B.J. Lieberman grew up in Washington, D.C., and worked in restaurants up and down the East Coast before settling down in his wife’s hometown of Columbus, Ohio. 

He had developed a reputation as a capable chef working at Husk in Charleston, S.C., under Sean Brock and running the kitchen at Rose’s Luxury in D.C. In Columbus, he opened Chapman’s Eat Market during the pandemic in 2020 and used the restrictions of the time to fine-tune his style. 

The restaurant was a success, being named one of the Top 50 Restaurants in Ameri...

Lion’s Choice has built a reputation and a steady stream of regulars for its legendary roast beef sandwiches in its hometown of St. Louis and beyond. The quick-service menu offers several choices, including the original Famous Roast Beef, the French Dip and The Remix—the last a favorite of CEO Fred Burmer.

Burmer joins us on the podcast to talk about the menu and more. Lion’s Choice sources the top round cut of beef and trained beef masters at each location use a secret seasoning and technique to roast the meat and slice it to spec. <...

Nicholas Poulmentis took a remarkably straightforward approach to entering the world of food TV: He filled out an application.

It was apparently a very good application because it got him a spot on the Food Network’s competition show “Chopped,” where he ended up winning, leading to other television appearances.

But he also has cooked in restaurants all his life and is now preparing for his own venue in New York City. Kythira NP, named for the island where he grew up and the initials of his own name, is slated to open in the SoHo n...

Attorney Kevin Kelley set out to create a restaurant that would be the kind of place he could feel at home in. The result is Kitchen + Kocktails, an affordable, chef-driven restaurant with elevated Southern food, great cocktails and a warm, welcoming vibe that has grown to seven locations across the U.S.

Kelley’s lifelong passion for hospitality, food and drink is powering the restaurants’ expansion from their home base in Dallas to Chicago, Miami, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Charlotte, and Boston. Although those cities are quite different, Kitchen + Kocktails seems to hit a sweet spot with...

Strickland’s is a family-owned ice cream shop that opened in Akron, Ohio, in 1936, and the original operation is still using its original equipment. 

It has since expanded to five locations in its home state, all franchised except for the original shop, and it recently opened a franchised location in Costa Mesa, Calif. (not its first location in that state — it previously had a franchise on the campus of the University of California at Irvine).  

Strickland’s formula is straightforward: Each location has four ice cream machines, one churning out chocolate ice cream, another producing vanilla...

Chef Sungchul Shim’s dream was to have a restaurant in Times Square, and he realized that dream just about a year ago when he opened Gui Steakhouse. The Culinary Institute of America graduate set out to make his steakhouse unique by infusing Korean flavors and techniques into the menu.

Steaks are dry-aged and cooked over live fire fueled by a combination of wood and Korean charcoal. Along with classic steakhouse sauces, Chef Shim offers a house-made steak sauce that’s an umami-rich blend of Korean soy sauce, seaweed and herbs. His Caesar salad also has Korean acce...

Danny Lledó is the chef and owner of Xiquet and Taller de Xiquet. The former is a Michelin-starred, tasting-menu restaurant in Washington, D.C., and the latter offers similar food in an à la carte setting downstairs. 

Born in the United States, Lledó  comes from a family of cooks—his father is an accomplished chef from Dénia, Spain, located between Valencia and Alicante, and he focuses on that region’s cuisine at his restaurants, particularly paella. That rice dish is the centerpiece of his tasting menu, which starts with small plates and ends with dessert and drinks outside th...

Our guest on this week’s Menu Talk is Ahu Hettema, chef-owner of Istanbul Hawai’i restaurant in Honolulu. 

Chef Hettema came to California to study art and psychology but was unable to return to her homeland of Turkey because of a string of immigration snafus. She visited Hawaii and fell in love with the culture and climate, which reminded her of Southeast Turkey.

Chef Ahu Hettema and her mother run the kitchen at Istanbul Hawai'i. 

Cooking was a way to ease her homesickness and connect with people, and she began making Turkish food to...

Billy Dec is the owner of Sunda New Asian, a Pan-Asian concept with a heavy bent toward Dec’s own Filipino heritage. The original location in Chicago’s River North neighborhood is 17 years old, and the concept’s fifth location, in Detroit, is slated to open in a couple of weeks. 

There are also Sunda locations in Nashville and Tampa.

The décor of the Detroit location reflects Dec’s own heritage more deeply than the other restaurants, with images from his documentary Food Roots, which is currently screening across the country as it prepares to air on P...

Dozens of menu trend forecasts came in towards the end of 2025 from culinary and restaurant industry experts. Included in that pile were the top trends from market researcher Technomic, the sister company of Restaurant Business and Nation’s Restaurant News. 

Lizzy Freier, senior director of menu research & insights at Technomic, has her finger directly on the pulse of chefs and menu developers, tracking the latest in flavor, R&D and global cuisines. During the podcast, she zeroes in on the predictions she and her team made last fall to see how they’re panning out about a month...

When it comes to Mexico and spirits, most people think of tequila, which has now surged past whiskey and even vodka to become the most widely consumed alcohol in the United States. But Max Reis goes well beyond that, and not just into mezcal (now ubiquitous enough that you can get it at Applebee’s) or even lesser-known indigenous Mexican spirits such as sotol, raicilla and bacanora.

At his Los Angeles bars Miraté — Spanish for “look at you” — and the new Daisy Margarita Bar, the native of California’s Napa Valley delves into Mexican gins, eaux de vie, rum and...

Kevin Lee grew up in a Korean-American family in Oklahoma City, a place not known as a dining destination 20 years ago. There were the usual chains, Korean mom-and-pops and some chef-driven restaurants, but few if any places that focused on global cuisines. 

Lee majored in hospitality management at UNLV, and while there, he worked part-time in a restaurant and fell in love with cooking. That changed the trajectory of his career. With Las Vegas chef Joon Choi as a mentor, Lee immersed himself in Japanese cooking. Then at age 21, the luck of being in the right place a...