The Restaurant Guys
Subscribe! https://restaurantguysregulars.buzzsprout.com/The Restaurant Guys is one of the original food and wine podcasts, launched in 2005 by restaurateurs Mark Pascal and Francis Schott.With roots as a daily radio show, the podcast features in-depth conversations with chefs, bartenders, winemakers, authors, and hospitality professionals—offering the inside track on food, cocktails, wine, and restaurant culture.New episodes and vintage conversations because the best stories, like the best bottles, age well. Expect insightful, opinionated, and entertaining conversations about food, wine, and the finer things in life.Subscribe for ad-free content, bonus episodes and invitations to special events! https://restaurantguysregulars.buz...
Comic Cocktail History | David Wondrich
Why This Episode Matters
A great bartender needs more than recipes and a great cocktail doesn’t necessarily need more ingredients.Black and Filipino bartenders helped shape American drinking and preserve traditions that might otherwise have disappeared.The drinks that last are the ones other bartenders can actually make.The Banter
Mark and Francis debate whether we’ve reached peak spritz, suggest leaving the soda out of an Aperol Spritz, and deliver an unfiltered verdict on Sarti Rosa. After the interview, a dirty-martini disagreement turns into an argument about olive brine, expensive gin, and who’s bein...
The Cost of Three Michelin Stars | Rudolph Chelminski
This is a Vintage episode from 2005.
Why This Episode Matters
Earning three Michelin stars is a triumph. Keeping them brings financial commitments, public scrutiny, and relentless pressure.Rudolph Chelminski knew Bernard Loiseau for decades and offers a personal view of the ambition behind his extraordinary career.As they prepare to open Catherine Lombardi, Mark and Francis share their own concerns about expansion and protecting an established restaurant’s reputation.Recorded before Michelin’s first NYC guide, this conversation captures the Guys debating whether any New York restaurant would earn three stars.The Bant...
A Fire, a Do-Over & The Bear | Brian Lockwood
Why This Episode Matters
What it takes to reopen a restaurant after a fire shuts it down just three days into business.How a shared-space kitchen becomes a lesson in building one restaurant team.What went into training Jeremy Allen White for The Bear and that restaurant professionals find the show almost too real.Why the smallest service and design decisions can shape an entire dining experience.Banter
Can airport pizza outperform a Chicago pizza restaurant? Francis and Mark compare deep-dish disappointments, Detroit-style discoveries, and a dropped cleaning rag that should have prompted more than...
Southern Smoke Festival 2026 | Vol. 2: French Brasseries, Caviar Camp & Great Brisket
Why This Episode Matters
Kyle Knall explains why Milwaukee offers the community support to build ambitious restaurants—and a life outside them.Jason Ryczek takes us inside Caviar Camp, from getting into tanks with sturgeon to selecting roe and serving it at Little’s Oyster Bar.Leonard Botello IV reveals what separates exceptional brisket from disappointing barbecue, including the importance of fire management, resting and learning to listen.These conversations celebrate the craft and hospitality behind memorable meals, all in support of Southern Smoke Foundation’s work helping food and beverage workers.The Conversation
Back at Sou...
Southern Smoke Festival 2026 | Vol. 1: Building Better Restaurants
Why This Episode Matters
Can restaurants offer exceptional food and hospitality while giving their employees a better life? These owners explain how they’re doing it.Birdie’s challenges the traditional fine dining model with counter service, a serious wine program and meaningful employee benefits.Shuai Wang shares how Top Chef helped him rediscover his inspiration through collaboration with other chefs.Ayu Bakehouse teaches employees the business skills to pursue their own ideas—and pays them to learn.The Conversation
Recorded at Southern Smoke Festival in Houston, these conversations explore what makes a restaurant worth workin...
The Lost Books Behind the Cocktail Revival | Greg Boehm
This is a Vintage episode from 2010.
Why This Episode Matters
Greg Boehm explains how obscure pre-Prohibition cocktail books became useful again as ingredients and serious bartending returned.He shares how Mud Puddle Books reproduced historic cocktail books in painstaking detail — right down to the paper, binding and gold stamping. The conversation captures an important moment in the rise of Japanese bartending in the U.S., including Kazuo Uyeda, the Hard Shake and the English-language release of Cocktail Technique. Boehm also opens up his remarkable 2,800-volume cocktail collection to bartenders, writers and researchers.
Banter
Mar...
Kenta Goto & Noah Rothbaum | The Goto Bartender’s Guide & the Art of Precision
Why This Episode Matters
Kenta Goto explains why the first sip of a cocktail is like a job interview: you get one chance to make the right impression, so every detail from ice and dilution to the order of operations matters. Noah Rothbaum makes the case that cocktail recipes have changed far less than cocktail culture itself, and that The Goto Bartender’s Guide fills in the technical information most recipes leave out. The conversation traces Kenta’s path from Tokyo to New York, his formative years at Pegu Club with Audrey Saunders, and the philosophy of precision and ho...Martini Expo 2026 | Vol. 2: Colin Asare-Appiah, François Monti & Ryan Maybee
Recorded on location at the Martini Expo in Chicago.
Why This Episode Matters
Colin Asare-Appiah takes The Guys inside Ajabu, the cocktail and spirits festival connecting bartenders across Africa and the wider cocktail world, and discusses Black Mixcellence and the Black voices too often missing from cocktail history.François Monti explains why vermouth deserves far more respect than the neglected bottle at the back of the bar and how Madrid’s cocktail culture changed the way he thought about both vermouth and the martini.Ryan Maybee traces the unlikely revival of J. Rieger & Co., from a p...Martini Expo 2026 | Vol. 1: Toby Maloney, Jackson Cannon, Federico Lombardi & Dan Smith
Recorded on location at the Martini Expo in Chicago.
Why This Episode Matters
Hospitality Should Be Fun | Rick Tramonto
This is a Vintage episode from 2006.
Why This Episode Matters
Banter
Mark and Francis discuss a 2006 proposal to block cell-phone...
Pasta, Balsamic & Calm Chaos: Inside Monteverde | Sarah Grueneberg
Recorded on location at Monteverde Restaurant & Pastificio in Chicago
Why This Episode Matters
Nothing Stops a Bullet Like a Job | Father Greg Boyle
This is a Vintage episode from 2007.
Why This Episode Matters
Father Greg Boyle explains how Homeboy Industries uses jobs, training and support to help former gang members build different lives.Rival gang members work side by side — and Boyle describes what happens when people who once saw each other as enemies begin to know one another.The conversation gets at something restaurants can do particularly well: teach skills, create pride in work and offer a path that doesn’t require a traditional academic route.Boyle makes the case for employment as intervention in one unforgettable line: “Nothin...Last Call at the Funeral Home: Inside a Secret Speakeasy | Andrew Loos & Phil Worden
Why This Episode Matters
Til Death The Speakeasy is literally hidden beneath a working funeral home outside Kansas City and unlike most modern “speakeasies,” it really isn’t generally open to the public. The room comes complete with a casket bar, an urn used to smoke cocktails, mysterious doors and at least one unexplained doorbell incident. The basement’s secret-drinking history predates its current owners: decades ago it reportedly served as a discreet drinking club for local Southern Baptists. What started as a cocktail obsession became a charitable passion project, raising money for organizations including Veterans Community Project and inspiring...Are We Loving Seafood to Death? | Rick Moonen
This is a Vintage episode from 2006.
Why This Episode Matters
Long before sustainable seafood became a mainstream restaurant conversation, Rick Moonen was pushing chefs and diners to think about where their fish came from and how it was caught.Moonen explains why cooking fish requires precision and why buying the freshest fish often means abandoning your shopping list and letting the market decide dinner.From beluga caviar to Chilean sea bass, the conversation shows how quickly popularity can put pressure on a species.And because this is The Restaurant Guys, a serious discussion about ocean conservation...Preserving the Seasons: Canning, Pickling & Seasonal Cooking | Paul Virant
This is a Vintage episode from 2012.
Why This Episode Matters
Banter
Mark Pascal and Francis Schott visit DeBragga & Spitler and get...
Knowing When to Change: Ice Cream, Fine Dining & Reinvention | Nicholas Harary
Why This Episode Matters
Nicholas Harary explains why he chose to reinvent one of New Jersey’s most acclaimed fine-dining restaurants before the business forced him to.A surprisingly technical look at what separates great ice cream from mediocre ice cream: butterfat, overrun, and the cold chain.Nicholas, Mark Pascal and Francis Schott debate whether traditional fine dining is dead or simply evolving.The conversation turns to Michelin: what its stars mean today, how the Guide’s expansion model complicates perceptions of independence, and why restaurateurs should always focus on the customers in the room.Banter
Ma...
The Mystique, Money and Madness of Truffles | Jane Black | Preview
You’re hearing a preview of this subscriber bonus episode. Restaurant Guys’ Regulars can hear the full episode, plus other commercial-free bonus episodes, at restaurantguysregulars.buzzsprout.com .
This is a Vintage episode from 2006.
Why This Episode Matters
Stripper Food, Bachelor Parties & Other Bad Ideas | Inside Track
This is a Vintage compilation from 2010.
Why This Episode Matters
The Conversation
Mark Pascal and Francis Schott find the...
Can Local Food Save a Town? | Ben Hewitt
This is a Vintage episode from 2010.
Why This Episode Matters
Hardwick, Vermont became an early test case for whether local food and small agricultural businesses could help revitalize a struggling rural economy.Ben Hewitt challenges the feel-good version of the local food story: What happens when artisanal food creates jobs but remains too expensive for many people in the community?The conversation explores how small farms can compete through distinctive, value-added products rather than commodity agriculture.Mark, Francis and Ben dig into questions that remain central to the food system: affordability, farm viability, subsidies, food access...How Do We Get a New Generation Into Wine? | Tony Margiotta
Why This Episode Matters
Why wine may not be losing younger drinkers so much as failing to introduce itself to them wellHow small, independent producers can offer something industrial wine cannot: place, history and storyWhy wine education works better through tasting, comparison and discovery than scores and intimidationHow restaurants, retailers and wine lovers can make wine more approachable to people just beginning to explore itBanter
Francis returns from the Russian River Valley with a deeper appreciation for Pinot Noir and plenty to say about what he learned. The Guys talk about how tasting wines...
Heirloom Seeds, Local Farms & Better Food | Erica Renaud
This is a Vintage episode from 2006.
Why This Episode Matters
Erica Renaud explains why heirloom, traditional and open-pollinated seeds matter to agricultural biodiversity.Mark and Francis share how they worked directly with local farmers to plan crops, commit to purchases and even shoulder some of the farmer's risk.The conversation connects sustainable agriculture with something more immediate to a restaurant: better-tasting food.From backyard tomatoes to restaurant purchasing, they explore ways consumers, chefs and farmers can build a closer connection to where food comes from.
The Conversation
In 2006, organic farmer and researcher...
Authentic Italian Food vs. the Algorithm | Vincenzo Prosperi
Why This Episode Matters
Italian food isn’t one cuisine. Vincenzo Prosperi explains why Italy’s regional traditions matter—and what gets lost when everything is reduced to pizza, pasta and red sauce.Authenticity and innovation can coexist. The question isn’t whether chefs should create new dishes, but whether classics should be changed beyond recognition and still carry the old name.Social media is changing restaurants. Vincenzo, Mark and Francis dig into influencer culture, food designed for photographs and the pressure on restaurants to pay for attention.Preserving tradition means supporting the people still cooking it. Vincenzo is shift...Non-Alcoholic Pairings at Thomas Keller’s Restaurants | Paul Roberts
This is a Vintage episode from 2006.
Why This Episode Matters
Why guests who are not drinking deserve a beverage experience equal to the food, not simply still or sparkling water.How sommeliers can build non-alcoholic pairings using the same principles as wine: weight, acidity, texture and flavor.Why thoughtful glassware and presentation communicate that every guest matters.How one memorable beverage program can turn the non-drinker into the person who chooses the restaurant for the entire table.The Conversation
Mark Pascal and Francis Schott are joined by Master Sommelier Paul Roberts, then director...
Farm-to-Table Was Only the Beginning | Spike Gjerde
Why This Episode Matters
What local sourcing looked like before restaurants had reliable farm-to-kitchen distribution.Why supporting local agriculture is an economic commitment not merely a menu description.How “farm-to-table” became vulnerable to greenwashing and what genuine sourcing requires.Why whole-animal butchery, preservation and culinary craft are increasingly difficult to sustain under modern restaurant economics.Why “sustainable seafood” may be too simple and how ocean warming, acidification, habitat loss shape the larger story of what reaches the plate.The Banter
Mark Pascal and Francis Schott return from Tales of the Cocktail with lessons in hospitality...and staff...
Can Wine Unlock Creativity? | Michael Gelb
This is a Vintage episode from 2010.
Why This Episode Matters
The Conversation
The Restaurant Guys, Mark Pascal and Francis Schott, welcome author and organizational consultant Michael Gelb to discuss Wine Drinking for Inspired Thinking: Uncork Your Creative Juices.
Michael connects wine and creativity...
The American Beefsteak: Politics and Excess | Sother Teague
Recorded live at the House of Suze during Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans 2026.
Why This Episode Matters
Discover how the American beefsteak became a tool for political organizing in New York and New Jersey.Learn the feast’s essential rules: endless meat, bread as a plate and no concern for remaining clean.Hear how Prohibition and women’s suffrage changed public drinking—and the beefsteak itself.Find out how New Jersey preserved the tradition after it faded elsewhere.The Conversation
Mark Pascal, Francis Schott and Sother Teague take the stage together to exp...
How Prohibition Backfired on America | Daniel Okrent
This is a Vintage episode from 2010.
Why This Episode Matters
How a freedom-loving nation came to outlaw the manufacture, sale and transportation of alcohol through a constitutional amendment.Why women’s suffrage, progressive reformers, wealthy industrialists and economic politics created unexpected alliances on both sides of Prohibition.How Prohibition fueled corruption and organized crime while weakening Americans’ respect for the law.Why speakeasies helped create nightclubs, cocktail parties and social drinking among men and women.The Banter
Mark Pascal and Francis Schott debate a New York Times writer who confronted chef Marc Forgione afte...
Restaurant Trends That Don’t Add Up | Inside Track
Why This Episode Matters
The Guys taste ʻŌkolehao, a nearly lost Hawaiian spirit made from kī root, and explore its unusual history and revival.Why Michelin retired its Green Star—and why judging sustainability is far more complicated than judging what arrives at the table.The economic problem facing bars devoted exclusively to non-alcoholic cocktails.A simple way to uncover better bottles and better values when restaurant wine-list prices are climbing.The Banter
Mark Pascal and Francis Schott welcome two of their favorite guests: each other.
Longtime listener Kelvin sends the Guys bottle numbe...
How Classic Cocktails Were Lost—and Found | Ted Haigh
This is a Vintage episode from 2006.
Why This Episode Matters
How America’s cocktail golden age flourished from the Gilded Age through Prohibition and how it eventually gave way to highballs and vodka.Why pre-Prohibition whiskey was stronger, more aromatic and dramatically different from much of what followed.How cocktail historians reconstruct forgotten drinks using antique bar guides, vintage bottles and nearly vanished ingredients.Why Ted Haigh believes cocktails should engage an adult palate rather than conceal alcohol beneath sweetness.Banter
Mark Pascal and Francis Schott explore the emerging trend of beer cocktails, fr...
Hayman’s Gin: Tradition and Revival | James Hayman
This was recorded on-location at Bar Convent Brooklyn 2026
Why This Episode Matters
The First Great American Hospitality Empire | Stephen Fried
This is a Vintage episode from 2010.
This show was recorded in 2010 and discusses a high fructose corn syrup study in rats. The current human evidence does not support the Princeton rat-study implication that high fructose corn syrup is uniquely more fattening than sucrose, but excess added sugar in our food supply, as well as obesity, are still of concern today.
Why This Episode Matters
Fred Harvey built one of America’s first national hospitality systems, proving that restaurants could scale without abandoning quality, standards, or service.The Harvey organization changed railroad dining from a pun...Hotel Jerome and the Art of Quiet Luxury | Stephane Lacroix
Hotel Jerome general manager Stephane Lacroix shares how Aspen’s historic luxury hotel preserves its soul, builds a culture of service and delivers a guest experience rooted in quiet luxury.
Why This Episode Matters
Why true luxury is more about attention than flashHow historic hotels stay relevant without losing their sense of placeWhat leaders can do to build trust before asking employees to performWhy excellent service depends on communication and recovery, not perfectionBanter
Mark Pascal and Francis Schott begin their Aspen Food & Wine Classic adventure at Hotel Jerome, where they found what they...
Wine, Restaurant Culture and What Makes Great Barbecue | Live from Aspen | Part II
Recorded at the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, Mark Pascal and Francis Schott continue their conversations with three people who know how to make complicated subjects feel immediate: sommelier and wine communicator Amanda McCrossin, Master Sommelier and restaurateur Bobby Stuckey, and chef, author and television host Andrew Zimmern.
Why You Should Listen
Amanda McCrossin
Why wine should feel fun and accessible—not like knowledge you had to inherit.The case for putting ice in wine, trusting your own taste and keeping “wine-tainment” accurate.Bobby Stuckey
Why strong restaurant culture still depends on standa...Regional Food, Restaurant Longevity and the Future of Hospitality | Live from Aspen | Part 1
Recorded live at the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, Mark Pascal and Francis Schott sit down with four influential voices shaping American food and hospitality. Food & Wine Editor in Chief Hunter Lewis and chefs Claudette Zepeda, Cassidee Dabney, and Melissa Perello.
Why You Should Listen
Hunter Lewis
Why the Aspen Classic feels like “adult food and wine summer camp” and still makes even celebrated chefs bring their A game.How live events and genuine human connection offer something algorithms and AI cannot replicate.Claudette Zepeda
How growing up between Tijuana and San Dieg...What Does Ethical Food Really Mean? | Jay Weinstein
This is a Vintage episode from 2006.
Jay Weinstein, author of The Ethical Gourmet, explains how everyday food choices affect farmers, animals, workers, the environment—and what ultimately ends up on the plate.
Why This Episode Matters
Why inexpensive food may carry environmental and taxpayer-funded costs that are hidden from shoppersHow farm subsidies can favor industrial agriculture over smaller farmsWhy ethical production and better flavor often meet at the same farmPractical ways to buy more responsibly without attempting dietary sainthoodThe enduring value of local farms, CSAs, seasonal produce, and preserving food at its peakBa...
Reviving Gage & Tollner and Reinventing Tropical Cocktails | St. John Frizell & Garret Richard
Recorded live before an audience at Sunken Harbor Club in Brooklyn.
Why This Episode Matters
Gage & Tollner’s revival shows how a historic restaurant can be preserved without turning it into a museum. Sunken Harbor Club demonstrates how tropical cocktail history can be reworked through modern technique, research, and strong storytelling. St. John and Garret offer practical insight into crowdfunding, opening during COVID, and building a destination bar above a landmark restaurant. The conversation connects serious non-alcoholic cocktails, classic steakhouse drinks, the Martini, and Charles H. Baker Jr. to the larger evolution of cocktail culture.The Conve...
Vineyard 7 & 8 and Spring Mountain Cabernet | Launny Steffens
This is a Vintage episode from 2005.
The Restaurant Guys welcome Launny Steffens, co-founder of Vineyard 7 & 8 in Napa Valley’s Spring Mountain District, for a conversation about mountain fruit, terroir, and the pursuit of a more food-friendly California Cabernet Sauvignon.
Why This Episode Matters
Launny explains why he chose Spring Mountain for Vineyard 7 & 8 and why elevation, slope, fog, and sun exposure matter in Napa Cabernet.The conversation explores terroir in practical terms: how land, weather, soil, and farming choices show up in the glass.The Guys discuss the tension between powerful “cult Cabernet” styles and wines...The Natural Wine Debate and the Future of Wine | Ray Isle
Ray Isle returns to The Restaurant Guys nearly 20 years after his first appearance to consider where wine is headed and whether the industry has made something pleasurable unnecessarily difficult.
Why This Episode Matters
Natural wine and biodynamic farming overlap in philosophy, but differ sharply in practice.Fifty years after the Judgment of Paris, its impact still reaches far beyond one famous blind tasting.Wine is facing real headwinds, including rising prices, intimidating choice and a growing disconnect from younger drinkers.The future of wine may depend less on prestige and more on accessibility, personal connection and...Market-Driven Brooklyn Dining Before the Hype | Liza Queen | Preview
This is a Vintage episode from 2005.
The Restaurant Guys welcome chef-owner Liza Queen of Queen’s Hideaway, a tiny Greenpoint restaurant where the menu changed with the market, the farmers, the smoker, and whatever was left in the kitchen by the end of the week.
Why This Episode Matters
How to Build a Team That Actually Cares | Preston Lee
Hospitality consultant Preston Lee explains how restaurants can build stronger teams, earn employee trust and create the kind of human connection that keeps guests coming back.
Why This Episode Matters
Why hospitality begins with genuine care, not a memorized scriptWhat younger employees need from restaurant leaders todayHow daily training creates consistency without overwhelming the staffWhy the employee experience directly shapes the guest experienceHow AI may make real human hospitality even more valuableBanter
Mark and Francis take aim at New York City’s new anti-alcohol campaign and its failure to acknowledge the social an...
