Culinary Characters Unlocked

David Page is a long-time journalist who reinvented food television when he created Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. He is also an author, having written the award-winning book Food Americana.
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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.
  • CULINARY CHARACTERS UNLOCKED - EP 70

Chef Amy Mehrtens on cooking at a New Orleans legend, then moving on to run a NOLA kitchen of her own and getting creative with that city’s classics. - EP 70

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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.
  • CULINARY CHARACTERS UNLOCKED - EP 69

Cleveland Chef Vinnie Cimino On Being Named A Food And Wine 2025 Best New Chef For Re-Inventing Midwestern Cuisine. - EP 69

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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.
  • CULINARY CHARACTERS UNLOCKED - EP 68

Chef Diane Moua on her restaurant being named 2025 Food and Wine restaurant of the year, featuring a cuisine most Americans have never heard of Hmong cooking. - EP 68

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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.

  • CULINARY CHARACTERS UNLOCKED - EP 67

Chef Kyle Knall on training under legends in the south and New York, then opening his own restaurant and helping turn a spotlight on an unexpectedly hot dining city. - EP 67

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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.
  • CULINARY CHARACTERS UNLOCKED - EP 66

Baker Kelly Jacques on being named a 2025 Food and Wine Best New Chef, and on her unique baked takes on New Orleans favorites. - EP 66

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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.
  • CULINARY CHARACTERS UNLOCKED - EP 65

Le Cirque and Spotted Pig alum, Chef Casey Wall on opening a hot new French/Texan hybrid in Austin after fifteen years as a successful restaurateur in Australia. - EP 65

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Off the beaten path: the chef behind a Colorado restaurant you have to ski or snowshoe to get to and the owners of a James Beard Award winning family favorite in Alaska.
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.

  • CULINARY CHARACTERS UNLOCKED - EP 64

A double helping of great restaurants off the beaten path.

Off the beaten path: the chef behind a Colorado restaurant you have to ski or snowshoe to get to and the owners of a James Beard Award winning family favorite in Alaska. - EP 64

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Born in southern India, a region rarely represented on Indian restaurant menus in the U.S., Chef Kumar was raised in rural poverty. His culinary aspirations surfaced early and he attended culinary school in India then worked on cruise ships and 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.
  • CULINARY CHARACTERS UNLOCKED - EP 63

2025 James Beard Best Chef in NY state on bringing a little known southern Indian cuisine to his Michelin-starred restaurant the New York Times ranked #1 in NY - EP 63

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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.

  • CULINARY CHARACTERS UNLOCKED - EP 62

Chef Kelly Franz on the challenge of coming home to a legendary Charleston restaurant to take it into the future without discarding its storied past - EP 62

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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 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. Along the way 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.
  • CULINARY CHARACTERS UNLOCKED - EP 61

RESTAURATEUR AND MASTER SOMMELIER BOBBY STUCKEY OF THE 2025 JAMES BEARD AWARDS OUTSTANDING RESTAURANT ON FEATURING FOOD FROM AN ITALIAN REGION FEW PEOPLE HAVE EVER HEARD OF. t - EP 61

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