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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Marisa Baggett had never seen sushi, never tasted sushi, when a customer asked for it at her Starkville Mississippi café. And that launched her quest to master the age old Japanese culinary tradition, graduating from the California Sushi Academy, and championing creativity that remains true to the fresh and local soul of sushi, such as her southern influenced sushi made with ingredients including pickled okra, catfish, and collard greens. She says anyone can learn to make their own sushi at home, and she’s written the cookbooks to help people make it happen. She’s also writing about Japanese food — sushi and much more — in a Substack column called Dear Sensei at dearsensei.substack.com.
- CULINARY CHARACTERS UNLOCKED - EP 44
OWNER AMY MILLS ON SECRETS BEHIND THE ICONIC BARBECUE RESTAURANT FOUNDED BY HER FATHER, MIKE MILLS, THE FIRST PITMASTER NAMED GRAND CHAMPION THREE TIMES AT THE INTERNATIONALLY RENOWNED MEMPHIS IN MAY BARBECUE COMPETITION. EP44
- CULINARY CHARACTERS UNLOCKED - EP 42
CHEF ALYCIA WAHN MARTINDALE ON MICHELIN RECOGNIZING HER NEW TORONTO RESTAURANT; COOKING CREOLE, CARRIBEAN, AND LATIN AMERICAN FLAVORS NORTH OF THE BORDER; AND WHY SHE’S SCRATCH- MAKING HER OWN BUTTER AND BACON. EP 42
Cara Tobin got her first restaurant job at the age of 17, by lying about her cooking experience in the job interview—she had none at all. In the years that followed she went to culinary school, graduating number one in her class, then worked her way up the cooking ladder at several restaurants before falling in love with Eastern Mediterranean cuisine when she worked at Oleana in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Now she is cooking that cuisine at two restaurants she co-owns in Burlington, Vermont—Honey Road and The Grey Jay. And she and her business partner have been named finalists for the title of America’s Outstanding Restaurateur in the 2025 James Beard awards, which will be announced in June.
Named a Food & Wine Best New Chef for 2024, Karyn Tomlinson has won raves for her restaurant Myriel in St. Paul, Minnesota. Her menu, combining elements of French, Nordic, and Midwestern cuisines has been dubbed “Grandma Chic.” A major advocate of local, seasonal cooking, she sources all her ingredients from local farms, which she visits every week. But she is pragmatic about getting people to eat better, encouraging them to simply do as well as they can (and she herself admits to enjoying a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios after work).
After coming to the United States from Peru in his teens, Diego Sanchez found a sense of belonging in restaurant kitchens. He cooked under some of the world’s greatest chefs before striking out on his own and now owns his own restaurant on the Jersey shore, 39 Degrees North in Manahawkin, NJ—a diner he has reimagined his way, adding items like handmade gnocchi and lomo saltado to the traditional diner menu.
Chef Mary Nguyen grew up in a Vietnamese immigrant household in Denver, went on to work as an investment banker, then decided to make a major career change—into the world of food. She began by working three culinary jobs at once, and becoming one of America’s first female sushi chefs, before opening the first of several restaurants in her hometown, including Olive & Finch, which is now a growing restaurant group. It offers chef-driven, scratch-made food without the fine dining prices.
Michelin star winning chef John Fraser worked for Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Thomas Keller, and in some of the most storied restaurants in France, before opening a restaurant of his own and then continuing to build a culinary empire. He has won Michelin stars at two different restaurants, including the vegetarian Nix in New York city. His restaurants focus on a range of cuisines, including French, Greek and Turkish, and vegetable-focused California style cooking.
Sheila and Duffy Witmer bought the Pioneer Saloon in Ketchum, Idaho nearly half a century ago. And they’ve kept it a jam-packed favorite ever since, with scores of repeat customers including Clint Eastwood, Sandy Koufax, and Ernest Hemingway’s grandchildren. The menu is beef-heavy, featuring steaks and their legendary prime rib. And scraps from preparing the prime rib are the key ingredient in the Jim Spud, a massive twenty-two ounce baked potato stuffed with teriyaki beef, cheese, sour cream, caramelized onions and more.
Chef Katie Button is a James Beard winner for her Asheville, North Carolina Spanish restaurant Cúrate, which is the flagship of her restaurant group. Button discovered her deep love for food when she was living in Paris, studying for a master’s degree in biomedical engineering. The awakening was so profound that she changed careers, worked for two of the world’s greatest chefs, Ferran Adrià and José Andrés, before opening tapas-based Cúrate, then building a culinary empire that includes a Catalonian restaurant, a Spanish market, European tours, a cookbook, and more. She is heavily involved in helping the Asheville community rebuild after massive flooding from Hurricane Helene.
Melissa Reagan and Stephen Gonzalez met at Culinary School in Austin, Texas two decades ago, then followed their own culinary journeys through a variety of restaurants. Today she’s cooking at an upscale restaurant in North Carolina (but by contract she can’t name it) and with supermarkets challenging many restaurants by offering meals cooked on site, he is working for the H-E-B grocery chain, a major player in Texas. Both feel deeply about getting average folks cooking at home. Which is the impetus behind their Food for Thoughtcast podcast. We discussed that and much more about the world of food—now and in the future.
Nok Suntaranon remembers eating like royalty growing up in Thailand, even though her family was poor, thanks to her mother’s skills in the kitchen. And it’s the food of her childhood that she is cooking at her Philadelphia restaurant Kalaya, named for her mom, which she did not open until the age of 50. She had been enjoying life as a housewife but says there’s only so much Pilates, yoga, and lunching a person can do. Just a few years later, she won the 2023 James Beard Award as best chef in the mid-Atlantic. She’s been featured on Top Chef. She’s written a cookbook, Kalaya’s Southern Thai Kitchen. And she contends that Philadelphia is now America’s number one food town.
Named the 2024 James Beard Awards best chef in the mountain region, Matt Vawter began his culinary education going to restaurants with his grandparents and being taken into the kitchen to meet the chef. He got his first cooking job at the age of fourteen and worked his way up to big success in his hometown. Born in the Breckenridge, Colorado area, Vawter began culinary school while still in high school, cut his teeth in Denver working for celebrated chef Alex Seidel, then came back to Breckenridge to open Rootstalk, featuring local and impeccably sourced ingredients. It was a big hit and soon thereafter he opened Radicato, his Colorado take on Italian.
Victoria Shore grew up in an adventurous culinary family (few American kids fall in love with Basque food but she did) and ended up cooking professionally because she could not get the job she wanted, culinary journalist, without kitchen experience. She’s always loved to cook—she was the kid making French fries in her dorm room—and has now worked her way up from positions in catering and restaurants to become the Executive Chef of all the restaurants at the Thompson Savannah Hotel in Savannah, Georgia. She discusses, among other things, the unique challenges of a hotel restaurant competing with celebrated fine dining establishments in a food forward town.
