What happens when your passion meets purpose? Saba is what happens. Saba is Chef Alon Shaya’s flagship restaurant, which was his answer to that question and is the result of his passion for cooking helping him to find his purpose and his voice in food. After spending nearly an entire lifetime suppressing his heritage so that he could feel more acclimated to the American life that his family immigrated to, he discovered his roots in Israel and began cooking with his heart rather than his head. In this episode, Eli and Alon speak very frankly about the importance of creating a story, narrative, or purpose for your food and how it can be incredibly impactful for your guests.

James Beard award winning chef, Jeremiah Langhorne, sits down with Eli to talk about his improbable rise to one of the Mid Atlantic’s best chefs and why his work ethic, determination, and resilience are the keys to the success he has had at The Dabney and now at his newest restaurant, Petite Cerise in DC.

Chef Jeremiah only had one goal in life, and that was to be a professional skateboarder, but it was when he saw some cooks at a local pizza shop, where he was delivering pizzas, putting food into a pan while testing out a special, that he realized that real cooking was more than just reading a recipe out of a book, and it was at that moment that he realized this is something worth pursuing.

What has luck got to do with it? Well, the short answer is absolutely nothing, and when Chef John Shields and his wife, Karen, took a leap of faith and moved to a little-known town in rural Virginia, they had no idea how life-changing that decision would be. It was after a New York Times writer stumbled upon their groundbreaking cooking at the little country inn named Town House in Chilhowie, Virginia, where they were really developing their style of cooking, that their careers really took off. But, as chef Eli says in the podcast, luck is nothing more than being fully prepared when the opportunity comes your way.

What has luck got to do with it? Well, the short answer is absolutely nothing, and when Chef John Shields and his wife, Karen, took a leap of faith and moved to a little-known town in rural Virginia, they had no idea how life-changing that decision would be. It was after a New York Times writer stumbled upon their groundbreaking cooking at the little country inn named Town House in Chilhowie, Virginia, where they were really developing their style of cooking, that their careers really took off. But, as chef Eli says in the podcast, luck is nothing more than being fully prepared when the opportunity comes your way.

And after years of addiction, he was able to transcend his addiction and become a shining example of what it means to be truly resilient. Now, sober and focused, Eric is producing some of the most exciting food out there, and we are very excited to showcase him and his story on the CHEF Radio Podcast.

After nearly giving up and becoming a flight attendant, she realized that she was meant to cook and that she could only see herself being happy as a chef. Do what makes you happy, and everything else will fall into place.

As someone who was interested in food from multiple angles at a very young age and who created a reverse flow chart to find out exactly what was the best career choice for them, food celebrity and host of many different popular shows, Adam Richman, is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to all things food. I could tell immediately that this is a man obsessed with, not just food, but the stories of the food and the intrepid souls who created these ingenious flavors, techniques, and methods that shaped the way we eat today.

For today’s guest, chef Eddie Konrad of Messina Club in Philadelphia, cooking was not something that was a real focus in his family, and just like the majority of the world, big extravagant meals were saved for the holidays, thus making them that much more special. In between the holidays, dinner was more for sustenance than experience, and with everybody living their busy lives, dinner was mostly made up of whatever was readily available, affordable, and simple.

Whenever a cook asks me for my advice when they are starting out, I always tell them to find the best chef they can and then just put your head down and work hard for them. This strategy is nearly bulletproof and will almost always pay dividends down the road, even if you don't think so right away.

And that's exactly how chef Katie Button, of Asheville, North Carolina, did it when she got her first job working at Café Atlantico in Washington, DC, when José Andrés was early in building his empire of restaurants. After meeting her Spanish-born husband, Félix Meana, she went to Roses, Spain, to work at the all-time great restaurant, El Bulli, where she started off as a server but naturally migrated into the kitchen to work with Albert Adrià. By seeking out excellence and working in these world-class restaurants, she developed many of the necessary skills to run a successful kitchen when she was ready.

For this episode we head out to the Rocky Mountains, where chef Caroline Glover of Annette restaurant in Aurora, Colorado, joins us to talk about her journey, which started as an improbable cook and has culminated in a 2022 James Beard Award for Best Chef.

If you want to be a great chef someday, you are going to have to put in the time. Period. It’s simply a tough job, and Evan sums it up perfectly. He can pay you $120,000 a year to be a line cook, but it is still going to be hard; you’re going to have to work more than you want to, you’ll still get burned, and you’ll still have a long list. It’s just a hard job. It doesn’t matter if you’re working at the local diner or at the three Michelin starred restaurant; there are a lot of similar tasks that still have to get done every day no matter what restaurant you work at in order for it to be successful.

Evan and his wife Sarah are both New York City-trained chefs who left over a decade ago and landed in San Francisco, where they put down roots and opened Rich Table and RT Rotisserie, which are both perfect expressions of their passion for fresh, quality, and seasonal products.

Often the words resilience, hard work, and creativity are used to describe the key skill sets required to be successful in this industry. But, there's one more really important skill set that can be easily overlooked, and that would be resourcefulness. Resourcefulness is defined as "Having the ability to find quick and clever ways to overcome difficulties". In fact, arguably the most resourceful person in the history of our planet is someone whose name has become an adjective when you need a quick fix just to get you through a challenging moment. Do you know what that word would be? How about MacGyver-ing it?

How many times have you had to use this skill when it comes to fixing a problem in your kitchen? As chefs, putting out fires is our specialty, and if it weren’t for this extremely important skill set, we would be overcome with stress and anxiety over challenges that can be overcome with a little bit of cleverness and resourcefulness.

In today’s episode with Chef Kiki Aranita, we discuss this at length, as well as a bunch of other great attributes when it comes to being successful in this industry. Or, like Kiki, finding ways to succeed personally, financially, and even emotionally when your dream restaurant is forced to close during Covid.

Topics discussed in this episode:

Growing up between Hawaii and Hong Kong

A brief history of the difficult history of Hong Kong

Hawaiian is an ethnicity

How Poi shaped Hawaii as we know it today

How Rice replaced Poi as the staple starch in Hawaii

What exactly a Poi Dog is

How chefs from ”ethnic” backgrounds are cooking with their heritage as the focus

How SPAM became one of Hawaii’s most beloved proteins

The importance of knowing how your food got to your table

The adventures of Kiki learning how to drive

Why you need to respect pineapple when you eat it

Kiki’s pet river crabs Tomato, Tomato (in British pronunciation) and Basil

Kiki’s experience having a very popular food truck

How Filipinos embraced her Hawaiian cooking in Philadelphia

How cooking is considered work for the lower class in Hong Kong

Having to keep her profession under wraps to not disappoint her family

The challenges with educating customers about her food

Eli’s mind gets blown after learning about butter mochi

How Kiki became so resourceful

Why is interviewing people so difficult?

Kiki’s hesitancy to put the “Chef” label on herself

Kiki’s advocacy for chefs when it comes to charity events and asks

Kiki’s diversification of her skill set

Her line of Hawaiian sauces that she now sells nationwide

Chili Peppah Water and Guava Katsu sauces

Working with distributors to sell her condiments

Huli Huli Chicken

Traveling opens up our eyes to other cultures and new cuisines, allowing us to experience the world through a different lens and appreciate what it has to offer. Especially for chefs, learning the history of food and tasting local products can change how we view food.

Today’s guest spent years living and working in Bergamo, Italy, which fed his love for Italian cuisine and changed the trajectory of his career. Jeff Michaud, owner of restaurant Osteria in Philadelphia, sits down with host Eli Kulp and chats about his travels and career working with some of the best chefs in the business.

Now, Jeff shares his love for Italy and its food through La Via Gaia, a luxury tour company he started with his wife, Claudia, who he met in Italy. They’re bringing people to special places they couldn’t otherwise find on their own. Think cooking classes in someone’s kitchen on the side of a mountain or deep underground in a private wine cellar! And for those who can’t afford a tour, but want to taste the true flavors, Osteria offers simple but soulful Italian food, as well as pasta and pizza cooking classes.

Tune in to hear how Jeff crafted an amazing life around his passion for food, and where you can have those same invigorating experiences!

Topics discussed in this episode:

How Jeff’s experience working in Italy changed his career path

Bergamo, Italy, polenta, corn and Italy’s superior produce

What Jeff learned working and living in Italy for years

Jeff on his childhood and entering the culinary world

Working at the Caribou Club

Moving to Philadelphia and joining Vetri Cucina

Opening Osteria in 2007 and growing business

Keys to sustaining a restaurant for so many years

Osteria’s process for making cacio e pepe

Do chefs need to visit Europe to learn the food and culture?

Making the perfect panettone

Dishes that will always stay on Osteria’s menu

Jeff and his wife’s culinary tour company, La Via Gaia

Touring Slovenia and tasting the best white wine in the world

Once an award-winning chef at Ubuntu making acclaimed vegetable-focused food, Chef Jeremy Fox was struggling to deal with his anxiety and imposter syndrome. He spent years stuck in the persona he felt he was expected to be, building a bad reputation along the way.

Today, Jeremy joins host Eli Kulp to discuss his past and lessons learned, career highlights, and more importantly, his future. He recalls those early career days, and how his family and education as a chef inspired his food.

Jeremy and Eli talk about their struggles with anxiety, and how a new generation of chefs is changing how some chefs educate in the kitchen. He’s currently the chef and co-owner of Birdie G’s, a Santa Monica restaurant named after and inspired by his daughter and grandmother, where he’s leading with his newfound perspective on guiding young chefs.

If you’re going to take in anything from this episode (besides the best eats in Philly and LA!), we hope it’s that perseverance is all you need to change your life. Even if you burn all your bridges and hit rock bottom, like Jeremy, it is possible to start over and succeed.

Tune in to hear about Chef Jeremy Fox’s journey from living an unhealthy life of a stressed out “food celebrity” to doing what he always dreamt of doing — running a humble restaurant that people and families just love to eat!

“Often restaurants are comprised of a bunch of broken toys that have never had the sense of belonging”

This statement rings true for many restaurants which is why culture plays a big role in whether a restaurant succeeds or fails, and unfortunately the current kitchen culture is a bit broken.

From line cooks at the local diner, to Michelin star restaurants in France, the broken kitchen culture permeates through all. It seems that the nature of the business (see above statement), including the long hours and high pressure environment, is a cocktail for unprofessional behavior that doesn’t allow for the people or the business to reach their highest potential.

Curating a purpose-driven environment in your kitchen can be the difference between a good and great restaurant. If the staff feels valued and heard there is a high chance you can exponentially reduce turnover rates and make a difference in the lives of the people helping run your business. But how do you fix a broken culture and change an entire industry from the inside out?

In today’s episode, our host Eli Kulp, sheds light on his experience in dealing with the current broken kitchen culture and how he has made steps to improve that. He also discusses New York bestselling book The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle, extracting valuable tips to share with our listeners to help create a better kitchen culture and improve your restaurant business while doing it.

Listen in for nuggets of knowledge that can help you in your business, personal relationships, and in your day-to-day interactions.

After sustaining a major life-altering injury, Christopher Kearse, now chef and owner of Forsythia restaurant in Philadelphia, pushed through the odds and graduated college as the valedictorian, while still recovering from his injury, and then pushed himself to work at some of the best kitchens in the country. Not only did he work with some of the best chefs and restaurants, he ended up opening his own restaurant, despite having the odds stacked against him.

All too often, it's the loud, brash, and cocky chefs that snatch the headlines while the truly dedicated, food-obsessed chefs toil away in their kitchens cooking their asses off and calculating every move. In a restaurant world dominated by big egos, Chef Eli Collins of a.kitchen quietly lets his food speak for itself.

Eli is what you might call a chef's chef, which means that the admiration and respect he garners from his peers within the industry sometimes outweighs the attention he receives from high-profile food publications.

As you’ll discover in today’s episode, Eli’s humble, soft-spoken demeanor is matched only by his fiercely loyal dedication to the craft of cooking. Under his leadership, a.kitchen in the bustling heart of Philadelphia, has become a must-visit culinary destination in the city and is considered one of the country’s top restaurants (if their laundry list of awards is anything to go by!)

Tuning in, you’ll gain some deeper insight into how Chef Eli thinks, how he goes about balancing his family life with his passion, and how he stays relevant—whether that relevance is among his peers or according to Philadelphia Magazine, which named him a Best of Philly Chef in August of 2022.

For all this and more, including Chef Eli’s advice for young chefs taking the next step in their careers, you won't want to miss this episode of The Chef Radio Podcast!

After sustaining a major life-altering injury, Christopher Kearse, now chef and owner of Forsythia restaurant in Philadelphia, pushed through the odds and graduated college as the valedictorian, while still recovering from his injury, and then pushed himself to work at some of the best kitchens in the country. Not only did he work with some of the best chefs and restaurants, he ended up opening his own restaurant, despite having the odds stacked against him.

Injuries aside, Chris’s journey to becoming a restaurateur is inspirational. Chris grew up in a family with eight children, battled mental health, and learned how to cook delicious dishes without the ability to smell and taste the full spectrum of flavors. Despite all of this, Chris has made a name for himself by pushing the boundaries of his dishes and creating beautiful, stylized dishes that do not skimp on taste.

As a chef and restaurant owner, Chris has created a culture within his restaurants that has allowed for their success. By hiring the right people, having an environment of excellence, and being a personable leader, Chris has cultivated an environment conducive to success.

Tune in to hear this improbable story of resilience and passion that led Chef Christopher Kearse to success despite the odds!

Topics discussed in this episode:

What has been motivating Chris lately

How Chris is building a community around his restaurant

Creating a great culture in fine dining

Walk through Chris’ career

Top rules in Chris’ kitchen for a newbie

The importance of cleanliness and organization in the kitchen

How Chris grew up

What inspired Chris to start cooking

How Chris keeps his ADHD in check

How Chris decided to open a restaurant

Cultivating culture as a chef and an owner

The building blocks of the kitchen

Story behind the name Forsythia

Chris’ interest in helping others

If you’re in the Philly area, check out Forsythia restaurant!

Would you believe me if I told you anchovies fell from the sky in San Francisco?

Well, that is literally what has happened there, and it couldn’t have been a better omen for our one of our guest's restaurants, The Anchovy Bar.

Chef Stuart Brioza was named one of the Best New chefs by Food & Wine magazine in 2003, and is also the founder, partner, and chef of State Bird Provisions, The Progress, and The Anchovy Bar, all of which are in San Francisco. Not to mention a self-appointed chief of the janitorial department according to his Instagram page.

This intuitive and innovative chef took a chance on a unique and eclectic concept in a new neighborhood to provide locally sourced food presented in a way the local community hadn’t seen before. In a small plate, tapa style, but served on dim sum carts rolling around the dining room at SBP. He took a chance and was able to be wildly successful, which has put him in a position where most chefs and restaurateurs wish to be.

Stuart knows exactly where his food is sourced from and uses only the freshest ingredients to create his dishes, allowing them to come to life on their own. A chef’s dream!

Tune in to hear a timely discussion on climate change and how its affecting agriculture as well as the diverse culture in San Francisco, which allows for concept restaurants like Stuart’s to thrive.

Topics discussed in this episode:

Why there were anchovies in people’s backyards in San Francisco

The expanded seasons are due to microclimates in the bay area

What were some takeaways from Stuart’s trip to Copenhagen

Discussion on food tech disruptors

Where Stuart’s love for food came from

Stuart’s early years as a chef

How State Bird Provision changed its surrounding neighborhood

The success of the risk of the eclectic menu at State Bird Provision

What local california cuisine means to Stuart

How many years did it take for State Bird to progress?

How was the name State Bird Provisions chosen?

What could The Progress do that State Bird Provision couldn't?

How Stuart was able to get creative with anchovies

The set up of the kitchens of all his restaurants

Listen to more episodes at The Chef Radio Podcast.

Also, be sure to check out our other podcast Delicious City Philly.

True passion for cooking cannot be faked. It takes something special to withstand the grueling work and hours while perfecting the craft. The restaurant industry isn’t kind to all, but those built for it, last. It takes a love that will take you around the world tasting everything, talking to chefs and locals, learning the land where the food is grown, tasting, experiencing, and everything in between. Knowing this, the fact that someone can rise out of the ranks and have their hands in 15 different restaurants, create exceptional food and drink at all of them, while winning prestigious awards seems like a dream doesn’t it?

Our guest today has done just this! He is one of the most influential chefs of his generation and has shaped the way we cook today. Working in some of the best kitchens in New York City, France, and Italy, Andrew Carmellini joins us to give us an inside look into his genius.

He has a unique and real perspective on the industry, and you would never know he has partnered with big names like Jay-Z and Robert DeNiro given his down to earth nature. By traveling the world and experiencing all different types of cuisines and tastes, he went through his own type of schooling all driven by his passion for food.

Tune in for a conversation that can inspire and educate current and aspiring chefs by getting a closer look into Chef Carmellini’s journey from line cook to one of the most renowned chefs in the world. You don’t want to miss this one!

Topics discussed in this episode:

How Andrew became a chef

Is culinary school worth it?

Difference in Italian cuisine then and now

Andrew’s biggest cooking style focus right now

The restaurant business post covid

Which restaurants and chefs shaped Andrew

How cooking knowledge is passed down

How to understand the depth of food from a region

Who inspired Andrew to go to Europe and learn to cook

Is it as important today to go somewhere to gain cooking knowledge

Andrew’s journey through opening his restaurants

How Andrew’s partnership with Robert DeNiro came to be

What Andrew wishes doesn’t get lost in the industry

Challenges of growth

Hello everyone! Here's a little bonus episode for you as Eli sits down with one of the region's best barbecue chefs to get a sneak peek at what he's cooking up for his upcoming guest chef appearance for Delicious City's Philly Grown Food & Music series that is happening every Tuesday this summer at Liberty Point.

Chef Chad is guest cheffing at, what is now, the inaugural event, and you're going to want to listen in on this mini episode to get all the juicy details about what this super talented chef is planning to serve on Tuesday, July 19th.

Picnic chicken, fresh Jersey tomato salad, Memphis style coleslaw, and a blueberry dessert to die for, which will go perfectly with some homegrown music under the stars!t.