Adrienne Cheatham: From Top Chef to Top Food Podcaster

Adrienne Cheatham: From Top Chef to Top Food Podcaster

Some people spend their entire careers supporting others before they finally step into the light themselves. Adrienne Cheatham spent eight years at Le Bernardin, years supporting Marcus Samuelsson at Red Rooster and Street Bird, and a lifetime believing she was meant to be the operational person behind the scenes. And then a call to Top Chef and a family gumbo challenge changed everything. Adrienne Cheatham is a Michelin-starred chef, James Beard Media Award nominated cookbook author, Food Network personality, and co-host of The Chef's Cut podcast alongside Top Chef co-finalist Joe Flamm. And now she is launching something brand new: Eating History, a deep-dive food history podcast she is co-hosting with her husband Stephen Bailey, with its first season dedicated entirely to the origins and history of pizza. In this episode, host Sarah Perkins sits down with Adrienne for one of the most layered and beautiful conversations The Perfect Bite has had yet. From a childhood of chaotic, massive family gatherings with a mom from a family of twelve and a dad from a family of fourteen, to cooking Christmas cookies in batches for a solid week because they were too broke for gifts, to faxing her resume to Charlie Trotter's kitchen and ending up at Le Bernardin instead, to finally finding her voice through her family's Southern food heritage on Top Chef and pouring all of it into her cookbook Sunday Best. This is a conversation about what happens when someone who spent their whole career making other people shine finally gives themselves permission to be the person out front. And about what a marinara pizza and a husband who nerds out about history on his morning walks can do to change the entire direction of your life. In this episode, we cover: * Growing up in a big, chaotic Chicago family where food was always a massive, joyful production * Her mom's famous "restaurant night" where leftovers became a candlelit dining experience * Why her parents refused to let her go straight to culinary school and what journalism and business classes taught her instead * Getting her internship at Le Bernardin by faxing, mailing, and physically showing up with her resume for three weeks * Eight years at Le Bernardin, becoming exec sous chef, and copy editing Eric Ripert's cookbook  * Why she stayed past the one-year anniversary that most cooks treated as their exit date * Leaving Le Bernardin after a toxic kitchen situation and being recruited by Marcus Samuelsson * Being pushed out front by Marcus before she was ready: The New York Times documentary, meeting Gail Simmons, the De Gustibus demo * Top Chef: Going in without watching the show and not knowing who she was as a chef yet * The gumbo challenge that changed everything: Winning with her mom's recipe and discovering the Sunday Best concept * The real story of Southern fried chicken and why it was only made a few times a year * Sunday Best: Writing the cookbook to honor her family's history, her grandfather, her mom, her mixed heritage * The James Beard Media Award nomination and what it meant to have her family's stories recognized * The Chef's Cut podcast: Why Joe Flamm was always the obvious co-host choice * Eating History: Co-founding a podcast production company with her husband Stephen and deep diving into the history of pizza * Barbecue Brawl on Food Network: Her first long-term show * What it felt like to realize she is now actually a founder * Advice for founders: Perfect is the enemy of progress, just get started  Find Adrienne: * Instagram: @chefadriennecheatham, @chefscutpod, @eatinghistorypod * The Chef's Cut: Available on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube * Eating History: Available on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube * Sunday Best cookbook: Available wherever books are sold * Barbecue Brawl: Airing on Food Network now Subscribe to The Perfect Bite podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen! Want to watch the entire episode? Head here [https://www.youtube.com/@perfectbitepod] to our YouTube! You can follow us on social media @perfectbitepod [https://www.instagram.com/perfectbitepod/] and sign up for our newsletter [https://the-perfect-bite.beehiiv.com/]!

From Broken Back to MasterChef: The Chef Out West Story

He broke his back snowboarding, got stuck on his couch, and found the Food Network. Thirteen minutes after submitting his MasterChef application, a producer called him. And he never slowed down from there.   Josh Gale is the founder and private chef behind The Chef Out West, a Canadian food creator and MasterChef and Beat Bobby Flay veteran whose bold, unapologetic, in-your-face food philosophy has taken the internet by storm. After years of corporate tech sales, a decade running restaurants in Vancouver, and a string of celebrity private cheffing gigs, Josh committed fully to content creation at the start of 2025, posting six pieces of content a week for three months. Two months in, a high-protein pistachio ice cream video went to a million views overnight. Everything changed. In this episode, host Sarah Perkins sits down with Josh for a conversation that is as bold and energetic as his food. From buttered noodles and Shake 'N Bake in a non-food family to obsessing over Jamie Oliver's 30 Minute Meals on his couch, to accidentally building a 100,000 person Facebook following he didn't even know existed, to partnering with his life partner Mackenzie to run one of the most exciting creator businesses in the food space right now. Josh is building a business that lets him play hockey twice a week, go camping on summer weekends, and never miss a birthday again. And his food is an exercise in maximalism the whole way through. In this episode, we cover: * Growing up in a non-food family and not discovering food until his 20s * Six years in corporate tech sales and the square peg, round hole feeling * Breaking his back snowboarding and finding the Food Network on his couch * Obsessing over Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsay, and Bobby Flay during recovery * Cooking every day, feeding his friends, and building an early Instagram following * Getting called 13 minutes after submitting his MasterChef application * Quitting his job before he even went on the show * MasterChef as a kid in a candy store moment and total confirmation * The origin of The Chef Out West name * Beat Bobby Flay and the lobster-stuffed ravioli with crispy capers that judge Christian Petroni called an exercise in maximalism * A decade running restaurants in Vancouver from cook to head chef * Private cheffing for celebrities and saying yes to everyone except himself * Why saying yes to every client in 2024 felt exactly like being back in a restaurant * Committing to content creation at the start of 2025 with a three-month deadline * The high-protein pistachio ice cream video that went to a million views overnight * Korean marinated eggs on rice and the momentum that built from there * The three revenue streams powering The Chef Out West: brand deals, Facebook and YouTube view monetization, and website ad revenue * Accidentally discovering 100,000 Facebook followers and the passive income that followed * Mackenzie and the creative-technical partnership that makes everything work * The digital cookbook planned for end of 2025 and the print cookbook to follow * Doing only one or two things at a time really well as a key operating standard * Building a business around a life, not a life around a business * Advice for founders: start the thing, film the content, make today day one Find Josh and The Chef Out West: * Website: thechefoutwest.com (burger blueprint, recipes, stories) * Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok: @thechefoutwest * Crispy Edges: their insider community Subscribe to The Perfect Bite podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen! Want to watch the entire episode? Head here [https://www.youtube.com/@perfectbitepod] to our YouTube! You can follow us on social media @perfectbitepod [https://www.instagram.com/perfectbitepod/] and sign up for our newsletter [https://the-perfect-bite.beehiiv.com/]!

Vinnie Cimino on Building Cleveland's Best Restaurants

If you have been sleeping on Cleveland, Chef Vinnie Cimino is here to wake you up. Vinnie is the co-founder of Cordelia, one of Cleveland's most beloved restaurants, and the brand new ROSY, a wood-fired neighborhood spot that opened just seven weeks before this conversation. He is also a three-time James Beard Award nominee, a community anchor through the Cleveland Family Meal Project and Food Conscious, and one of the warmest, most thoughtful voices in the Midwest food scene today. In this episode, host Sarah Perkins sits down with Vinnie for a conversation that covers the full arc of a remarkable career. From a childhood surrounded by big Italian-Slovenian family gatherings and his grandmother's restaurant in Kent, Ohio, to working at Greenhouse Tavern under Jonathon Sawyer, to pop-ups and vagabond cooking during COVID, to answering a mysterious Indeed ad posted by his future co-founder Andrew Watts that simply said he wanted to open the next great Cleveland restaurant. Cordelia, now approaching its fourth year, is exactly what it sounds like: a warm hug. Grandma's dining room meets James Beard-level cooking, with family photos on the walls, vintage 1950s silverware, and a seasonal menu built entirely around what local farm partners bring through the back door. ROSY is Cordelia's sibling, but generationally different: old world techniques, live fire cooking, and an Adriatic and Balkan-inspired menu in a 50-seat neighborhood space where 80% of guests just walk in off the street. And running underneath all of it is Vinnie's guiding philosophy: hospitality starts inward. Take care of your team and they will take care of your guests. It sounds simple. In practice, it looks like buying James Beard Awards tickets for almost 50 members of his staff, rolling out PTO for part-time employees, and his team eating cake together the day his nomination was announced while he was away cooking a benefit dinner across the country. In this episode, we cover: * Growing up in a big Italian-Slovenian family with a grandmother who ran her own restaurant in Kent, Ohio * His first mid-rare steak in college and the moment food really clicked for him * Getting pulled into a kitchen at Russo's in Peninsula, Ohio and never really leaving * Taking a $30,000 pay cut with a one-year-old and a new house to pursue cooking for real * Working his way up to CDC at Greenhouse Tavern within 10 months of joining * Pop-ups, cooking in people's homes, and vagabond cooking during COVID * Reconnecting with Andrew Watts through an Indeed ad looking for a chef co-founder * Opening Cordelia: the inspiration, the vintage silverware, the family photos on the walls * A seasonal menu built around what the farms bring in, not the other way around * Why Cordelia's menu changes frequently while 40% stays as beloved staples * Partnering with 23 to 25 local farms including The Chef's Garden and a mushroom farm in Detroit * The "everyone's got the chef's table" feeling at ROSY * ROSY's Adriatic and Balkan-inspired wood-fired menu and the 50-inch wood-fired grill * Three James Beard nominations and what it means to the whole team * Shutting both restaurants down for Beard weekend so almost 50 staff can go to Chicago * Cleveland Family Meal Project during COVID and how it has evolved into Food Conscious * A senior living facility in North Ridgeville centered around healthy food and cooking * Rolling out PTO for all staff, including part-time, because hospitality starts inward * What he is most proud of: watching young cooks become sous chefs * His advice for founders: the hardest part is starting, so just start at square one Find Vinnie and his restaurants: * Cordelia: 2058 East 4th Street, Cleveland | @cordeliacle * ROSY: 2912 Church Avenue, Hingetown, Cleveland | @rosy.restaurant * Vinnie on Instagram: @chefvinniecimino Subscribe to The Perfect Bite podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen! Want to watch the entire episode? Head here [https://www.youtube.com/@perfectbitepod] to our YouTube! You can follow us on social media @perfectbitepod [https://www.instagram.com/perfectbitepod/] and sign up for our newsletter [https://the-perfect-bite.beehiiv.com/]!

Diaspora Spice Co.: Spices, Farmers and a New Cookbook

Some brands set out to sell a product. Diaspora Spice Co. set out to change a supply chain, honor a culture, and bring the most potent, story-rich spices in the world into home kitchens across America. Nine years in, they are doing all three. Sana Javeri Kadri is the CEO and founder of Diaspora Spice Co., a regenerative spice company built on a singular mission: put money, equity, and power into the best spice farms across South Asia and bring wildly delicious, hella potent flavors to your everyday cooking. Asha Loupy is Diaspora Spice Co.'s recipe editor and co-author, the woman behind some of the brand's most beloved and obsessively cooked recipes, including the strawberry cardamom bars that reliably spike website traffic every spring. In this episode, host Sarah Perkins sits down with both Sana and Asha for a conversation that covers the full arc: from a 23-year-old Sana buying a 350-kilogram turmeric harvest with her first ever tax refund and storing it in a co-op basement in Oakland, to selling out in four days and waking up to 700 orders after a New York Magazine gift guide mention, to building a company that now works with 100+ regenerative farm partners across South Asia and pays 3.9x above commodity price. And now, a cookbook that took five years, three months of travel across 10 Indian states and Sri Lanka, 14 languages, and one very memorable pumpkin chutney discovered in a kitchen in Kashmir as the cameras were packing up. Asha's origin story is equally delightful: she cold-walked her resume into Market Hall Foods after college, worked her way to the cheese department because that's where all the cool people were, and eventually slid into Sana's DMs with a photo of perfectly pleated cumin lamb dumplings with a turmeric wrapper that changed both of their lives. This episode is one of the most joyful, warm, and genuinely inspiring conversations The Perfect Bite has ever had. Two Bay Area women who love good food, care deeply about the people who grow it, and have spent nearly a decade proving that spice can be a vehicle for justice, storytelling, and extraordinary flavor. In this episode, we cover: * Growing up with food: Sana eating all the graduation snacks at preschool, and Asha dictating recipes to her mom at age four * Sana's time at high school in Italy and working on a vineyard and olive grove at 15 * Asha cold-walking into Market Hall Foods and gravitating to the cheese department * The turmeric latte trend that sparked Sana's curiosity about who was actually growing the turmeric * Buying a 350kg turmeric harvest with a $3K tax refund and storing it in a co-op basement * Selling out in four days and waking up to 700 orders after Julia Turshen's New York Magazine mention * Building trust with farm partners by paying quadruple the commodity price on time * How Asha slid into Sana's DMs with perfectly pleated dumplings and changed the trajectory of the brand * Three months traveling across India and Sri Lanka for the cookbook * The pumpkin chutney discovered at the last possible moment in a kitchen in Kashmir * Why they brought in regional cookware for every studio shoot (Kerala clay pots, Manipuri black pottery, Kashmiri copper) * The strawberry cardamom bars that spike website traffic every spring * Busting myths about South Asian cooking: you can make most recipes in the cookbook with six spices * An exclusive tease: Diaspora Spice Co. is opening a store (location and timing TBD) * The Padma Lakshmi collaboration returning later this year * Asha's solo cookbook "Dinner Season" coming June 2027! * Advice for founders: just start and get a good therapist Find Diaspora Spice Co.: * Website: diasporaco.com * Instagram and TikTok: @diasporaco * Available in about 900 independent stores across the U.S, including Whole Foods California * The Diaspora Spice Co. Cookbook: available wherever books are sold Subscribe to The Perfect Bite podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen! Want to watch the entire episode? Head here [https://www.youtube.com/@perfectbitepod] to our YouTube! You can follow us on social media @perfectbitepod [https://www.instagram.com/perfectbitepod/] and sign up for our newsletter [https://the-perfect-bite.beehiiv.com/]!

Caper is Reinventing Food Media | Max Tcheyan

What if food media got the Puck treatment? That's the question Max Tcheyan asked and Caper is the answer. Max is the CEO and co-founder of Caper, a new food and hospitality media company built on the premise that the food world deserves the kind of serious, insider, character-driven storytelling that business gets from Puck, that sports got from The Athletic, and that Hollywood gets from Vanity Fair. The characters are there. The stories are there. The journalism just hasn't caught up yet. Max knows how to build this. He was one of the earliest employees at Bleacher Report, grew The Athletic from startup to New York Times acquisition, and co-founded Puck, the subscription media company covering Hollywood, fashion, politics, and business with a talent-led model that changed how premium media gets built. Now he's applying everything he learned to the world he loves most: food, restaurants, and hospitality. In this episode, host Sarah Perkins sits down with Max for a conversation about what Caper is, why it needed to exist, and how he's building it. The founding team is a genuine Avengers assembly: journalists from The New Yorker, the New York Times, Artnet, Eater, and Bon Appétit who are equity partners in the business, not just employees. The editorial philosophy is built around what Max calls the "power triangle" of food: the hospitality groups (producers), the chefs and restaurants (actors), and the behind-the-scenes agents, the publicists, real estate players, consultants, and advisors, whose influence on food culture nobody is covering yet. There's also an underground chef competition happening in undisclosed New York City locations that sounds like Top Chef meets an underground rap battle. And yes, a podcast and video strategy is coming. This is one of the most forward-thinking conversations about the future of food media and food storytelling we've had on The Perfect Bite. If you care about what food journalism can become, and what food entrepreneurship looks like when it's treated like a tech startup, this one is for you. In this episode, we cover: * Growing up with a northern Italian mother and grandmother and the Bolognese that got frozen and shipped to college * The double meaning behind the name Caper: the ingredient, the adventure, and why it elevated the brand * Dropping out of law school to join Bleacher Report as employee number five in 2007 * Building growth marketing before "growth hacking" was even a term * The Athletic: building a pure subscription model that sold to the New York Times * Co-founding Puck at TPG and what the talent-led subscription model taught him * Why food media felt like sports media in 2016 and why that was the signal to build * The "power triangle" of food: hospitality groups, chefs/restaurants, and the agent class * Why the agent class in food, the publicists, consultants, designers, and advisors, is the most underreported story in the industry * Building Caper's founding team: Emma Orlow, Chris Crowley, and Annie Armstrong * Why equitizing journalists changes everything and protects editorial integrity * The subscription plus advertising model and why multiple revenue streams matter * Partnering with Loewe as the first ad partner and the signal it sends * Underground chef competitions in undisclosed New York locations: the events strategy * Expanding beyond New York through contributors and category-anchored storytelling * The podcast and video strategy coming in the back half of the year * His advice for founders: the hardest thing is to start, and the journey is the reward Find Caper: * Website: caper.media [https://caper.media/] * Instagram: @caper.media [https://www.instagram.com/caper.media/] * Sign up for free or join as a member - two subscription tiers available * Max on LinkedIn: Max Tcheyan [https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxtcheyan/] * Max on Instagram: @mtcheche [https://www.instagram.com/mtcheche/] Subscribe to The Perfect Bite podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen! Want to watch the entire episode? Head here [https://www.youtube.com/@perfectbitepod] to our YouTube!  You can follow us on social media @perfectbitepod [https://www.instagram.com/perfectbitepod/] and sign up for our newsletter [https://the-perfect-bite.beehiiv.com/]!