Freshly Squeezed: Recent Episodes
Fine Dining Lovers
Hear from food’s most fascinating people. No interviews, no studio patter, no ads or breaks - just the freshest stories served straight. You’ll meet ghost thinkers, engineers, scientists, chefs, directors and designers. Listen to the most curious voices in cuisine.
The actor, filmmaker, author, family man and self-confessed food nerd, Stanley Tucci, tells all in the latest episode of Freshly Squeezed.
In this fun conversation, the food-obsessed celeb recounts his earliest stories growing up in an Italian family, how his DNA in food has shaped his career and explains more about the impact of his iconic film ‘Big Night’ and his newest television series, ‘Searching for Italy’.
From the time he ate the best cheese in the world, to sharing some of his favourite at home
meal ideas. This is Mr Tucci at his best, talking about food.
One of the most widely known and loved figures in American food media, Frenchman Jacque Pepin is a chef, author, television host, philanthropist, educator and artist. In this conversation with Fine Dining Lovers’ editor in Chief Ryan King, Pepin recounts his life’s journey from a small, rural landholding in France, through post-war France, cooking for international dignitaries and presidents along the way. And on to America, where he made, and continues to make culinary history.
You might know Dan Ahdoot as a comedian and actor in shows such as Cobra Kai. But he is also a committed food explorer, restaurant investor and hunter, and in this episode of Freshly Squeezed, he shares incredible and hilarious stories about his food adventures, such as the time he sent a risotto back at the ‘World’s Best Restaurant’. He also touches on the war on cow’s milk, celebrity fridges and why you should befriend a food writer. Listen now.
Sean Sherman is a chef and founder of The Sioux Chef, a group of indigenous American ethnobotanists, food preservationists, adventurers, and foragers, committed to revitalising Native American cuisine. After years of fieldwork and research into a lost knowledge base, Sherman and his wife Dana Thompson opened their first restaurant, Owamni, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Serving solely Native American cuisine, Sherman hopes it will become a template to empower other indigenous communities to reclaim their lost food histories, not only in the US but also across the world.
Calum Franklin, the chef behind London’s Victorian-style Pie Room, is making pie-making fashionable again. He and his team’s incredible creations speak to centuries of British culinary tradition and have garnered a wealth of fans online and in real life seeking respite from extraneously colourful, Insta-perfect food. Franklin’s journey to the top has been a tough one, taking in addiction, overwork and serious illness. But throughout, he’s maintained his love for pie and the enduring appeal of brown food.
Clay Williams is a Brooklyn-based photographer and co-founder of Black Food Folks, a platform that aims to promote and connect black food and drink professionals. What initially started as an idea for a meet-up in a bar has evolved into a full-blown community that is busting the myth that there is a lack of black talent in the industry, tackling the discriminatory power structures, inadequate decision making opportunities and chronic misunderstanding of diversity that feed it.
Growing up in Italy to a British-American father and Latin American mother, chef Ixta Belfrage’s culinary outlook was destined to be international. Having worked in Yotam Ottolenghi’s test kitchen for a number of years, she recently published her first book with the London-based Israeli chef. Flavour, a celebration of all that is great about vegetables, is peppered with Belfrage’s experiments with Italian, Mexican and Brazilian cuisines in particular, and was one of the cookbook hits of last year. But could a change be in the air for Ixta Belfrage?
Restaurant Koks is a two-Michelin-star restaurant in the Faroe Islands, a rocky archipelago in the North Atlantic. There chef Poul Andrias Ziska, himself Faroese, is crafting an avant-garde take on the local cuisine, using centuries-old techniques, as well as those picked up working at some of the world's best restaurants. It's made Koks one of the most coveted destination restaurants on the planet. But for a restaurant that relies predominantly on tourists, the pandemic has hit especially hard.
Roshara Sanders is the first Black female instructor at the Culinary Institute of America. She is an inspirational figure who has overcome hardship and poverty, served two tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and rose to the top of the restaurant game, before taking her talent, skill, empathy and wisdom to America’s most important institution of culinary training. She now plans to change the industry from the inside out.
Bob Kramer is America’s foremost knife maker and master bladesmith. His bespoke chefs’ knives go for as much as $50,000 at auction and he famously forged a knife for Anthony Bourdain, which became one of the chef’s most treasured possessions.
But how did Kramer become such an accomplished craftsman? It all started back in school, where as a dyslexic student, he struggled with traditional learning. He found solace in the woodshop and making things with his hands. Then, when he left school, Kramer stumbled upon a call for auditions for the circus. Somehow he found himself traveling America as a clown. It taught him much about how to live differently, about craft and continuous improvement. Traits that are forged into the knives he now creates.
Brian Canlis runs Canlis restaurant alongside his brother, Mark. And they do things differently - very differently. As you will hear, Canlis is a restaurant that operates with a mission statement - a 'why' - that drives all their decisions. They are determined to treat staff better, to connect on a level that is unheard of in restaurants, to break all the rules, and forgo profit in the pursuit of an ideology, a feeling. They serve a message that is so much bigger than what's on the plate, yet one so powerful, it can be tasted in everything they do.
Their response to the Covid pandemic and subsequent lockdowns was an example to all in the industry, pivoting hundreds of times to ensure they maintained their mission to "inspire all people to turn toward one another".
Brian is a truly inspirational restaurateur who practices what he calls 'vulnerable leadership' - a way of building and maintaining strong levels of trust within his team. Canlis has to be one of the best fine-dining restaurants in the world for a young student to train and develop as a professional and a person, and discover that there really is a different way to run a restaurant.
Ten years ago, Monica Haldar managed to convince her mother Anita Sawhney to open up a pop-up restaurant in their family home in Manchester. Serving authentic Indian cuisine, The Spice Club proved so popular that they had to get more seats in the dining room and extend their kitchen.
Now the Haldar’s have their own cooking school in two different cities, an online cooking course, their own product range and a new cooking series on Fine Dining Lovers. Monica and Anita share their story of how a bright idea and a lot of hard work, combined with a passion for food led to them building something extraordinary.
What's it like to grow up in the biggest culinary family in the world? Thomas Troisgros is the fourth generation of the world-famous Troisgros family. In this emotional podcast, he tells the story of growing up with Paul Bocuse as an uncle, the recent loss of his grandfather - who he describes as his Jedi kitchen master - and finding his own way in the world of gastronomy. This is a story about inheriting history and all the pressure and privilege that comes with it.
Zineb Hattab was working as an engineer when she decided to quit and follow her passion for cooking. She spent time training in some of the world's best restaurants and now stands for creating a new, healthier menu for the future, in terms of nutritional and functional foods but also in terms of better work-life balance behind the line. This is a chef not afraid to tackle issues, ideas and innovations head-on.
Vusi Ndlovu was not supposed to be a chef. A chance reply, a sprinkling of rebellion and a runaway story on an overnight train to South Africa landed him in the kitchen - his tenacity kept him there. Billed as one of the best young chefs in the world, he's constantly creating projects away from the plate: The African Culinary Library, a Coachella-style traveling African food festival, a clothing range of chefs wear and an NGO to help feed child-headed homes in Africa.
At Honey Badger in New York they live in the moment. Kitchen, front of house, owners, investors, cooks, cleaners, bar staff, and marketing equate to a grand total of just two people: Fjölla Sheholli & Junayd Juman. A couple who built their own restaurant, their own way of doing things and their own style of "constant evolution on the plate". Get ready for the story of two truly passionate, wild and fun people who followed that little voice inside their head that said, "let's open a restaurant" - even if they had zero experience in running a professional kitchen.
Do dildos have their place in the kitchen? Can cancer, art and cuisine exist on a plate? What is the true power of gastronomy? These are the type of questions that keep Sasha Correa awake at night. A ghost thinker who works in the shadows of some of the world's best restaurants and culinary institutions. Her story started many years ago wearing bulletproof vests as a reporter in Venezuela and her accidental step into the food world has led her to adventures all over the world: like the time she had to bribe street food vendors for Heston Blumenthal's dry ice.