Menu Talk

Winsight Podcast Network
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  • FOOD
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

Menu Talk, formally Menu Feed, is a podcast hosted by Pat Cobe of Restaurant Business and Bret Thorn with Nation’s Restaurant News. We are veteran reporters on the menu beat and eager to bring you inspiring conversations about what’s happening in restaurant kitchens, including weekly interviews with chefs, operators and food professionals.

  1. 3 DAYS AGO

    How Levain Bakery is leaning into treat culture through catering

    Levain Bakery, a New York City obsession among cookie lovers, started as a bread shop 30 years ago. The famous gooey and crispy 6-ounce cookies came about by accident. The founders, Connie McDonald and Pam Weekes, were triathletes as well as bakers, and they developed an oversized chocolate chip walnut cookie to fuel them during training. Word got out about that cookie and lines formed around the block. Now there are several more cookie variations and many more Levain locations, stretching from New York City to LA, Boston, metro D.C. and Chicago.  Donna Magen joined the company about two and a half years ago as senior manager of specialty channels. She recently expanded Levain’s catering arm, partnering with ezCater to reach cookie monsters in the workplace. Magen sees great potential in the burgeoning treat culture, where consumers are craving affordable indulgences—like cookies. But Levain is also going back to its roots, baking up breads, muffins, scones and the like to grow breakfast catering and other occasions.  Listen as Magen talks about Levain’s growth strategies beyond its retail shops into nontraditional channels and how the bakery is preserving its legacy as it grows.

    20 min

  2. 23 SEPT

    Scott Conant chats about his new restaurant, his sauce line and his plans for a sandwich shop

    Scott Conant has been working in restaurants for 40 years, since he was an eager 15-year-old teen in Waterbury, Connecticut. Since then he has opened restaurants in New York City, Miami, Las Vegas, Toronto, and elsewhere, as well as a new restaurant in the Bahamas at the Baha Mar resort slated to open later this fall.  His restaurant L’Impero won the James Beard Foundation Restaurant & Chef Award for best new restaurant for 2003 and Conant has been moving forward ever since. His Scarpetto concept launched in 2008 and is still going strong with seven locations, although Conant is no longer involved. He does have Cellaio Steak in New York and The Americano in Atlanta as well as the forthcoming Leola at Baha Mar.  And of course he’s also a celebrity chef, currently hosting "House of Knives" on the Food Network and also making numerous appearances on "Chopped" and "Beat Bobby Flay." He recently sat down with Menu Talk co-hosts Pat Cobe and Bret Thorn and discussed his latest projects as well as the inspiration behind them.

    20 min

  3. 16 SEPT

    How restaurateur Eric LeVine's 45-year career has led to health and wellness

    Brooklyn-born Eric LeVine started cooking in restaurant kitchens at the age of 12, working the fry station at a neighborhood diner. Although that would be considered illegal child labor today, he loved the work and never looked back. LeVine fueled his passion as a student at the Culinary Institute of America and as a member of the kitchen team at Brooklyn’s renowned River Café, where celeb chef David Burke was his mentor and inspiration. Many kitchens and awards later, he is now chef-partner in two Long Island, New York, restaurants, 317 Main and Vico.  Throughout his 45-year culinary career, LeVine has experienced many ups and downs. He cycled through a number of restaurants, fought and survived several bouts of cancer, and gained and lost 180 pounds. Now he is on a health and wellness journey, both personally and professionally. LeVine ran his first marathon last year and is focused on staying healthy and improving and evolving his restaurants. Listen as he shares his journey, past and present.

    30 min

  4. 9 SEPT

    Stephanie Izard on menu development, fame and her new projects

    Stephanie Izard has a streak of fearlessness in her. She went from being a sous chef to a restaurateur at age 27 and hasn’t looked back. Closing that restaurant, Scylla, in 2007 after a three-year run, she went on to compete in and win season four of Bravo TV’s Top Chef in 2008. From there she launched her goat-themed restaurant empire, now comprised of two Girl & the Goat locations in Chicago and Los Angeles, two units of her Peruvian concept, Cabra (Spanish for “goat”), in those same cities, as well as Little Goat Diner and Duck Duck Goat in Chicago. At the end of March she opened her first licensed concept, Valley Goat, at the Treehouse Hotel Silicon Valley in Sunnyvale, Calif., and last month she opened Lucky Goat at the Hollywood Casino in Joliet, Illinois, with another to come in nearby Aurora. Next up: Cabrito, a fast-casual concept slated to open at Orlando International Airport. She also recently attended US Foods’ Food Fanatics conference in Las Vegas where she caught up with Menu Talk hosts Pat Cobe, senior menu editor of Restaurant Business, and Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality. She shared her approach to menu development, her plans for the future and the odd but beneficial status of being famous.

    17 min

  5. 2 SEPT

    How Amanda Toups turned a pandemic-era response into a powerful hunger-fighting nonprofit

    Amanda Toups, partner with her husband Isaac Toups in New Orleans’ Toups Meatery, flew into action when COVID-19 closed the restaurant back in March, 2020. The couple cooked and handed out to-go meals for their employees and their families and anyone else who showed up in need. Within a few days, 500 people wrapped around the block. Through the end of 2020, they prepped and distributed 100,000 meals, but the need didn’t end once the pandemic eased and restaurants were back in operation. In 2021, Hurricane Ida hit New Orleans, and in 2024, the governor of Louisiana cut back funds on summer feeding programs for school children. Amanda immediately brought back Toups Family Meal, starting with Easter boxes. Then she got in front of the media to broadcast the dire need in the community and spread the word on her active social platforms. As a result, she was able to drum up support from locals and other nonprofits to raise funds and help with meal deliveries. The Toups amassed a volunteer delivery driver army of 200 people and this summer delivered 70,500 meals. Now Toups Family Meal is a fully operative nonprofit with a commissary kitchen, meal and grocery distribution center and delivery hub, mostly self-funded but supported by donations and volunteers. Listen as Amanda shares the heartwarming story of how she and Isaac turned a personal community outreach effort into a hunger-fighting organization through their generosity and commitment.

    22 min

  6. 26 AUG

    Jet Tila gets into Chino-Latino cooking

    Jet Tila is known as a TV chef these days, thanks to his many appearances on the Food Network and elsewhere, but he has actually been working in the restaurant industry for pretty much his whole life. Having grown up working in his parents’ Thai restaurants in Los Angeles, he then attended culinary school and went on to cook at a wide variety of foodservice operations, including Compass Group subsidiary Bon Appétit Management and at Steve Wynn properties in Las Vegas. He also operates five Dragon Tiger Noodle restaurants—four in Nevada and one at the Dragon Tiger Casino in Central City, Colorado—and is the research & development chef of fast-casual Pei Wei Asian Kitchen, with some 120 restaurants across the country.  Tila was a keynote speaker at US Foods' recent Food Fanatics conference in Las Vegas, where he walked the 5,000 attendees through his own humble beginnings and ultimately his success as a TV personality and cookbook author as well as a chef and restaurateur. He also performed cooking demonstrations at the conference, including one for birria fried rice. One of his passions these days is Chino-Latino cooking, exploring the ways that East Asian and Latin American flavors go together.  During these stressful times people are turning to comfort food, he believes, whether that’s fried chicken sandwiches, noodles or Tila’s particular passion, fried rice. He discussed his own passion for “grandma cooking,” and shared his perspective on where food is going these days.

    22 min

  7. 25 AUG

    Seattle chef Victor Steinbrueck on high-touch hospitality in a fast-casual space

    Chef and restaurateur Victor Steinbrueck shook up the Seattle seafood scene when he opened LocalTide in 2020. The restaurant refuses to fall into typical seafood or restaurant categories, like fish and chips or fine dining sole. It’s serving up sustainable, sophisticated dishes that work just as well as takeout or while enjoying the hip vibes of Local Tide. Steinbrueck and guest host Gloria Dawson discuss making pandemic pivots, finding moments for high-touch hospitality at a fast-casual restaurant, and what sustainable growth means for a self-described "slow mover."

    14 min

  8. 19 AUG

    Douglas Keane flipped the script on Cyrus, changing the business model and dining experience

    Douglas Keane originally opened Cyrus in Healdsburg, California, earning two Michelin stars and many accolades. But during the pandemic, a burned-out Keene did not want to reopen it as a traditional fine dining restaurant with an upscale tasting menu. So he sat down and figured out how to change the business model and staffing model to provide a living wage for all his team members and a distinctive dining experience for guests.  At the new Cyrus, located in the Sonoma County town of Geyserville, the evening is choreographed like a dinner party in someone’s home, starting with drinks and bites in the Bubble Lounge, then proceeding into the kitchen where guests interact with the chefs over a first course, followed by a multi-course hyper-seasonal tasting menu in the dining room and ending with a sweet finish in the Chocolate Room. And every team member makes an annual salary of $75,000.

    22 min
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About

Menu Talk, formally Menu Feed, is a podcast hosted by Pat Cobe of Restaurant Business and Bret Thorn with Nation’s Restaurant News. We are veteran reporters on the menu beat and eager to bring you inspiring conversations about what’s happening in restaurant kitchens, including weekly interviews with chefs, operators and food professionals.

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