FAITH, FAMILY, FOOD CHEF AARTI SEQUEIRA

This month, We're making the transition from the Summer to the Fall. We're thinking about all the things that this season is perfect for from still being able to enjoy being outdoors with a few layers, the crispness that begins to encompass the air, a number of fun festivals, apple/pumpkin picking, and so much more! The last few months have involved being out and about with friends and family, and of course the upcoming holiday season.

This sense of community and coming together with food is something that Chef Aarti Sequeira embodies. We've had the pleasure of interviewing her in our NOV ISSUE #71 a few years ago when her My Family Recipe Journal was released. At that time we talked about how she came to food, being a chef, Food Network's Halloween Wars, and more.

This month, we caught up with her to talk about her latest cookbook that came out last year - UNWIND: A Devotional Cookbook For The Harried and Hungry, food festivals that she is participated in and why she likes being involved, hosting Halloween Wars, why she likes being part of the Food Network family and more!

ATHLEISURE MAG: It was so great chatting with you a few years ago where we talked about how you got into food, your food journey and everything that led up to the Family Recipe Journal that you dropped as at that time, you were a few days out from dropping that book!

So before we talk about things that have gone on since that book and things that are coming up, we’d love to know if you remember the dish that you had that made you first fall in love with food?

CHEF AARTI SEQUEIRA: Oh wow! I mean, I don't remember doing this because I was just a baby but my mum, my most vivid memory of me with food is that she would be making dinner and she would just you know pick me up and put me on the counter next to her chopping board and she would just be slicing onions, garlic and ginger and she'd look away for a second. And you know, with my little like you know how babies don't have like knuckles, right?

AM: Right!

CHEF AS: They just have dimples. It’s just those teeny, tiny dimples in a fist and I'd grab the onions and I was just shoving them in my mouth!

AM: Oh!

CHEF AS: She couldn't, she couldn't believe it and I liked it! It’s ironic because I hate raw onions now.

AM: Right!

CHEF AS: But I loved it back then, and I think that, you know, just from then on that the kitchen is just always where I've wanted to be and there's always been food in my mouth haha.

AM: Which is a good thing! I feel like if people were less hangry, that things might be better!

CHEF AS: Well that is true!

AM: Well, when we last chatted you were like a couple of days out actually from the My Family Recipe Journal, but since that conversation in talking with you, you also have released UNWIND: A Devotional Cookbook For The Harried and Hungry. Can you tell us a bit about the book, why you wanted to create it, and what can we expect when we're reading this?

CHEF AS: Yeah, I really created it for people like me and maybe people who are not like me, but anyone who experiences that sort of 4:30pm/5:30pm salt in the wound?

AM: Yes!

CHEF AS: You’ve had a full day and you've been all things to all people and then you’re like, “and now I’ve got to make dinner?”

AM: Right!

CHEF AS: Are you kidding? And it feels you know, it’s the last thing usually between you and bed.

AM: Yeah.

CHEF AS: Haha or you and crappy television, you know what I mean?

AM: Exactly!

CHEF AS: It’s the last hump that you have to get over. And I just found myself taking this thing that had once been my joy and once been my Sanctuary and starting to resent. It was like I started to phone it in and that's not right because you know, I have children now!

AM: Right!

CHEF AS: I didn't want to be giving them or serving them resentment at the dinner table.

AM: Of course!

CHEF AS: So, one of the things that I remembered is that there was this woman that owned an Indian grocery store in LA. and when I had to talked to her about cooking, she had mentioned that she had always prayed before she cooked and that was such a light bulb moment for me! She's Hindu, and I'm Christian. and I just remember going, well if she's doing it - why am I not doing it, you know?

AM: Mmm

CHEF AS: So I did start praying before I cooked and I just found that it opened up a passageway, like a spiritual passageway that took this very mundane chore. This thing that I resented and helped me see it as a moment of sacred connection and it redeemed it, right? And what I found was that in what started off like, "oh Lord, please let this dish turn out right or okay,” you know what I mean? Or let the kids like it or not have anything fall on floor – turned into…

“You know, one of the reasons I'm really upset right now, Jesus is that I'm really feeling discouraged that I didn't get that job that I wanted.”

AM: Right.

CHEF AS: Or, “I'm really scared about this thing that's happening in my family or any number of things.” And so, while I was cooking, that's when that conversation was happening. And I found that there was so much healing.

AM: Yup.

CHEF AS: That healing that was happening through that whole process was amazing. And I was like, well, if it works for me, I would like to be the sort of guide that says, “hey guys, this can work for you too.” This can be a moment, a half hour, 45 minutes in the day, where okay, maybe you didn't have your quiet time today, or maybe you did, and you need another one. This can be It. And I think the lesson that I learned from that is that, you mentioned it! You know, so often when we're walking into the kitchen at that hour, we are tired and we are hungry and we are hangry. And that's when quite often we are in that space. So, if we can get into the practice of turning our eyes towards heaven, when we are at our worst in the kitchen, then we will do that when we are at our worst in the car, in a meeting, doing laundry, talking to someone that's very triggering.

AM: Oh yes!

CHEF AS: All of this stuff, it just builds up muscle in us. So, I now have learned after that experience and after writing UNWIND that how you show up in the kitchen and how you come out of that kitchen, is great practice for how you show up and leave every situation in your life.

AM: That really resonates because a lot of times when there's projects being worked on whether it's a series of business meetings or calls I need to make I'll do a prayer before.

CHEF AS: Yes!

AM: It could be a project or anything I’m doing where I need that reset, it allows my mind to take a pause a beat and then to almost get closer to certain things that maybe have nothing to do with what's going on. But you're able to kind of like categorize it and you just come out a lot better of a person versus me just running out and being like argh!!!

CHEF AS: It is good to sort of slow down. You know, I think a lot of people say, get present. And for me, getting present with myself is just not enough because myself is the problem. So I need to get present with God. That is the one that's going to pull me out of myself and actually fix it.

AM: That's true. That's very true. And, you know, do you find that, because I find that the books that you've done, it is so personal because you are talking about, you know, getting in touch with yourself, getting in touch with God, getting into a better place. Is it is it more difficult to have these books that have a cookbook component as well as this other inspirational component too? Do you feel the process in writing it is longer? Do you feel that you get, you know what I mean - like, because you're doing two different components putting it together. It's beautiful, and seamless, but I know a lot of times if I'm writing something that comes from more of a personal place in my heart, I'm gonna grapple with that for like 80 more hours.

CHEF AS: Yeah, 100%. I mean, I think writing a cookbook is a much more difficult process than I imagined. I think before I kind of got into this world, I was like, oh, well, you know, you just write your recipes and blah blah.

AM: Right!

CHEF AS: But then once it becomes your way of life, at least for me, you know, I'm super critical.

AM: Yeah, same.

CHEF AS: Super critical of myself and so I'm questioning every instinct, every idea, every finished product. Wondering if it's good enough, wondering, if I've written it well, wondering - you know saying the worst things to myself. And so, then couple that with trying to be an ambassador for God.

AM: Right.

CHEF AS: There is always like, there is so much room for failure. I did find it to be a really, really difficult process. We also did it so quickly. We did the whole thing in about 6 or 7 months.

AM: Whoa!

CHEF AS: You know, most people take like a year or 2 years because, you know, some of the people that I'm seeing putting cookbooks out, they're like, “you know, this has been the past 2 or 3 years of my life,” and I'm like, oh my God! You know, I don't know what's worse. Like I don't know if it's worse to live with something for 3 years and live with that kind of pressure for three years.

AM: Exactly.

CHEF AS: Am I a marathon runner or am I a sprinter? I think I've always been a sprinter.

AM: Yup.

CHEF AS: So I think that God kind of knew, you know, what kind of project it needed to be for me. But yeah, I mean, I think I even posted on my social media about how difficult it was that like the process of creativity was not like - was not like a scene from Ratatouille and it has never been for me. It's never been - it's very rarely a moment of like the muse, you know, and going to bed where it’s saying, “hey, why don't you pull tamarind and ginger together and build ribs,” like it’s very rare that that happens. A lot of it is full on. It feels like you're working out, you are throwing weights around picking them back up again, throwing them down again that was the process for me and getting to write that book meant that I had to employ 2 very different parts of my brain and try to make them make sense. But it was also a great challenge, like, I really enjoyed it and I sort of felt like this idea for me felt like a download from heaven and so I was like at this moment in time, I'm the only person that is doing this. So I have to believe that I am also being totally equipped to do it. I have to thank my husband who helped me so much because he loves words and he loves the Bible and so it's really helpful to have him at my side literally for some of them like writing portions of it and then me being able to then put it in my own words. He was like such a such a rock to me.

AM: That's amazing!

Are you already thinking about that next cookbook? I mean, you've already done, you know, these last two. I mean, I know you had one before obviously, but you know, that's so quick between the recipe book. Now it's UNWIND! Is there something in the future that you're kind of sketching out?

CHEF AS: I don't know, you know, I think cookbooks are so hard because frankly there are just so many of them and it's hard to capture people's attention in between. I mean, I'd love to write another one, but I think I also would like some time to really fine tune you know, where is my cooking at this point? What is it that excites me. And what you know? I just feel a little bit all over the place because my career has really, has really taken off it feels like this year.

AM: Yeah.

CHEF AS: I’m traveling, so much of that. I'm probably cooking for other people more than I'm cooking for my family.

AM: Wow.

CHEF AS: And yeah. And so, I want to get back to cooking for my family because I feel like that's like truly the essence of who I am or who I want to be. And so, I'm open to it, of course, and I'm open to even doing another one because I, I do think that I'm proud of it. I really, I'm really proud of it. And even, you know, and every time, just even the other day, someone sent me a photo of one of the recipes that they made and the fact that they were doing it in their small group and they were going through the devotions together. I mean, it just is like so meaningful to me more meaningful than anything else I've worked on, because yes, they're making the recipes, but they're also reading the words that I wrote and reflecting and when I read the words that I wrote, I'm so very convinced that I was not the one that was writing them because I don't recognize it!

AM: Haha right!

CHEF AS: You know, I'm a little nervous to go through that whole process again because, frankly, it was really rough. But when I look at it and I look at the fruit of it, I'm like, well, I mean, hi, I get to partner with God again and that’s kind of amazing.

AM: One thing I love when I'm looking at your IG, I love your Monday Motivations. I think they're so amazing.

CHEF AS: Oh thank you!

AM: And as we are dropping on Monday, do you have a Monday Motivation for us that we can share with our readers?

CHEF AS: Ooo. What have I been toggling in my mind? I think the message that I feel like keeps coming up is - if God is knocking on the door, he's kind of yelling through the door at you.

AM: Ha! I feel that one!

CHEF AS: Which is kind of, “are you more interested in what I can do through you or are you more interested in spending time with Me?”

AM: Ooo ...

CHEF AS: Because I have to say, I took inspiration from someone who posted it online - that concept, at least. But I have been feeling it -

AM: Yeah.

CHEF AS: You know what I mean?

AM: Yeah.

CHEF AS: The first one is about me.

AM: Yup.

CHEF AS: And the second one is about God.

AM: It's about Him. Yeah, you gave me goosebumps because I yeah, I thought about something very similar to that, a couple months ago, and I was like, well am I really trying to do that because I want to amplify Him or am I trying to do it so I can boost myself up? Like wow, yeah.

CHEF AS: Yeah, it hurts. So I did not like it.

AM: 100%

CHEF AS: When I saw it on IG and I still don't, but I think that's the point. I think that it's –

AM: It’s uncomfortable -

CHEF AS: It’s uncomfortable and I think those of us who are sort of our own turbines, who are in that sort of entrepreneurial space, it becomes a lot about me and what can I do? What can I accomplish and what's the next thing to build? How do I build on what I've already built? All that stuff and so then we try to kind of loop God into it saying, “you know use me for whatever it is that you want,” but you know intrinsically, we're like yeah we want to get some action, right?

AM: Right.

CHEF AS: You want to rustle up some action. And I think, especially for me, like I'm not really good at sitting very quietly.

AM: Same

CHEF AS: Or sitting in a posture of listening or just being or just any of those things.

AM: It's a good reminder.

CHEF AS: Yeah, that would be my Monday Motivation is just go sit and do nothing for a minute.

AM: Yeah, wow. Yeah.

CHEF AS: Haha I know!

AM: Well, you are always traveling! You were just on an amazing trip in Peru with some of our faves who have previously been in our issues - Chef Duff Goldman, Chef Fariyal Abdullahi who was our AUG ISSUE #104 cover, and Chef Marcel Vigneron. I love an immersive trip and it seemed like you guys got to combine your culinary knowledge along with those that were indigenous to the area and people, as well as to be part of some amazing cultural activities!

Right now your IG has a number of food festivals you’ve been at as well as those that are coming up! We are looking forward to the Food Network NYC Wine Food Festival that takes place mid Oct. and I know that you’re not involved in that one, but Iove being able to go to festivals like this. What do you love about participating in food festival and can you tell me more about the Del Mar Wine + Food Festival that is next month? I mean that Spice Girls Dinner seems pretty amazing.

CHEF AS: Yeah, food festivals are so fun because it's sort of like, you know, that everybody there is one of you, you know what I mean?

AM: Yup!

CHEF AS: Like, these are people that love food and love food television and love to celebrate and love to gather!

AM: Yes!

CHEF AS: The Gathering thing to me has really been feeling more and more important. I think because we have so many years of not gathering.

AM: Yeah that was tough!

CHEF AS: I heard once I was listening to a podcast and I'm not saying I've ever read Alexis de Tocqueville, but I guess when he visited America he was like, “the thing that's very interesting about Americans is that they love to gather.”

AM: Facts!

CHEF AS: They will find any reason to gather and so when we weren't gathering, it was like one of the most un-American things that we could have done.

AM: Yeah.

CHEF AS: So I think that's one of the things that I have come to really appreciate about food festivals is we're all together. We're breaking bread, we're maybe having a couple cocktails.

AM: Yes!

CHEF AS: You sort of feel like, this is who we are. This is the essence of our humanity, the essence of our identity as a people, you know? It's a very unifying moment. I think, especially for people who are creating content, whether it's, you know, on traditional streams, or on social media streams, or YouTube or whatever it is, you know, it kind of goes out into the ether and even if you get likes, yes, you get some sort of feedback, but to see the actual faces! To sort of interact with the actual spirits of people who were like, “I saw when you did that thing.” Oh, it feels real and it feels really gratifying in that moment, selfishly. And it feels very encouraging, honestly - to say, okay, I'm on the right path, I'm going to keep going because it can feel like a very isolating experience.

You know, basically, like I remember when Twitter came along we were all like, oh, doesn't it sort of feel like there's one million people and each of them has a megaphone and they're all yelling? So no one's listening to each other and so sometimes things like food festivals can be so gratifying because here are the people that have been listening!

AM: 100%

CHEF AS: You can see, you can then engage like, oh this is what touches people. And this is what people find necessary. And this is what sort of they find unique about when they come to my corner of IG and it can help sort of fine tune your voice.

AM: Exactly!

Tell me about the Spice Girls Dinner at the Del Mar Food Festival!

CHEF AS: Yeah, I'm excited about Del Mar because not only because it's a very beautiful food festival, this whole thing was spearheaded by Troy Johnson and his wife, Claire Johnson and you know I've known Troy forever for like decades through Guy's Grocery Games.

AM: Ok!

CHEF AS: No, no it’s not been that long! So this is the, you know, they already have babies, but this is another baby of theirs. They're really putting their money where their mouths are and trying to encourage the same thing, the sense of community and gathering, and celebration, and celebrating chefs who are, you know, taking risks in the kitchen and so, I'm really excited to go see people, but also support people who are risking it all you know.

AM: Wow.

CHEF AS: Like Troy and Claire, I think our dinner is going to be so interesting because I love Claudia Sandoval (winner of MasterChef S6, Judge on MasterChef Latinos, Host of Taste of the Border on Discovery+). I love the way she cooks. She has a really strong connection to where she comes from and in a way that I love because she sometimes will take the humblest of dishes, like, her grandmother's beans and she won't change it all that much. She will present it just like that because she's like they're actually good enough. That's very inspiring to me because there's, you know, a lot of the food that we all grew up with, it's not restaurant food.

AM: Correct.

CHEF AS: It's home food. I'm trying to figure out a way to gussy that up so that it looks pretty in an Instagram photo sometimes can feel very difficult!

AM: Daunting, yeah.

CHEF AS: So I I think that it's, I think it's really, it's been very inspiring to me to go, no, the dal, just the way it is. The dal just the way I grew up with is enough and good enough! So, I'm really excited to see where our spice palettes cross over, compliment each other, and contrast with each other. I think it's going to be a really fun dinner and I'm really excited also for the wine pairing because Neeta Mittal, owner of LXV Wines - she's Indian and so she's got a particular palette when she's looking at wines because she's going well, what wine will play well, with these spices - will amplify them and vice versa. So, I think it's gonna be a really interesting unique dinner in that way.

I'm relatively new to this circuit you know, compared to some people that have been doing it for a while and so you're only honestly, you're only as good as the organizers of the festival. It is such a beast to organize these things. There's always something that you didn't think about.

AM: Right, for sure.

CHEF AS: So that's a huge factor to me! I want to be at a festival where we’re all you know, you do your job, I do my job, but we do our job so that we can support each other and make each other look good. That's, you know, that's one of the big things.

AM: That's amazing.

CHEF AS: I love going to festivals where there's a lot of great food on display, you know, especially a lot of adventurous food because I'm like, oh, the people that are going to show up here are going to be willing to try things that, you know, they've maybe never tried before.

I just did the Ilani Wine and Food Festival at the Ilani Resort just outside of Portland. That one was so amazing because even though you know this festival's been going on forever, I made these Jackfruit Sliders with a date barbecue sauce. That was a two for two in terms of things that people haven't tried before. People were so willing like, when you know, I remember someone came over and they were like, “your pulled pork was amazing.” I was like, “that was jackfruit!” So I love going to festivals where I can bring something that someone hasn't had before. Not just for the the purpose of maybe trying something new but, then also that people go home and they're like, I'm going to buy that and I'm gonna work that into my meal plan, or whatever it is. You know, that's just like I want to be of service, and that's really helpful but I love festivals like that where I can be of service.

AM: I think that that’s amazing. And I saw those pictures of the Jackfruit Sliders. And I was just like, whoa, I've had jackfruit but never thought about barbecue sauce and dates – but ok!

CHEF AS: Yeah, well, you know, I had the barbecue sauce ready to go. I had that idea. I was just trying to think because I didn’t think that I was gonna have the time or the energy to like slow cook a ton of pork.

AM: Right.

CHEF AS: So then it was like, what about, you know, I think actually I was talking to Damaris Phillips (2013 winner of Food Network Star, Guy’s Grocery Games Judge, author of Southern Girl Meets Vegetarian Boy) about it and then we came up with that idea together, so that was super helpful.

AM: Love that! Ok, so Halloween Wars. I mean, first of all, I can't even believe that we're sitting in the fall.

CHEF AS: Yeah!

AM: It's rainy here in New York today and I'm like, wait, the holiday season is around the corner. I always know it's around the corner because I see the promos for Halloween Wars.

CHEF AS: Ha ha! I know! It’s all a long slippery slope from there!

AM: Yup! So what are you excited about for this season? I always look forward to the different things and I'm always amazed at how grotesque in the best way possible that some of the things end up being, I'm like, oh my God, who does that? I'm so scared! But at the same time, the baking capabilities and dedication to craft is next level when they’re on the clock!

CHEF AS: This season is so great because each of the teams is helmed by an All-Star. So each of these people have won before, they know what it feels like and they know what it takes. So, they’re kind of acting like team leaders to their teammates. There's a lot to, you know, you whenever you go into competition, you don't cook, carve, sculpt the way that you do –

AM: Exactly.

CHEF AS: At your bakery or at your place, you know? You've got to, you've got to do it in a way that is a work smarter not harder kind of mindset.

AM: Yeah.

CHEF AS: And yet, you're still going for perfection as possible. So that's why this season is so great because and that's why that from day one like the displays were already almost like finale level.

AM: Ooo.

CHEF AS: Perfect, right?

AM: Yeah -

CHEF AS: You had these people who are veterans informing the entire process. So that's what's so great about this season.

AM: That is so exciting!

Tyler Florence’s, The Great Food Truck Race is one of my favorite shows. So, seeing you on the finale, this last season, I was like, wait, there's Aarti!

CHEF AS: Ahhh. Yeah, the food was legitimately awesome! You know, sometimes it's like you know with competition you have a lot of grace because things are not gonna - you just don't have the same amount of time that you would at home or in a restaurant. So I was so impressed, every bite that I took, I was like this tastes completely dialed in. It was amazing. It was truly amazing.

AM: Well, are there any other shows coming up that we should keep an eye out for because I always love when I see you at, like, Tournament of Champions or you're on Guys Grocery Games. And I'm like, this lady is working.

CHEF AS: I'm trying to work. I am trying to work. I just got something and I don't think they've announced it yet.

AM: Okay.

CHEF AS: That's going to be super exciting!

AM: Amazing.

CHEF AS: Thank you! And then you know, all the usual like Grocery Games and all that kind of stuff is still coming down the pipe. Yeah, it's just always such a privilege to be part of the part of the family over at Food Network. Whenever we get to see people, you know, you get the sense that that Food Network is on all day.

AM: Exactly.

CHEF AS: For some people, you know what I mean? It's just very cool that even if I'm not currently shooting something and they turn it on, more than likely one of us is on there. You know? It feels really intimate to be in people's homes that way, and I think that that's how they feel about us, you know, based on the reactions we get. So it's really such a privilege.

AM: I love that and are there just any upcoming projects In general that you would like to share to get out there or or, you know, just things that you have going on?

CHEF AS: Yeah. I mean, one of the most exciting things that's coming up in the short term is that I'm expanding my line with QVC.

AM: That’s amazing!

CHEF AS: Yeah, really amazing! It's such a huge community to be able to dive into and QVC has been so generous and so sweet with me to sort of pull me into the fold and say, hey what do you think about doing this? And here are the kinds of things that our people love and how would you put your own spin on it. And so, you know, it's a select few people that get to do that and I was really hopeful when we started the line last year that we would get to do this, and It has expanded exponentially and some of the things that we've got in the line, I use on a daily basis. They're unbelievably good quality, you know, I really wanted to make sure that it would be something I would use and it's just really exciting, so I think that's going to launch at the end of October.

AM: Congratulations on the continued success of your line with them and I’ve seen the cute kitchenware!

That's so exciting. Yay!

CHEF AS: Yeah!

AM: I just love that every time I see you on shows, you just have such a love and zest for food, and like you're talking about community and people coming together! What do you want your legacy, you know, to be in terms of the imprint that you've left on all of these different things that you're doing and whatever ends up being in the future - that may not be happening at this moment?

CHEF AS: Gosh. Well, I mean, the most important thing to me obviously is my family, right? And just for my girls to know that I did the best I could to balance these two parts of my life. But that they were always way more important than anything else, you know, for them and my husband to know that.

But outside of the home, I guess that I want people when they think of me to think of someone – who really valued coming around a table. Like, I really think that there are so many things that are coming in to distract us from connection with each other, you know, phones and social media. And I know there's been a lot of discussion and study recently on, you know, the impact of phones on kids.

AM: Yes.

CHEF AS: And teenagers. And what that does to the family and I really think that something as simple as sitting around the table and having dinner as many nights as possible is one of the most powerful things that we can do to combat that. Like so that would be probably part of my legacy. Then the other part is that, so often when I'm competing and doing things like that, I'm doing stuff that I feel completely out of my depths doing.

AM: I feel that.

CHEF AS: I'm, you know, like just recently I got booked for a bunch of things and it made me so scared. I was like crying in a fetal position.

AM: Oh no!

CHEF AS: It was bad because I was like, I cannot do this. I don't know how I'm gonna fail like. That has no matter how many times I do it, it just feels like it's something that I'm constantly fighting and I don't think I'm the only one.

AM: Nope!

CHEF AS: So I suppose part of my legacy, I hope these are very big words. It's just that, I was loud about feeling unequipped to do things, but doing them anyway!

AM: Which is huge! I tell people all the time, I’m always in my head, mulling over things and nervous before I do something. Even if it's like a million times, whatever, because everything is a little bit different and you just, I don't know, it's a thing, but I was like, if I feel that shaky about it, I have to kind of tell myself that you feel shaky because you want to do so well, and you care so much about what it represents for myself and what it is for the other people involved. So I try to turn it, although I'll still sit there and be like, I gotta run to the bathroom. This is crazy, but in the end, it does end up being lovely.

CHEF AS: Yeah, I think that there's the sense of like, if it isn't going easily, then you must be doing something wrong or you must be in the wrong place. Yeah, you must have made the wrong decision and I think that as I mean I'm 46 now. So hopefully it'll stick this year …

AM: It hasn’t yet, but it’s tough.

CHEF AS: Yeah, hopefully, but you know for the first time this year, I was like, after I had my little fetal position breakdown. I was like wait. Why don't I ever say to myself, “yes, I don't know how to do these things. I feel completely out of my depth. But the second half of that is, I'll figure it out.”

AM: Yeah.

CHEF AS: Yeah, figure it out. Just saying that has started to change things where I'm like, okay, you know, it may not go smoothly and it may not go off without a hitch.

AM: Right.

CHEF AS: But, I will figure it out. You know what I mean? It doesn’t have to go perfectly. I'll land something out of there. And that has felt very empowering actually. I think that just saying that to ourselves can be very edifying.

AM: 100% I like that. I will try to remember that the next freakout that happens.

CHEF AS: I will figure it out!

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PHOTOGRAPHY CREDITS | FRONT/BACK COVER, PG 16 - 22 Rowan Daly | PG 25, 26 + 38 Food Network |

Read the SEP ISSUE #105 of Athleisure Mag and see FAITH, FAMILY, FOOD | Chef Aarti Sequeira in mag.

NYCWFF 2024

We're looking forward to one of our favorite times of the year in terms of the culinary calendar - the 2024 Food Network New York City Wine & Food Festival (NYCWFF) presented by Invesco QQQ! Much like Chef Aarti Sequeira mentioned in her cover interview, there is something about gathering and community! Being at these events allow you to see a number of Food Network stars, celebrity chefs, food personalities, mixologists, culinary creators and more! You will be able to enjoy master classes, panels, wine tastings, your favorite restaurants through tastings and intimate dinners, as well as to try new ones to get an idea of their menu. We enjoyed attending last year's event which you can check out what we did here from our OCT ISSUE #94.

This year, we're excited as NYC's ultimate wine and food festival takes place Oct 17-20th and will include over 80 events over 4 days that will be in NYC and in Brooklyn that allows you to join them in their mantra of EAT. DRINK. FEED NYC! This includes 500 restaurants, bars, and 200 sponsors. On average, approximately 48,000 fans a year attend this event along with 3,000 volunteers that are involved to support this event.

As we're days away from kicking off the 17th annual event, a number of these events will take place at the Invesco QQQ Campus at Brooklyn Army Terminal. By including the borough of Brooklyn into the festivities, it centralizes the signature events, Pier Parties, and the Grand Tasting (which is one of our events that we will attend on the Trade Day) into one expansive 450,000 square foot campus. Regardless of whether it's raining or not, this will be a tented experience at this location so that you know the good vibes, bites, and sips will happen uninterrupted! It also highlights the diversity of culinary tapestry that also exists here and it's exciting that they are making their debut at the NYCWFF.

While we celebrate food and what it means when we're together, 100% of net proceeds from NYCWFF will support God's Love We Deliver which is NYC's only provider of medically tailored meals and nutrition counseling for individuals who are living with severe illness. To date, NYCWFF has raised more than $14.8 million for its charitable partners to make a significant impact in the city. In 2023, God's Love We Deliver delivered 4 million meals to nearly 15,000 individuals.

Make sure to read our OCT ISSUE #105 which drops on Oct 30th where we will have a recap on events we attended during NYCWFF which includes: Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits Trade Day hosted by Wine Spectator at Grand Tasting, Meet Cutes NYC presents Tacos & Tequila, and JJ Johnson’s The Cookout: A Hip Hop Celebration hosted by Rev Run and Angela Yee.

IG @nycwff

@godslovenyc

PHOTOGRAPHY CREDITS | Paul Farkas

Read the SEP ISSUE #105 of Athleisure Mag and see NYCWFF 2024 in mag.

ATHLEISURE MAG ISSUE #105 | CHEF AARTI SEQUEIRA

In this month’s issue, our front and back cover story is with the Chef Aarti Sequeira who we have enjoyed seeing on Food Network whether it's on her show, Halloween Wars or when she appears on Guys Grocery Games and a host of shows on the network! We talk about her passion for food, the importance of faith, her devotional cookbook UNWIND, the latest season of Halloween Wars, Food Festivals, and upcoming projects. 

In advance of covering the 2024 Food Network NYC Wine Food Festival (NYCWFF) presented by Invesco QQQ, we give an overview of what you can expect from this festival as tickets are still available from this event taking place Oct 17 - 20th, the inclusion of Brooklyn joining the events in addition to those in NYC, link back to our coverage from last year, and more. Make sure to read next month's OCT ISSUE #106 as we recap the events we went to during this festival and follow us on @athleisuremag for posts we share during the 4 days.

We also sat down with NY Mets' DH J.D. Martinez who talks about his love of the game, being on this iconic MLB team, the hit song OMG, and his partnership with Pfizer and how he manages his asthma.

We know that we have a number of fans who enjoys watching Dancing with the Stars! So we were excited to sit down and talk with Derek Hough who recently kicked off the latest season of DWTS as a judge. We talked about his love of dance, his creative process, projects he's been part of, this season of the show, and his partnership with Pepcid that allows him to enjoy the foods he loves.

We always love when we get the chance to sit down with those that we have covered previously as well were former covers. 2017 US Open Champion Sloane Stephens launched her wellness/beauty brand Doc & Glo during the Grand Slam in NYC. We talked about what she has been up to, how launching this brand has been, what we can expect from it, and more.

NYFW SS25 was an amazing experience and we have a recap of this past season, trends, and a fun interview with celebrity manicurist, Miss Pop who we met backstage at BruceGlen to talk about a number of looks that she did for this show as well as others, tools we should have on hand when we do our nails at home, tricks to get a perfect mani, and her passion for her art.

This month's The Art of the Snack comes from SUSHIDELIC which takes Kawaii to the next level with a culinary experience of an elevated conveyor sushi belt experience.

This month's Athleisure List comes from Harbor Burger Shack in Kittery, Maine and L'Antica Pizzeria Da Michele.

This month’s 9PLAYLIST comes from super model Chanel Iman and EDM DJ/Producer Calvin Harris. This month we have our 9PLAYLIST MULTI from Netflix's DIPLOMAT, Alysia Reiner who shares her songs, books and podcasts/TV/films that they are enjoying. Our 9LIST STORI3S comes from 5X Team USA Olympic Gymnast Nastia Liukin (1G, 3S, 1B). Our 63MIX ROUTIN3S comes from 2X Team USA Olympic Track & Field Grant Hollway (1G, 1S) as well as FOX's 9-1-1: Lonestar's Julian Works who shares their routines that they do, enjoy, and have Morning, Afternoon, and Night. We kick off our 9CH3FS ROUTIN3S with AUG ISSUE #104 cover Chef Fariyal Abdullahi who shares her routines in the kitchen for the Morning, Afternoon, and Night. This month's THE 9LIST 9CH3FS and THE 9LIST 9B-L-D comes from Chef Eli Buli of Mesiba in NYC, Chef Hector Laguna of Botanist at the Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel in Vancouver, Canada, and Chef Anthony Ricco of Leuca at the The William Vale Hotel in Brooklyn. This month's 9DRIP comes from NY Mets' DH J.D. Martinez.

Read the SEP ISSUE #105 of Athleisure Mag.

INTEGRITY EXCELLENCE SUSTAINABILITY | CHEF FARIYAL ABDULLAHI

As the Summer comes to a close, we're looking ahead to the Fall and Holiday! We love being able to take time with friends and family and those that are in our inner circles to connect and many times, these gatherings take place in our favorite restaurants! It's within these 4 walls that memories are made, food is shared, and horizons are expanded. With the restaurant as the canvas, it is helmed by those give us the foundation for this exchange to take place.

This month's cover is Executive Chef Fariyal Abdullahi of Hav & Mar which is located in Chelsea's Art District in the Starrett-Lehigh Building. We talk about how a passion for food, fine dining, sustainability, and advancement led to a culinary career that has included phenomenal restaurants and a track record of integrity; her helming and being personally selected by Marcus Samuelsson (Red Rooster, Streetbird, MARCUS ADDIS) for this restaurant that is in the Marcus Samuelsson Group; being the Chef for and walking the Met Gala red carpet in 2021; being a judge on Food Network shows such as Chopped and Alex vs America, and being a James Beard Award 2024 Finalist! We wanted to know more about her culinary journey, her approach to food, sustainability, and changing restaurant culture.

ATHLEISURE MAG: It’s been such a fun day in being able to hangout at your baby, Hav & Mar and your cover editorial here with, a number of looks, and to see your restaurant and you in this way.

What was the first dish that you remember when you realized that you fell in love with food?

CHEF FARIYAL ABDULLAHI: Um, ok, so I grew up in Ethiopia and I am the youngest of 6 siblings. My mom would cook all of our meals herself – breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We were a family of 8, it didn’t matter. She always made it herself. You know, people say that their mom was a good cook, I can tell you objectively as a Chef that my mom was very talented and she didn’t have any formal training or anything. She was just very intuitive and very good at it. Because of that, everybody used to come to our house for food because her food was just that good! Holiday and everything, my uncles would be at the house. They were not at their wives homes with their cooking. They would be at the house and I noticed that at a very young age. I was like, “mom, you have to put me on!”

So it’s not a particular dish. But, she started me out with salad from the beginning. It was nothing that had to do with fire and stuff. I was a Garde Manger Queen (Editor’s Note: The pantry chef, commonly known as Garde Manger or Garmo is responsible for the preparation of cold dishes, salads, charcuterie, and appetizers in a commercial kitchen) when I was 6 years old. I was like, I want to do this, I want to do what you do. But it was also the process of – we’re very close to our food source. So, I have photos of me from when I was a kid making salad! We would go to the farm which was right around the corner from our house and they would grow the lettuce. So it was a whole process. I would go get the lettuce, the tomatoes, and all of that stuff and I would have the connection of seeing all of this stuff going from the soil, the farmers that grew it, and then I would go back home and it was literally a simple salad. Romaine Lettuce, Serrano Peppers, and Tomatoes – you didn’t even make a vinaigrette for it – it was just lime juice and salt.

AM: Oh wow!

CHEF FA: Yeah, that was my responsibility. It was very few ingredients, but it built my relationship that I had with food. It kind of made that first part where I had that connection with the people that grew my food. Then I turned what they did into something that was delicious to eat, and then everyone comes over - everyone pulls up. It was really that process where I was like, this is what I want. This is that thing that connects all of us.

AM: You graduated with a Bachelor’s in Clinical Child Psychology. When did you realize that you wanted to be a Chef as opposed to going down that track in terms of a graduate degree? You opted to go to the Culinary Institute of America in Nappa as opposed to staying on the psychology track.

CHEF FA: I always knew that I wanted to be in food. But, it’s the classic immigrant story where you leave your country and you go to America. The American Dream is that you are a doctor, lawyer, or engineer. Those are the 3 things. I would tell my mom when I was 14 or 16 that I wanted to cook and that I wanted to be a chef. And she would always tell me that that was a hobby and that it wasn’t a career. So when you’re a doctor, you can go home and cook as a hobby. That was your hobby, that was not a career. But I was like, “damn, that is really what I want to do!” As the youngest of 6 siblings, that’s what they did. So I have a sister that is a Neurosurgeon, my brother is an Immuno Oncologist – so he is doing cancer research, I have a brother and a sister that is doing Internal Medicine – so then it was my turn and I mean, I guess my second love is just knowing people and understanding behavior and that is why I went into Clinical

Psychology. But it never -

AM: It never really felt right.

CHEF FA: It didn’t! It really didn’t and I am a very empathetic person and so I got my Bachelor’s in Clinical Child Psychology and my sister who is in UCLA – both of my sisters are in UCLA, I went to go visit them and they said, “let’s show you the psych department.” They took me to where the children are and that’s what kind of changed me forever because I knew that I could not work with sick kids every day. I couldn’t do that and then go home with it! I knew that I would always go home with it! So that day, instead of applying to grad school, I applied to culinary school. I had my heart set on CIA because I had read 2 biographies from Grant Achatz and Anthony Bourdain and they both went to CIA and it is supposed to be the Harvard of culinary schools. I thought, hold on, if I get accepted to this school – this 1 culinary school, it’s go to be big right? So, I didn’t apply anywhere else, I just applied there.

AM: One shot!

CHEF FA: Yeah, one shot and I got accepted. So I told my mom, you have to let me do this.

AM: I used to have a teacher who felt that I should be a surgeon because in our labs when we were dissecting various animals, my precision in cutting was something that she loved. I had to explain to her many times that it wasn’t the work that I wanted to do, and that inspired me to find a piece that called back to that to bring it to this set. My mind will continue to run and replay a number of things and I can’t make my mind not work that way. I don’t know if I could take running a procedure in my head where something went wrong on that level and be ok.

CHEF FA: Yeah, I don’t know how they do it!

AM: So while you waited to hear about your application, you went to 18 countries and traveled for 3 months! What was it like to go to these places and for someone who already had an interesting palette already, how did you retrain that to take on all of these other areas that you had not previously been exposed to?

CHEF FA: So that was the purpose because I didn’t think that I had a palette. I don’t want to say advanced, but I didn’t think that I had a good palette yet. So the first 16 years of my life, I lived in Ethiopia, so I had a very high tolerance for spicy food, but also like very heavily spiced food. Things are very seasoned in Ethiopia so that is my threshold. I came to the States and my intro into American food became what I ate on campus.

I was like, “what is this flavorless, unseasoned – what is going on?” I swear that at 16, because I started college fulltime at 16, I used to walk around in my purse with Tabasco before Beyoncé said it, I swear to God that I had hot sauce in my bag! Because I was like, this ain’t it for me! It was just no flavor! It was that and the burritos, the burgers, and I’m in college. I kept thinking that there had to be an in between – hold on!

Yeah so, that was kind of the purpose behind my trip and I knew that there had to be more food out there. So it was 18 countries and now I’m on my 56th country. But in those 3 months, I did 18 countries and it was just to eat!

AM: That’s insane and amazing!

CHEF FA: It was cool because it’s like the whole 10,000 hours that Malcom Gladwell talks about (Editor’s Note: Malcolm Gladwell is a Canadian journalist, author and public speaker. He is known for his unique perspective on popular culture. He has been a staff writer with The New Yorker since 1996 and has published 7 books. He is also the podcast host of Revisionist History and the co-founder of the podcast company, Pushkin Industries. In his 2008 book Outliers, he states that, “10,000 hours is the magic number of greatness.” This theory means that to be considered elite or truly experienced with a certain craft you would need to practice it for 10,000 hours) it was the exposure of different flavors and textures that I would not have been exposed to if I had not traveled to these different countries. It became my little culinary school!

AM: Did you have a little travel journal and write down things as you navigated these countries?

CHEF FA: Yeah! I was solo too! I went by myself!

AM: Got it! Wow that’s a lot!

So what was it like to attend CIA and what were some of the kitchens that you trained in as you navigated to where you are here?

CHEF FA: So CIA, so I was responsible for my own tuition and that was the deal when I moved from Ethiopia. I did 8 hours of school a day, that’s how long our classes were – 8 hours, but then I would also work as a Teacher’s Assistant for the first 8 hours of my day. So that’s when I got into the 16 hour work day.

AM: Right!

CHEF FA: So, it was actually teaching me the work ethic that I needed honestly at the time, I didn’t know! I didn’t know how many hours people worked at restaurants. I had never worked in a restaurant before and there were no examples around me. So CIA in addition to obviously the culinary fundamentals, it was the first thing that taught me – ok, you can’t be tired. If you’re going to do this, you’re going to have to have the energy for this. I mean, it’s the Harvard of culinary schools and I do think that I got into Noma which was my first job ever – I mean Noma was the best restaurant in the world for 4 years in a row! It’s because I set myself up by going to the CIA!

AM: For sure!

CHEF FA: I felt like I was behind because when I was attending the CIA, my classmates were 18 years old and I was 25! I knew that I had to be on the fast track. Yeah, so it was essentially, a career change for me.

AM: Clearly, it all worked out as I’m sitting here talking with you in your restaurant!

CHEF FA: Yeah, I’m pretty much on a space ship and I’m on it.

AM: So, you were at Noma and I know that they are closing at the end of this year, but they will be more of a food laboratory and so that’s an interesting evolution with how they will continue their journey. So what are 3 things that you learned in your time of being at that restaurant? I mean when you hear of people who were at that restaurant, it’s no joke and it’s highly prestigious!

CHEF FA: I mean, especially with that being my first job ever! I remember when we were in culinary school getting ready to graduate and my classmates were like, we’re going to start off at this restaurant and then work our way up. I was like nah! I knew that I had to go straight to the top. They were like, you can’t do that. That’s not how the system is set up. You have to work your way up to Noma and I’m like, “cool, that’s what y’all are going to do.”

AM: But when you have a vision and you already feel like that you’re older than those that you have been with, you just can’t go at the same cadence because you have to make up for lost time.

CHEF FA: So the first thing that I learned at Noma is Integrity. Because my thing was that if I want to learn to be the best, I have to learn from the best! They were the best restaurant 4 years in a row and I was like, cool. What is it that makes them the best. It’s not always necessarily the food, what I learned there was Integrity is so high. Everybody was doing the right thing whether someone was looking or they weren’t looking. There’s no cutting corners. If this is how you’re shown how to do something, you do it. If there is something that is stopping you from doing it, you do it. Either way, you always do the right thing. That’s really powerful! So integrity!

10 years ago, the restaurant industry and kitchens are set up on this bully system I would call it. You get called all kinds of names, you get yelled at, that’s the relationship that you have with your Chef. The standard is always excellence and you will never reach that. So you're getting yelled at constantly every single day. So I was like, ok cool, this is how it is. If this is how it is, you just adjust to it. You learn how to have tough skin and you move on. But there is a changing area and I was getting ready to close out from the day and I heard René Redzepi (Editor’s Note: Danish chef and co-owner of 3-Michelin star Noma in the Christianshavn neighborhood of Copenhagen, Denmark) having a conversation with his leadership team and I guess there was this line cook that was being bullied and he just couldn’t take it anymore and he just left and he wasn’t answering anybody’s calls for 3 weeks.

AM: Oh wow!

CHEF FA: And people were like ok, whatever, if he’s gone, he’s gone. That day when I was getting ready to leave, I was in the changing area and I heard the conversation that René was having with his leadership team and he was telling them, “we have to shift the culture. How do you guys not care? What if this guy isn’t even alive right now? What is wrong with you?”

AM: That’s what I was wondering!

CHEF FA: He was really laying into them. He said, we have to be better. So he was like, “cool, you guys are going to go to his apartment, you’re going to find him and make sure that he is fed.” He was an intern so he wasn’t getting paid, but he was like, “do we need to pay him?” He wanted to find out all of this information. René’s wife was pregnant at the time and he thought that he was having a son and he was like, “if my son told me that he wanted to work in the kitchen, I would tell him no.” That’s because it is very abusive and we have to shift the culture and we need to be able to create a system where people want to come to work and that they feel appreciated and cared about. I was like, what is he talking about? That is not how kitchens run. Don't you just get yelled at and told that you ain’t shit?

AM: Yeah and you go into the corner and do a cry where no one can see you so you can get back in the game.

CHEF FA: Right? You go to the side, handle it and go right back out!

AM: Right? That’s how it was for me in fashion and that was just how it went!

CHEF FA: Yeah and I thought that it would be like that forever! But that was the first time that I had ever heard anybody talking about changing and shifting the industry! I thought, ok I guess that it could be different. So that sparked the biggest thing in me where it made me say that I run my kitchen with joy. I lead it with joy. I think that that is why we have such a high retention rate here. People want to stay working here.

AM: We have been here for a few hours and I haven’t seen anyone slacking, slinking off or even watching us do a photoshoot and having me interview you. Everyone is just focused!

CHEF FA: Yeah they have a very heavy prep list. They are super focused! They are totally fine! I am really proud of what I have built. It all stems from my Noma days. Build a workplace that people actually want to come to and I learned that from René and have integrity! Always do the right thing!

AM: You leave Noma and prior to Hav & Mar, what are some of the restaurants that you were working at between these 2 periods?

CHEF FA: Right after Noma, I went back to LA because that’s where my family lives and while I was there, I got a call from a Chef here in NYC and he was an Executive Chef at a restaurant called Caviar Russe which is a Michelin-starred restaurant and he called me and he was like, “hey, I need a prep cook." I was like, “damn, starting from the bottom. I just came from Noma!” But it made sense because there is such a huge gap in my resume because I went from culinary school to the best restaurant in the world and while I was at Noma – you know, that’s the third thing that I learned.

I learned that you determine your own growth in terms of how quickly you grow. Because I went as an intern and interns don’t really get to work the line especially prep, but I was out of the prep kitchen after a month and they put me on the line.

I remember that there was a huge symposium that they do called the MAD Symposium (Editor’s Note: René created the MAD Symposium which is considered the G20 of Food Industry Change) where they bring some of the best culinary minds and René would be on huge pins and needles and he was very anxious to make sure that service went well. Obviously, they had all the interns in the prep kitchen and he came upstairs and he said, “what are you doing here?” I was like, “Chef, this is where I was put.” And he told me that I was going to be working on the line. He put me on the line for one of the most important services that he was about to do. So I said, “got it Chef.” I just put my head down and I did the work.

AM: Inside, you must have been like, argh!

CHEF FA: Oh yeah! I mean, we’re extremely close, but he could be very intimidating. So, we always knew when he was in town because when he is in the kitchen, all you would hear (Chef Fariyal pulls her keys out of her pocket and puts her finger through the keyring and flips the keys over and over through the loop) is those keys and you would say, “Chef’s here.”

So he put me on a station with a Sous Chef from Finland and he was this massive guy! He said, ok you're going to work this station with him. The Sous Chef was like, “don’t say nothing. All you have to do is shuck these 200 year old clams and that’s it!” I mean, dude, they were the size of my palm. I’m like wow 200 year old clams, but I was like, “yes Chef.” He let me know that no matter how intense it got, all he needed me to do was to stay calm and just shuck these clams. So I said, “yes Chef.” 5mins into service, René comes around the corner and starts screaming at the Sous Chef and asking him why his station was dirty. It was not even dirty. “Why is your station dirty? You know what, stop, everyone come here. Look at how nasty his station is.” He kicks the Sous Chef out of the kitchen and now I am in the station by myself.

AM: Oh no!

CHEF FA: I said, “the Sous Chef told me to shut up and just keep shucking so I’m just going to shut up and keep shucking my clams!” So I learned to stay cool and to stay calm. So nothing gets me out of my zone.

AM: Nope!

CHEF FA: So that is my 3rd thing. You determine your growth because I was the only intern working the line on a shift that René kicked my Sous Chef off his station that I worked at and then it became mine. That was all because I put my head down and I put in the work.

AM: We also know that you accepted that job at Caviar Russe.

CHEF FA: Yes so Caviar Russe was the first job after Noma. They called me and I said sure, prep cook is kind of crazy, but sure. So I came and I moved to NY for that. Fine dining is my love and it’s what I love to do. But 6 months of doing that, making minimum wage and you’re in NYC – I was barely surviving – barely. I was like I don’t know how much longer I can sustain this. When I was in school, we always used to have job fairs and there would be this restaurant group, Hillstone.

AM: Oh yeah!

CHEF FA: They would always be in the school and try to recruit kids from the CIA. They have a few restaurants in NYC.

AM: Yeah, they had the spot at 53rd & Lex as I used to eat there quite a bit in my early days of living in NYC. That was my place at that time.

CHEF FA: I was never interested in working at a place like Hillstone. I was like, I’m a fine dining girl from CIA – what are you talking about? I’m not trying to make burger and fries! But then I was like, ok, fine dining is not cutting it. I’m literally a starving artist right now and I’m hungry and can’t even feed myself. I got recruited to Hillstone and I said, let me see what this is about. I went and I remember when I did my stage, I was like hold on, they may not be making the type of food that I am interested in, but the restaurant is run like a fine dining restaurant. So I thought hold on, maybe I can do this. They pay you a 6 figure salary right off the bat and I thought, I can do this and not be broke!

I was like, this is compromising the type of food that I love making, but it is done to the same standards. Also, the paycheck is cute and I did the switch from fine dining to Hillstone. I did that for about 5 years.

AM: That’s a long time.

CHEF FA: 5 years, 9 different restaurants, I moved 9 times to different cities, and I became the opener. That’s how I got my experience in opening restaurants. Anytime you are asked to open a restaurant as a Chef, that is a huge compliment because you’re laying the foundation.

AM: Yeah the standard.

CHEF FA: They’re saying that they want you to instill and to inject your work ethic and the trajectory of the restaurant is all based on -

AM: Your brand standard!

CHEF FA: Yeah so I opened 9 restaurants in 9 different cities with Hillstone.When I was with them, they had 53 restaurants in a number of major cities. It was a $650 million dollar restaurant. It was 1 owner, he did not go public.

AM: Oh wow!

CHEF FA: Huge!

AM: That’s a flex!

CHEF FA: That’s a flex! That is where I learned my leadership. That is 100% where I learned my leadership style. A lot of Chefs say that it is one of the best run restaurant groups in America. Hands down, easily.

So Caviar Russe to Hillstone and then I was like, I’m tired. By that time, I had been in the industry 8 years and there was never any Black women and even with Hillstone, I grew really quickly so after 9 months they gave me my own kitchen which was also very much so on the fast track. People had issues being led by a woman of color and they would make it very clear.

AM: Oh yeah.

CHEF FA: Like they would actually verbally say I’m not doing that. Why? Because you’re a woman and you’re Black. I would say, “cool, do you take a paycheck from a woman because guess who is writing your paychecks?” So if you’re cool with that, you’re going to do this task. But that was very exhausting. It felt like I was in a state of isolation. Because I was far away from my family, cities and states that I didn’t have friends or family in them. So I was very much so alone and then you go into work and they make it a point to feel even more alone. Even though I was Head Chef, you didn't really have much of a say. It wasn’t my food. I didn’t get to hire the people that I wanted. So I wasn’t making any of the changes that I wanted to make. I was tired and it was 2020 and I felt that I was done with the industry. I moved back to Ethiopia. I was like, “I’m done, this is wack and I’m not into it.”

Then I get a call from Marcus Samuelsson. “I was like, what the heck is happening right now?” He’s like, “Chef, it’s taken me quite awhile to track you down.” I was like, “what – what do you mean?“ I was so confused. He tells me about this restaurant. He told me that he was opening a restaurant in Chelsea and he wanted it to be run by me. I wanted to know more. He said that he wanted to build a sustainable menu and that he wanted it to be led by a woman of color as he felt that he had not put any spotlight on women of color.

So I was in Ethiopia for 6 months. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I was chilling. I still had my home and my brother still lives there – I was cool. There was no rush. So Marcus called and he said sustainable menu which really mattered to me a lot and having it led by women of color. I was like, “hold on, so I can make whatever food I want and I can hire whoever I want?” He was like, it’s you. It’s your restaurant. You can do what you want! So I was like, alright cool, I have to come back. Also, it didn’t feel like I was done with the industry.

AM: Right, you just needed the right fit.

CHEF FA: So this was my second chance at the industry. Then within a year and a half, we have had a stellar NY Times review, I’ve gotten my James Beard Nomination, all of this stuff and it’s like – wait, what?

AM: That’s so insane! You must have gotten off of the call and just been like – he’s been looking for me? I’m going to be working with this man?

CHEF FA: How? I mean – what? You’re looking for me? That don’t make no sense!

It was and it is and he is letting me do my thing. I’m really glad that I came back.

AM: It’s such a great story. I have had the pleasure of interviewing him before and I have also done a fun culinary video with him and seeing him at culinary events and competitions. Love his personality and his focus as well as everything about him is really amazing.

What does it mean to you for him to place you in this position and to have this massive responsibility as well as being able to chart your own path?

CHEF FA: It’s 2 things. There is that whole show that comes along with it. It’s a very public and media facing restaurant. I wouldn’t have known that I could be a voice for women of color in the culinary industry if he didn’t trust me with this you know? There is only 6% of women of color that are Executive Chefs which no wonder that we feel so lonely. I do know some women of color that are Executive Chefs, but they say that they don’t have to talk about it all the time. They feel that the more that you focus on race and all of that stuff, you’re taking away from your craft. But I’m like, people are making it a point to focus on it anyway.

AM: Exactly!

CHEF FA: Right, so why don’t you talk your shit?

AM: It’s intertwined!

CHEF FA: It is!

AM: You can’t do one without the other.

CHEF FA: People don’t want to separate it so I will talk about it. People immediately are only focused on the food. I am going to talk about it and he gave me the voice which I think really helps. Because now, so many women of color reach out to me and say, “Chef this is so inspiring. I almost gave up on the industry.”

But the other thing is that Marcus is the first and the only person to ever tell me this. When we first started opening the restaurant he could tell because I had never really worked for a restaurant where I was in charge that was this front facing. He started talking about that we would get reviewed in the first couple of months and I was like woah, “I have never had to deal with this.” I wasn’t sure if I could do it and he was the first person to ever tell me, “Chef, you’re here because you deserve to be. You know that right?” I’ll never forget those words. I’m like, “no actually. No one has ever said that to me. Not a single person has told me that you’re here because you deserve to be.” He told me that I worry about that way too much and that he brought me here because I made great food and I tell a great story. So he told me that, ”whoever walks through that door, if they don’t see you, that’s not your problem. You’re here because you deserve to be.” And that kind of felt like the shackles that I had the first 8 years of my career –“

AM: Broke.

CHEF FA: Yeah, it unlocked it. I was like, cool. I don’t have to prove myself to anyone. I’m here because I deserve to be. You know, you don’t see white men prove why they are there.

AM: No you don’t.

CHEF FA: Right, everyone just knows that that is what it is. They make the food, people see that is the chef and there isn’t anything else that has to be said or debated. So he gave that to me. He gave me the belief and the understanding that I am here because I deserve to be. He gave me that voice so it’s been very impactful. It’s the first time and I always tell my siblings that their job is important because they are literally saving lives. My job is not important and that is what I have been saying for the last 8 years, but now like I have been doing this for 12 years and it’s the first time that I have felt that what I do is important. I’m changing an entire industry in terms of how you can run a restaurant and also many people see that you need to bring more women of color into your restaurant.

AM: There are a lot of people out there in your space telling a story, but you need to also be out on platforms sharing how you’re rocking things too. To hear as you said that it’s less than 6%.

What can you tell us about this space, the ambiance, the design, and what can diners expect when they come here? I love how decadent it is when you look in. But there is a relaxing element to the space as well as whimsical with the Black mermaids which I love!

CHEF FA: Yeah! Well that’s all Derrick Adams! So when Marcus commissioned Derrick Adams to do the artwork here, he told him it was going to be a seafood restaurant and that it would be led by women of color. So immediately, Derrick Adams was like Black mermaids. He titled it, We Are From the Water Too.

AM: I love that!

CHEF FA: We Are From the Water Too! So Black mermaids. So Marcus always says, “when you lose the message of Hav, look at the mermaids.” Like, they will always bring you back to what our message is at Hav. Visually and aesthetically, the architects name is Zébulon Perron (Red Bull Music Academy, Broccolini Condo Store, Pancho) and he’s won awards for creating this space and he's actually amazing.

But I love how it looks simple, right? Which is why you can feel so relaxed and it doesn’t feel intimidating where you feel that you have to be buttoned up. But then you get into the details and it’s like woah, hold on!

AM: It’s very Matrix-y in some ways with the way that the fixtures are floating. There are sections and yet everything is still together. It’s mind trippy! A little bit like Salvador Dalí (Editor’s Note: A Spanish surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, and his striking images. Major themes in his work included dreams, stretching and mixing realities, as well as the subconscious.)

There’s just a warmth.

CHEF FA: And you know, he wanted it to be an open kitchen obviously. So I always stand in the pass (Editor’s Note: This is where plates go for a final garnish or inspection before they’re sent to the dining room. It’s also where components of a dish that are prepped at different stations meet to be plated together,) so I am the first person that people see. If we’re going to have a restaurant led by a woman of color, we’re not going to hide her. We’re going to make sure that people know that she is at the helm of it all. So I take my position right there and we have guests that walk up. Sometimes people are like, “can we meet the Chef?”

AM: It’s like, hello!

CHEF FA: Haha yes, hello! Were you expecting someone or something different?

AM: Sometimes they are!

CHEF FA: Well most of the time they are!

We get so many people that come up! Little girls and they’re like, “I want to be a chef!” This space! When I first walked in, there was nothing! It was rubble – a pile of rubble! I was like, “I don’t know what y’all see!” They did it just like that – 2 months!

AM: Really?

CHEF FA: Yeah!

AM: Wow!

CHEF FA: I love it here. I spend 80 hours in this building so -

AM: You know it very well!

CHEF FA: It’s not a bad place to spend 80 hours.

AM: What is the meaning behind the name?

CHEF FA: So Marcus is both Ethiopian Swedish. Hav is Swedish for ocean and Mar is the Ethiopian word for honey. So we are from the Sweet Waters which is how he describes it. But, it’s to pay homage to both his Swedish and Ethiopian roots.

AM: So what would you say the cuisine is and what are the ingredients and the flavors that are indicative of it?

CHEF FA: So when we were first talking about how we could make a sustainable menu, we kept coming back to seafood. Initially, he wanted to do a vegan restaurant.

AM: Part of me thought that this would have been a vegan restaurant.

CHEF FA: Right because when you talk about sustainability, that tends to be the best route to go. But then we were like, gosh, it’s really hard to tell our story through just plants. So we landed at seafood. I like to describe it as seafood. When we first opened it was, seafood told through the lens of the African Diaspora because it was very heavily influenced by African ingredients. I’m Ethiopian born and raised so a lot of Ethiopian influence, but I did a lot of West African ingredients too. Then we evolved because I have a Sous Chef from the Philippines and a Sous Chef from Puerto Rico.

PF: Oooo

AM: Yeah, both of us just said ooo at the same time!

CHEF FA: Yeah as the Executive Chef, the menu is mine. One day, I was feeling under the weather and my Filipino Sous Chef made me a traditional Filipino soup called Sinigang. I was in the pass and she saw me struggling as I was saying fire for the dishes. She said, “Chef, I made this for you.” I was like what is this and why is this not on our menu? She explained that it was from the Philippines and that they have a traditional soup made with fish. I was like, “you know we have a seafood restaurant?" Then I was like, hold on, I think that we should start bringing in their voices to the menu too. I don’t have to gatekeep this.

So then we started incorporating their dishes and then I think that that’s when Pete Wells (Editor’s Note: Pete Wells was the restaurant critic at The New York Times from 2011 – August 2024) came in to do the review and I was like, oh my God, we don’t really have an identity besides the fact that we are a seafood restaurant. He was like, “Chef Fariyal uses her global influence –.“ I was like, that’s who we are - we are a seafood restaurant. Some people will come in and say this is not African and I’m like we’re a seafood restaurant with a global influence. That’s it and now it has all of their global identities.

We have Puerto Rican flavors, we have Middle Eastern flavors, Filipino flavors – we have everything!

AM: That’s amazing.

CHEF FA: But the vessel is seafood. The seafood tells our story in terms of sustainability. It’s what keeps me up at night.

So when I was designing the menu and we were creating these dishes, we need to use as much of the ingredient as possible. I want very little waste. So the thing about restaurants is that we are one of the highest contributors of the Climate Crisis because we produce so much food waste and that ends up in landfills and I’m like how can we avoid all the waste that we produce here ending up in landfills? So it’s about using as much of the ingredient as possible.

So we are getting really creative so I have something called Ash Oil. So I was like, can we do anything with all of these scraps with the skins of scallions, onion skins, scallion tops that we throw away, garlic, and all of that stuff. Things that you would throw away and I thought that there has to be flavor in here! So we just put it in the Hearth oven which goes up to 800° and it gives it a nice char and then I blended it into a salt and then I mix that with oil so it has this super...

AM: Smoky

CHEF FA: Yes smoky flavor! So I was like, hold on this is edible and it gives this whole other dimension to dishes. So I was like, alright cool lets get really creative like that. Let’s use parts of ingredients that normally get thrown away. So that was Step 1.

Step 2 was how do I make sure that – obviously you can’t use 100% of everything.

AM: Right.

CHEF FA: How do I make sure that this doesn’t end up in landfills? So I did some research and found 2 different organizations one is called Afterlife. They come and pick up our compost every day. They grow mushrooms with our compost.

AM: Oh wow!

CHEF FA: I built a dish around these mushrooms so it’s like a full 360 moment. But then, the most important thing is that after they are done growing these mushrooms they take the substrate which is the compost and they turn it into soil and they create something called Biochar. So Biochar is soil, but it has the ability to sink carbon for a 1,000 years.

AM: Wow so they are a Circular Farm.

CHEF FA: Right, so I was like hold on, this is really fly! So all of our compost goes to them. I work with them a lot and they are doing a lot of really amazing things.

AM: And they are based here in the city?

CHEF FA: Yeah! They do all of that and they make Biochar by using our compost and then they donate the Biochar to farmers and it helps them increase their yield. So farmers are getting better yield while making sure that we’re not increasing the output of Carbon Dioxide to the air. They also donate it to parks and it goes to Governors Island. So they do all of these wonderful things with our compost.

AM: Wow!

CHEF FA: And then the second company, they’re called Billion Oyster Project.

AM: That’s the host of the dinner we’re going to on Thursday at Governors Island (Editor’s Note: You can read the story about this dinner from Outstanding in the Field in this issue).

CHEF FA: No way!

AM: Yeah Le Jardinier is the culinary portion and we’re very excited.

CHEF FA: Ok, that makes sense!

They are my second partner. So what they do is they collect oysters from restaurants and they are basically reconstituting the oyster population in the Hudson and all of the rivers here. What that does is it gives us a good filtration system. So they take our oysters because I’m like, let’s not get lazy with it. Technically, you could throw everything into a compost, but I’m like are there things that we can separate within the compost that makes better use? So since we have been open, Billion Oyster Project has been in the loop.

That is the most important thing to me. We can get all of the best accolades in the world. But the thing is, If you are contributing to a worse planet, what are you really doing?

AM: We have to do something and to keep researching for new innovations.

CHEF FA: Exactly!

AM: Wow!

CHEF FA: I like talking about it because for example, Afterlife they have 20 restaurants that they have partnered with in NYC. Do you know how many restaurants there are in NYC? That’s wild that there are only 20 restaurants that participate!

I eventually want to end up in policy. I do work with Save the Children. I do a lot of advocacy work and I eventually want to end up there. But for now, if you can implement the stuff while you’re on the ground, that’s a great place to start.

AM: I can see you doing Food Advocacy work as Tom Colicchio and Todd English, both of them are doing what they can and making their voices heard.

CHEF FA: It’s important! Listen, I am a mushroom fiend! They are very tasty.

AM: In looking at the menu, the flow of it is really great! What are 3 dishes from your Raw & Cured that you would suggest for those coming in?

CHEF FA: Raw & Cured, so I am a little biased with my Tuna Tartare.

AM: I love a Tuna Tartare moment.

CHEF FA: It’s so good! Tuna Tartare is a must. Hamachi has been there since we have opened. It’s a ceviche that I use called the Black Ceviche which is non-traditional and I use the Ashe Oil in there. It’s very acidic, but that Ash Oil gives it that other dimension of what I was talking about when I was saying smoky. That’s not very traditional for a ceviche. I can never get rid of that. It will be on the menu forever. There are just some things – I mean we are a seasonal menu, but there are just some things that’s just like, there will be an uproar if we take that off the menu.

AM: People will be like, wait, is it even a restaurant if I can’t get this here? Forks raised in the air – where is it?

CHEF FA: For real – picketing! The Hamachi Ceviche and there is a dish called the Swediopian. So it is something that we have had since the beginning. Swediopian is our play on words where it’s Swedish and Ethiopian. So way before this restaurant opened, Marcus and I did an event for Pepsi and it was around the Super Bowl and he wanted a dish that represented both his Ethiopian and Swedish roots and he said to play around with the cured salmon. So I cured it using Swedish techniques, but then I used berbere which is an Ethiopian spice so it’s a twice cured salmon.

AM: Oh wow so it’s punchy.

CHEF FA: Yeah very actually. You guys need to come in and eat. Seriously.

AM: Oh we will, we want to be able to try that.

CHEF FA: So those three from the Raw & Cured are great!

AM: What are 3 Small Plates that you suggest that we should enjoy?

CHEF FA: Small Plates, we do a beautiful Scallop here.

AM: I love a Scallop.

CHEF FA: Yes, we have our Fall Menu coming in 3 weeks and so the format will change again.

Yes and the Salad is a big hit too! We always bring that in every Summer. I have this formula that I use. For this particular Salad I do a purée and it’s about what ingredient is at its best during the season? So for the Summer Salad, I do a corn purée then Heirloom tomatoes because you know and then I do a compressed watermelon.

AM: Wow!

CHEF FA: What could be more Summer than that? So I always say get the Summer Salad and the Scallops – those are my 2 favorites.

AM: What is Happy Hour like here?

CHEF FA: Happy Hour is from 5-7pm. We have a separate menu that we do and our General Manager Tia, a woman of color whose Jamaican, she’s a Somm and she does the Beverage Program here.

AM: Wow!

CHEF FA: So she wears many hats! So she makes awesome cocktails. We work in tandem and she takes ingredients from the kitchen that we are processed and done with and instead of throwing it away and making waste, she makes cocktails with it.

AM: Oh that’s smart and the sustainability continues.

So that means some of your cocktails are even a bit savory as well?

CHEF FA: Yup the Hav & Martini – so I make pickled red onions that I use as a garnish and I put beets in it to make that beautiful pink color. So when we're done pickling it, we used to toss out the juice. But she uses it in her Hav & Martini.

AM: I like that!

CHEF FA: Yeah it’s this beautiful pink hued beverage. She has this really beautiful way of explaining it because I don’t drink alcohol and I’m Muslim and I have never been in that world.

The way that she explains it she’s like this cocktail uses onions and this is why. I’m like, girl I don’t know, but it sounds good!

AM: It’s smart because there are a lot of studios in this area -

CHEF FA: Art studios.

AM: So you’re open for dinner every night. Do you ever foresee a lunch service? What was the decision behind this?

CHEF FA: So one thing that I love patting myself on the back for is because when you start getting to this whole thing – James Beard, Michelin, and all of that stuff – people equate how difficult it is to get into a restaurant with how successful that restaurant is. I always tell people – it’s not a competition, but when you look at and line up all of the restaurants, I have 140 seats. We are open 7 days a week and a lot of these restaurants are not open 7 days a week. They’re not and in this post COVID climate, it’s very challenging to have enough staff to be open and operating 7 days a week and that’s a really huge deal.

AM: Yup!

CHEF FA: And most of the restaurants, I mean this is a very big operation in terms of seats.

AM: When I walked in, I thought, they’re not playing.

CHEF FA: Yeah so 140 seats, 7 days a week. I’m like, you guys don’t understand – like when you guys are like who is the best chef? Look at the operation also, you know what I mean? I could run a 12 seat restaurant that’s open 4 days a week. I could run that very easily. So it already is doing the most because we are open 7 days a week in this restaurant. But Marcus does have pipe dreams of being open for lunch and I’m like, “Chef, where are these people? Where is the staff that I’m supposed to find?” I would say that that is the biggest challenge of being open for more service – it’s just not the same. The pool of people to hire is not the same at all.

AM: So speaking to that, what is an average day like?

CHEF FA: So the operating hours is that we are open from 5-10pm.

So there are 2 shifts. The AM team gets here at 8am. They are here from 8-4pm. They prep the food that all the guests are going to eat. So our rule is, “today’s food, for today’s guests.” So everything is made fresh inhouse every day. There is no rolling over. I have a Sous Chef, I have a Pastry Chef, 2 Prep Cooks, and a Dishwasher.

AM: Wow.

CHEF FA: So that’s who’s here from 8 – 4pm.

Then at 3pm, my line team gets here. So they are the ones that cook the food. So there is an hour overlap between the 2 of them. But they will be here from 3 – 11pm. So there is the prep team and the service team.

AM: Oh wow.

CHEF FA: I have to kind of be here for both.

So I get here between 12-2 and then I stay here until the last table leaves.

AM: So on your admin day, is that when you are touching base with the group?

CHEF FA: So with the group, we have weekly meetings every Wed. So we have our meetings with our Director of Operations. The only reason why she is here today is because our General Manager is in Chicago. But we have a meeting with her, our CEO, and our CFO every Wed. about our P&L. So I have to know every single penny that comes into this building and every single penny that leaves this building. So I always give them a presentation every single Wed. This is where we’re at, this is the goal, this is what my food cost is, this is what my labor cost is, and this is our bottom line. It’s every Wed. and I have to be prepared to talk about our numbers in and out.

But when I say admin stuff, it’s like every Mon. we do payroll. Bit every day, I process invoices. So there is always something. Or there is scheduling I do that every week.

AM: You are a woman of many hats.

CHEF FA: It never ends.

AM: So obviously we were talking about the Met Gala earlier during your shoot. You looked phenomenal on the red carpet. What did it mean to you to be part of that event in addition to obviously doing the menu itself? Just being in that apex of fashion.

CHEF FA: So in the moment, I obviously didn’t grasp how big it was!

Somehow in the end it looks like I’m a fashion forward person ...

That was important for me 1 – it was kind of my debut. We had done so many shoots with Vogue and a lot of stuff and it was like, Chef Fariyal, Chef Fariyal. I was always cooking behind the scenes and now it was like, people know me as a chef now. It was cool and that’s what kind of catapulted the whole TV and media. Because that is when I got a call from the President of Food Network. They were like, hold on, who are you and why are you not on TV? I was like what do you mean because I’m a Chef? What do you mean TV? But that is what catapulted it all. It was that Met Gala, that red carpet.

AM: You were on a lot of the main pages of a number of international editions of Vogue as well as the one here. It was like Lady Gaga what? I remember thinking wow and she’s a Chef on that red carpet – wow. It’s like that’s huge because I thought that she would be in the kitchen.

CHEF FA: I thought that I was going to cook, but no!

AM: What does it mean to your brand because you are doing Chopped as a judge or you’re on Alex vs. America as a judge, or you’re on your Roku show, Celebrity Family Food Battle, and you have done different kinds of things. What does that mean to you when you look at that particular component. Because it feels like being a Chef now – although you don’t have to do this – it has become elevated where you have to have these other touch points that includes TV.

CHEF FA: So it kind of goes hand-in-hand. One of the reasons that the restaurant has been successful is that obviously we’re blessed to have Marcus and his brand behind it and now it’s 50/50. Just as many people walk into the building to meet me as they do asking for Marcus and it’s because I do so many things and when they introduce me on TV they say, that is the Executive Chef from Hav & Mar. So it really helps and my brand is very closely tied to Hav & Mar. So we keep those butts in these seats.

AM: You’re rocking those 7 nights!

CHEF FA: Yeah!

AM: And being a finalist for James Beard. What does that mean to you?

CHEF FA: Oh my gosh, that was never – to me, it was one of those things like James Beard wasn’t even a North Star for me. It wasn’t something that I thought would ever be in my world or something that I could even attain. Then when I moved to Hav & Mar and we opened this restaurant, Marcus asked me what some of my goals were.

I was like, James Beard and he said, “oh, ok.” I was like, “what you mean?”

AM: And he was like what part did you not get? The O or the K?

CHEF FA: I want to be nominated for a James Beard. The other thing was Food & Wine Best Chef. I wanted to be in that category too. And he made me write a list and he said that these were all things that we could work towards. I didn’t think that it would come so fast within my first year of opening the restaurant.

So when I got my nomination for James Beard, I was on set at Chopped and the list came out. It was like right between takes and my phone because I always have it under my leg, it was going off. I was like is the restaurant on fire? What is going on? So I kind of snuck a look and I was like what? James Beard – whatever. And then in between, I read the first text and it was like, congratulations you are a nominated and I was like, what are they talking about? So I was with my co-judges and I was like, Tiffany, I just got nominated for a James Beard and everyone was like what that’s so cool! Then it was like, “and action!”

So literally this is happening in between takes and obviously everyone on set knew how big of a deal this was and what made it really special was that at some point, somebody went out and got flowers and a card. They made the entire team come out on set – every single person that works on Chopped came to give me flowers.

They announced it and said Chef Fariyal is a James Beard nominated Chef! It was very emotional.

AM: That is very cool!

CHEF FA: It was really emotional and how cool is that moment? I’m on the set of Chopped, we’re their celebrating a James Beard nomination and then of course, everyone was like wow just to be nominated is really important and a lot of people don’t even make it to the finals. The people were making sure that I didn’t get my hopes up. But sure enough, I made that shortlist too! It was like what? This is insane. So now, we’re really pulling up. We’re pulling up to the James Beard Awards – this is amazing. I thought that up until that moment that it was just the nomination that mattered to me.

But then, I am in the first category. I sat down, there was a quick presentation. First award of the night is the Emerging Chef Category. I had this super powerful and emotional speech written. I had envisioned it, I was going to go up there and Marcus had given me a pep talk and said that not that many people get it on their first nomination. So if they don't say your name, just try to find it within you to not be disappointed. Because the fact that you made it this far is insane.

AM: Yeah, it’s huge!

CHEF FA: Right so it’s my first nomination. I just remember that they didn’t say my name. I was like woah, I want that. But I didn’t know that I wanted to win. I thought – I mean my goal that I had written down was – I wanted to be nominated. But when they didn’t say my name, it was a 2 second thing where I said, I do want to win. Next year. Then afterwards, the President of James Beard came up to me and everyone was coming up to me and everyone was shocked. They thought that I really had this one. But they told me, you know you’re going to be here many, many, many more times.

AM: Exactly! And the dress you wore was amazing!

CHEF FA: That was like full on from my tribe! Because I did a little bit of it for Met Gala with the headband. But then I wore the full attire this time. That was part of the speech too! I was like gosh, I have to wear it every year now?

AM: Well, you set a little precedent for yourself.

CHEF FA: I did! But that was really important you know because I -

AM: Well representation!

CHEF FA: That’s the thing! I represent 4 voices in America – I’m Black, I’m a woman, I’m Muslim, and I’m an immigrant. 4 of the most underrepresented voices and I think about that every day. I just can’t carry myself like that – this stuff matters, you know what I mean? People are paying attention to me and I have to be very careful about how I speak, what I say, and it’s not all fun and games.

The reason why I was disappointed that I didn’t get it is because we talk about so much about how this is – I always talk about how we need to give women of color more opportunities in the kitchen. So when I got the nomination, it wasn’t just me, I was making a case and a point for why more people of color should be nominated in these things. Then when I didn’t win I was like, gosh, did I let everybody down? I don't know.

AM: No, not at all.

CHEF FA: I got us in the room.

AM: You got in the room and like you said, you will have many more opportunities.

Do you envision having your own cookbook? I know that you had a recipe that was included in a cookbook.

CHEF FA: They are on my case every day!

AM: Haha I can imagine.

CHEF FA: It’s definitely in the pipeline. It’s just a matter of me finding the time.

AM: Last year, we had the pleasure of covering the Food Network Wine Food Festival and this year, you are going to be participating. How excited are you to be part of it, is this your first time?

CHEF FA: This is my first time!

Well I’m doing -

AM: I know that you have a sit down dinner that you’re doing right?

CHEF FA: It’s a Hav & Mar X The Musket Room Brunch with the chefs from The Musket Room. So that’s Mary Attea and Camari Mick. How much more aligned can we get? Like Camari is also killing it in the game! So we got on the phone and we came up with the menu in like 3 seconds and we knew that this was going to be so fun. But I think that that will be so powerful. That should be fun so I’m excited.

I’m also doing the Blue Moon Burger Bash: Champions vs. Challengers presented by Pat LaFrieda and hosted by Rachael Ray.

That is going to be fun, a little burger competition.

AM: We loved the spread of coverage and the fact that you could to eat a number of amazing dishes, connect with people we have covered as well as to hang out with the food community, it’s a good time.

I love that we’re living in a time right now where people are understanding more and want to get a better awareness of the restaurant industry. That’s whether you’re watching Chopped, Top Chef, or The Bear.

CHEF FA: Oh yeah.

AM: I love The Bear!

On your IG, you’ve been talking about the industry, explaining terms, and giving people an inside scoop. Why do you also enjoy sharing this aspect so that people are able to know more about you, but also the industry?

CHEF FA: It was kind of a natural progression from people developing an interest from watching these programs. There are all these Food Network shows, but it’s not an insight into how restaurants are. I think it was The Bear that started this whole thing. People would start using kitchen terms and be like, “how does the pass work?” and I was like what? How did you know about the pass? Where did you -

AM: Carmy said it!

CHEF FA: Exactly, Carmy said it. Oh my gosh! But I am glad that if they’re going to take any information from a show, it’s The Bear because it’s 1000% accurate. Now obviously, there are some Hollywood liberties that they take so that it makes it more dramatic or whatever. But it is a very accurate representation of how restaurants are. So, it came from people being so interested and asking questions. Then on my end too, it’s like it was such a huge shift when the industry was shut down during the pandemic and then opening back up. I was like, people are going to be nice. Right? Because we’re all struggling collectively as humanity.

No, we would get people that were so mean to our servers and just being super mean, just like – beyond. So I thought, well maybe if you give people insight into how tough that it actually is to get the food to your table, you’d be more grateful for this experience.

AM: Tell me about Take Care of Home, why you created it, and what does it do?

CHEF FA: So it’s a non-profit that I started with my friends from Ethiopia. Education has always been at the forefront of my philanthropy work because my mom was set in an arranged marriage when she was 16. So she had to drop out of school in the 8th grade and she was married and started having kids at 16 and her only regret in life was that she didn’t finish school. She stressed that with us. She put all 6 of us thorough private school. It was really important to her. So it became important to me. In Ethiopia, there is a huge gap where in the capitol city, there are a number of schools. But in rural parts of the country, there aren’t actually that many schools because the government only has the funds to subsidize teacher’s salaries, but there are no physical structures because no one has the money to build these infrastructures. So on paper, the schools exist, but no one is going. You’re learning under a shed and under crazy circumstances.

So we were like if this is what is going on and all they need is funding to build the schools, why don’t we do that? So we created Take Care of Home just by the first year was just asking our friends. We were like, we could build a school with $20,000 US or $60,000 US depending on the size of the school. The first year we raised money just by asking our friends. Then it becamea formal thing. We became a non-profit, and we spent an entire year raising money and we just built our 9th school.

AM: Wow!

CHEF FA: We’ve been open for 7 years. We have also expanded our initiatives as well. The first school that we completed, we always go back and visit. We noticed that it was mostly boys that were attending school, but not girls. So when we started digging into that, we learned that in that part of the country, girls don’t really get to go to school because they have house things that they have to do. Especially, when it comes to getting water. None of these homes have direct access to water so the girls have to go to the river and it’s not always close or nearby. So they can’t go to school. So I said, what if we fix that problem?

So we started a second initiative where we build water pipelines to the homes. We started doing that and that freed the girls to start going to school. So we are learning as we go. We’re adding more initiatives in addition to building schools.

AM: 9 is huge!

CHEF FA: 9 schools and I’m very proud of it!

AM: Are there any upcoming projects that we should know about that are on your radar that you are comfortable in sharing with us?

CHEF FA: Not really – obviously you know that there are always talks like TV shows.

AM: How do you take time for yourself when you’re not doing all of the things at the restaurant or are on set for TV? How do you reset especially with the amount of hours you have for work?

CHEF FA: So my reset is if I do take 2 days off like a human being, and I am doing this next week, after I get off of work here, I go straight to the airport, hop on a redeye, to go be with my family for 36 hours and then come right back. So I usually catch the red eye coming back and I come here straight to work. I’m usually suitcase out and suitcase in. So my family is my reset.

AM: What do you want your legacy to be?

CHEF FA: See that’s an Oprah style question?

AM: Yes, she was my very first interview when I was 12.

CHEF FA: No way. But it makes sense. I’m not surprised!

Ok, what I want my legacy to be is the Chef that changed the culture.

AM: Yeah!

CHEF FA: Anybody could make good food honestly. I could give anybody the recipe and they could carry it out. But to make people feel seen and that they deserve to be here the same way that Marcus made me feel that I deserved to be here regardless of your race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation – none of that stuff matters when you’re making food. None of that stuff matters at all! But we have not created that yet and I think that that is what I have done with these guys. But I want it to go beyond these 4 walls. This should be how restaurants are run.

AM: 100%

CHEF FA: I’ve had these conversations with Chefs and they’re like, nope – it would never work. Like, if you want to make this kind of food, this is how you have to run the kitchens. Ok, but then why am I able to make it work here? It’s happening here now.

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INTEGRITY, EXCELLENCE, SUSTAINABILITY COVER EDITORIAL | TEAM CREDITS

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BRAIN HEALTH IS KEY | ALTON BROWN

This month, we had the pleasure to sit down and talk with Chef Alton Brown who is known as a TV Personality, super informative food scientist, author, voice actor, and cinematographer. Growing up, we enjoyed watching Food Network's Good Eats so much, which examined the origins of ingredients, and shares culinary customs and shared recipes with us. In addition, we enjoyed watching him host Iron Chef America on the network as well as Netflix's Iron Chef: Quest For An Iron Legend.

His passion behind the science of food, as well as its history, is always exciting to learn about. We took some time to find out about brain health, how he got into the industry and his partnership with Neuriva.

ATHLEISURE MAG: I have been a fan of your work ever since 1999 when I saw the first episode of Good Eats on Food Network!

ALTON BROWN: Oh wow! You were in grade school?

AM: Hmm ’99, I was in college!

AB: It’s funny, it still sounds recent. When I hear someone say 1999, I’m like that’s not too far away!

AM: Same! I was born in ’79 so I don’t feel it’s that far away!

AB: I graduated from high school in ’79!

AM: We’re always talking about health – fitness, gut, mental, and we don’t always get to brain health. But that is an important component as well. Why is it important to you?

AB: Well I really started to think about it a lot when I was thinking about the fact that I was going to turn 60 soon. I studied nutrition so much and I have read so much about it – I have probably forgotten a lot but, I hadn’t really spent a lot of time thinking about what my brain actually needed from me from a culinary standpoint, a supplemental standpoint, an exercise standpoint, or any standpoint. So I started doing a fair amount of research from a few years ago reading peer review papers and I have always enjoyed research. When I got a call from Neuriva, I was like, I already know what is in there, because I have already read papers on ashwagandha and papers on NeuroFactor and so it was very clear to me very quickly that they were very into the science, as was I. That’s how that started and that’s how I got interested in learning about what brains need and they are very complex organs. They do need things and a lot of what it is that they need, is that we need to feed them. The rest, I think supplementally helps.

For me, I break it down into exercise, quality sleep – which most of us do not get – as sleep is gigantic and really almost more important than exercise, nutrition, and what I call – brain stretching. For me, I always need to be in a state of always learning about something that I don’t know. It’s about studying and not just reading for fun. I have to have the ability to actively acquire information.

AM: Yeah, like putting the pieces together.

AB: Right, or my brain gets lazy. It does the equivalent of cracking a beer and sitting down in front of the TV if it’s not actively learning. That’s my brain – not me!

AM: Of course not you!

AB: I’m not a beer person!

And the other part is supplements. When I was studying nutrition from a brain standpoint, I thought there are a lot of things that I would like to get, but it’s just hard to get in food. You can, but not easily because you would have to eat a whole lot of something that you don’t want to. So I break it down into those 5 parts. I try to learn and now that I am in my 60’s, I need to try to learn enough so that my brain can continue to go for perhaps a little while longer.

AM: So what is Neuriva?

AB: You mean the actual supplement itself?

AM: Yes!

AB: Well, there are several of them. They have different things in them, but really, it’s a matter of adding, so the original Neuriva has this thing called NeuroFactor which is an extract from coffee berries – not the seeds, the berries. It also has Phosphatidylserine which is a phospholipid which supports cell membranes especially in the brain. So those 2 chemicals together – originally they were obtained from animal sources and then someone figured out how to get them from soybeans so it’s vegetable derived now. But those 2 things together formed a core of the two nutrients that I was interested in that I couldn’t just get.

You can get coffee berries for your beverage, but you need a lot and I’d rather take them in this supplement. On top of that I don’t really like the way that it tastes. For the Phosphatidylserine, it’s just almost impossible to get. So, those 2 things help you do maintenance for connectivity and cell membranes and then they added Neuriva Plus which brought B6 and B12 to they party. They are very symbiotic vitamins for brain health with those others. Then when Ultra came out, that added an extract from a member of the ginger family – Galangal – there are 4 different kinds of Galangals in the ginger family. They are wonderful for enhancing alertness. I like that one because it also works symbiotically with caffeine. It doesn’t have caffeine, but it works with it and I am a coffee person, so I have moved to that. It’s the same package plus the B Vitamins, plus that extract so it’s kind of like, you can get the base model or the extra! Of course when they come out with their next one, I don’t know! Because now that they have used Ultra, I told them to be careful about that as when it's out, what are you going to do? I mean what’s next, Super Ultra?

AM: Just hearing you talk about how you delve into the base parts of how things come together, how did you come to the culinary industry?

AB: I was a filmmaker, cinematographer, and director for TV commercials. I watched food shows and back in the late 80’s and the 90’s, I thought that they were boring and I knew that I wasn’t really learning anything. It was like, I have another recipe, great. But I don’t know why and I don’t know why any of this works?

I wanted shows that were more exciting and more visual. I wanted to know more on why that was going on and no one wanted to make that show.

So I quit and I went to culinary school. When I went to culinary school, I realized that they weren’t going to show me why either. Luckily, there was another college in this little town I went to for culinary school in Vermont and they had a library that we could use. So they would publish their chemistry reading list and I just went and started studying it because unfortunately, science is the answer to just about everything. There’s a science play everywhere, not necessarily for matters of the heart, but everything else.

So I think that I got addicted in a way that was chemical to telling those stories and to get people excited and to get people to be curious. It sparked in me a curiosity engine that I wouldn’t want to turn off.

AM: We love hearing about people's routines! What are 3 things that they enjoy doing, having, enjoying/being in the Morning, Afternoon, and at Night. We call this 63MIX ROUTIN3S.

AB: This has very much come out of my brain studies.

AM: I assumed!

AB: As a matter of fact, I'm not naturally a routine person. The only routine that I used to have was that I will stumble out somewhere and I will find coffee. When I went to bed, where I got to bed – at that time, everything was about work. I would work until 4 in the morning and then when I got up, I did it all over again.

So now with this routine that I have, it's about sleep and I have a bed time! I have a bed time. I have a bed hour that I have to get to bed during. Somewhere between 10:30 and 11:30, I must be in bed.

I can’t look at a screen at least 2 hours before then. It screws up everything. I can read, but it has to be a book. I have to get that sleep!

I also have a time that I get up and it’s no later than 6:30 in the morning. Because the morning to me is like stolen time it’s before you have to do things for other people. I’m working on my first collection of essays and memoirs stuff right know which has been a very challenging thing right now. I write better in the morning and I edit what I wrote at night better at this time. So that's a very big one.

My wife and I, Elizabeth, do not eat after 8pm at night. If that’s not enforced, you automatically set a clock where it forces at least a 15 hour break for the next day which puts me off my schedule for breakfast!

And then the other thing that I won't call a routine is that I used to say, ok, I'm going to workout. It's like, I have to put on clothes that I don't like.

AM: No 3-piece suits!

AB: It depends! I knew that it would be an hour and a half and that I would hate it. So instead, I have learned to break it up into chunks. I do micro workouts! I try to do 3 of them everyday. One of them has to be weight related. It doesn’t have to be a lot of weight.

One of them has to be 100% cardio. It can be fast - or when we're in NY, we have an apartment here and we live in Atlanta. If there is a coffeeshop that I want to go to like when we have our apartment here in NY, as opposed to picking the one on our block, I’ll pick one that is 3 miles away. So I earn -

AM: You earn that coffee!

AB: Yes! So there's always a cardio, there's always a weightlifting and this is going to sound so stupid, but my wife read this book called Breathe and convinced me that the entirety of my life, I had been breathing wrong. I don’t meditate because it makes me fall asleep, but I literally stop and work on nothing but breathing for half an hour.

AM: Breathwork is so important!

AB: Well I never knew that! I just thought that is was eh?

AM: I started doing it about a year ago and it really is effective!

AB: I was like, I'm already breathing! But the truth is, I'm a scuba diver and when I got the scuba diving training when I was much much younger, breath control was such a huge huge part of making your air last and not sinking all of the time, so it reminded me of that training that I went through and it's incredibly effective both mentally and physically! Two years ago, I wouldn't have been into it!

AM: It has been such a pleasure to chat with you and to be able to meet you and being such a fan of Good Eats as well as other shows that you have been on!

We enjoyed interviewing Alton and in addition to having time to talk with him, we enjoyed an intimate dinner party with him and the Neuriva team that would fuel our brain health.

Over our four course dinner at Hearth, Chef Marco Canora's (founder of Bone Broth brand, Brodo) Tuscan-American farm-to-table restaurant in the East Village of NYC, Alton walked us through each of the dishes! Of course, he provided the science behind them and why they are effective. Our first course was the Ribollita. It's an honor to share some select notes highlighted by Chef Alton from this special dinner.

AB: I’m so excited that we’re sharing this intimate dinner party together and as we enjoy our various courses, I’m going to tell you a bit about the brain nutrients that are involved in the dishes that we’re going to enjoy! The brain needs a number of nutrients for its health and you can get those outside of a supplementary way. One of the ingredients is coffee berries – I like coffee but I don’t like the berries and I’m not a fan of the taste and another one is Phosphatidylserine which is a lipid, a phospholipid that we used to get from brains in animals and now we get them from soybeans. It helps to build and maintain cell membranes and I want this stuff, I need to get this, and I can’t get enough of it in food. Then, all of a sudden there was the original Neuriva formula which I believe only contained those two things. So I knew it was the supplement for me as I wouldn’t be able to get enough of it in food.

So not too long after that, I was called up by them and I thought yes, get your scientists on the phone because I want to talk about white papers and everything. So it happened very naturally to partner with Neuriva and it’s been a couple of great years. I have been taking the product for awhile now and Ultra happens to be my favorite because it works really nicely when the caffeine hits.

We have a very stimulating evening ahead and we also have what I like to call instead of a Tasting Menu, a Thinking Menu as we talk about food. Everybody knows what the Mediterranean Diet (Editor’s Note: The Mediterranean Diet is a diet inspired by the eating habits and traditional food typical of southern Spain, southern Italy, and Crete, and formulated in the early 1960s.) is as it can be a bit loosey goosey and sexy and cool. It has had some great effects. From that is another diet that emerged from it known as the DASH Diet (Editor’s Note: Known as the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension, it is a flexible and balanced eating plan that helps create a heart-healthy eating style for life) that some of you may not have heard of that is a version of the Mediterranean Diet that was designed specifically for people that were fighting hypertension problems. So if anyone with us was in the 80s we used to have these things called Graphic Equalizer Stereos that turned things up and down on different parts of the soundwave and that’s what that diet did. It went for the hypertension part and removed salt and then it did some other things. Then in the 2015, Martha Clare Morris came up with the MIND Diet (Editor’s Note: Known as The Mediterranean – DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay Diet combines portions of the DASH Diet and the Mediterranean Diet which have been shown to improve cognition) and it takes the same componentry of the Mediterranean Diet and changing it up for our brains. What would our brains want out of that diet? It’s a little bit different as it emphasizes some other components that might not have been as focused as much. For instance, all the diets have fruit! No one is going to talk bad about fruit. The MIND Diet says, you know what? The brain really wants dark berries. Blueberries - eat your blueberries. Have more olive oil, eat more leafy greens. No one is going to say anything bad about these things either. The MIND Diet has more poultry, even more than fish! There is a substance in poultry called choline (Editor’s Note: Found in poultry, this prevents abnormal storage of fat in the liver, which ensures proper body metabolism and efficient utilization of nutrients. It also supports the proper functioning of the nervous system and ensures its harmony.) which is really hard to get anywhere else, but in good lean, protein meat. Choline has a lot to do with enhancing the way that phospholipids work in the brain and our membranes as well. The good news is that unlike other diets, red wine is on the MIND Diet currently. There is some research for that. Tonight, we’re going to eat 4 courses. We’ll try to enhance and bring to the party, some of those foods that are incorporated into the MIND Diet and we’ll talk about it course by course as we go through it.

We are very fortunate to be at this restaurant! Hearth is one of the best restaurants in NY and I have known Chef Marco Canora for many years. There are brilliant, brilliant cooks here. Chef Michael Keough is here tonight and I hope he will come in and say something to us in a bit. I had some questions for him this morning and he was so gracious about answering about things that are on tonight’s menu.

Our first course is going to be a soup called Ribollita. If anybody has spent time in Tuscany, this is a soup that you would have seen there. It's a basic - I hate to say the word the word but here it comes – rustic soup. What this one does is it’s going to hit one of the major notes and chords of the MIND Diet – beans! When we talk about green beans, we’re also talking about dry beans. This is a bean soup in vegetable stock and we will be enjoying those vegetables tonight! There will be carrots, there are some onions, and I believe there is some cabbage in there. This also has some sage and garlic infusion. The cool thing about this in its traditional form, is that is bread based. It is thickened usually with moistened bread and always served with crisp, giant croutons on top. There is also a dusting of parmesan cheese. But most of the flavor will be coming from those beans. That’s going to guarantee that we are getting those beans that we want. Of course you can enjoy the bread as well as the olive oil which is also perfect for this diet as well.

We enjoyed this hearty soup which was flavorful and nourishing. It really set the stage for the next portion of our meal which was a Pizzocheri, a ribbon pasta.

AB: As we continue on in the MIND Diet, the next course is a Pizzocheri. We don’t talk much about mushrooms in brain health and brain support, but there’s a lot of research that suggests that we should be focusing on them a lot more. They’re good for our bodies, our planet, and our brains. This Pizzocheri is topped with a little bit of fontina cheese and what we’re getting is some great vegetation with the cabbage and some brain healthy mushrooms that are not currently listed on the MIND Diet, but I think that they will be in the next few years and a whole grain pasta which is a perfectly acceptable way to get your grains.

This was yet another dish from the night that was filling an full of nutrients that are beneficial to our health. We all agreed that this was something that we would enjoy eating throughout the winter! Where the first, second and the fourth course are dishes that are currently on Hearth's menu, but were adjusted to have the brain health specific ingredients that are part of the MIND Diet, our third course is a recipe from Alton Brown that we were excited to try as we know his love for chicken!

AB: We are at the Main Course event for tonight! This is my recipe and it is actually a conglomeration of two of my spatchcock recipes. I like to cut the back of my chickens – some people call it butterflying, I think that spatchcock is far more sexy! So this features a couple of Middle Eastern spices that I am a big fan of, Aleppo pepper and Za’atar that I know that you all are very very familiar with. So we’re getting our poultry in which is definitely on this diet. But also, we’re taking in our greens from another chicken dish of mine, a Sesame Glazed Dark Greens which it is being served with it tonight. I believe we’re going to have a Black Kale and 2 other greens, I’m not sure what they ended up with tonight, but it is 3 very different organic greens. They have been sauteed and it’s whatever they got from the market today. The sauce is a straight forward pan sauce that are the drippings from the chicken with a little bit of butter and poured right over the chicken. This is something that I like to do once I got into the MIND set of the MIND Diet which is combining various things that were in the diet to support each other. I love chicken, it’s my favorite meat. There are days where I don’t want to eat my greens and I try to hide them – I will tell you that! But because they are brought together by the lemon glaze with sesame, it unites the dish in a really handy way! So I hope you enjoy it and smell it!

Without a doubt, this is a chicken that we could have again and again! The greens were also something that we want to put in our rotation as well! We have the recipe for both of these dishes that you can make for yourself for Alton's Butterflied Chicken with Aleppo and Za’atar as well as his Lemon Sesame Glazed Greens!

Of course, we ended this amazing meal with dessert and enjoyed a Tangerine Almond Cake.

AB: Dessert! Believe it or not, on the MIND Diet, desserts can be had especially when they contain nuts! Nuts are a big part of this diet because nuts have a lot of fantastic fats that are not only good for your body, but also for your brain. It’s the phytochemicals that are still being studied as we speak. This is an almond with most of the cream off to the side and kumquats. Of course, they are a great source of Vitamin C and so this is a dessert in the Italian style where the accent is really on the flavor of the ingredients rather than an added sweetness. Enjoy!

We enjoyed being able to chat with Alton as well as to be invited to his dinner party to enjoy a great meal as well as one that benefits our brain health!

We also learned about the brand's 30-Day Brain Health Challenge, an easy and fun way to redefine cognitive potential and establish a brain-healthy routine. This allows consumers to choose their Neuriva of choice and taking it for 30 days to help support up to 7 indicators of brain health, including memory. You can also download the Neuriva Brain Gym app, to play stimulating Brain Games daily and see the results for yourself.

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Read the FEB ISSUE #98 of Athleisure Mag and see BRAIN HEALTH IS KEY | Alton Brown in mag.

JOURNEY OF FLAVORS | HORTUS NYC

We truly enjoyed catching up with new and old friends while we covered the Food Network's Wine Food Festival! What do you do after being able to enjoy some of the most amazing bites? You check out a fantastic restaurant that has been on your list for awhile to continue to enjoy the positive vibes that a great meal can provide!

We found ourselves at Hortus NYC here in NYC where we knew that we wanted to try their amazing Tasting Menu as well as cocktails that include one of our favorites, soju! The laid back ambiance and cool tones was a great way to decompress after some hectic days. We wanted to find out more about what we eat and the restaurant itself. We took some time to chat with Suhum Jang, Managing Partner of Hortus to find out more.

ATHLEISURE MAG: Before we delve into Hortus NYC, tell us about when the restaurant opened as well as a bit about the ambiance in terms of the design aesthetic!

HORTUS NYC: Hortus NYC opened in 2018. The name Hortus NYC, Latin for garden, reflects the emphasis on freshness, and the theme of the garden runs through the interior. The restaurant is divided into four distinct areas, the first floor is dedicated to bar dining with an open kitchen and a Chef’s Table. The second floor contains an adjoining glass-enclosed hidden garden oasis complete with lights hanging above for a warm and intimate glow in the evening as well as the main dining room, which offers exquisite views of the illuminated stained-glass windows at the Marble Collegiate Church across the street.

AM: Tell us about who the chef of Hortus NYC and what is his culinary background?

HN: Chef Geo Park initially served as the opening sous chef at Hortus NYC in 2018 and moved on to work in the kitchen at Michelin-starred Jua. He returned to Hortus NYC in the spring of 2023 and is using the techniques he has learned from his other posts to add his own touches to the menu at Hortus NYC.

AM: You received a Michelin plate in 2020 and the menu is an interesting blend of cuisines that come together beautifully, what can you tell us about the countries that you draw from in the menu?

HN: We have blended the cuisines of many Southeast Asian countries, including China, Thailand, and Korea, to design a unique menu that combines the flavors in unexpected ways, expressed through out European techniques. This is part of our mission to reinvent how we approach modern Asian cuisine.

AM: We had the pleasure of enjoying the Tasting Menu - can you tell us more about this?

HN: The Hortus Tasting Menu allows guests to curate their own experience and is not a set tasting menu. It begins with The Hortus Royal Platter, which includes chilled lobster tail, hamachi crudo, and a shrimp cocktail, with an option to add a dozen oysters, paired with gochujang and a lightly sweet, tart plum mignonette. It is followed by a choice of an appetizer, main course, and dessert from our dinner menu, which allows diners to curate their own tasting menu and enjoy various dishes from our a la carte menu.

AM: Are diners able to pick menu items a la carte?

HN: Yes in addition to offering the Hortus Tasting Menu and Prix Fixe options, diners can order dishes a la carte.

AM: That's great! We definitely love the Tasting Menu and found that we added a few items as well. What are 3 appetizers that you suggest that the table can share?

HN: Three appetizers I would recommend, that are also great for sharing are: the Hamachi Crudo in a yuzu kosho sauce with cucumbers, pickled pepper, and orange segment; Crispy Rice, topped with spicy tuna, quinoa, and sriracha truffles; and King Crab Noodle, fettuccini in mala and cream sauce with shallots and scallions, which is a house favorite.

AM: Tell us about your 3 favorite mains that you suggest that we should try upon our next visit for dinner?

HN: A few favorites from our dinner menu are: Sea Urchin Donabe, a clay pot filled with rice infused with nori puree, topped with, ikura roe, a cured egg yolk, sea urchin, and freshly shaved truffle; our Cod, which has a gochujang crust and is served over lobster risotto accompanied by charred Spring onion; and the Truffle Donabe, probably our most famous dish composed of wild mushrooms, cured egg yolk, black truffle, and an option to add short rib, served over rice in a clay pot.

AM: You have 3 desserts on the menu - we enjoyed the Yuzu Panna Cotta as well as the Matcha Tiramisu! Can you tell us about all 3 desserts?

HN: All of our desserts blend Asian flavors with traditional European desserts. For instance, the Matcha Tiramisu uses matcha in place of espresso and cocoa; Our Panna Cotta uses Yuzu, an Asian citrus fruit, to add a new flavor profile to the classic dish; and Mango Bread Pudding, which was inspired by the classic bread putting, using more exotic ingredients to add a twist.

AM: The cocktail menu had a number of options that included soju and sake. What are 3 drinks that you suggest that we should enjoy for our next visit?

HN: I would suggest: the Pear Affair, made with Hummy Seltzer, pear, and soju; and Piña, jinro, lychee puree, and Lunar Seltzer; for dinner. For brunch-goers, I would suggest our Yuza Aperol Spritz, consisting of Prosecco, Aperol, yuza, and orange.

AM: For those that are looking for wine, beer, soju, or sake what are 3 bevbeer, soju, or sake what are 3 beverages that we can enjoy by the glass to enhance our meal?

HN: Our wines by the glass rotate seasonally and currently feature: Chardonnay, Louis Moreau 1er Cru from Chablis, France and Pinot Noir, Morgan, from Santa Lucia Highlands, California.

For beer, I would also recommend a current Hortus seasonal pick, the Rydeen Pilsner from Japan. It is slowly fermented in low temperatures, making it easy to drink, with an emphasis on aroma and a clean finish. The rich malt flavor, refreshing bitterness and aroma of hops expand gently in the mouth.

AM: For those coming in for lunch, can you walk us through the menu?

HN: Our lunch specials are offered for both take-out and delivery, as well as dine-in, and included: Spicy Pork, pork belly marinated in a spicy Korean-style sauce; Miso Cod; and grilled Short Rib in a Korean galbi sauce. Each lunch special is served as a set with seasonal Ceviche, a Nokdu-Stick, Fried Calamari, a side of Rice, and Seasonal Vegetables.

AM: We're always excited for brunch. Tell us about this as it seems like there is a focus on sharing plates.

HN: The brunch menu is designed for parties to share five plates, that includes three appetizers for the table and a choice of two entrées. The experience is priced at $30 per person and the team at Hortus NYC will adjust the portion sizes to ensure each guest is well fed.

The appetizers are: Mochi Pancake, with Kimchi jam, buttercream, maple syrup Yuzu, with an option to add Maple Yuzu Bacon for an additional $3; Burrata & Beet, marinated in a tomato vinaigrette, served with a tomato medley and basil; and Fruit Salad, cucumbers and fruit medley in yogurt, finished with chili oil.

Entrée choices include: Poached Egg (Korean Style) served with house-made hash browns and a seasonal mixed salad dressed with rice vinegar soy sauce; Prime Meat Ball Sandwich filled with galbi marinaded beef meatballs, pickled mushroom, and red onion with an option for to add Truffle $10; and Yuzu Bacon Rose Pasta, rigatoni in a rose cream sauce with yuzu bacon.

AM: We're in the fall and eventually will be focused on the holiday season, will there be additional dishes added to the menu that are seasonal in nature?

HN: New for the season is our just-launched Bar Menu, that is available at our 10-seat bar, facing our open kitchen. It adds a new dimension to our restaurant by providing diners with the choice to enjoy small bites paired with our low-ABV soju and sake based cocktails as well as our wines by the glass. The bar menu includes: Steak and Shishito Pepper, with house-made lemon soy and crispy garlic chips; Fried Calamari and Nokdu Sticks, with mung beans, kimchi, and house soy sauce; Chicken Sausage and Cheese with pickled mustard seed and green and red aioli; and Korea-Galbi Chicken Wings.

AM: Will you have any events during the holiday season that you would like to share with us?

HN: Each year we offer Christmas Eve and Christmas Day dining specials, and host a New Year Eve Party complete with a complimentary glass of Champagne for a toast.

IG @hortusnyc

PHOTOGRAPHY CREDITS | Hortus NYC

Read the OCT ISSUE #94 of Athleisure Mag and see JOURNEY OF FLAVORS | Hortus NYC in mag.

FOOD NETWORK NEW YORK CITY WINE FOOD FESTIVAL PRESENTED BY CAPITAL ONE

The Food Network New York City Wine and Food Festival presented by Capital One takes place starting today on Oct 12th - Oct 15th! During these days, there will be a number of signature events, Walk Around Tastings, Intimate Dinners, Demo & Dine, Master Classes, Cocktail Parties, and more! Events will include some of your favorite chefs and Food Network Stars such as Michael Voltaggio, Marcus Samuelsson, Duff Goldman, Eric Adjepong, and Brooke Williamson, who we have included in previous issues of Athleisure Mag!

You'll also find a number of our favorite restaurants and chefs that are involved this year from Rosa Mexicano, The Standard Grill, Buddakan, STK Steakhouse, Pig Beach, Shake Shack, Archer & Goat, 5 Napkin Burger, Little Owl, Serendipity3, Boulud Sud, Fig & Olive, and Lamia's Fish Market to name a few!

Be on the lookout to meet your favorite chef, to taste a dish that will be next level or to be at an event such as Bacardi presents JJ Johnson's The Cookout: Hip Hop 50th Anniversary Celebration featuring DJ CASSIDY, Rev Run, Ice-T, DJ Mick, Tamron Hall, and Angela Yee. We also have our eye out on Brunch at the Blue Box Cafe hosted by Daniel Boulud and Martha Stewart which is at the iconic Tiffany & Co. store on 5th Avenue. There are also a number of intimate dinners with some of your favorite chefs that are presented by Air France. As there are a number of events taking place over these 4 days, make sure to go to the website to see if tickets are still available as some events are sold out.

As you know, Athleisure Mag always enjoys sharing our favorites in food through our indepth articles, our monthly feature The Art of the Snack, Athleisure List, and our podcast Athleisure Kitchen. We're looking forward to this year's festival and in the OCT ISSUE #94, we'll tell you about the events we attended as well as interviews with those that we have covered previously and those that have yet to be included in our issues. Make sure you follow @AthleisureMag across social handles so that you can also see what we're tasting, watching, and attending during that weekend!

To get ready for this year's event, here are some of our favorite moments from last year's festival. Without a doubt, this is definitely a series of events that are not to be missed whether it's enjoying dishes and restaurants that have always been on our list or those that are new to you! Grab your culinary bestie and be prepared for numerous satisfying bites!

IG @nycwff

PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY | Food Network New York Wine Food Festival

Read the SEP ISSUE #93 of Athleisure Mag and see FOOD NETWORK NEW YORK CITY WINE FOOD FESTIVAL PRESENTED BY CAPITAL ONE in mag.

TRUE HOSPITALITY | CHEF MICHAEL VOLTAGGIO

We're really excited about this month's cover, Bravo's Top Chef Season 6 Winner, and Titan Judge on Food Network's Bobby's Triple Threat, Chef Michael Voltaggio. He also makes a number of guest judge appearances on Guy's Grocery Games as well as Beat Bobby Flay! When he's not on set, you can find him taking his dishes and experiences to the next level alongside his brother Chef Bryan Voltaggio whether it's at Voltaggio Brothers Steakhouse, Vulcania, Retro, Volt Burger and other projects! As someone who we have admired in terms of his culinary point of view, technique and keeping hospitality at the forefront of all that he does, we wanted to sit down with him to talk about how he got into the industry, where his passion comes from, how he has navigated the hospitality space, his approach to his concepts, working alongside family, Season 2 of Bobby's Triple Threat and how he has taken a number of opportunities to connect with guests and viewers as well as to stay sharp in and out of the kitchen!

ATHLEISURE MAG: So, when did you first fall in love with food?

CHEF MICHAEL VOLTAGGIO: Oh wow, I don’t think that I have ever been asked that!

AM: We ask the tough questions around here!

CHEF MV: I think that it happened around necessity. I would say that I first fell in love with it when I understood the creativity that went into it. Because, I was a very, very picky eater as a kid and when I got my first job cooking, I started to look at ingredients as a kid meaning that things like cauliflower for instance – I remember thinking to myself that if I could make this, in a way that I like it, then people who actually like cauliflower will love it. So for me, I started seeing how creativity could sort of, not only like give me a chance to artistically express myself, but also be a chance for me to maybe make ingredients more accessible for more people because it made the ingredients more accessible to me. So I think that realizing that the creative part was as important as the technical part, I think that was the moment that I fell in love with it.

I always knew that I wanted to do something creative, but up until I was 15 or 16 years old, which is when I started cooking, I wasn’t being creative yet. Like, I was playing sports in high school and I wasn’t the best student and I was sort of interested in a lot of things that were creative, but I didn’t have a creative discipline that I could focus on myself.

AM: What was the moment that you realized that you wanted to be a chef? Taking something that you just enjoyed and then making it as a professional.

CHEF MV: I mean, I think that it happened as sort of a default. Like, I was doing it to just sort of survive. I was one of those people that started cooking – because when I did it, it wasn’t like it was today where it was like, “oh, you’re going to be a chef!” It was more like, “yeah, I figured that you would end up in the food industry.” I sort of feel like I woke up and 25 years later, I still have the same job and I’m just like, “wow, how did this happen?” I’m in my profession prior to even graduating high school. My career has started already, but I didn’t know that at the time. What I didn’t realize at the time was that I was already on my path. I’ve loved food ever since I could remember like 4 years old and I have had this job since I was 15. Not many people can say that. I’m approaching 30 years of experience and I feel like I am just getting started.

I would say that my career, after my apprenticeship, that I did at The Greenbriar Hotel when I went there when I was 19 years old to start that program, that I really felt like that, “ok this is what I am going to be doing for at least a substantial amount of time.” I had never gotten to experience any form of luxury in my life at that point, either because I grew up sort of pretty humble or in humble surroundings I would say. When I got to work in luxury, I knew that not only did I want to do that because I wanted to take care of people at that level, but I knew that at some point in my life, I wanted to feel it myself as a guest. So I knew that the only way that I would be able to experience luxury is if I understood how to work in it at the highest level and then hopefully one day, get to sit down at the table for myself.

AM: I can understand that feeling!

How do you define your style of cooking?

CHEF MV: It’s weird because if you had asked me that question 10 years ago, I would have answered it differently than I would today. The reason being that I think that I have obviously matured a lot as a person, but more specifically in my professional career, I think that I have matured a lot in the sense that I don’t know if I have a style and I think that that is interesting about the way that I like to cook now. I’m really still obsessed with learning the things that I haven’t learned how to do yet. So for me, it usually starts with something that I want to learn and then I build something off of that, that I can then offer to my guests.

So, let’s say for instance that I want to study a specific cuisine, I’ll go and study that cuisine and then figure out how that fits into one of our restaurant concepts. Now that we have different concepts, it forces me to study different kinds of cuisine.

I would say that the style that we communicate in the restaurants on our menus is that we like to sort of under offer and over deliver. We like to write descriptions of menus that are familiar to people and that almost seems not that exciting so that we get that chance to sort of surprise them and wow them. I think that that’s oftentimes how we approach a lot of the things that we do is to sort of under offer and over deliver.

AM: I really like that.

Who are your culinary influences?

CHEF MV: Wow, that is a tough one because I mean, I would say the one culinary influence that I have had in my career and this is a direct influence, because I have worked with him is, José Andrés (The Bazaar by José Andrés, Mercado Little Spain, Nubeluz). For someone that made me look at food completely differently, it would be him and I think that a lot of people who think of José, they think of the modern things that he has done in restaurants and that’s a big part of it, but when you talk to José, the thing that he is the most passionate about outside of feeding the world and helping people right now which is incredible, is actually the traditional food of Spain. Seeing him communicate to me that without a foundation like that, you can’t really do all this modern stuff because at the end of the day, the food has to be delicious. Learning that from him was probably a sort of pivotal moment in my career, because I was doing a lot of things then because I wanted to learn all of these modern techniques and I want to do all of these modern things. I think that often, people get caught up in the exercise of that and lose touch of the hospitality or the make it taste good aspect of it. I would think that I really settled into a level of confidence where I worked with him that would sort of influence me for the rest of my career.

AM: I first became aware of you on Season 6 of Bravo’s Top Chef. I’m a huge fan of that show and seeing you along with competing with your brother on the same season, what was that like for you and why did you want to be part of that show?

CHEF MV: So, when I went on Top Chef, this was sort of a moment in the industry where that was really the beginning of how you had the legends like Julia Child (Mastering the Art of French Cooking, The Way to Cook, The French Chef Cookbook), you had Emeril (Emeril’s, Emeril’s Coastal, Meril), you had Wolfgang (Spago, Wolfgang Puck Bar & Grill, CUT) and the list goes on and on – Yan Can Cook, Ming Tsai (Bābā, Mings Bings, Simply Ming) – they were cooking on television and the list goes on and on and on. They were a handful of real chefs that were cooking on TV and then there was sort of the entertainment side of it. I think that when Top Chef came out, I think that that was the first show or competition that was pulling chefs from kitchens that were really grinding and really after it and giving them a platform to sort of go out and come out from being those introverts in the back of house to like these big personalities!

So I think that when the opportunity came, I was like, I wonder if there is a bigger way to sort of bridge this gap between people that are actually chefs and people that are just sort of chefs on TV. Can we really tell this story in a bigger way and connect to a bigger audience and through that, grow the interest and the curiosity in a higher level of cooking or a different level. Whether it’s making people culturally more aware for those that are interested in cultural cuisine or demographics of cuisine or whatever it is, can you educate people by entertaining them? So I didn’t see it as, I want to be on TV and I think that there were certainly a few of those even on my season on Top Chef that were there for that reason. I signed up to do that competition because I really believed that I could win it. I think that some people get involved in programs like this not necessarily thinking that, “hey, I can really win this thing.” For me, I thought, “I could win this thing and this could create an opportunity.” I couldn’t predict what you’re seeing today where every chef at every level or cook for that matter is in some way trying to communicate what they do through some form of social media or entertainment. Back when I did Top Chef, it was like there was this line in the sand – these are the chefs, the real chefs and these are the ones that are on TV, but not everyone was doing television or some form of visual media to tell their story. Then you look at today and everyone is doing it. I think that the risk that I took was worth it, but I also wanted to learn a different kind of skill set, like I wanted to learn.

I think that I was doing this ad for I think Vitamix and I remember going up to the set and I had a teleprompter in the camera and I was reading my lines off the lens while doing my little demo and I was with the blender that came with it and it was like, “welcome to your new Vitamix.” They kept telling me, “Michael, we can see your eyes reading the words in the lens – we can see you doing it off the teleprompter. Can you try and memorize at least part of it?” Again, in that moment, I was like, ok if I’m going to do this, then I need to get good at it. By getting better at television or getting better at sort of some of these visual mediums, I felt that I was getting better at communicating with my guests too. I think that as somebody who works in hospitality, it started to pull another part of myself out that would allow me to want to communicate with my guests even more. I felt like that moment and all of it I can credit back to the opportunity that I had on Top Chef. I think that outside of the exposure, outside of the money, and outside of the study that I had to put into the food, I learned so much going through that process. Even I think as a company owner, how to better and more effectively communicate - I think that that is something that I was missing at that time of my life.

“I think that I have obviously matured a lot as a person, but more specifically in my professional career, I think that I have matured a lot in the sense that I don’t know if I have a style and I think that that is interesting about the way that I like to cook now. I’m really still obsessed with learning the things that I haven’t learned how to do yet. So for me, it usually starts with something that I want to learn and then I build something off of that, that I can then offer to my guests.”

— Chef Michael Voltaggio

AM: What was the moment that you realized that you wanted to open up your own restaurants as that’s such a big step!

CHEF MV: So I was in Pasadena and I was running a restaurant there called The Dining Room at The Langham. They were actually super supportive and that’s where I was when I won Top Chef. I had left The Bazaar and left José. I was working at this restaurant in Pasadena when this show started to air. They were super supportive and they were like, this is your project, this is your room. We’ll grow you here, you’ll grow something big with the hotel and all of that. In my head I was like, do I need to go and do this on my own before I can go and do this in somebody else’s environment?

So they were very supportive in saying, “hey, we’ll renovate a restaurant and conceptualize something around what your goals are.” I was like, “this is super incredible and I think that I would want to do that.” But then I got a phone call and somebody said that they had a restaurant space and they were interested in meeting me and investing in me. At that moment, I was like, “oh, it can happen that easy!” They had read and heard about some of my accomplishments and they genuinely wanted to invest in me. And so I was like, now I need to see if I can do this. So, I took the meeting, we negotiated the deal and this person, his name is Mike Ovitz he started CAA. I don’t know if you are familiar with them.

AM: Very much so!

CHEF MV: He basically said, “what do you need to open the restaurant?” I have the space. I said that, “I really wanted someone to get behind whatever vision I have because this is the first chance that I have to do this and I kind of want to figure out how to do this on my own. What I really just need is money.” He gave it to me. He got behind me, we were partners for over 7 years and we still remain friends to this day, and he was a really good partner in the sense that he was there, but he wasn’t in my face with expectations. He built his career as somebody who supported artists or somebody who supported creatives. As someone who supported creatives, I think he did just that. I think that as a restaurant partner, it was the best scenario that I could find myself in because this was a person that built his career supporting creatives. So then, the money was there and it was time to start opening the restaurant. As you can imagine, I had to learn everything. I had to learn the legal side of it, I had to learn the human resources side of it, I had to learn the accounting side of it – I had to learn how to become a president of a company – not just how to run a menu. That’s the part that I hadn’t realized that I had signed up for at that time. You don’t know all of the nuance of starting a business until you start a business and then it’s, wait a second, I have 10 full-time jobs now!

AM: Pretty much!

CHEF MV: And so, I think again, if you look at that experience, it’s very similar to what happened on Top Chef. Here I was not realizing that I was now going to acquire a whole new set of skills that I didn’t have yet and so for me, you have this trajectory where you’re building on top of previous successes and you’re combining those successes to get more than you have to put yourself in a situation where you are learning. Then you have to retain that information and then you have to be able to teach that to other people, because it's the only way that you can grow your team around you. If you don’t have the tools to give them to be successful in your role or if you don’t know the expectation of the people that are going to work with you, then they’re not going to have a good experience and neither are you and neither is your business. So, for me, it was really important that I really understood everything and every layer that I was responsible for.

AM: You and your brother back in 2016 opened Voltaggio Brothers Steakhouse together which was your first venture together. What was that like doing that especially as siblings?

CHEF MV: I think that at that point, we had gone in separate directions from each other and I think that we realized that we could accomplish a lot more if we worked together so we started flirting with the idea, and so when MGM called and said, "we have a restaurant in the Maryland/DC area and we’re building this hotel, we think that you should be involved in that," at the time I was living in California and I had Ink – it was still open. My brother was living in Maryland. The reason that the call came in was that somebody who had previously been my boss was the one that was making that call. They had called me saying that they had been watching my career since we had worked together. We'd be interested n potentially doing the restaurant project together at the MGM National Harbor and I was like, in that moment, my brother still lives there, I live in California this story makes the most sense that Bryan and I are both locals from that area and we should do this together. So that became the pilot for how we work in perpetuity. Bryan and I are now business partners in pretty much everything that we do in the restaurant space. So creatively, logistically, work wise – everything involved, it just made more sense. If we work together, we can work half as harder or accomplish twice as much. Just having that support system and having something that you trust as a partner, we didn’t realize how beneficial that was going to be for us moving forward. Because here we are this many years later and we haven’t broken up yet. I think that speaks volumes for how you can do it the right way. There is nothing wrong with family getting into business together.

AM: I love that! We also cover a lot of EDM artists, we enjoy going to music festivals and you guys have Volt Burger which has been in various festival circuits and Live Nation venues. Why did you want to be part of this experience in this particular way?

CHEF MV: I think again back when I talked about entertainment as a medium or a discipline that would be a great tool to connect more people, I think that when Live Nation came to us with the opportunity of getting Volt Burger put together and being in multiple venues across the country, I think we’re in 30+ venues at this point. I think again, we get to connect to that many people that fast. So, for us and Tom See who is the President of Venues for Live Nation, when he called, he really – you could hear it in his voice and see it in his face, that he had a real commitment to elevate just not the food and beverage experience, but the hospitality experience at the venues, I think that when you look at companies that are willing to invest in the safety and the overall experience of their customer base, like I could feel it and I could feel his commitment to where they wanted to do something bigger and do something better. A lot of people call with sentences and statements like that, but they don’t really get behind it.

AM: Right!

CHEF MV: Then you get passed off to somebody else and then it sort of dilutes itself. I think that with Tom and his team, and Andy Yates, Head of Food and Beverage – they’re both personally up to Mr. Rapino the President of Live Nation – they’re personally committed to making sure that what they’re going to do is going to happen. I think that for us, we have learned just as much from them as they have learned from us. I think that again, it’s all about that learning aspect of it. When you can be in multiple cities at once, and I’m not saying physically. We are sometimes physically present at these venues, but it’s a chance for people who don’t necessarily have a direct access to us to sometimes go back to that surprise moment that I talked about when we can under offer and over deliver.

Imagine a fan – or somebody that has always just wanted to try something from the Voltaggio Brothers – they go to a concert to see their favorite artist and then they’re walking through and they see this big banner of Bryan and I on the side of a burger stand and I can only imagine in that moment from them that they have that reaction again! It's like, "oh wait, I'm here to see this musician and there’s the Voltaggio burger!” In my head, I’m envisioning people having an even better time. This point in my career, if you were to ask me what my most important part of my career is, it's hospitality. I genuinely still get excited when I see someone’s reaction on their face when they taste something that I have made. I’m not like, “yeah I knew it was going to be that good,” I’m more like, “wow, thank you! It means so much to me that you like it that much!” It makes me want to go and do more. I genuinely feed off the energy of the people that I take care of. I think that a lot of chefs and a lot of restaurateurs lose touch with that.

AM: This year, you opened Vulcania at Mammoth Mountain. What can guests expect when we’re going there?

CHEF MV: Mammoth Mountain made a commitment to elevate the food and beverage experience. It’s one of the best outdoor recreational mountains in the whole country and in all four seasons. In the summer time, we're going into that now, they still have snow – people are still snowboarding there until like August 1st or 2nd – skiing as well. But again, here’s an opportunity to connect to a whole different demographic that I have yet to really have a chance to get to.

I think that the most unique food markets to elevate the food right now are in markets where there aren’t huge saturation of other restaurants. 1, because there isn’t that much competition and 2, that means that there is probably a need for it right there. So getting to sort of pioneer and go into an area that there isn’t a lot of chef-driven sort of concepts in Mammoth and them wanting to bring that there, to me meant that there was a need for it. Their guests were asking for something different or maybe more and again they made that commitment to hospitality to provide that.

So, that’s when we were like, how do we create a concept that is appropriate for families, appropriate for a very transient sort of guest, but also please people that need fuel to go out and do all of these extreme sport activities. That’s when we were like, we’re Italian and our last name is Voltaggio, we haven’t really done an Italian American concept together, let’s use this as an opportunity to now study this and to do that cuisine together and expand on our repertoire and our portfolio of what we can offer moving forward. So, we dug deep and dove deep into the research. We have always made our own pastas and sauces, and pizza at various different opportunities, but never brought it all together in one restaurant concept.

Then we got to dig deep into even naming the restaurant. Vulcania actually means volcano. Mammoth sits in a volcano more or less. That mountain is a volcano. And the first ship that brought our family to the US was the Vulcania!

AM: Oh wow!

CHEF MV: Yeah, so Voltaggio’s that traveled from Italy to NY, came on a ship called the Vulcania. So, the whole thing just came together. You can never say that something is your favorite restaurant. I just love the restaurant, I love the location, I love our partners, and I think that being part of a destination like that, the restaurant itself becomes a destination too. That’s a pretty special thing!

AM: That’s insane and I love the story involved in that!

I also love the idea of Retro. I like that it is kind of feeding into that 80s/90s feel with fashion and entertainment and its confluence. Can you tell me more about the concept and what the vibe of this restaurant is?

CHEF MV: The goal – well 1, it was a very fast turnaround. We had to come up with a really strategic way to sort of redecorate or revamp a room if you will. When MGM came to us with the opportunity and as you mentioned, we already had a restaurant with them at MGM National Harbor and so my favorite thing about our partnership with MGM is the only reason we don’t do something is because we haven’t thought of it. Any idea that you have, they have the resources and the ability to bring it to life as long as it makes sense you know?

I look at that space and Charlie Palmer (Charlie Palmer Steak, Sky & Vine Rooftop Bar, Dry Creek Kitchen) is one of my mentors as well, how do we take this iconic space at the Mandalay Bay and how do we make it enough ours so that it doesn’t feel like what it was while not taking away from what it was. Meaning, Aureole which was one of the first restaurants in Vegas that really told the story of these chef partnerships.

So we approached it with, what if we like – we moved around a lot as kids – what if we treated it like we did as kids where our parents had us in a new house and we got to decorate our new room. That’s effectively what it is. We call restaurants the room – the dining room is the room. So, let’s go decorate our room. We started down this path of what that would look like and I always had this in my head. I used to work with this chef named Katsu-ya Uechi (Katsu-ya, The Izaka-ya by Katsu-ya, Kiwami) and we talked about a concept that would be retro modern meaning that you could start with retro dishes and modernize them a little bit. I remember having to call Katsu-ya and say, “hey, I know that we had this conversation together and I know that this was something that you were really big on and wanted to do one day. Is it ok if I sort of do this concept, but in a much different way than what we discussed?” We had both nerded out on this back in the day and this opportunity came up where I could bring it to life. He was like, “yeah, go for it. If anyone could do it, it’s you.” So my brother and I decided to noodle on the idea and using that as the foundation to build this whole concept on top of.

What if everything that was important to us in our childhood through our personal and professional careers, what if we could tell that story through a restaurant. So down to the white CorningWare pots with the blue flowers on the side of it, we’re serving food in that. To the décor, Keith Magruder, if you look up BakersSon on Instagram, he’s an artist that did a lot of the art in there. So there’s a lot of painted album covers that throw back and tribute to the music in the 80s and 90s. He did things like make 2 scale 3 dimensional water color paintings of Nintendos and Blockbuster Videos and he made these cool paintings of gummy bears. He did an Uno Table and these 3 dimensional donuts and things like that. So what we did was we went into this room and just like when we were kids, it was kind of like, I’m going to hang up my favorite poster on the wall and I’m going to put up a couple of tchotchkes in the space and it's going to be mine.

What we didn’t realize was going to happen is that all the creative people in the company that worked for the company got behind it in such a big way that everyone started to contribute to the process! Down to Tony Hawk sent us one of his skateboard decks and wrote, “Go Retro” on it so that we could hang it up inside the tower. It was just one of those things where it was like, you have to be so careful when you have an idea because you don’t know how fast it can go and how many people will embrace it and get behind it. Before you know it, you can wake up and have something as incredible as Retro.

The food, we have Pot Roast and Mac & Cheese. But our Mac & Cheese, we make the noodles ourselves, we make this cloud of cheesy sauce that sits on top of it that’s sort of feels like the sauce that would come in a package of Velveeta, but we’re making it from really good cheddar cheese, we’re making a bechamel, we’re emulsifying the cheese into it and aerating it with a whip cream siphon – we’re making our own Cheez Whiz more or less!

“Then we got to dig deep into even naming the restaurant. Vulcania actually means volcano. Mammoth sits in a volcano more or less. That mountain is a volcano. And the first ship that brought our family to the US was the Vulcania!”

— Chef Michael Voltaggio

AM: Oh my God! It’s the best Cheez Whiz ever though!

CHEF MV: Yeah! It’s like, how do we start with this idea and then turn it into something that can be appropriate in an elevated dining experience? We’ve got a lot of that sprinkled throughout the menu. We also have things that are comforting too.

It’s not just like kitschy or trying to do something for the sake of doing it. Our Caesar Salad is just a Caesar Salad, but then we serve it with a little bag of churros that we make out of Parmesan Cheese. Our Mozzarella Caprese is a piece of cheese that we dip in a Pomodoro skin that creates a skin of tomato on the outside of it so that it looks like a tomato, but it tastes like a tomato sauce and it’s on the outside of a piece of cheese.

AM: Oh wow! Earlier this week on your IG Stories, I want to say that you had an avocado, but it was a pit that looked like a gelee – what was that?

CHEF MV: So, we had a dish and once again, this was us reacting to guest feedback, we had a dish that I called back, we had a dish that I called Chips and Guacamole on the menu. So, we did this giant rice paper wafer and put a confit of avocado in the middle of it. But the problem was when it went out to the guests, they said, “well, that’s not Chips and Guacamole. I don’t know what that is.” I think that some chefs, their egos would not allow them to say, “ok, do I listen to the guests and do I make a change?” So, when I hear stuff like that and it’s consistent, I’m like, “ok, I need to change this dish!” It’s not living up to the guest’s expectations. So, then I was like, Avocado Toast, bread would be more appropriate to eat with this. I wonder how I could make this retro. I learned the technique of spherification from José Andrés. It was created by chefs, Ferran Adrià and Albert Adrià (Tickets, Enigma, Little Spain) back in El Bulli back in the early 90s. It’s not retro. We’re in 2023! Can I pay homage to it without saying, “oh that’s such a dated technique, that I can’t believe that you’re doing it.” It was such an important technique that it changed like, José, the Adrià Brothers, they made a global impact on how chefs looked at food. So for me, I was like, I think that I can make a black garlic purée and spherify that the way that I learned how to do it when I was working with José and put that in the middle of an avocado that I’m putting in the oven and put that on a plate and put a couple of other seasonings on it and put it with some really good crusty bread and serve it as an Avocado Toast.

AM: That looked so ridiculously good!

CHEF MV: But you know what’s so crazy? Some people today, like the next generation of people that are out eating in restaurants, they never saw spherification. Like let’s say that someone who is 19 or in their 20s or whatever, they missed that whole thing. We have this obsession with trends and we program our brains to say if it’s trendy, then eventually, it will go out of style. Therefore, you have to forget about it.

Where kale had its moment, like last year, or 2 or 3 years ago that the Kale Caesar Salad became so popular people were like it’s so popular, you can’t put it out because it is on everyone’s menu. Or like Pork Belly, it disappeared! Like Pork Belly was on every single menu and then all of a sudden, one day you woke up and you’re like, “where’s all the Pork Belly?” Every chef was cooking it, but I think that people got it to be trendy because they liked it and that’s what they wanted. We have this innate desire for change when change isn’t necessary. I think that spherification got trendier and then people were like, what’s the next cool thing? But then when we do that, we forget that the cool things that we have and that these chefs have sort of put forward to learn, we feel this pressure to not embrace it or to not do it anymore because now we have to create the next big thing.

AM: Yup!

CHEF MV: Why not just keep it around? So we brought that back and not only as a nod to the Avocado Toast, but a nod to the individuals that were behind that technique. I thought that it was so cool when we first learned it and I didn’t think that it needed to go anywhere.

AM: I love how you approach food like that. As someone who in addition to being the Co-Founder of Athleisure Mag is a fashion stylist and a designer, there are many times when I’m like, “yeah, this is a great look, we don’t need to lock it as a trend that has an expiration or pause around it. We can still use this.” I love that you’re talking about something that I fight about on the fashion side all the time.

CHEF MV: I think that there are a lot of similarities between fashion and food too! When you think about the sustainability aspect, when you think about again – in your world, and I think that that’s why I love fashion as much as I do. But now, even in buying my clothes, I go look for old things. Like, I don’t want the newest trendiest thing, I want the old trendy thing, why did it go away? Where did it go? I think that when you look at some of the most successful brands now, they’re the ones that can continue to just bring it back whether it’s recycled with an actual item or an idea, it’s that storytelling that I think that people actually gravitate towards.

AM: I totally agree! I always tell people it’s about going back to the archives!

CHEF MV: Yeah!

AM: There’s so many things that you can spring back from it. You can put a twist on it and do whatever. But the archives are the archives for a reason! They’re going to be here much longer than some of these other things that are going to be a flash in the pan.

CHEF MV: I feel like people can go shopping in their own closet. If you’ve saved stuff from 3 years ago that you haven’t worn and then all of a sudden, you’re like, “wait a second, I’m going to look back at that.” Maybe you got something as a gift that you would have never worn when they gave it to you and then you rediscovered it again in your closet and I think that any creative could recognize that with whatever kind of discipline that they have. Just go back into your closet and try something old.

“But now even in buying my clothes, I go look for old things. Like, I don’t want the newest trendiest thing, I want the old trendy thing, why did it go away? Where did it go? I think that when you look at some of the most successful brands now, they’re the ones that can continue to just bring it back whether it’s recycled with an actual item or an idea, it’s that storytelling that I think that people actually gravitate towards.”

— Chef Michael Voltaggio

AM: Exactly!

Since being on Top Chef, you have been on so many TV shows judging and guest hosting and even doing series, why did you want to add these into your portfolio?

CHEF MV: I think it’s because I don’t want to become complacent. I think that my biggest fear in life was going to be that I would get stuck doing the same job every single day. Although that’s great for some people, and it’s necessary to have those who are committed to that, it didn’t work for me. I never had the attention span to do just that. And so, as I get those opportunities, I think that it make me better for what I do. For instance, if I go and I have 4 days where I can work on this television show, after the 4 days are done, I’m excited to go back to my restaurant. Maybe in those 4 days while I was gone, I learned something while I was there that I could bring back to my restaurant. For me, again, it’s about learning. I’m learning. I get to do something that I would have never had the opportunity to do. When I started cooking, if you told me that I would be doing dozens of episodes of television a year or any television at all, I remember when I was doing some local television and how nervous I was. I was like, wait, I didn’t sleep and I was telling everyone and it was local news! I thought it was the coolest thing on the planet for me to able to get to do. Then, fast forward to now and I’m a show that can reach millions of people. So, not only did I see the opportunity, but I feel a sense of responsibility to use that platform the right way and I think that I just love the fact that I get to communicate with that many people at once. I think that it’s an opportunity for me to tell my story, but also to continue to contribute to this commitment of hospitality that I signed up for. I’m not just making people feel good, I genuinely do this because I love the fact that what I do that maybe I can make someone else smile or whatever. I know how that sounds, but I genuinely believe that! The fact that I do that and I get to call it work is so important!

AM: Well, I know that you always bring so much energy when I see you on different shows like Bobby’s Tripple Threat, we’ve had interviews with Chef Brooke Williamson (Playa Provisions, Top Chef Season 14 Winner, Tournament of Champions Season 1 Winner) a number of different times. When I saw that you were on there, I couldn’t wait to see what you would do. Or, if I see you on Guy’s Grocery Games – it’s really cool to see your point of view when you're doing all of these different things.

CHEF MV: Yeah, when you look at the competition side of cooking too and what I learned very quickly is that it’s a very different discipline. A lot of super talented chefs who are in restaurants struggle with the competition side of it, especially if there are a lot of different cameras and stuff around them. So again for me, I thought, if I could become good at that, then that’s another level of chef that I can become good at and I think that what’s interesting about that is that I do it so much that the first time I competed, I took it so seriously. I still do! I get so much anxiety every time that I’m about to go. But then I do it so much and I started to look at competition cooking like the sport of cooking.

AM: Yup!

CHEF MV: It really is and it’s not for me as much about entertaining and doing a demo of what you’re doing. It’s more so that people can watch it and cheer for their favorite athlete and I think that that's what culinary competition really is.

So now, we win some and we lose some. You have to learn from those losses and I think that those losses are the ones that I have learned the most from. I think that anyone that competes in any competitive setting would say the same thing. You have to experience those losses to then go back and say, how can I be better so that I can get more of those wins. I think that it became a personal obsession because I wanted to continue to learn and win! Because it really is a sport – it’s a sport!

AM: Are there any projects that you have coming up that you can share that we should keep an eye out for? I feel like you’re always doing something!

CHEF MV: One thing that I can say is that Season 2 of Tripple Threat will start airing in August! I think that that’s the next big thing that we’re excited about. Then it’s about just getting back to work with Bobby Flay (Amalfi, Bobby’s Burgers, Brasserie B), Brooke and Tiffany Derry (Roots Southern Table, Roots Chicken Shak, Top Chef Season 7 Fan Favorite). I think that there is more to that than what everyone has seen so far! I think that for me, that is really one of my favorite projects that we're doing right now. Myself, Brooke, and Tiffany - Bobby included, we’ve all become so close to one another through this project and I think that more of that – I want to be able to keep my knives sharp and my brain sharper. I think that the best opportunity for me to do that is growing my relationship with Live Nation, Bryan and I are really sort of excited about the amount of support that we’ve gotten from MGM with every project that we have in the works with them. I think that for now, honestly what I’d like to focus on is focusing on what I have going on. I think that right now is a good point to say that I am satisfied with everything that we have our hands around right now. Let’s just focus on doing the best job that we can at that and then maybe next year, pivot and start focusing on some other stuff. For now, I have a lot of responsibilities and I have a chance to make a lot of people happy and I’m going to focus on that!

AM: As someone who is so busy, how do you take time for yourself so that you can just reset?

CHEF MV: I mean, I think that you have to force it. I have a tendency to say yes to everything and I think that I grew up working more 7 day weeks then I did 5. I would say that I did that for a good part of my life. I wanted to do it, but I did it because I had to as well. I mean, I had 2 daughters when I was young and I remember when I was doing my apprenticeship, on my days off I was standing in a deer processing plant at a local butchers house processing meat and stuff to pay the bills you know? I think that my work ethic is something that is really important to me and it’s something that I don’t want to lose touch of. I think that it’s a super valuable asset, but at the same time, I’m allowing myself to do that, to take a couple of things and to just go do something. Like yesterday was my daughter’s birthday and it’s a little extreme, but my brother flew me here from Vegas, we were at our restaurant doing an event and I was like, “I need to get to my daughter, it’s her birthday.” She’s down here in medical school, she’s going to become a doctor.

AM: Oh wow!

CHEF MV: Not only is it like a Voltaggio going to college which is one thing! But a Voltaggio becoming a doctor is another! My other daughter is here as well and she’s like also doing her own thing and so when you have those moments to spend time with family, my brother flew my wife and I down here just to spend 2 days with my daughters here. I think that family time is so key!

AM: Your smile is so big right now!

CHEF MV: Well because I think that as much as I hate that I am going to say this, I really neglected my family for a long time because I had this path that I had to do these things so that I could be better for them. So now, I think that at this point in my life, as much as I provided for them, I think that I could be more present for them and that’s something that I am really trying to carve out time for.

AM: If we were invited to your house for brunch, what would be something that you would cook for us? I always love knowing what people’s brunch menus are.

CHEF MV: I mean as much as I hate to say it, I would have to have something with caviar on it because I think that, I don’t know, to me brunch is caviar. I think that that’s really weird to say, but when I worked, no one wanted to work brunch at the luxury hotel. If you got scheduled to work brunch, you were getting punished. I think that that was the first time that I tried caviar. Working brunch at The Greenbriar Hotel or at The Ritz Carlton or something like that and I was like, “hmm, I like this stuff.” Then when I was in charge of running things, there was Caviar Eggs Benedict, caviar this and caviar that! I just really liked it. There’s a restaurant that we have here in LA called Petrossian, you have one in NY as well.

AM: We literally lived around the corner from them!

CHEF MV: So, they do this Caviar Flatbread there and I had it once, I’ve had it a lot actually, and I’m going to go home and recreate my own version of this. Every time I have a brunch, I am going to do this. You can do this with smoked salmon like the Wolfgang Smoked Salmon Pizza that Wolfgang Puck makes. But you buy the flour tortillas, and you brush them with a little olive oil and season it with a little salt and bake those in the oven. You pull them out and you have a crispy flatbread.

So now, you can build this breakfast pizza on whatever you want on top of it. So, now you grab crème fraiche, capers, grab some chopped red onion, parsley, a little hard-boiled egg, and whether it’s smoked salmon or caviar, you cut it into pizza. It’s easy, it looks beautiful –

AM: Wow!

CHEF MV: You said wow, I only described it to you and you said wow! I used to get that a lot when I went to Petrossian for brunch and I would always order the Caviar Flatbread. So, a smoked salmon version or whatever, I just think that the idea of using a flour tortilla is something that everyone should have in their repertoire!

IG @mvoltaggio

PHOTOGRAPHY CREDITS | PG 16 - 27 CREATIVE DIRECTION Dominic Ciambrone, PHOTOGRAPHY Bryam Heredia, PHOTO COURTESY of SRGN Studios | PG 28 + 31 Food Network/Guy's Grocery Games | PG 32 - 35 Food Network/Bobby's Triple Threat |

Read the JUL ISSUE #91 of Athleisure Mag and see TRUE HOSPITALITY | Chef Michael Voltaggio in mag.

ATHLEISURE MAG #91 | CHEF MICHAEL VOLTAGGIO

In this month’s issue, our front and back cover story is with Bravo's Top Chef Season 6 Winner, Titan Chef on Food Network's Bobby's Triple Threat, countless appearances as a judge on Beat Bobby Flay, Guy's Grocery Games, and trailblazing Chef/Restaurateur, Michael Voltaggio. We have been a fan of his since he appeared on Top Chef and we love seeing his passion for food, guest experience and hospitality as well as he continues to increase his brand and portfolio by working his brother, Chef Bryan Voltaggio as well as their partnerships with Live Nation and MGM Resorts. We wanted to know what he was working on now, the upcoming 2nd season of Bobby's Triple Threat and how he navigated the industry. We also caught up with Chef/Founder Philippe Massoud of ilili here in NY as well as its DC location.We have attended this Lebanese restaurant since 2008 and we have a number of dishes that we enjoy there. We wanted to know more about how he brought the cuisine of his home in Lebanon to NY and elevated it! He gave us his culinary story that is filled with passion, memories, and the need to continue storytelling with each guest that comes to his restaurant. He also talks about how he got into the industry as well as an the importance of connection through his food. We sat down with decorated Team USA Swimming Olympic Medalist, Nathan Adrian. We enjoyed watching him as he participated in the Summer Games of Beijing, London, and Rio. He talked about being a freestyle swimmer, having teammates that included: Michael Phelps, Ryan Lochte, Matt Grever, Cal Dressel and more! He also told us what he has been up to since then as well as the importance of safe sun! When it comes to haircare, Chaz Dean, Hairstylist, Colorist, and Founder/Creator of WEN which is a hair system that revolutionized the industry by removing lather from your hair routine. He talked about how he became a hairstylist, how creating products became part of his role, the fundamentals of Chaz Dean Studio, and his line, WEN. If you have yet to watch Netflix's The Deepest Breath, we highly suggest that you do. In our conversation with its director, Laura McGann, she talked about creating this documentary that focuses on a world champion free diver and her safety diver. In this story we learn about the sport, the incredible kind of training that takes place when competing and participating in this sport, the beautiful locales around the world, and the relationship of these roles and this duo specifically. You can stream this now.

This month’s 9PLAYLIST comes from DJ Mia Moretti which we have seen perform a number of times here in NY and EDM DJ's Kris Kross Amsterdam. This month's 9DRIP comes from Chaz Dean. Our 9LIST STORI3S comes from FAST X's Jordana Brewster and The Bachelorette contestant, Jason Tartick. Our 63MIX ROUTIN3S comes from Chef Michael Voltaggio, and EDM DJ/Producer John Newman.

Our monthly feature, The Art of the Snack shares a must-visit to Jiwa Singapura in Tyson’s Corner. This month’s Athleisure List comes from Ritz Carlton, Bacara Santa Barbara and Ichibantei. As always, we have our monthly roundups of some of our favorite finds.

Read the JUL ISSUE #91 of Athleisure Mag now.

FOOD FOUND HER | CHEF KARDEA BROWN

Food storytelling has been something that we have talked about multiple times. In enjoying those bites, you’re able to get the intention that the chef has whether it’s their style of food, infusing a culture that they represent or are passionate about as well as how they want you to feel! Once you consume it, you have memories that are set that you will come back to again and again!

Chef Kardea Brown is the host of Delicious Miss Brown which gives us recipes and stories about Southern cuisine from the low country that highlight Gullah culture on Food Network! She is also a judge on the same network for Spring Baking Championship alongside Nancy Fuller and Duff Goldman! We wanted to know more about how she got into the culinary industry, her passion for food, having her show, her partnership at PEPCID, and upcoming projects that we should keep an eye out for! We talk about how food found her, coming to TV, being nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award and being a New York Times Bestselling Author.

We also delve into the issues surrounding food insecurity and her attendance on June 12th for Chef’s Tribute to Citymeals on Wheels fundraiser in New York, an annual tasting event, where PEPCID is the exclusive heartburn brand sponsor and 100% of public proceeds help Citymeals prepare and deliver nourishing meals to older New Yorkers in need. She teamed up with PEPCID, the #1 doctor recommended over the counter acid reducer brand, and is proud to support their efforts in the fight against food insecurity with Meals on Wheels America through their $50,000 sponsorship.

ATHLEISURE MAG: It’s such a pleasure to speak with you as we have been such fans of your show! Where does your love of food come from?

CHEF KARDEA BROWN: It would have to be not only the city that I come from, but my grandmother and my mother! They are some cooking women. They absolutely love cooking and I believe that it is one of our first loves. We have always found ways to spend time in the kitchen. I grew up around women that really loved being in the kitchen and I love food you know! Good food is always good for the heart and the soul!

AM: When did you realize that you wanted to be a chef?

CHEF KB:  You know, I believe that it chose me. My first initial thought was that I was going to become a social worker and that I was going to work in the not-for-profit sector, in my life. The universe would say that it was a bit of a course redirection like, “this is great, you’re doing great there, but I think that I have something bigger and better for you there that’s going to involve food.” That’s how it kinda chose me and I’ve always loved cooking, but I never thought that I was going to do it for a living! It was kind of like, this is your purpose and this is your mission. Here it is!  

AM: It’s so great to hear that! How did you get your own show, Delicious, Miss Brown which we love and we also love that you talk about your background coming from Gullah influences and things like that. How did that all come together?

CHEF KB: So, I was dating a guy at the time. We are no longer together, but we’re still great friends! I’m pretty sure that I owe my career to him! He signed me up to be on a show for the Cooking Channel and out of thousands of submissions, they chose me to do the show with Bobby Dean and it was all about taking that Southern food and making it light and fresh. He wanted to go to a house of someone who cooked heavy Southern meals and kind of flip that and make it into a lighter meal. So, I did that show and it didn’t get picked up by the network, but the network’s executives saw the show and said, “man, she’s really great! Has she thought about doing food television?” At the time, I was working at Big Brothers, Big Sisters and I wasn’t thinking about doing food or cooking on TV! Somehow, I ended up being on several shows after that and eventually, they pitched me to the network to have my own in the kitchen show and I would say about 5 years later, I got my opportunity to host my own show and now I’m in my 8th season!  

AM: That is incredible and congratulations on your recent nomination for your Daytime Emmy Award as a Culinary Host and in your category is Guy Fieri, Emeril Lagasse, Justin Sutherland, Andrew Zimmern, and Ina Garten! That is amazing!

CHEF KB: Blew my mind! To be mentioned in the same room and category with these greats, with these people that I grew up watching is insane and so it’s a great filling!

PHOTO COURTESY | Pepcid

AM: You’re going to be part of the 36th Annual Chef’s Tribute to Citymeals on Wheels, tell me about this and why you’re excited to be part of it?  

CHEF KB: Oh my gosh! I personally use PEPCID in my life! If you have ever seen any of my shows, I cook – you know I like to fry things, I like my spicy foods and all of the things that give you heartburn and so when the opportunity was presented, I thought it was a no-brainer.

The Chefs Tribute that is going on Jun 12th – I am really excited to be there! It’s for a great cause with Citymeals. They’re combatting food insecurity and that’s something that is very important to me because what I do for a living is to teach people how to cook. I can’t do that for people, especially when the demographic that watches Delicious Miss Brown, it’s usually between the ages of 25 – 56 and even older! So a lot of these people watch the show and I want them to be able to have the opportunity to be able to go to their local supermarket or have food delivered that makes my job easier! I want to be able to show you how to cook it and I need you to be able to have the food in order to be able to do that! So Citymeals is doing a really great job of that and combating food insecurity especially here in NY.

For this event taking place, PEPCID is the only heartburn brand that will be there and they have personally sponsored Meals on Wheels America with $50,000. So as soon as I heard of the initiative and PEPCID’s involvement, I said, sign me up!  

AM: That’s definitely exciting.

What is it that you enjoy about taking PEPCID? Do you take it before you eat something or is it after for those that have yet to use this?

CHEF KB: So, you don’t have to take it before. I usually take it after especially when I kind of feel the heartburn kind of starting. I know immediately that when I eat something, especially at night, I might eat something spicy or tomato-based which we do a lot in the Gullah culture. When I eat my red rice, I know that I will have to take some PEPCID immediately after to have a good night’s rest! Even when I film my show, I’m tasting, I’m eating constantly. I can’t do that if I’m suffering from heartburn. If you have ever suffered from heartburn, you know that it’s not pleasant. I take PEPCID immediately, it works just like that and it makes my job that much easier!  

AM: In addition to you hosting Delicious Miss Brown, you’re also judging Spring Baking Championship on the same network! We’re also huge fans of this show! What are you looking forward to with this show?

CHEF KB: Oh my gosh, Spring Baking Championship is one of those shows that I really stumbled in and it’s an amazing show! I have learned so much. It took me awhile to get into baking. I have always been a savory person, but now I do both! But now that I feel that being part of this show has taught me so much and being on the judging panel with Nancy Fuller everyone’s grandma and then Duff Goldman who is a pastry and cake genius! I’ve learned so much and I’m just really excited about what’s to come with the show and many more seasons! The show did really well last season so I’m really excited about more season with Spring Baking!

AM: It’s such a fun show and everyone is so creative! We couldn’t do any of those things, but we always love hearing Duff talk and how excited he is when he’s eating things!

CHEF KB: Yes! He really does get into it and he’s like the cake genius! He is the mechanics of the show and I feel like I bring in the heart where I’m like, “oh this is good, girl!” You know, that type of thing.

AM: You need both!

CHEF KB: Yes, you do! It’s a good balance!

AM: Last year, you dropped your cookbook, The Way Home: A Celebration of Sea Islands Food and Family with Over 100 Recipes, what was it like working on this project and you’re also a New York Times Best Selling Author!

CHEF KB: Yes, it was really fun! It was my first cookbook so I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into, but it was a learning lesson and it was an experience. I’m really happy about it because for so many years and actually decades, my family had these recipes within my family, but we never had a way to keep those recipes beyond word of mouth. So now, there’s a place where recipes can live and I really feel like I’m making my great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother proud by creating history within our families! Being that it is right out of the gate and it made it to the NYT Bestsellers was just mind-blowing to me. A little girl from Charleston, South Carolina had big dreams and I never dreamt that it would be this.

AM: Your journey has been amazing and we’d love to know more about your frozen food line! What’s it going to be and what can we expect from it?

CHEF KB: Oh my gosh! I can’t give all the details yet, but it’s going to be with a major distributor/retailer, and it’s going to be all the things that everyone loves about the South and the low country as many of the foods that you have probably seen on my show or people who have watched it who say, “man, I wish I could taste that!” You will be able to soon!

AM: We can’t wait to see it! Just looking at all of the things that you have done in your career, these are really big moment! Food is such a big vertical at Athleisure Mag, what do you want your legacy to be whether it’s on the culinary side or being an overall entrepreneur?

CHEF KB: You know, I want my legacy to be that I wasn’t afraid to take that leap of faith and that I somehow landed on my feet. If anyone ever has a dream, a hope, or something to aspire to – just do it! I literally did it and I had no clue what to do and somehow I ended up in a very great place! I want my legacy to be that I jumped, I landed, and it did well! If I can do it, anyone else can!

IG @kardeabrown

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S3. E5. | ATHLEISURE KITCHEN CHEF YIA VANG

On today's episode of Athleisure Kitchen, we know that there is something about a great meal that allows you to enjoy the flavors, the ambiance and so much more. When the food becomes a gateway to a deeper understanding about the people and culture, it's truly an immersive experience that leaves you with a bigger takeaway.

Today's conversation with Chef Yia Vang explores a history that is infused with his passion for food by sharing his love for Hmong cuisine, his parents as well as the people that it comes from. This multi-nominated James Beard Award chef whose restaurant is up for Best Chef: Midwest for a 2nd year in a row, has two restaurants in Minnesota, Union Hmong Kitchen and Vinai. He is also the host of a number of shows including: The Outdoor Channel's Feral, Food Networks' Stoked, and PBS' Relish. He has competed on Netflix's Iron Chef: Quest for An Iron Legend and hosts his podcast Hmonglish just to name a few of his projects. He tells us about the food, his philosphy and the importance of representation.  

Athleisure Kitchen is part of the Athleisure Studio Podcast Network and is a member of Athleisure Media which includes Athleisure Mag. You can stay in the loop on who future guests are by visiting us at AthleisureStudio.com/AthleisureKitchen and on Instagram at @AthleisureKitchen and @AthleisureStudio. Athleisure Kitchen is hosted by Kimmie Smith and is Executive Produced by Paul Farkas and Kimmie Smith. It is mixed by the team at Athleisure Studio. Our theme music is "This Boy" performed by Ilya Truhanov.

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FOOD IS MEDICINE | CHEF TODD ENGLISH

This month, we're kicking off our transition into the Spring! It's always an exciting time to find more reasons to be out and about with friends, travel to new destinations and to have the best meals at new and treasured restaurants. When it comes to the culinary industry, there have been a number of luminaries that elevated this space and showcase how they interpret and infuse their passion in this field.

Our March cover is an innovator and trailblazer in this field. We're pleased to have 4X James Beard Award winner, Emmy nominated, Las Vegas Food & Wine Festival's 2022 Chef of the Year, restaurateur, entrepreneur, food advocate, best-selling author, philanthropist, and Host/TV personality, Chef Todd English. We enjoyed eating at his restaurant Olives, here in NY back in the 2000s as well as eating at his restaurants in Las Vegas.

His passion for his love of cooking rustic Mediterranean, creating an immersive ambiance when you're at his establishments and having that Todd English aesthetic when you're at his properties is something that we enjoy. He has blown our collective minds, palettes and senses with such utter delights over the years - with so much more coming!

We caught up with Chef Todd to talk about his culinary background, how he got in and navigated the industry, providing insight into what it meant to be in the indsustry when there weren't the resources that we have access today, English Hospitality Group (its portfolio includes Olives, Figs, The Pepper Club, Bluezoo at Walt Disney World Dolphin Resort, The English Hotel to name a few), an array of projects, luxury in hospitality, cannabis and food advocacy. In this interview, we get an inside look on how he approaches food, the state of food and the power of relevancy as a brand.

ATHLEISURE MAG: It is such an honor to be able to talk with you and to you have you as this month’s cover of Athleisure Mag. We used to go to Olives here in NY quite a bit, it was definitely our hangout quite a bit, it was definitely our hangout spot! So to be able to have you and to talk about your background, all the things that you have been involved in and what you're working on is a great moment. It’s been inspiring to see what you have done in the culinary scene and how you have pushed boundaries.

CHEF TODD ENGLISH: Well thank you very much and the honor is mine as well. Thank you for being a patron of mine over the years and we will have to continue that down the road with all of the new stuff that’s going on.

AM: I know I saw that you are doing a lot of amazing things that’s coming down the pipeline, we definitely want to check out your restaurants. For me personally, when I first came to NY in 2002, you kind of showed me what being a Celebrity Chef was like in terms of having the restaurants, having the programs that you were on, the cookware, cookbooks and so on. It’s really interesting to see where the industry has gone and how you continue to do these really amazing things.

CHEF TE: Yeah, it’s fascinating you know? I was talking to somebody else yesterday and it’s somebody that I actually cooked with who was one of the first people that I worked with when I got my amazing cooking jobs when I got out of culinary school. It was in 1980!

AM: I was 1 year old then ha!

CHEF TE: Haha it’s crazy where the world has gone as far as in the cuisine. There was no Food Network at that time, there was no Internet, there was no Instagram. I remember that when you wanted to learn something about cooking, you went to the library for culinary or you went and read a book or that was pretty much it! There was no Internet or Google!

AM: Versus now, where everything is so much at your fingertips. This issue marks our 87th, and when we first started, food has always been a big category for us in our coverage, you were always someone we'd love from the beginning to have share your story. So to be chatting with you now 7 years later with all of this comingi up is a thrill for the Athleisure Mag team.

CHEF TE: Well thank you and that’s so cool. I will first and foremost say that I still really love what I do. I’m always working on different categories of things that interest me. My sons, Oliver and Simon, they did a documentary called Feeding Tomorrow that just won a bunch of awards at the LA film documentary and they were just invited to Sundance. It talks about sustainability, regenerative soils and etc. etc. and all of the things that we’re starting to pay attention to here. So I have been working with one of my cool – because I have gotten into working with cannabis as well mostly from medicinal standpoints from my sister way back when it wasn’t legal.

So having to work through this all these years I found that there all sorts of interesting things that are coming out of that whether it’s the hydroponics (editors note: hydroponics is the technique of growing plants using a waterbased nutrient solution rather than soil) and the way that they grow it and etc. Now, we’re learning to do that and I’m working with one of my good friends who has one of the leading hydroponic companies in North America, not to mention the world. I was talking to them about sustainability, hydroponics and how we’ve been working on a project to make wine and to do it in a hydroponic way and wild stuff like that.

So, I’m always interested in what is the future. I worked in Dubai with the Museum of the Future on a project there. What is the future of food, how are we going to provide food for 10 billion people in 20, 25 years or whatever that number is going to be? How do we produce healthier food that’s not full of GMOs. One of my first cookbooks was Alice Waters' cookbook, Chez Panisse and her dedication to local farms and obviously, being in California that was a lot easier than when I was in Massachusetts at the time. I mean, we went local, but in the summer. I would buy exotic seeds, sometimes legal and sometimes not, but we would buy stuff from all over that was not being grown and so it was fun. To me, that’s the beauty of what we do. Not to get sidetracked, but that’s what I do and why I love it.

AM: Well that’s the thing that I have seen about the different projects that you have been involved in. You continue to trailblaze and really dig deep into these areas. I find it fascinating!

When did you first fall in love with food?

CHEF TE: Well, if you ask my mother, my mother tells a story where I grew up part of my life in Georgia and I was 8 or 9 years old and I wanted to figure out how to make ice cream. Again, there’s no Internet, so we went and bought a White Mountain hand churned ice cream machine. I figured it out, once again, it was a hot August day in Atlanta. We went to the Farmer’s Market and I bought a bunch of peaches and I made Georgia Peach Ice Cream!

AM: Wow!

CHEF TE: I was so young and it was handmade! There was no Food Network. My family were pretty good cooks, but where the hell that came from, I had no idea!

AM: That is crazy and it takes a long time to! We used to have one as a kid that had salt in the tumbler and you had to keep churning it and churning it and my dad loved doing it. It was great ice cream, but as a kid, I was like, “can’t we just buy it out of the tub?”

CHEF TE: It’s definitely a real labor of love.

AM: Exactly.

CHEF TE: It’s worth it in the end when it comes out of there and it’s delicious and the Georgia peaches were super ripe.

AM: At what point did you realize that your passion for food and you’re love for it would be a career path that you wanted to take?

CHEF TE: You have to remember that when I got out of the Culinary Institute of America, it was 1982 and I started working in French restaurants, then Italian and I ended up going to Europe and cooking just because I had just met with someone who said, “here, I will give you a letter,” it was Tony May (founder of San Domenico NY, SD26, Palio) – I don’t know if you know, but Sirio Maccioni (Le Cirque), Tony May, they were the super Tuscan guys that came over from Italy and opened restaurants in NY. Tony May had a restaurant called San Domenico and he was a wonderful mentor to me because again in those days, I went over in the 80s and knocked on someone’s door and said, “can I have a job?” with a letter in my hand! They ended up giving me a job and one thing led to another and I worked in Italy and it was the 80s. I don’t know, there was something about it - it was amazing. You’d go to the markets to cook, you’d make fresh bread, fresh pasta and you did all those great things and that’s what I did. The same with the French, you’d make sauces and I think that that’s one of the things that I was most fascinated by – learning about flavors, learning about extractions of flavors, sauces, technique and there’s nothing easy about it! It’s 14 hour days and I was also going to school. So, I’d go to French school, bakeries and it was pretty crazy.

AM: I didn’t even think about that. That’s crazy so you must have slept for 4 or 5 hours in a day, but you were either training or working.

CHEF TE: Pretty much!

AM: Wow!

CHEF TE: Luckily, I was born with a lot of energy. I was also studying music, I love music – I was studying the classical guitar at the NY Guitar Institute in NY. So I would go home and practice guitar and classical guitar is a lot of practice. It was fun!

AM: Who were some of the people that you trained under when you were coming up?

CHEF TE: In NY, it was Jean-Jacques Rachou at La Côte Basque and he was like a papa to me he was very very encouraging to young American chefs although he was still an old school chef where you really didn’t want to mess up, let’s put it that way. So that’s the old school. He would invite me in and he was from Toulouse and they are famous for their cassoulet. I would have these obsessions with certain types of food. So cassoulet, he found out that I wanted to know more about it and he brought me in early and he came in early and he taught me cassoulet. To this day, I still think that I make the best cassoulet - learning from Jean-Jacques Rachou. Then he also spent a lot of time in Provence and he talked about Bouillabaisse and I was obsessed with it. I did a whole thing on Martha Stewart when she had me on and we went through the whole process. You can Google it – it’s crazy!

AM: I remember that!

CHEF TE: She didn’t want to skip one step!

I guess I try to teach the glamor of this which is interesting how it has obviously become so glamorous. You have Food Network, Instagram stars, TikTok stars that do food. I watch all of these Instagrams where you have these people and they just go out and cook food and they have millions of followers. It’s wild! I think it’s great! With my chefs when we have menu writing sessions, I tell them to go out and find me your 10 top Instagram moments on food and bring those to the table because I want to see the perspective of everybody out there. Everyone follows different people, what are people eating, what makes them excited? What is the entertainment of food now? That’s something where I think that you have to stay modern and to keep your finger on the pulse to see what’s out there and I’m constantly always out there researching that and we try to always stay ahead of the curve. It’s not easy because it moves so fast now.

AM: Exactly!

CHEF TE: I think it’s great. I think it’s wonderful what’s going on and I’m very encouraged. The only thing that concerns me is the cost of goods. We need to figure that out and do better because at some point, where is luxury defined? I have always felt like food is our greatest democracy.

AM: Yup.

CHEF TE: If we don’t continue to look at our democracy of food, we are not going to and you know – when I go to Italy, food is very reasonable in most cases and in most restaurants. You can pretty much have the most incredible pasta in the world that you could ever have for not a lot of money. I find that is something that is concerning. I feel that we can grow more vegetables nearby or on our own gardens and let's do things that aren’t going to be so prohibitive as far as what we eat. That is one of the things that is so important to me. It really really bothers me that the biggest aisle in a big grocery store in a big chain one, not like a Whole Foods, is the cookie aisle and the sugary aisle! It’s disgusting!

AM: Absolutely, the sodas!

CHEF TE: Yes. Sugar pumped up foods that people eat. It’s just, what? Unfortunately, a lot of bad things are happening out of that from diabetes, obesity, etc. I find that I always like the 5 or 10lbs that I

lose when I go to Italy because you’re just eating good food. How did all these allergies come about? Being allergic to celiac and these other things. Maybe they have always been there, but why is it worse than ever?

No one ever really wants to admit it, but it’s the way that we process food.

AM: Absolutely.

CHEF TE: It’s pretty simple and yet Big Agra and the government are not going to ever admit it –

AM: That’s their bread and butter.

CHEF TE: That’s their bread and butter. It’s how they make their money, no pun intended. I think that there’s a much bigger awareness out there for sure and that’s what my sons are doing and I think that that’s why their docu is getting so much attention because it’s actually calling out these people. Not necessarily by name, but it’s saying that we have 50 years and we won’t have any more soil that has the nutrients that we need etc. etc.

AM: But that is a big part of it. As I said earlier, I’m originally from the Midwest. Although I was from a large city, we would talk about soil, supporting local farms as opposed to factory farms that were moving in and you grew up knowing about food sourcing and the importance of being able to know about the environment and how your food supply was affected. There are a lot of people walking around not understanding that the labels on their food don’t really say all the things to say and so you could be eating things that are contributing to an allergy or other underlining particular conditions.

CHEF TE: I don’t even know if we know!

AM: Yeah!

CHEF TE: I think that it has gotten to the point, and I preface this by saying that I don’t think that it is everyone’s intention to do this, there are those people who do have these intentions. It’s troublesome!

AM: Exactly! When did you realize that you wanted to own your own restaurants and what was that point that you said that this was something that you wanted to take on? Did you think it would be as large as it is today?

CHEF TE: Not at all. No, no, no. I was working at a job, that I was like, oh ok. I had been there for a while and being a little bit wild I guess I could put it and feeling like I wanted to prove something else and my ex-wife and I had a baby die at birth in 1986 and it was shocking, I was young and 25 years old. I was like, ok well what is the meaning of life? Trying to get a different perspective and at 25, you think you’re really old.

AM: This is true!

CHEF TE: We had a baby and it was very traumatic and it was a very complicated process. So I had to make the decision on whether we were going to try to save her from a very – what would have been a very terrible existence from what we were told.

Anyway, so I remember sitting there on a mountain top looking out over the valley and I went out on a journey through Italy and I’m by the ocean and I go, “you know what? It’s time to do my own thing.” I ended up leaving the job, I didn’t have anything set up. I did a little catering here and there with the clients that we knew about. Long story short, we opened the restaurant and never looked back!

AM: That’s amazing!

CHEF TE: Yeah, it was the original Olives and we did 50 people I think the first night, 100 people the next night and then there was a line around the corner for 16 years.

AM: Tell me about English Hospitality Group and the brands that make up this portfolio?

CHEF TE: Yeah, yeah, I mean that’s – it’s really about us – I mean incorporating my family, incorporating what I think that the business is very much about not just the food, but the whole hospitality world that we’re in. Hospitality to me, I like to have a good time and have people over as I’m more than just the food. It’s a whole ambiance.

AM: As someone who has had a number of different restaurants, how do you go about deciding which one it will be, what location you want to take on as it seems like it would be a strategic situation when you’re thinking about this.

CHEF TE: Right. I don’t know I just kind of like exploring a lot of different things. I look at it like, I like music in the same way. I love exploring different types and genres of music and I find that it’s really the same kind of thing. It is the same thing – to me. Truly, the food end and the music are the most when it comes to emotions, energy and synergy – all of those kinds of things. I think that when you put on a song that you can listen to, it reminds you of something or whatever that moment may be in your life as well as aromas or something that you might eat – it evokes the same kind of things. So that’s why I like to explore different genres of things and it’s kind of one of the most exciting things and why I love what I do!

AM: Why did you want to open The English Hotel. It looks stunning in the pictures.

CHEF TE: Haha – thank you! For all the same reasons!

AM: I thought that you would say that!

How do you define the Todd English aesthetic?

CHEF TE: It’s pretty simple. I don’t like for it to be too complicated or uptight. It’s come in and have a good time, let your hair down, be in the moment. That’s what I try to evoke and it’s like those are the special memories that will hopefully come out of it. It’s those simplest things that are the fondest memories.

AM: Pappas Taverna, what can you tell me about this? It seems like a very exciting project and I know you’re working with Stratis Morfogen (Jue Lan Club, Brooklyn Chop House Steakhouse, Philippe Chow) on this.

CHEF TE: That has been a great project. I’ve spent a lot of time in Greece over the years and I have always loved and have a lot of really great Greek friends. I have spent a lot of time traveling the country and enjoyed the amazing food. So it’s been a great project to work on and what I want to do, I call it Greek Unplugged and I have been working on a couple of other projects that the English Hospitality Group is working on with that and actually, exploring Greece as an outlet for us to do something in Mykonos over the summer as a pop up.

“I mean incorporating my family ... the business is very much about not just the food, but the whole hospitality world that we’re in. Hospitality to me, I like to have a good time and have people over as I’m more than just the food. It’s a whole ambiance.”

— Chef Todd English

AM: Oh wow!

CHEF TE: It’s like you can create songs out of 3 notes like The Beatles have done. A lot of great rock songs are only 3 or 4 chords. Food is the same thing, it's how you mix it up, you know? What’s your interpretation of it, how you change the notes or the ingredients around it just a little bit to make it something that is unique to you and makes your own song. So that’s how I kind of always look at it.

AM: Very cool.

Are there other projects coming up that are here in NY?

CHEF TE: Yeah! I’m working on doing my sort of revised version of Figs which I opened up 30 years ago. I’m very excited about that. I think that pizza is having its moment again. I’m very excited to dabble back into that. With Figs, it’s always been over the years, Lobster and Corn Pizza, Peking Duck Pizzas, Foie Gras and Confit Duck Pizza! We’ve always pushed those limits and taken it out of the tradition and that was always happening in the beginning. So my outlook on food is the same way. I always say that it’s common things and uncommon ways. When I do cooking seminars or classes and I’ll say, well you know, let’s look at this for a second here. As an example, we all have a beautiful Hen of the Woods Oyster – Oyster Mushrooms, there’s 10 of us at the table and we’re all going to make our own version of whatever this is, but it’s the one ingredient. How does one take that ingredient and how do we make it special? How do you make it different or is it just the technique? How do you grow? So that is always what I am looking at.

AM: I love how you get into different kinds of details and how you challenge yourself basically. Looking at something in a different way, taking that same item and having various variations out of it. I think that that is very interesting.

CHEF TE: Well, it certainly is what it is. You have to challenge yourself every day. You don’t have to, but I believe that’s what keeps me coming back. We always say in the business that you’re only as good as your last dish, but in retrospective, that is true! Life changes and things move on. I don’t cook things that we used to cook when I first started cooking you know? Veal kidneys – have you ever eaten them?

AM: Um no, I don’t think so.

CHEF TE: Right? You’re the generation – what about sweetbreads?

AM: No, I’m not a sweetbread person, no.

CHEF TE: What about brain?

AM: No just no! I had sweetbread once I believe – but still no.

CHEF TE: See, if I made it for you and you were sitting at my table, you may go, “eww gross” or you may go, "I have no idea!"

AM: Right!

CHEF TE: Yeah, because I’m the generation that if you kill an animal, you eat it head to toe. Early on in my career, that’s what you did and not so much anymore. I would seek small farms with lamb that they would raise like I would see in Rome. They would be 35lbs and you would roast it and it would be the most delicious thing that you ever ate in your life. That appreciation for killing an animal, one of the things that I have always loved about my roots in the Mediterranean diet is not only are they finding that it is actually one of the healthiest ways to eat and live, only 20% of the diet is protein, meat or fish. Again, that’s very localized and eaten head to toe whether it’s rabbit, lamb or something that’s freshly caught that day, It’s a highly based vegetable diet and also very legume oriented. So that’s where a lot of the protein comes from. Again, I’m not getting on my stumping stool here, but it’s something that I believe in and I believe in it in a sense of eating it for animals as well.

AM: I can appreciate that, but I will pass on the sweetbreads.

You have a private restaurant at the Bentley Residences.

CHEF TE: Yes!

AM: It sounds amazing. Can you tell me about that and why did you want to be part of that?

CHEF TE: You know what it’s going to end up being? First of all, I like the idea of – it doesn’t have to be that the food is exclusive or the exclusivity of it, but I do like the specialization or the exclusivity of have something that I hope can be a very interesting experience – it’s different than what you normally might have. Luxury is being defined in very different ways, now. This to me is a fun way to look at luxury and it will actually be more of a test kitchen. Even though Gil Dezer, the developer is a good friend of mine, he said, “Todd do whatever you want. It’s fine.” I said, ok I may be down there being like a mad professor in there, people will come in and try – it’s some mad professor stuff! He said it was cool and that he loved that.

AM: He’s like, whatever you want to do!

CHEF TE: Yeah, whatever I want to do!

It’s not going to be just one genre of cuisine and cooking. I’m hoping that people will use it as their daily basis to and to create stuff that they can place in their fridge, we’ll run it up to your condo and give you instructions on how to throw it into the Todd English Air Fryer that we’ll sell to you and will come along with it!

AM: Nice!

CHEF TE: It’s so often that in these large condos, nobody even knows where there kitchen is.

AM: And very clean because it’s not used.
CHEF TE: The design is a very cool kitchen. It gets kind of put away behind a cabinet.

AM: You’re also in the Ghost Kitchen space. Why did you want to be part of that as I love that concept.

CHEF TE: I think again, those people that don’t know their kitchens and have busy lives as you do, there’s just different ways to be able to get people their food. I look at it like another outlet. As an example, Figs delivery, our pizza delivery is over 35% - it’s a lot and it’s the kind of food that transports very well.

AM: For the Ghiost Kitchens, is that just for your restaurants and brands in your portfolio or can others partner with you in this as well?

CHEF TE: It will be other people as well, yes. I don’t try to take all of the glory or to pretend that I could do it better than some places where that’s what they do. I respect that and I would never – I may try to mimic it and do my best to be –

AM: Right!

CHEF TE: It’s always to pursue things and to have different goals and perspectives of things.

AM: We were talking about cannabis earlier in our conversation and I love Mac & Cheese, you have this Mac & Cheese from LastLeaf that is cannabis infused. What was that process like?

CHEF TE: I actually changed it. The name is no longer LastLeaf, it’s actually called Bougie.

AM: I like that even better!

CHEF TE: We’re going to be making that out of Nevada now with some very prominent doctors out of that field that are pretty cool. One of the things that I got a call on was from St. Jude. I used to do a lot of stuff on HSN and during the holiday season, I would have a certain pot during Breast Cancer Awareness, we can talk about that too as a I do a lot of charitable stuff. With St. Jude’s Hospital, we always had that we would sell and the proceeds of that would go to St. Jude’s. In Oct., we would manufacture these hot pink pots that were really cool and we would sell those for proceeds going to my sister’s foundation, Wendy English Breast Cancer Research Foundation as she passed away from that. So that was another motivating factor for me to get into my own business too.

Having said that, so with Bougie and its Mac & Cheese, we’re going to be creating this and also at St. Jude’s Hospital, I don’t know if they have cleared it yet, but they called me and asked if we would be willing to donate the Mac & Cheese to their terminally ill kids. And I said yes, without me crying, I would certainly be willing to do that. I know we’re following up on that and they will be following up with us, but I’m very very excited to have the ability to do this for these poor kids that are amazing.

AM: Wow, that’s amazing.

CHEF TE: Food is our medicine, baby!

AM: Absolutely!

CHEF TE: It is our medicine, and we can’t ever forget that. Any legacy that I would want to live by in my life is – let’s look at this in a different way and let’s think about how we can provide healthier food to people in the world. I think especially because I’m doing something as well with a super food group that is pretty interesting called BOKU Superfood that are friends of mine that I met through the shopping channels when they would sell their products. I used to joke with them that I loved that they had 75 different types of mushroom powders, but the taste, I can’t drink it. I have to choke it down! We joke about it. They laugh about it too and I told them that I get it, but here’s the thing, let's make it taste good, because that's what I do and I will do my best to make it taste good. Let’s talk about the nutritional contents of what it is that makes it. During the pandemic, I actually ended up staying with them on their ranch in Ojai, California for a little bit of time. We were working on some stuff there and we’re looking to put those things out there as well.

AM: That’s exciting!

CHEF TE: Yeah, that’s what I love.

“Food is our medicine baby!”

— Chef Todd English

AM: Do you think, as I remember watching you on your show Food Trip on PBS, do you think that you would come back and do a series?

CHEF TE: Yes! We’re working on that now!

AM: Yay! There are so many awesome food shows like Top Chef and different things like that, but I thought that you would have to come back to a network or whatever streaming platform.

CHEF TE: Yes, probably a streaming platform. I’m very excited about it. I think that people really love and most of my friends, they travel for food.

AM: I do as well! So yeah. I love knowing where things come from.

CHEF TE: I’m sure you do, yeah. What restaurant you’re eating in is a pretty big on the agenda right?

AM: Absolutely and even if it’s something that we’re doing in work as I’m also a fashion stylist, if I’m pulling, I need to know the different things that we can try if I’m in a certain neighborhood or other city.

CHEF TE: You’re also in fashion?

AM: Yes! I am also a fashion stylist. I’ve designed a number of lines and I was also on HSN and I had a collaboration with Sebago shoes so I did that for 3 years. There’s a lot of things from my background and everytime you’re talking about music, my great uncle was a jazz artist and I used to see him and Herbie Hancock.

CHEF TE: Oh my God!

AM: Yeah my great uncle was Joe Henderson.

CHEF TE: Oh wow! See, I’m old enough to know all of those names! That’s great!

AM: Yeah, I loved his music, continue to play it. I do like how music, food and fashion – all of these things, come and play together which is why we created Athleisure Mag. We shoot a lot of our active lifestyle wellness content in luxury residences here in the city. We just love having that blend together. Food with me is huge. Even on our sets, we have to have something tasty. I’m not satisfied if I’m not happy with what I’m eating.

CHEF TE: Right, I love that!

AM: Absolutely and in this industry, it’s great to know so many people and in food, it was an honor and super fun to have had Cat Cora, we shot with her right before the pandemic and I’m always interested in the space and thinking in the mind of a chef.

CHEF TE: I love Cat, she’s great! Well tell her I say hi!

AM: I will for sure! I think that one of the things that we enjoy about the magazine and our podcast equivalent for Athleisure Kitchen was just hearing the stories of the why and the how. Seeing it on one side, like going to your beautiful restaurants is one thing. But now, being able to talk with you and to see how you sketch things out, I find that highly impactful.

CHEF TE: It’s crazy!

AM: What are some other projects that you’re tackling that we should know about?

CHEF TE: One of the things is that I have my charity called Hunger Pains. Hunger Pains is about figuring out ways to get food to people in places so that we can set up commissaries for people so that we can actually feed the 1 million kids that go hungry every day. This happens even in NYC where people only have 1 meal a day and that’s kind of crazy how we live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world – what’s the deal here? That’s a big movement on my side right now.

AM: We were speaking with Tom Colicchio last month and he was talking about the Food Bill and other initiatives that he is involved in to drive awareness to the government, do you do things like that where you’re partnering with local or the federal government to push these initiatives along?

CHEF TE: Yeah. That’s certainly the goal. My son was showing me a clip where there is a place that they grow these beautiful melons, but they only grow them for their seeds. So they have a way of extracting the seeds and then they throw out the meat. Wait a second?

AM: Wait what? That’s so strange.

Our readers always like knowing what ingredients or spices that you love using and is in your kitchen? If you could only have 3 spices that would be the main theme in a dish that you’re creating, what would it be?

CHEF TE: If it’s a fresh herb, it’s usually a rosemary, not to sound boring.

AM: I love rosemary it’s also great in cocktails.

CHEF TE: I’m pretty much a rosemary guy. Not to mention basil and all the sweet herbs, but sometimes, depending on what I’m making, I like some dried herbs. Dried herbs, I mean I remember growing up that on the Italian side, tomato sauce would be made, it had to have dried oregano. Only dried! You’re talking about flavors and blooming flavors, essential oils and bringing things to their peak flavors, learning how to work with herbs and how to extract flavors out of them. I definitely love aromatic spices and there’s no question! I’m also a salt freak!

AM: Me too! I’m obsessed with various kinds of salts.

CHEF TE: Yeah, there are times when I have over 40 or 50 kinds of salt in my cabinet. I’m always picking one up whether I’m in the desert of Ibiza or I’m in Sicily or wherever, I’m getting salt and bringing it home.

AM: Absolutely, I like sauces, spices and I like salt. Those are my things.

CHEF TE: Good, there you go. We’ll get along really well then.

AM: Yes!

If we were coming over for brunch which is my favorite meal to have, what would be the meal that you serve and what cocktail would you pair with it?

CHEF TE: Brunch to me is a fun all day meal.

AM: Exactly.

CHEF TE: I like it to be ever so evolving. Let’s say we were in the Hamptons over the summer, which is one of my favorite places to do a Sunday Brunch kind of thing. Obviously, you want to go over to the Farmer’s Market which is amazing out there and so you say, ok, they just harvested those beets, those beautiful tomatoes just came in or peaches for example or fennel. Whatever all the amazing stuff there is that comes out of the ground over there. Sometimes what I will do is courses that are about 1 topic.

AM: I love that.

CHEF TE: So, if it’s a topic. Today is going to be tomato day and what are we going to do with these tomatoes? We're going to have various courses that are about tomatoes. We’ll be doing tomato shots with fresh tomato juice that I have squeezed with a knife and then we would do a Clear Bloody Mary.

AM: Oh, that’s awesome!

CHEF TE: So we’ll start you with a Clear Bloody Mary so it’s just the tomato juice that is infused with horseradish and all the things that make a little bit of spice like black pepper and that kind of thing. So that’s sort of where I would go with that and that’s kind of fun because I’d serve them chilled – they’d be shaken and chilled and placed in martini glasses and then I’d float tomatoes in the glass.

AM: Oh wow!

CHEF TE: So that’s fun and it’s a fun little experiment for you!

AM: I love that ok, I thought I was doing something when I had Green Bloody Mary, but this sounds fantastic!

CHEF TE: And to me, I just go back to the beauty of tomatoes – tomato sauce – however that would be interpreted. My Sicilian grandmother used to make tomato sauce with Italian tuna or it might be with poached eggs. So, it’s not one particular item, but you might have a beautiful harvested tomato day with me including dessert!

IG @cheftoddenglish

PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY | FRONT COVER/BACK COVER + PG 16-47 Chef Todd English

Read the MAR ISSUE #87 of Athleisure Mag and see FOOD IS MEDICINE | Chef Todd English in mag.

S2. E12. | ATHLEISURE KITCHEN WITH KATIE LEE BIEGEL

On today's episode of Athleisure Kitchen, It's all about the approach to food whether you're making it or enjoying it. We've been fans of Katie Lee Biegel for a number of years as we love how she simply enjoys telling her story through food. With a hectic holiday season upon us, we wanted to chat with her to talk about her love of food, being a co-host on Food Network's The Kitchen, partaking in Kitchen Therapy as a form of self-care and her thoughts on her bestselling book, Groundswell, being turned into a film on the Hallmark Channel!

Athleisure Kitchen is part of the Athleisure Studio Podcast Network and is a member of Athleisure Media which includes Athleisure Mag. You can stay in the loop on who future guests are by visiting us at AthleisureStudio.com/AthleisureKitchen and on Instagram at @AthleisureKitchen and @AthleisureStudio. Athleisure Kitchen is hosted by Kimmie Smith and is Executive Produced by Paul Farkas and Kimmie Smith. It is mixed by the team at Athleisure Studio. Our theme music is "This Boy" performed by Ilya Truhanov.

BRINGING MISSISSIPPIS CULINARY SCENE | NICK WALLACE

We hopped into the kitchen with Chef Nick Wallace who we enjoyed seeing his passion and love for Jackson, Mississippi. In addition to being the Founder and Executive Chef of Nick Wallace Culinary, Nick Wallace Catering and Nissan Cafe by Wallace, we enjoyed seeing him as a finalist in Top Chef Season 19 in Houston, Chopped episodes, winner of Food Network Canada's Fire Masters and he appeared on CNN's Nomad with Carlton McCoy. We talk about the importance of Mississippi when it comes to creating his dishes and bringing awareness to the culinary scene there. We also talk about why giving back to others is essential and also how we can focus on creating great meals when we're busy that still have love and full flavors!

ATHLEISURE MAG: I was such a fan of watching you during Top Chef Season 19 and it’s so great to be able to talk with you right now and as a finalist you showed us your love for food, where you passion came from – when did you realize that you wanted to be a chef?

CHEF NICK WALLACE: So I realized that I wanted to be a chef honestly when I was maybe in my late 20’s. It was something that I always knew that I was good at was cooking. I was cooking as a teenager and I was good at it because my grandmother taught me. But in my late 20’s, I just had to look around my perspective in Mississippi and when I didn’t see that many chefs and executive chefs that were really trying to push it that were of my color, that’s when I said, now it’s time for me to write my story and it’s time for me to ask my elders about the stories that I could reshape who I want to be and that’s when I had my answer!

AM: Your passion for Mississippi whether it’s supporting local producers or giving back via your non-profit Creativity Kitchen to support healthier meals for children and schools is amazing. Why is this so important to you?

CHEF NW: Well, my grandmother told me one thing! When you get things in life, you need to give back just as much. It took me awhile to really figure that out. But the one thing that she was really getting at is that your circle, your environment that’s around you – as you grow up in life, other people need to be able to grow with you and that’s the same way that you should be doing business as well. That’s the reason why I’m in line with Ben’s Original because they have some of the same beliefs and they care about their community.

AM: As the Co-Founder/Creative + Style Director of Athleisure Media, I think about our readers at Athleisure Mag and our listeners of Athleisure Kitchen for Athleisure Studio, they’re busy, they’re always in the mix of doing things. They want to eat well, they want to have healthy meals, they also want to be able to prepare things easily so that they can go from one place to the next. How can they do that, keeping it elevated and also having some hacks whether it’s cooking for themselves or their coupleship or friends and family that come over.

CHEF NW: Yeah, that’s probably one of the most tough things is to cook for 1 individual. Because honestly the way that I was raised, you cook big pots – that’s what you do. You honestly have to bring all of that down and then it’s time that you have to get sandwich bags – it’s not about the Ziplock bag form anymore, things have to be smaller. So, when you’re dicing and pre-prepping you just need to be able to put things into ramekins and put it in your refrigerators because honestly, you don’t need a whole onion. So when you’re cutting things, portion them out – it’s all about portion control when it’s 1 or 2 people, because you will waste a lot and you don’t want to do that.

AM: Absolutely. What are some meals that you suggest that we should have on our radar that are delicious and that can impress guests when they’re coming over to eat with us?

CHEF NW: So, I’m going to give you 2 great recipes here and then we’re going to talk about a lot more that we have. This first one is going to be focused on the Whole Grain Brown Rice which is in the Ready Rice packages. It’s really easy to do, you can put it in the microwave for 3 mins. Take a fresh apple and you’re going to slice and then dice it and incorporate it into some diced red peppers, parsley, green onions, lemon juice, apple cider vinegar and salt and pepper. Once it’s incorporated, add some of the pre-cooked Ben’s Original Ready Rice right into the bowl. This is when you can get kids involved if you have them – you can let them mix and you can have them add ingredients. Maybe they want to see a little more green or red – let them be in charge because when you place this down on your dinner table, you want them to finish this. So you have your sweetness, you have a little bit of acidity, you have protein that’s in there. If you want to add chicken or seafood, you can do that and you can just keep taking this to the next level. But this here is your base!

Your next recipe is going to be Wild Rice. Now this Wild Rice is a favorite. I have been buying these pouches since they have been out there because it’s just so easy. So for this meatball, you don’t have to pre-cook the rice. You’re going to add this rice right into a bowl with ground beef and you’re going to add eggs, milk, salt and pepper and a little garlic. If you have some kids, get them involved again. Letting them mix and reshaping their meatballs. Pop them into a 350˚ oven and in about 12-13 mins, you have some really luscious meatballs that’s right there at your dinner table.

AM: Those are great recipes to add to your meals.

You’ve kind of been talking about this throughout – preparation is always key. What are some items that we should have in our pantries so even when we don’t know what’s going on, when we have these items, they are so versatile that we can create a meal.

can create a meal.

CHEF NW: The good thing about Ben’s Original’s mission is to really save - to save time. You definitely need to have these Ready Rice packages in there because you can get something where you can have Taco Night with Spanish – you can go all kinds of different ways. The Wild Rice is great to pair with a fish. So this here is a great vessel and then in your refrigerator, you really want peppers, onions, squash and eggplant. You want these things that can be in there and you’re already halfway there with a meal. And then you can look at a protein. So when you’re buying meats, have Ziplock bags in your house or a vacuum sealer just so that you can take that one protein and put it in a Ziplock bag, date it and put it right in your freezer. So when you pull out your ready rice and also your veggies, you can go ahead and sauté your veggies or make that salad, pair it up and you have a meal in minutes.

AM: That sounds great!

What are some seasonings that you suggest as 3 go-to’s that we should have in our pantry that we should think about having?

CHEF NW: I’m only going to talk about 1 seasoning!

AM: We expected that!

CHEF NW: I’m going to be very biased on that! This is Nick’s 26. It’s the first seasoning that has ever been incorporated with 26 spices. Think about turmeric, cinnamon, nutmeg, all spice, garlic, etc. It took me awhile to get the ratio down. But the only reason why this seasoning is invented because my grandmother told me that I needed to figure out how to put my personality in a bottle because people like the way that I cook and season food. You can now be your own chef in your own household with Nick’s 26.

AM: We love that!

You’ve been working with Ben’s Originals and like you, they’re also focused on childhood hunger that we’re super passionate about here at Athleisure Media. Can you tell us about initiatives that they are focused on and what they’re doing?

CHEF NW: I’m very delighted to partner with Ben’s Original for the second year now. It’s great! One of the things that Ben’s Original and No Kid Hungry is doing is that they are investing 2.5 million meals. All you have to do is to go into the grocery store and spend up to $1 – that’s all! Just think about if you spend just a few more extra dollars, you never know how far that can go. There’s a lot of kids out there that are in need. Our spirits are aligned because it’s just like my mission. Don’t ignore your community, as we grow – we all grow and that’s just the philosophy! We should all believe that and we need to get on the streets and just start walking and do what we do!

AM: We love to hear that. We love No Kid Hungry and we have worked with them since 2016 and so that is something that we love hearing! $1 impacting such a big thing is amazing!

As mentioned in the beginning, it was great to see you on Top Chef as a finalist and we’ve continued to watch you on Chopped as well. Do you have any other shows coming up that we should have an eye out for? Are you making a cookbook – what’s Nick up to?

CHEF NW: So I am writing a cookbook, it’s called Rooted. It’ll be out soon. It’s got some really really great fantastic recipes in there so it’s going to feature a lot of the different partnerships that I do and a lot of the things that my grandmother pretty much instilled in me. That’s the main thing! And then there’s Mississippi as a whole! I want to be able to put a spotlight – just like Ben’s Original is doing. I want the world to know about us, they need to know about us and I hope that by me going on Top Chef, shows what kind of sophistication that we’re bringing. We're coming hard and we’re believing in our community and we’re coming together as strong as 1!

I did do a show in Food Network Canada that you should probably check out. It’s called Fire Masters, it’s a good show. I started the show off with an old-school recipe from my grandfather. My grandfather passed when I was at a young age, but he showed me this and I’m glad that I had that trick to show to the world, but it’s called Fire Masters and check it out! Soon we have more things to come, but we’re probably going to be a little quiet about it but we have a lot of things in the making!

IG @nickwallaceculinary

PHOTO COURTESY | Nick Wallace

Read the OCT ISSUE #82 of Athleisure Mag and see BRINGING MISSISSIPPI’S CULINARY SCENE | Nick Wallace in mag.

EXPLORATION THROUGH FOOD | KRISTEN KISH

We enjoy seeing Kristen Kish hosting, judging a number of culinary shows and taking us through her recent trip to Seoul. We took some time to catch up with her since talking earlier this year ahead of TRU TV's Fast Foodies 2nd season.

We talk about her co-hosting Netflix's Iron Chef: Quest for an Iron Legend, her new show on National Geographic - Restaurants at the End of the World and being on Selena + Chef on HBO Max.

We also talk about her latest partnership with Jongga Kimchi, a worldwide number one Korean brand. She also talked about their Generation Preservation campaign to preserve plant-forward foods, health and wellness through fermentation and environment to minimize food waste.

ATHLEISURE MAG: We enjoyed talking to you earlier this year prior to the 2nd season of Fast Foodies with you and you’re co-hosts Chef Justin Sutherland and Chef Jeremy Ford! It’s great to catch up as you’re always doing great things. We enjoyed seeing you over the summer on Netflix’s Iron Chef: Quest for an Iron Legend! It was great to see the dynamic between you Alton Brown. We love the food fact that we learned about Korean Fried Chicken and how it came to be! Why did you want to be part of this show?

CHEF KRISTEN KISH: I mean, first and foremost, when they say that Iron Chef is coming back and that Iron Chef is coming back on Netflix – it means a lot of different things. Obviously, it’s so iconic in the Japanese form and then to see it evolve over time to hit the Food Network and then for me, Netflix, it just completely diversifies in a lot of different ways. You can hit so many different audiences, you can pull from different chefs and there is just so much more storytelling that can be had.

So I think for me, obviously Iron Chef – yes! Then Iron Chef Netflix and then there’s Alton Brown coming back! So already for me, I was feeling relatively insecure going into that job – it would scare anybody I think to go onto that job and to feel like that I can hold my own and to have enough to say with those things being worth hearing and to being able to do that with the comfort of Alton being next to me. I think that that was a nice dynamic coming together. I mean, all of it scared me shitless, but honestly, how do you not say yes to that?

AM: You looked amazing and you were a perfect fit for it and it was so good to watch. We hope that there will be more episodes of it for future seasons.

CHEF KK: Well thank you, thank you!

AM: You’re also on the latest season of Selena + Chef which is out now on HBO Max. The format of the show is great. How was it for you to do it virtually, to tell someone how to to cook something and what drew you in to want to be part of it?

CHEF KK: Ohh I remember it! So, I requested to my manager that I wanted to go on Selena + Chef! It looked like a lot of fun and I thought, why wouldn’t I want to cook with Selena Gomez? She was like ok and so she does what she does and she was like, great they want you on the next season and I’m like, “perfect!”

Honestly, it was so much more than what I expected in various ways. So I was expecting that I was going to teach Selena how to cook a few things and that we were going to call it a day. But I remember all of the prep-production calls and they were like, “we want to do start to finish. Like we want to have her work, do it – there’s no fluff around it, there’s no swap outs on and off camera.” Everything that she’s doing, we filmed for over a good 6 hours getting this stuff done. Selena went for it! She just did it all! I think that that is just the most interesting thing and it is hard to teach over Zoom because you are missing a human connection in a lot of ways. But for what it was and what was being asked of her to be quite frank, the whole thing was just a really really phenomenal experience.

AM: OMG! You always have so much going on! You’re also hosting Restaurants at the End of the World on National Geographic tell me about this! You’re a traveling girl!

CHEF KK: Oh my goodness! It is! For a girl that didn’t think that she would travel in her life because I thought that I was just going to be working in kitchens and I just wouldn’t make a ton of money – I would just live my life and that was just going to be how it was – to say that I can travel for my job and not only for my job, but in pockets of the world where it’s very foreign to me and meeting chefs that have this resilience in how they run a restaurant and that can be several different definitions. How they can run their restaurants with limited resources and access to the luxuries that we have with our restaurants here especially in the States.

The whole project is really phenomenal. I think that the biggest thing is yes, food is always going to be the through line, but it’s about who these people are and how and why they do this. Like, it’s just mind-blowing to me and I’ve learned a tremendous amount about how to just relinquish control as this is the theme for those people. What will be, will be – and that’s it! Argh that’s such a hard concept because in my form of restaurants, anything that I can control, I’m going to! If I can control the outcome, you better believe that I am going to control the outcome because there are so many unknowns. But all of these people have been really phenomenal.

AM: Can’t wait to check that out as it sounds really exciting.

I love Kimchi, it’s one of my favorite things to eat. You’ve partnered with Jongga Kimchi. Why was this such a fit for you that you wanted to be part of it?

CHEF KK: You know, Korean culture for me, I’ve had a complicated relationship with being an adoptee. I think that a lot of adoptees can relate wherever you are adopted from. Having a connection to your culture when you are brought up in that kind of household or where you are brought up in an environment where people look like you. I think that for me, I always shied away from a lot of it because I thought, I’m not Korean enough. So, who am I to own Korean culture because it’s not mine. But it is mine and I’m allowed to redefine what it is and what it means to me.

So I recently took my first trip to Korea, I ate so much food – traditional and otherwise! For me, I think that it opened up my eyes to say that there’s not just one way to do this. I think that giving myself the permission to lean into partnering with Jongga Kimchi which it originated in Korea, it’s the number 1 world wide brand in Korea! So to say, hold on, they want me for a reason. That reason is because of my story and my interpretation of what being Korean means to me. So I think that just them giving me the permission and them giving me the permission for me to be able to create recipes that aren’t traditionally Korean and I think that that was like this whole moment like, “ahh ok, here we are. Now I understand what this means.” It’s been a really dream partnership for me personally and professionally.

AM: I remember watching your IG when you were going to Korea and it was so cool to see how you were connecting. I think that there is a sense of connection that everyone has even if you grew up in American and you grew up with a family that looks like you and as an African American you’re saying I see this, but where are the roots and what does that mean? I think being able to watch you on your journey and for you to share that with everyone was so impactful and beautiful.

CHEF KK: Thank you!

AM: I enjoy eating kimchi on its own or on a salad. But what recipes in terms of integrating it in a different way? I love this dish so much, what else should we be doing with it?

CHEF KK: Honestly, any place that you can impart acid, I say add kimchi and swap it out! Whether that be a burger or you chop it up and thread it through a beautiful carbonara – think about the little bits of acid and heat through something so rich. I created 2 recipes specifically with Jongga Kimchi.

One is a play off of my Midwestern love for potatoes -

AM: Yes! I live in NY but I’m from Indiana originally!

CHEF KK: Yeah! Ok, then you’re going to be right here with me! I love a tater tot!

AM: Oh yes!

CHEF KK: Give me a tater tot in any form! So now we can jazz it up and we can call it a croquette and now we’re in a little fancier background. Then, the love of Korean BBQ and the cheese corn that you get and then mix it up and putting it all together with this smoked mozzarella bechamel that I make and then thread it with corn, potatoes – thread it, fry it – it’s crunchy, cheesy and delicious.

Then the other one is my ode to little hot dogs wrapped in baked croissant dough! We can’t really call that by it’s brand name because it’s not a croissant, but it’s in dough. The love of pigs in a blanket and it’s just so yummy! And I make a kimchi honey mustard using the kimchi brine because we chop up the kimchi to put it inside of the roll and then we use the brine to make the honey mustard and it’s just so good!

AM: The last time that I talked to you, you turned me onto Kewpie which I loved that! Now you’ve turned me onto the fact that I need my tater tots with kimchi on it – check!

How is kimchi made and why is it so important to preserve plant biodiversity?

CHEF KK: I mean, food waste in general, a lot of times in restaurants, we’re always thinking about how we can preserve and how to make things last. How to use the undesirable pieces of different vegetables and meats. It’s something that I have always been very passionate about ever since I have been in the culinary industry and also learning about how to do it. Because a lot of times, you go to culinary school, but they don’t always teach you how to use the end cuts and how to use the things that are less desirable. So it’s important. I think kimchi is important to preserve the history and the culture of kimchi making! I’ve gone on a deep dive on YouTube watching sweet Korean ladies making kimchi and obviously it stems from a place of need and that’s why we do a lot of things and where it stems from when we do the things that we do. It’s out of necessity. Here’s a fact, there is a very high percentage of cabbage that is at risk or has gone extinct in terms of different varietals that are no longer in use or in production or being grown. So the Generation Preservation campaign that Jongga is doing is really focusing on the preserving of the history of the preservation and why we do the things that we do in order to keep sustaining the vegetables and to kind of keep moving things forward.

So, being able to use products like that is really important and of course how you make kimchi! Now there are various versions. There’s cabbage kimchi, there’s other kimchi’s there’s all this food and food has evolved and carries different stories from all of these different kinds of people. But traditional cabbage kimchi is this rice paste flour, Korean chili flakes, lots of aromatics – ginger, garlic all blended into a paste and then you layer it onto these leaves and I think that a lot of the rich tradition is in the process right? Watching how meticulous it is in order to make it and so I think that anyone at home can make kimchi, do I think that there are far better kimchi’s especially those that I can personally make – absolutely! So sometimes, it’s just best to buy it!

AM: My sister just came back from Seoul and I was watching all of her pictures and I was like, I want to eat it from there!

CHEF KK: I mean, I’ve eaten at a lot of Korean restaurants in LA and in NY and those Koreatowns of those specific cities and you know that you can find some really good stuff. But there is something to be said when you sit in a Korean restaurant with a bunch of Korean people and you don’t understand everything – there’s just something that brings it to a whole other level! I have to tell you that things taste different over there in a really beautiful way!

I will say that when you go, you should try and I don’t know if your sister has gone there – Temple Cuisine. I had a temple lunch in the middle of Seoul and it was just tucked away and the atmosphere was amazing. The food was just transformative in the fact that it is uncomplicated and you just know that it is coming from a place – I don’t even have words to describe it because it’s just a feeling and I highly recommend you hitting that up!

AM: Well, if you say it, that’s all I need to hear!

CHEF KK: It’s really really good!

AM: You’re always on the go and you have so many things going on and I have never been to your restaurant in Austin, Arlo Grey but we have plans to be there next Spring so that we can check it out for ourselves. Are there projects that you’re working on that you’re able to share that we can keep an eye out for?

CHEF KK: Yes! Obviously, we have Restaurants at the End of the World which is coming out and is huge and amazing. And the restaurant – please, please come visit! Parallel to kimchi I have a line of Soju coming out, which is Korean alcohol. I love your reaction, that's a great reaction! A lot of Soju is like ahahah harsh so I’m doing a line of 4 aperitifs with lots of great storytelling and a lot of good stuff and good flavor in it. Keep an eye out for that so grab some Jongga Kimchi and get my new Soju and have a grand old time!

AM: We enjoyed talking with Chef Kristen Kish about her recipes and as we enjoy a great tater tot or croquette, here is how you can make your own with Jongga Kimchi!

JONGGA KIMCHI CREAMED CORN CROQUETTE

PRODUCT | Jongga Napa Cabbage Kimchi

SERVES | 30 - 40 2oz croquettes

PREP TIME | 60 minutes

TOTAL TIME | 1 hour, 30 minutes

INGREDIENTS

FOR THE CROQUETTE

• 2 pounds russet potatoes

• 3 cups of fresh corn kernels (approx. 3 small ears)

• Smoked mozzarella Mornay (see recipe below)

• 2 cups Jongga Kimchi – squeezed dry and finely chopped, reserve 3 tablespoons of Jongga Kimchi juice

• Salt to taste

• Vegetable oil or frying oil as needed

• 1 large Black Truffle as desired/needed

• Celery leaves, lemon, Maldon Salt and chives to garnish

FOR THE SMOKED MOZZARELLA MORNAY

• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter

• 3 tablespoons all purpose flour

• 3 sprigs thyme

• 2 large cloves garlic – peeled and gently smashed

• 1 teaspoon whole black peppercorns

• 1 small shallot – peeled and small diced

• 1¼ cup whole milk

• 1 teaspoon kosher salt

• 6 ounces smoked mozzarella – cut into small cubes/pieces small cubes/pieces

BREADING STATION

• 2 - 4 cups panko – crushed with your hands and mixed with ½ teaspoon kosher salt

• 4 eggs – beaten and mixed with ½ teaspoon kosher salt

• 1 cup all-purpose flour, mixed with 1 teaspoon gochutgaru, ½ teaspoon dried thyme and ½ teaspoon kosher salt

INSTRUCTIONS

FOR THE SMOKED MOZZARELLA MORNAY

1. In a medium saucepan add the butter, flour, thyme, garlic, peppercorns, and shallot.

2. Turn on heat to medium and allow the butter and flour to come together, forming a blond roux.

3. Slowly whisk in the whole milk and allow mixture to come to a simmer, scraping down the sides and stirring frequently. Mixture will thicken.

4. Add in the cheese 1/3 at a time, stirring to incorporate.

5. Once cheese is fully melted, turn off heat and transfer into a wide shallow container, placing plastic wrap directly over the sauce.

6. Refrigerate until the sauce is room temp or chilled to the touch.

FOR THE CROQUETTE

1. Bake potatoes at 400°F for about an hour or until tender.

2. Remove from oven and let cool enough to handle.

3. Remove the skin and gently fork mash the potatoes while still hot, set aside to cool.

4. Mix together the room temperature or cooled cheese sauce with the corn kernels.

5. Add the kimchi, potatoes, and kimchi juice.

6. Mix until incorporated and season with salt to taste.

7. Form into 2 oz discs, larger or smaller depending on preference.

8. Freeze until firm (optional but makes it easier)

9. Working in batches, dredge each croquette in the flour mixture (be sure to tap off excess before moving on) then in the egg mixture, then in the panko mixture.

10. Deep fry in 350 – 370°F vegetable oil.

11. Garnish with celery leaves tossed in lemon juice, chives, Maldon Salt and lots of shaved black truffles.

12. Serve immediately.

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PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY | Kristen Kish

Read the OCT ISSUE #83 of Athleisure Mag and see EXPLORATION THROUGH FOOD | Kristen Kish in mag.

S2. E10. | ATHLEISURE KITCHEN CHEF CHRIS SCOTT

On today's Athleisure Kitchen, we catch up with Chef Chris Scott who we have enjoyed seeing him compete as a cheftestant making it to the finals of BRAVO's Top Chef Season 15 as well as when he is judging on a number of shows, most recently Food Network's Bobby's Triple Threat. We talk about his TV appearances and why this is important to include with his brand. His passion for food, bringing awareness to African American cuisine and technique is seen in every dish. We caught up with him right before he dropped his cookbook Homage: Recipes and Stories from an Amish Soul Food Kitchen. In this cookbook, he shares the story of his family over 7 generations from enslaved ancestors, to his great-grandfather who migrated to Pennsylvania after the Emancipation Proclamation to where Chris grew up in Amish country. This heritage and experience led him to being a successful chef in Philadelphia and New York City. In addition to his story, he illustrates how Amish Soul Food is a blend of Southern, German and Dutch cuisines. 

We also talk about his restaurant at Butterfunk Biscuit, teaching at the Institute of Culinary Education and the importance of giving back through time and education to those that are coming up in the industry.

You can stay in the loop on who future guests are by visiting us at AthleisureStudio.com/AthleisureKitchen and on Instagram at @AthleisureKitchen and @AthleisureStudio. Athleisure Kitchen is hosted by Kimmie Smith and is Executive Produced by Paul Farkas and Kimmie Smith. It is mixed by the team at Athleisure Studio. Our theme music is "This Boy" performed by Ilya Truhanov.

S2. E7. | ATHLEISURE KITCHEN WITH CHEF NICK WALLACE

On today's Athleisure Kitchen, we hop into the kitchen with Chef Nick Wallace who we enjoyed seeing his passion and love for Jackson, Mississippi. In addition to being the Founder and Executive Chef of Nick Wallace Culinary, Nick Wallace Catering and Nissan Cafe by Wallace, we enjoyed seeing him as a finalist in Top Chef Season 19 in Houston, Chopped episodes, winner of Food Network Canada's Fire Masters and he appeared on CNN's Nomad with Carlton McCoy. We talk about the importance of Mississippi when it comes to creating his dishes and bringing awareness to the culinary scene there. We also talk about why giving back to others is an essential and also how we can focus on creating great meals when we're busy that still have love and full flavors!

You can stay in the loop on who future guests are by visiting us at AthleisureStudio.com/AthleisureKitchen and on Instagram at @AthleisureKitchen and @AthleisureStudio. Athleisure Kitchen is hosted by Kimmie Smith and is Executive Produced by Paul Farkas and Kimmie Smith. It is mixed by the team at Athleisure Studio. Our theme music is "This Boy" performed by Ilya Truhanov.

S2. E6. | ATHLEISURE KITCHEN WITH CHEF JUSTIN SUTHERLAND

On today's episode of Athleisure Kitchen, I catch up with one of our faves, Chef Justin Sutherland owner of Handsome Hog and Big E, winner of Iron Chef America, Top Chef Season 16 finalist, co-host of TRU Tv's Fast Foodies and TNT/TBS' Taste the Culture and author of Northern Soul which is out now! 

We catch up with Chef Sutherland on being from the Twin Cities and the culinary landscape of Minnesota which includes an array of chefs from Andrew Zimmern, Yia Vang, himself and more. We talk about his approach to food, owning an array of restaurants, delve into his cookbook which presents Southern recipes with a Northern flair, being a culinary consultant for Allianz Field - home of the MLS' Minnesota United FC and how this sport is so global in nature from viewing it to those who watch and meeting their tastebuds expectations. We also talk about his co-founded apparel line, Hybrid Nation which focuses on the tagline of In Diversity We Trust as well as their capsule collection with MLS.

You can stay in the loop on who future guests are by visiting us at AthleisureStudio.com/AthleisureKitchen and on Instagram at @AthleisureKitchen and @AthleisureStudio. Athleisure Kitchen is hosted by Kimmie Smith and is Executive Produced by Paul Farkas and Kimmie Smith. It is mixed by the team at Athleisure Studio. Our theme music is "This Boy" performed by Ilya Truhanov.

BINGELY BOOKS

BLACK ROSES: ODES CELEBRATING POWERFUL BLACK WOMEN

Harper Design

Harold Green III

We always believe that it's essential to celebrate women regardless of the time of year and we fell in love with poems by Harold Green III for his latest book, Black Roses: Odea Celebrating Powerful Black Women. This poet and founder of music collective, Flowers for the Living has used this book to pay tribute to Black women. Whether you're reading about Ava DuVernay, Janelle Monae, Nikole Hannah-Jones, Issa Rae and more - he has created a poem that talks about all of their exceptional accomplishments. He talks about how they use their mind and talents to transform their messages to impact society. These contemporary women span 5 areas as advocates, curators, innovators, luminaries and trailblazers. He highlights their diversity and what their reach has meant to the culture. It's a great read that is powerful and insightful!

RUN, ROSE, RUN: A NOVEL

Little, Brown and Company

Dolly Parton + James Patterson

You can't go wrong when you partner a noted bestselling and great storyteller, James Patterson with one of the most beloved superstars on the planet - Dolly Parton! Together, they released Run, Rose, Run: A Novel which is a thriller that focuses on a singer-songwriter who is on the run while also being an artist on the rise! Regardless, she is determined to do what is necessary in order for her to survive.

She makes her way to Nashville as that's where she wants to set her mark; however, she knows her secrets will follow her there as well. She enjoys singing her music which tells her story and will bring her closer to her future and hopefully will allow her to forget her past as well! Will she be able to finally live the life that she feels that she deserves or will things that are best left in the past end up claiming her just when she's close to getting what she wants?

THE PIONEER WOMAN COOKS SUPER EASY! 120 SHORTCUT RECIPES FOR DINNERS, DESSERTS, AND MORE

William Morrow Cookbooks

Ree Drummond

We love watching Ree Drummond on Food Network's The Pioneer Woman as she's always cooking an array of tasty dishes. So, when we found out about The Pioneer Woman Cooks - Super Easy! 120 Shortcut Recipes for Dinners, Desserts, and More, which includes ways we can make meals while having some great ways to simplify it!

You'll find that these recipes save steps as well as your sanity. There are recipes for Speedy Dumpling Soup, Butter Pecan French Toast, One-Pot Sausage Pasta Hawaiian Shrimp Bowls Mug Cakes and more. Dishes can be composed in baking dish casseroles, sheet pan suppers, etc.

By taking the complication out of cooking these meals, you can enjoy cooking while being able to interact with friends and family!

Read the MAR ISSUE #75 of Athleisure Mag and see Bingely Books in mag.

S2. E3. | ATHLEISURE KITCHEN WITH CHEF KRISTEN KISH, CHEF JUSTIN SUTHERLAND, CHEF JEREMY FORD

On today’s episode of Athleisure Kitchen, I catch up with Chef Kristen Kish (Bravo's Top Chef Season 10 winner and chef/owner of Arlo Grey), Chef Justin Sutherland (Iron Chef America Winner, Top Chef Season 16 contestant and chef/owner of Handsome Hog) and Chef Jeremy Ford (Top Chef Season 13 Winner and Chef/owner of Michelin starred Stubborn Seed and The Butchers Club) who are in the JAN ISSUE #73 of Athleisure Mag. I chatted with the co-hosted trio ahead of the season 2 launch of Tru TV’s Fast Foodies that looks at your favorite comfort food dish and having it recreated by a chef and then making it again to put their own spin on it! We find out more about how they came together, filming the second season, who we can expect to see on the show and what they have in their kitchens for their Fast Foodies fix!  

You can stay in the loop on who future guests are by visiting us at AthleisureStudio.com/AthleisureKitchen and on Instagram at @AthleisureKitchen and @AthleisureStudio. Athleisure Kitchen is hosted by Kimmie Smith and is Executive Produced by Paul Farkas and Kimmie Smith. It is mixed by the team at Athleisure Studio. Our theme music is "This Boy" performed by Ilya Truhanov.