Joiners

Episode #190 - Adam Sindler of SHŌ

Chef Adam Sindler grew up inside Chicago’s first sushi restaurant, Kamehachi — founded by his Japanese immigrant great-grandmother and later revived by his mother and grandmother. A next-generation operator and creative force in the family business, Sindler left home to sharpen his craft at the Alinea Group, working as Kitchen Expo at the Michelin-starred Roister, before bringing big-league systems thinking back to a legacy institution. In this conversation, he breaks down the unseen mechanics of great hospitality — especially the expo role as the high-pressure “air traffic control” of a professional kitchen — alongside service pacing, allergy management, and the discipline behind small but consequential standards like “don’t rip the tape.” The episode also traces the arc from family tradition to contemporary expression through the opening of SHŌ, a modern take on Omakase he co-founded with Chef Mari Katsumura. Throughout, Sindler reflects on sourcing, precision, and how to modernize a legacy without breaking what people love—right down to why a “choose-your-own soy sauce” eyedropper is a quietly radical idea.  

Episode #189 - Laurent Schroeder-LeBec of Big Star

Our reverence for Big Star is well-documented — and for good reason. For a wide range of people coming up in Chicago’s hospitality scene, the spot represented a proof of concept: that you could take something familiar, do it with conviction, and build a culture around it. Its mythos is legend — from strong margaritas to nightly cash-only bonanzas — and this week’s guest was there for all of it.Laurent Schroeder-LeBec was born in France and spent his formative years in Korea, a hardcore kid turned hospitality lifer, whose musical soul and DIY spirit can still be felt at the heart of Big Star. In this episode, we’re reliving the glory days of the gold-studded classic — from cheap Lone Star beers to its eventual growth and expansion — with a true original who had the inside scoop.
--We’re heading north: Joiners will be on the road at Sand Valley, Wisconsin, February 27–March 1, recording live episodes during the Friends of James Beard Sand Valley Chefs Invitational. Expect great chefs, beautiful surroundings, and a weekend built around food, conversation, and community.Details and tickets → Friends of James Beard Chef Invitational

Episode #188 - Rosemary Waldmeier of Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab

This week’s guest is Rosemary Waldmeier, a true hospitality lifer -- raised in downtown Chicago in the orbit of the Drake Hotel, then pulled (inevitably) toward the dining room’s gravity. After two summers hosting at Gibson’s and a formative management internship at Shaw’s, she found her long-term home at Lettuce Entertain You, rising through Shaw’s and onto the opening team at Oyster Bah before stepping into her current role as Partner and General Manager at Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab. This episode, we talk about the long arc of a hospitality career -- how you grow from “working the door” to building culture, setting a service philosophy, and finding the next frontier. Also: her Swiss-German executive-chef dad’s old-school standards, the lost art of the clipboard (and the economics of a “secret table”), a recent pilgrimage to Florida to visit the original Joe's -- and so much more.--
As mentioned on the show, we’re hosting a limited run of Chef’s Table dinners at the Stock showroom in Logan Square -- 12 seats, chefs cooking in the room, stories included.
February - Dear Margaret (Two Nights) - French-Canadian cooking from Chef Ryan Brosseau, presented as a rare pop-up while Dear Margaret rebuilds.
March - Umami Q - Pitmaster Charles Wong blends Texas barbecue with umami-forward technique.
April - Diego / Entre Sueños / Trino - Chef Steven Sandoval leads a borderless Baja-inspired dinner with Mediterranean influence.
Tickets range from $175–$250 per person (beverages included).Only 12 seats per dinner. Tickets go fast, so get them while you can.

Episode #187 - Poochie of The Wiener's Circle

Much ink has been spilled on The Wiener's Circle as a Chicago institution -- known for late-night hot dogs, sharp tongues, and the kind of chaos you can only get away with if there’s real love underneath it. And Poochie, who joins us for this week’s episode, has been at the center of it for nearly three decades, turning that corner of Clark into something closer to a stage than a storefront. But if you only see the gimmick, you miss the real magic -- and the real Chicago spirit of Poochie and Wieners Circle: humor as hospitality, boundaries as a form of care, and a community that knows how to take care of its own. Poochie comes to the studio to talk about what the place actually runs on when the cameras are off -- feeding people who walk in hungry, protecting the vibe from the truly hateful stuff, and keeping it funny without letting it turn mean. In an all-time episode, we get into the unwritten rules of the room, the origin story of the chocolate shake, why reading a customer matters as much as taking their order -- and so much more.

Episode #186 - James Sanders of Sanders BBQ Supply Co.

The first guest of 2026’s origins might be modest, but the results are anything but. From deciding to cook as a nine-year-old so he didn’t have to eat the same meal every night, to bootstrapping a BBQ restaurant from a single Weber grill (the small version!) into one of the NYT's top 50 restaurants in the country, Chef James Sanders is very much the real deal. His South Side BBQ hotspot, Sanders BBQ Supply Co., is a much-loved gem -- and for good reason. James is obsessive about consistency, patient with craft, and deeply principled about the people and traditions he’s responsible for carrying forward. This week, we talk: being asked to oversee the storied Harold's Chicken franchise, mastering ribs, the plan for the forthcoming Sanders Barbecue Prime (with details about the liquor license), and so much more! 
 

Episode #185 - Bret Heiar of Avec

We round out 2025 with Bret Heiar, a true original of the hospitality world. These days, he’s the Wine Director at Avec River North, and he's gearing up to open a new Avec location in Highwood, bringing One Off Hospitality’s wine ethos north to the suburbs. Bret got his start as a teenager slinging fries at I-80’s World’s Largest Truck Stop in Walcott, Iowa, before bouncing through back-of-house gigs, front-of-house service, and eventually discovering a deep obsession with all things wine. Along the way, he lived a vagabond lifestyle, training obsessively in martial arts, hitchhiking on Grateful Dead tour, and bumming around Europe. As one of the city's foremost wine curators, Bret is known for building lists that favor lesser-known regions, older vintages, and unexpected finds. This episode, we talk creative ways to train your palate, the strange world of celebrity rider wine requests, the lost art (and enduring power) of puns, and what it really means to build a wine program with integrity. Plus: squirrels, scooters, grilled cheese philosophy, and plenty more.

Episode #184 - Margaret Pak of Thattu

It didn’t always seem inevitable that Margaret Pak would end up running one of Chicago’s most thoughtful and distinctive restaurants. She studied statistics, built a long career in finance and analytics, and spent years inside corporate systems where stability and structure were the goal. But alongside that work she fostered a quieter obsession for the culture surrounding food and food service. After a series of career pivots, unexpected layoffs, and some chance meetings with some of the city's more eccentric culinary characters, Margaret began following that instinct into kitchens, pop-ups, food halls, and eventually full restaurant ownership. Curiosity became craft, mentorship, and a deep respect for process: learning knife skills on prep shifts, absorbing lessons from chefs and collaborators, and shaping a truly authentic culinary voice.
Today, Margaret is the co-owner and chef behind Thattu, an Avondale restaurant focused on Kerala cuisine, pop-up collaboration, and creating opportunities for emerging chefs., She joins us in the studio to talk through her winding journey, touching on career reinvention, the realities of building a restaurant from the ground up, and what it means to honor tradition while finding your own way forward -- and so much more!

Episode #183 - Paul Abu-Taleb of Pilsen Yards, Beaumont’s, and The Bull Moose

Before he became a hospitality lifer, Paul Abu-Taleb was considering a PhD in History -- he’s the type who could absolutely have ended up teaching undergrads how to think, argue, and spot patterns. Instead, he’s applied that same mindset to restaurants: building places that don’t just serve people, but actually hold communities together. We get into how Paul went from a restaurant-family childhood in Oak Park to a formative chapter in Whitefish, Montana, and back to Chicago to help shape Pilsen Yards. He tells us about taking on the huge project of bringing Beaumont’s back as a real-deal neighborhood restaurant -- including the debut of The Bull Moose, an upstairs steakhouse and cocktail lounge. We’re also talking: what “good taste” means operationally, why some concepts just don’t match their neighborhoods, framing the math of making restaurants work -- and so much more!

Episode #182 - Chase Bracamontes of Chef’s Special Cocktail Bar

Chase Bracamontes grew up chasing triple axels as a competitive figure skater, but these days her rink is the bar and the dining room. She is the former wine and spirits director at The Publican and now partner and beverage director at Chef’s Special Cocktail Bar in Chicago, whose path from junior-elite ice rinks to a Chinese American cocktail bar says a lot about how she thinks about pressure, comfort, and hospitality. She joins us in the studio to talk about how a life defined by competition turned into a career built on creating places people actually want to haunt. This week, we’re talking what defines a cocktail classic, how New York and Chicago hospitality cultures shape the people working inside them, how serving American Chinese food means embracing both the comfort it brings and the conversations it inevitably sparks, and so much more! 

Episode #181 - Martin Kastner of Crucial Detail

This week, we sit down with Martin Kastner, the award-winning designer responsible for some of the most iconic objects in modern gastronomy. From Alinea’s game-changing serviceware to the now-legendary Porthole Infuser, Martin has spent his career reshaping how we experience food and drink — and the rituals around them. He takes us from his early days as a Czech metalsmith, to conceptual art school, and into a decades-long collaboration with Grant Achatz that helped redefine fine dining. We talk about the origins of his most influential pieces, the importance of “good friction,” designing objects that guide behavior, and so much more.