Joiners

Episode #213 - Danny Grant of Maple & Ash

Chef Danny Grant earned two Michelin stars before he turned 30, making him the youngest American chef of his time to hold the distinction -- and you could argue it all started with an Easy-Bake Oven. These days he's building Maple & Ash into a national hospitality brand, with restaurants in Chicago, Dallas, Scottsdale, Miami, Boston, and soon New York. This week, he joins us in the studio to walk us through the meteoric rise, the messy reality of opening restaurants in cities that don't know you yet, and the hardest problem of all: carrying a company's culture into a new room without flattening its people into robots. He goes back to cooking for golfers as a teenager, staging in Paris under North Pond's Bruce Sherman, and the slow, deliberate work of turning Maple & Ash into a Chicago institution. We get into hard-hat dinners and hand-to-hand hospitality, the French art of tailgating, the time he got fired for cutting himself too often, and plenty more.

Episode #212 - Mike Boschert of Medinah Country Club

This week, we're joined by Chicago hospitality veteran Mike Boschert, whose career has taken him from rookie back waiter mishaps in Columbia, Missouri, to the openings of some of Chicago’s most beloved spots, and now to his role overseeing operations at the historic Medinah Country Club. Along the way, he’s built a career around relentless preparation, gracious hospitality, and the belief that mistakes are opportunities to teach rather than reasons to lose your cool. A longtime friend and former colleague of Danny’s, Mike joins us to reminisce and reflect on the people, places, and hard-earned lessons that shaped his approach to service. We chat about the wild early days of Bavette’s and the Doughnut Vault, preparing Medinah for the 2026 Presidents Cup, White Castle, and as always, so much more.

Episode #211 - Mindy Segal of Mindy's Bakery

For the first time in Joiners history, we welcome back a repeat guest: Mindy Segal. A longtime friend of the pod, Mindy remains one of our favorite people to talk to. She's funny, fearless, deeply thoughtful about hospitality, and never especially interested in keeping an opinion to herself (but she's working on it). She continues to hold it down at Mindy’s Bakery, the deeply personal neighborhood shop where weekend lines wrap around the block, the pastries inspire cult-like devotion, and her team has room to grow, experiment, and practice their craft. She comes to the studio bearing a birthday cake for Danny, teases an intimate new concept, and catches us up on everything else. We talk: the art of a real apology, getting “cancelled” for five minutes, Chicago bakery politics, concert etiquette, dirty bathrooms, dabbing with Mike Sula, why the best hospitality often has nothing to do with restaurants -- and so much more. 

Episode #210 - Nate Chung of Mott St

This week’s guest entered the restaurant business by offering strangers free labor at a dinner party. Sixteen years later, he’s still at it. Chef Nate Chung is the co-owner of Mott St, the enduring Logan Square restaurant known for Asian-American comfort food, one of the most celebrated burgers in the city, and the kind of hospitality that turns regulars into friends. He joins us at Joiners HQ to talk about growing up between Honolulu and Hong Kong, earning an MFA in sculpture and printmaking, and finding an unexpected creative home in Chicago restaurants. This week we talk: surviving bad reviews, knowing when to pivot, the complicated pursuit of awards, what makes restaurant math actually work -- and so much more!

Episode #209 - Justin Lerias of Del Sur Bakery

This week’s guest was sketching out his dream bakery in a high school notebook. That alone might not be too remarkable, but turning those daydreams into one of Chicago’s most talked-about bakeries certainly is. Pastry chef Justin Lerias is the owner of Del Sur Bakery, where Filipino flavors meet Midwestern pastry traditions in creations like longanisa croissants, turon danishes, and toasted rice croissants. His rise, from working at Lost Larson and Big Jones, to baking hundreds of pastries out of his apartment, to opening a bakery with lines stretching down the block, has been remarkably fast. Even more impressive is the humility, humor, and care with which he has handled it all. This episode, we talk about learning pastry without culinary school, producing hundreds of croissants from an apartment kitchen, Malört tea cake, and so much more.

Episode #208 - Chef Richie Farina

This week's guest is Chef Richie Farina, a man who turns food into theater without losing sight of flavor. A Johnson & Wales grad, three-time collegiate ice-carving champion, Moto alum, Top Chef competitor, and host of Carnival Kings, Richie has spent his career reworking familiar pleasures into strange, funny, technically impressive dishes, like Cuban sandwiches as cigars, smoked fish as a riverbed, s'mores toasted at the table, and fair food rebuilt under pressure. He tells us about finding his way from pizza shops and Boston kitchens to Moto, what he learned from Homaro Cantu about making food feel like an event, and why his next chapter is less about chasing stars than finding a life that leaves room for family, creativity, and the occasional dragon's breath puff. We're talking competitive ice sculpture, deep-fried Coca-Cola, Moto's creative process, TV-show sequestration, the decline of three-hour tasting menus — and so much more!

Episode #207 - Stephen Sandoval of Trino, Diego, and Entre Sueños

This week, we sit down with Chef Stephen Sandoval for a globetrotting whirlwind tour through a career that spans McDonald’s franchises in Southern California, Michelin-starred kitchens in the Bay Area, wood-fire cooking in Argentina, classical Mexican cuisine in Mexico City, and some of Chicago’s most celebrated restaurants. Stephen is a tour de force who’s worked alongside the likes of Rick Bayless, Stuart Brioza, and Albert Adrià, and his newest restaurant, Trino, is a deeply personal steakhouse concept inspired by Northern Mexico, Spain, Argentina, and the classic Chicago dining tradition. He joins us to talk through mastering seven different live-fire cooking techniques in Mendoza, the philosophy behind Baja Med cuisine, staging and cooking across three continents, and the long, winding road toward opening his dream restaurant concept, Entre Sueños -- and so much more.

Episode #206 - Chef Andrew Zimmerman

We’ve wanted to have this week’s guest on since we started the podcast. Andrew Zimmerman is one of Chicago’s most respected chefs -- a five-time James Beard finalist and the chef behind Sepia’s remarkable 15-year Michelin star run. In a special episode, we hosted the Gratuity Round live during a dinner at the Stock headquarters featuring Andrew and Jonathan Zaragoza before sitting down with Andrew a few days later to talk about his journey from New Jersey kitchens and punk bands to becoming one of the defining culinary voices in Chicago. This week, we talk: American cuisine and cultural influence, the realities of consistency at the Michelin level, wild restaurant stories involving retirement homes and alleged mobsters, and why hospitality is ultimately about building something worth coming back to -- and so much more.

Episode #205 - Chef Zealand, Food Content Creator

This week’s guest is an enjoyable diversion for us. Chef Zealand started cooking as a teenager, learning almost entirely through curiosity, YouTube, and trial and error before graphic design school, COVID, and a few hard pivots pushed him toward kitchens for real. He went from cooking in a senior living facility to grinding on the line at a suburban tavern, all while quietly building the voice and format that would turn him into one of the internet’s most approachable food creators. He joins us to talk about learning by doing, leaving restaurants earlier than planned, the strange jump from Snapchat cooking lessons to millions of followers, and what happens when the thing that saved you becomes the job. This episode, we talk: Alton Brown’s six-hour spaghetti sauce, butter noodles with cottage cheese and cinnamon sugar, the tomato soup video that changed everything, the terror of brand-approved music -- and so much more!

Episode #204 - Zubair Mohajir of Lilac Tiger, Sarima, & Mariela

This week's guest is Chef Zubair Mohajir -- and he's got a lot going on. A former finance guy who found his calling in the kitchen after the 2008 crash, Zubair has since built one of the most compelling culinary identities in Chicago, rooted in the idea that food is migration made edible. He's the force behind Lilac Tiger, the Coach House, and Mirra -- and this summer, he's opening three more: Mariela, Muhājir, and Bobo. He joins us to walk through all of it, in a conversation that covers growing up between Qatar and the southwest suburbs, his mom's legendary garage catering operation, staging at Alinea with zero experience, why a 927-year-old duck recipe from medieval Islamic Spain is one of his signature dishes -- and so much more!