Joiners

Devon Quinn had a biology degree and a standing offer to train mine-hunting dolphins for the Navy in San Diego. He turned it down (the water was too cold, the gig was unpaid) and ended up in a kitchen instead. Today he's Chief Culinary Officer of The Paramount Group and the chef behind Michelin-recognized eden. He walks us through the whole arc: training under Jean-Michel Diot, Dale Levitski, and Andrew Zimmerman, running the dining programs at the Art Institute of Chicago alongside Tony Mantuano, and co-founding Paramount Events in 2011. We talk the grit of catering (dragging 3,000 pounds of food over a barb wire fence in a downpour, laying plywood so guests could climb a muddy hill to dinner), the pandemic reset that took his operation from 500 people down to 19 and forced him to rebuild, the biology obsession that has him hunting for land to grow obscure ingredients -- and so much more. 

This week, Tim and Danny sit down with Katie Renshaw, founder of Bar Bambi and 2019 U.S. World Class Bartender of the Year. Katie traces her unlikely path from software development into Chicago’s cocktail world, the bars and mentors that shaped her, the intensity of competition bartending, and the leap from working behind the bar to opening one of her own. They get into the long, unglamorous process of building Bar Bambi and the care, ambition, and point of view behind what Katie ultimately created: a bar where deeply technical, flavor-first cocktails, a genuinely serious food program, and warm, unpretentious hospitality all feel of a piece. She talks about assembling the right team, the realities of ownership, and the obsessive work behind seemingly effortless drinks, from force carbonation and clarification to centrifuges and multi-day prep.
Also: drinking on the job in the old days, 14-hour Moneygun shifts, blood clarification, Speed Rack training software, and so much more!

Call him crazy, but Chef Darnell Reed is a hospitality aficionado who believes the customer who walks in five minutes before closing deserves the same care as anyone else. Chef Reed started cooking professionally at 16 and spent nearly two decades working his way through Chicago’s hotel kitchens, eventually becoming executive chef at the Conrad. He joins us to talk about leaving that world to open Luella’s Southern Kitchen, the acclaimed restaurant inspired by the food and hospitality of his great-grandmother. We discuss the mentors who shaped him, the discipline he carried from hotels into restaurant ownership, Luella’s evolution from a tiny Lincoln Square dinner spot into an Albany Park brunch destination, and his belief that the last guest through the door deserves the same welcome as the first. Plus: getting strong-armed into culinary school by a high school teacher, making chicken and waffles for Reggie Miller, learning the secret to his great-grandmother’s cornbread, the best way to clean a cast-iron skillet -- and so much more! 

Bo Fowler is a true Chicago restaurant powerhouse, though she is far too modest to describe herself that way. After leaving medical school and finding her way into professional kitchens, she went on to open some of the city’s most memorable restaurants, including Fat Willy’s Rib Shack, Owen & Engine, and Bixi Beer. Her food reflects the full range of her upbringing -- Korean, Vietnamese, Scandinavian, and deeply Midwestern -- while her career has been defined by persistence, instinct, hard work, and a willingness to learn as she goes. In this episode, we discuss leaving medical school for the kitchen, growing up in a sprawling multicultural family, the rise and legacy of Owen & Engine -- and so much more!

This week we sit down with Barry Sorkin, founder and pitmaster of Smoque BBQ, a personal favorite of the Joiners boys and, for our money, one of the best barbecue joints on the planet. But the road to BBQ greatness wasn't exactly obvious. Barry joins us in the studio to talk about leaving a career in IT consulting to chase an obsession with barbecue, building Smoque from scratch, surviving the chaos of opening day, and what it actually takes to cook great brisket at scale. Along the way we get into the surprising economics of barbecue, why the best hires often have no restaurant experience, plenty of practical advice for anyone trying to smoke meat at home, a near-death-row meal -- and so much more! 

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.

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.

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. 

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!

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.