Episode #17
Best Friends to Private Chefs: The Nude Dude Food Story - All In Good Taste
On this episode of All In Good Taste , Aidan Descourouez sits down with Seth Bradley and Ryan Van Voorhis , founders of Nude Dude Food , to unpack how two high-school friends turned casual cooking and dinner parties into a private dining and catering business that has taken them across roughly 30 states. Long before Nude Dude Food, Seth was pursuing music and performing around Chicago while Ryan spent more than a decade working in social work, child welfare, and juvenile services. Those careers may seem worlds apart from hospitality, but both became foundational to the company they would eventually build: Seth learned how to read a room and entertain, while Ryan built his career around service, empathy, organization, and taking care of people. Their culinary journey began simply, cooking together as roommates, exploring Chicago’s farmers markets, experimenting with sourdough, and feeding their friends. Eventually the dinner parties got bigger, friends began hiring them, Instagram DMs started coming in, and by 2017 they were ready to leave their previous careers and go all in. Seth and Ryan share the real story behind the Nude Dude Food name, why the provocative branding worked, how they made sure the food could back it up, and how their relationship with the brand has evolved as the company has grown. They also talk candidly about the reality of building a business with your best friend: communication, disagreements, complementary working styles, hiring people into a tight-knit culture, learning to delegate, and recognizing that what once revolved entirely around the two founders now has to become something bigger than them. Ryan opens up about his experience living with Crohn’s disease and how his health journey shaped his relationship with food, local sourcing, simple ingredients, and hospitality. The conversation also dives into the unpredictable realities of private dining, including one memorable Chicago event where a broken oven forced the team to transport hot food roughly 35 floors between a client’s apartment and the party. Then there’s COVID. With private events disappearing, Seth and Ryan returned to one of the things that started it all: sourdough. They invested in a French steam oven, found a temporary kitchen in Fulton Market, kept cooking, kept learning, and eventually emerged into the next phase of Nude Dude Food. Today, the company spans private dinners, catering, corporate dining, and sourdough pizza, with corporate business becoming a major engine for growth. Now Seth and Ryan are thinking about what comes next: scaling the team, evolving the brand, remaining self-funded or potentially bringing in outside capital, and deciding whether a traditional restaurant ever fits into the vision. At its core, this episode is about much more than food. It’s about friendship, service, creativity, resilience, entrepreneurship, and turning something you genuinely love into something that can grow without losing the reason you started. Find Nude Dude Food at nudedudefood.com and @nudedudefood on Instagram. Hosted by Aidan Descourouez , All In Good Taste tells the stories behind the people shaping restaurants, food, beverage, and hospitality. The health and nutrition discussion in this episode reflects the guests’ personal experiences and perspectives and is not intended as medical advice. CHAPTERS 00:00 Cold Open 01:11 Meet Nude Dude Food 01:57 Inside The Hatchery Chicago 02:49 How Seth & Ryan Became Friends 03:43 Roommates, Wrigleyville & the Chicago Food Scene 04:19 Learning to Cook Together 05:14 The Sourdough Starter That Changed Everything 06:09 Dinner Parties Become a Business 07:28 Seth’s Music Career & Learning to Read a Room 10:00 Ryan’s Social Work Career & a Life of Service 15:01 Their First Paid Private Dinner 15:44 Instagram DMs & Going Full-Time 17:40 The Story Behind the Name “Nude Dude Food” 21:35 Did the Name Open Doors — or Close Them? 25:31 Creative vs. Organized: How Their Partnership Works 26:47 Building a Business With Your Best Friend 29:40 Ryan’s Crohn’s Journey & Relationship With Food 34:41 What Private-Chef Guests Never See 36:19 The 50-Story High-Rise Disaster 37:57 Surviving COVID With Sourdough 39:08 Corporate Catering, Private Dining & Scaling 41:01 Building a Self-Funded Business 42:29 Expansion, Restaurants & What Comes Next 44:29 The All In Good Taste “Tasting Menu” 48:01 One Final Lesson: Just Do It
