Joiners

This week on Joiners, we sit down with Chanita Chayaluk, chef and owner of TAAN, a new and exciting Thai restaurant in Humboldt Park. Chanita came to restaurants by way of a totally different career: she was working in...

Chef David Choi has always been a hustler. As a teenager in St. Louis, he skipped enough school to rack up hundreds of absences while tracking down celebrities at hotels, getting their autographs, and selling them on...

This week on Joiners, we sit down with Dominique Leach, chef, pitmaster, entrepreneur, and founder of Lexington Betty Smokehouse. Dominique’s story is a wild one: culinary school, Chicago kitchens, legendary mentors...

Tim McEnery had an idea: a restaurant built around wine, a wine club built around community, and a company where people would be treated well. At the time, none of that existed. He didn’t have much money, he didn’t have...

This week’s guest arrived in Chicago during a brutal winter storm. Jose Sosa was sixteen, newly arrived from Mexico, spoke very little English, and needed a job. An uncle helped him get in the door as a dishwasher, and...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...