arts
Hosted by Sam Jen · arts · EN-CA
Scratch is a Canadian podcast about the people behind the plate - the chefs and restaurateurs who built their businesses, lives, and communities through food. From immigrants finding home in a new country to locals turning cafés into community hubs, these are stories of hustle, resilience, and heart. Food isn’t just about what’s on the table - it’s about connection, belonging, and building something meaningful from scratch.
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Contact path
Public web form
Booking probability
30%
Guest openness
Selective
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Signup to Generate a PitchScratch is a Canadian podcast about the people behind the plate - the chefs and restaurateurs who built their businesses, lives, and communities through food. From immigrants finding home in a new country to locals turning cafés into community hubs, these are stories of hustle, resilience, and heart.
Scratch is hosted by Sam Jen. The show has published 40 episodes to date.
Recent episodes include "From the wrong website: Proper" (28 October 2026, 42 minutes), "From barista to president: Demetres" (21 October 2026, 72 minutes), and "From a second act: Honey’s" (14 October 2026, 37 minutes).
Scratch publishes roughly weekly, with episodes averaging 46 minutes across 40 episodes.
Booking probability for Scratch is 30%, and the host is rated Selective on guests. Scratch requires a Pod Score of 80 or higher. Scratch's contact route on record: public web form.
The strongest fits for Scratch are Restaurants. Scratch has an arts audience.
Sam Jen hosts Scratch, an arts podcast with 40 episodes published.
Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.
Episode #8
Michael Edwards spent his career researching what people want. When he sold his company and decided to try something completely different, he bought a restaurant in Roncesvalles without even knowing what kind of food it...
Episode #7
Kayvan Mahbod started at Demetres as an eager 15-year-old barista who was folding menus before he’d even been hired. A few decades later, he’s its President and still approaches dessert with the same enthusiasm. From...
Episode #6
When Ashley Wittig left her first food business in 2018, opening another one was nowhere on the agenda. Then she started thinking about the one thing she’d missed since giving up dairy: really rich, smooth, decadent ice...
Wanda Beaver thought she’d bake pies for a little longer while she figured out her career. Thirty-eight years later, she and her husband David are still doing it by hand. From Wanda’s first sour cherry pie at nine years...
Chef Michael Angeloni’s relationship with pasta started in his nonna’s Etobicoke basement, where a long table became a family pasta factory and bags of handmade tagliatelle were practically currency. Years later, after...
Episode #3
Allyson Bobbitt grew up surrounded by baking, but never imagined it could become her career. Then, at 30, one story in a book about finding your path made her heart race and changed everything. Within 18 months, she had...
Episode #33
David Schwartz’s cooking was never about one cuisine - it was about understanding how cuisines are built. Raised eating both Cantonese food and Eastern-European deli classics, David grew up noticing something...
Episode #34
Dining at O’Noir starts with losing something - your sense of sight. But for Dr. Jaren R. Feng, what you gain is far more important. Jaren first experienced dining in the dark as a guest. What struck him wasn’t just the...
Episode #31
Portuguese culture in Toronto can feel frozen in time, but that’s not the story William Oliveira wants to tell. Raised in a deeply Portuguese household, William’s early memories were shaped by family trips back to...
Episode #30
For a long time, David Neinstein didn’t think he’d end up in a restaurant. After building a career in marketing and completing his MBA, he found himself asking a simple question: if you won the lottery, what would you...
Episode #29
Andrea Christensen didn’t set out to build a cookie business - it found her. When the pandemic hit, Andrea suddenly had time. What started as baking for fun (something she’d always loved) quickly became an obsession...
Episode #28
Not only is Golden Turtle one of Toronto’s oldest Vietnamese restaurants, it’s a story that stretches across continents, generations, and the quiet work of keeping something meaningful alive. For Linda Nguyen, the...
Episode #27
Lake Inez was never meant to be static. When Zac Schwartz met Dennis Kimeda and Patrick Ciappara, he wasn’t planning on becoming a restaurateur. He was paying his way through university. He wasn’t a lifer in the...
Episode #26
When COVID threw a wrench into Michael Lam and Eric Chow’s plans at Ascari, they were left with a choice. They could go their separate ways, or they could figure out how to keep working together. What they shared was a...
Episode #25
For Nicolò Marchisio, food has always been the way love shows up. It’s the universal feeling of coming home and being greeted by your nonna — not with questions, but with a list of everything she made just for you. And...
Episode #24
Not knowing what success looked like turned out to be the greatest advantage Nick Genova and James Carnevale had. James was already deep in kitchens, drawn to the technical, almost scientific side of gelato. Nick was a...
Episode #23
Mezes began in 1990 at 404 Danforth, started by a man who had no business opening a restaurant — no formal training, no business plan — just a huge heart and an even bigger dream. Vasha Zindros’ father opened the...
Episode #22
Creole, Caribbean, and Latin cuisines may look different on the surface, but historically, they’ve always spoken the same language. For Alycia Wahn, Conejo Negro wasn’t about filling a gap in Toronto’s dining scene - it...
Episode #21
PAI didn’t start as a restaurant idea - it started as a place. Chef Nuit and Jeff Regular’s story begins long before Toronto, in a small northern Thai town called Pai. It’s where they lived, where Jeff fell in love with...
For Talia Rana, the restaurant was never just a restaurant - it was home. Before Gio Rana’s Really Really Nice Restaurant became a Leslieville cornerstone, it lived in a family’s daily routine. Homework done in the side...
Recent guests on Scratch. Study who booked and why before you pitch.
CEO, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Lake Inez
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