In the Weeds Podcast with Chef Spike Mendelsohn

Vinoda Basnayake started out throwing parties for Georgetown's international bottle-service crowd. A few years later he was on the road as tour manager for one of Cash Money's breakout acts. Today he runs VERSUS Equity, the group behind some of DC's most celebrated restaurants and nightclubs, where Drake, LeBron, and the Obamas have all ended up on the guest list. He's also the city's first-ever chairman of nightlife and culture. Spike and Vinoda go back 20 years, and it shows. They cover the first meeting Vinoda showed up two hours late to, the club that turned away the White House crashers, and the party that accidentally launched a lobbying career. There's also the day he got to introduce his dad to a president. Plus a borrowed yellow Ferrari and a traffic stop they're still laughing about. This is DC after dark, told by one of the guys who helped build it.

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We have teamed up with Odd Chef for an official merch collab! Check it out here and get 10% off your order with code INTHEWEEDS10.

🎙️🎙️ In The Weeds Podcast is proudly sponsored by:

Events DC is the official convention and sports authority for the District and a key player in making some of DC’s most exciting events and experiences happen. From world-class sports to cultural festivals and everything in between, they help power the energy of the city. Visit eventsdc.com to see what they are cooking up!

DC Central Kitchen is an iconic nonprofit and social enterprise that combats hunger and poverty through job training and job creation. The organization provides hands-on culinary job training for individuals facing high barriers to employment while creating living wage jobs and bringing nutritious, dignified food where it is most needed. To learn more, please visit dccentralkitchen.org

He lost Top Chef's finale — and somehow won the internet anyway. Chef Spike welcomes back Eric Adjepong, the Bronx-raised, first-generation Ghanaian-American chef the internet crowned "The People's Champ." Since then: multiple Food Network shows, a James Beard hosting gig, and a cookbook the Washington Post named one of the best of the year. Now he's opened Elmina, his DC restaurant named for a treasure town in Ghana — and he calls it his current romantic partner.

In this episode, Eric opens up about the five-continent, five-year journey behind his cookbook (and the arrest in Ghana that came with it), what it means to feel a "civic duty" to represent West African cuisine, how he's quietly chasing a Michelin star by cutting brunch and obsessing over a new tasting menu, and why his toughest critic in the kitchen is his own mother. Plus: he and Spike play a round of Head Chef, and things get ridiculous fast.

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Listen & Connect With Us Here: https://www.intheweedspod.com/itw-links

We have teamed up with Odd Chef for an official merch collab! Check it out here and get 10% off your order with code INTHEWEEDS10.

🎙️🎙️ In The Weeds Podcast is proudly sponsored by:

Events DC is the official convention and sports authority for the District and a key player in making some of DC’s most exciting events and experiences happen. From world-class sports to cultural festivals and everything in between, they help power the energy of the city. Visit eventsdc.com to see what they are cooking up!

DC Central Kitchen is an iconic nonprofit and social enterprise that combats hunger and poverty through job training and job creation. The organization provides hands-on culinary job training for individuals facing high barriers to employment while creating living wage jobs and bringing nutritious, dignified food where it is most needed. To learn more, please visit dccentralkitchen.org

The Marine Corps couldn't break her. A pandemic couldn't break her. No culinary school, no mentor, no safety net — just her mother's recipe and zero interest in quitting.

Chef Patrice Cleary went from Navy Achievement Medals to building Purple Patch and Joya Burger with no restaurant training whatsoever — she found her first contractor by driving to Home Depot. Chef Spike gets into the grief, the grit, and the "burger dating" process behind DC's Filipino food renaissance, plus the real story of how a landlord's phone call turned into a restaurant empire. Then it's a round of Head Chef that gets very personal, very fast.

Listen & Connect With Us Here: https://www.intheweedspod.com/itw-links

We have teamed up with Odd Chef for an official merch collab! Check it out here and get 10% off your order with code INTHEWEEDS10.

🎙️🎙️ In The Weeds Podcast is proudly sponsored by:

Events DC is the official convention and sports authority for the District and a key player in making some of DC’s most exciting events and experiences happen. From world-class sports to cultural festivals and everything in between, they help power the energy of the city. Visit eventsdc.com to see what they are cooking up!

DC Central Kitchen is an iconic nonprofit and social enterprise that combats hunger and poverty through job training and job creation. The organization provides hands-on culinary job training for individuals facing high barriers to employment while creating living wage jobs and bringing nutritious, dignified food where it is most needed. To learn more, please visit dccentralkitchen.org

Chef Anthony Jones grew up on the Chesapeake — crabbing, fishing, shucking corn with family — but there was one rule in the house: stay off the stove. Now he's running the kitchen at Marcus DC, serving up a crab rice that's become the stuff of local legend, and holding his own on Season 23 of Top Chef. Anthony sits down with Chef Spike Mendelsohn to talk about the mentor who shaped him, the dish that almost sent him home, and what it actually takes to build a career on your own terms. DMV proud, top to bottom.

Listen & Connect With Us Here: https://www.intheweedspod.com/itw-links

We have teamed up with Odd Chef for an official merch collab! Check it out here and get 10% off your order with code INTHEWEEDS10.

🎙️🎙️ In The Weeds Podcast is proudly sponsored by:

Events DC is the official convention and sports authority for the District and a key player in making some of DC’s most exciting events and experiences happen. From world-class sports to cultural festivals and everything in between, they help power the energy of the city. Visit eventsdc.com to see what they are cooking up!

DC Central Kitchen is an iconic nonprofit and social enterprise that combats hunger and poverty through job training and job creation. The organization provides hands-on culinary job training for individuals facing high barriers to employment while creating living wage jobs and bringing nutritious, dignified food where it is most needed. To learn more, please visit dccentralkitchen.org

Zach Leonsis, EVP of Monumental Sports & Entertainment (Washington Capitals, Wizards, Mystics) and son of owner Ted Leonsis, joins Spike Mendelsohn at DC Central Kitchen for a rare look inside one of the biggest sports and hospitality operations in the country. Zach breaks down the massive Capital One Arena transformation — like going from 2 kitchens to 15 — and his path from aspiring architect to running the family business. Along the way: what it was like growing up starstruck around Capitals players as a kid, and the unwritten rules of being an owner, including why he's only flown on the team plane once, ever. Plus: Spike pressing Zach on Ovechkin's future, recorded weeks before the Capitals made it official.

In this episode:

Order up! In The Weeds and Odd Chef teamed up for a banger of a merch collab. Visit Oddchef.shop to check out the drop. Enter code INTHEWEEDS10 for 10% off your order. 

Listen & Connect With Us Here: https://www.intheweedspod.com/itw-links

We have teamed up with Odd Chef for an official merch collab! Check it out here and get 10% off your order with code INTHEWEEDS10.

🎙️🎙️ In The Weeds Podcast is proudly sponsored by:

Events DC is the official convention and sports authority for the District and a key player in making some of DC’s most exciting events and experiences happen. From world-class sports to cultural festivals and everything in between, they help power the energy of the city. Visit eventsdc.com to see what they are cooking up!

DC Central Kitchen is an iconic nonprofit and social enterprise that combats hunger and poverty through job training and job creation. The organization provides hands-on culinary job training for individuals facing high barriers to employment while creating living wage jobs and bringing nutritious, dignified food where it is most needed. To learn more, please visit dccentralkitchen.org

Bobby Hicks — private chef, Next Level Chef semi-finalist, and the creator of Retro Recipes Kitchen — sits down with Spike to talk about his debut cookbook, Retro Recipes, and the theory that started it all: that nostalgia is what grounds people when everything else falls apart. What began as a COVID-era obsession with vintage cookbooks (he's now got 700-800 of them), eventually led to a mission to cook a century of American food — the good, the bad, and the aspic. Along the way: why he still can't eat a pork chop to this day, getting yelled at by an intimidating tattooed mentor chef for asking too many questions and the wild true history behind Country Captain (America's original fusion dish). Equal parts food history lesson and a genuinely fun hang.

We have teamed up with Odd Chef for a banger of a merch collab! Visit Oddchef.shop to check out the drop. Enter code INTHEWEEDS10 for 10% off your order.

Listen & Connect With Us Here: https://www.intheweedspod.com/itw-links

We have teamed up with Odd Chef for an official merch collab! Check it out here and get 10% off your order with code INTHEWEEDS10.

🎙️🎙️ In The Weeds Podcast is proudly sponsored by:

Events DC is the official convention and sports authority for the District and a key player in making some of DC’s most exciting events and experiences happen. From world-class sports to cultural festivals and everything in between, they help power the energy of the city. Visit eventsdc.com to see what they are cooking up!

DC Central Kitchen is an iconic nonprofit and social enterprise that combats hunger and poverty through job training and job creation. The organization provides hands-on culinary job training for individuals facing high barriers to employment while creating living wage jobs and bringing nutritious, dignified food where it is most needed. To learn more, please visit dccentralkitchen.org

Nycci Nellis has interviewed everyone from Thomas Keller to Anthony Bourdain — and today, Spike flips the script. The founder of The List, co-host of the 18-year-running Foodie and the Beast, and one of DC's most wired-in food media voices pulls no punches on the state of the industry: rents are too high, spaces are too big, and the labor pool never fully came back. Along the way: the inside story of how Michelin actually got to DC (and what happened when the city stopped paying), why the "build it and they will come" era is dead, a trip through Montreal's Jewish deli culture and smoked meat, and why the layperson needs to understand the restaurant business before there's nothing left to save.

We have teamed up with Odd Chef for a banger of a merch collab! Visit Oddchef.shop to check out the drop and enter code INTHEWEEDS10 for 10% off!

Listen & Connect With Us Here: https://www.intheweedspod.com/itw-links

We have teamed up with Odd Chef for an official merch collab! Check it out here and get 10% off your order with code INTHEWEEDS10.

🎙️🎙️ In The Weeds Podcast is proudly sponsored by:

Events DC is the official convention and sports authority for the District and a key player in making some of DC’s most exciting events and experiences happen. From world-class sports to cultural festivals and everything in between, they help power the energy of the city. Visit eventsdc.com to see what they are cooking up!

DC Central Kitchen is an iconic nonprofit and social enterprise that combats hunger and poverty through job training and job creation. The organization provides hands-on culinary job training for individuals facing high barriers to employment while creating living wage jobs and bringing nutritious, dignified food where it is most needed. To learn more, please visit dccentralkitchen.org

Victor Albisu — the operator behind Taco Bamba (now 16 locations across four states) — sits back down with Spike to talk Electric Bull, his new all-day South American steakhouse built as the antidote to the stuffy, overpriced classic. Along the way, the two old friends get into the realities of opening restaurants (and the endless delays that come with them), the rise of food influencers and what they mean for working chefs, war stories from kitchens in Paris and a memorable run-in with a food critic at the zoo. Equal parts industry insight and old-friend banter.

This episode is proudly presented by Toast! Thousands of the busiest restaurants in the world run on Toast. To learn more about how Toast can help you get busy, stay busy and run busy, click here.

Get ready for an In The Weeds merch collab drop with Odd Chef! Keep an eye out at www.oddchef.shop and enter code INTHEWEEDS10 for 10% off your purchase!

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Watch this episode and more on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@InTheWeedsPod

Listen & Connect With Us Here: https://www.intheweedspod.com/itw-links

We have teamed up with Odd Chef for an official merch collab! Check it out here and get 10% off your order with code INTHEWEEDS10.

🎙️🎙️ In The Weeds Podcast is proudly sponsored by:

Events DC is the official convention and sports authority for the District and a key player in making some of DC’s most exciting events and experiences happen. From world-class sports to cultural festivals and everything in between, they help power the energy of the city. Visit eventsdc.com to see what they are cooking up!

DC Central Kitchen is an iconic nonprofit and social enterprise that combats hunger and poverty through job training and job creation. The organization provides hands-on culinary job training for individuals facing high barriers to employment while creating living wage jobs and bringing nutritious, dignified food where it is most needed. To learn more, please visit dccentralkitchen.org

Chef Amanda Freitag didn’t just survive the old-school New York restaurant gauntlet — she thrived in it. From chaotic Jersey banquet halls to the CIA to butchering fish in the Florida Keys, she built her craft the hard way: station by station, burn by burn. She came up through Verbena, Vong, Gusto, and the legendary Harrison, shaping a cooking voice pulled from Thai flavors, Mediterranean markets, and a whole lot of late-night chef culture.

In this episode, Amanda and Spike trade stories from their Tribeca days — duck-fat fries through the back door, mushroom guys showing up mid-service, saffron hustlers with dreads, and kitchens that ran on adrenaline and a thousand covers.

She talks burnout, reinvention, Iron Chef prep disasters, female leadership before it had a label, why chaos feels like home, and how TV became the unexpected next act.

It’s a deep dive into the craft, the grind, the heartbreak, and the strange comedy of becoming a chef in a city that never lets you coast.

On The Menu This Episode:

• Growing up in a loud, food-centric Jersey family where the answer to everything was “you should probably eat something.” 
• Falling in love with restaurant chaos at 15: banquet halls, bar menus, and surviving the subculture.
• Discovering the CIA thanks to her home-ec teacher, and entering a male-dominated kitchen world as one of the few women in her class.
• Early NYC grind: Vong with Jean-Georges — French technique meets Thai flavors and a fish sauce education.
• Butchering fish in the Florida Keys, getting hazed out of her chef whites, and realizing shorts were mandatory.
• Verbena and Diane Forley: six years of seasonal cooking, Union Square Greenmarket runs, making bread, ice cream, everything from scratch.
• A life-changing stage at L’Arpège in Paris — empty walk-ins, live frogs, and purveyors knocking at the back door.
• Building the Harrison back to a two-star restaurant and creating cult classics like duck-fat fries and octopus with feta.
• Chef-world nightlife: Blue Ribbon at 3AM, saffron dealers interrupting service, chefs hopping between each other’s doors.
• Burnout, Brooklyn, hiding out, and learning what kind of chef she actually wanted to be.
• The Empire Diner rollercoaster: red flags, Americana dreams, chaos magnets, and walking away on her own terms.
• How Iron Chef America really worked — the practice, the last-minute sous chef disaster, and the chaos the producers never warned you about.
• Why TV became the unexpected “restaurant after restaurants” — and why Easy AF is her true love letter to home cooks.

Listen & Connect With Us Here: https://www.intheweedspod.com/itw-links

We have teamed up with Odd Chef for an official merch collab! Check it out here and get 10% off your order with code INTHEWEEDS10.

🎙️🎙️ In The Weeds Podcast is proudly sponsored by:

Events DC is the official convention and sports authority for the District and a key player in making some of DC’s most exciting events and experiences happen. From world-class sports to cultural festivals and everything in between, they help power the energy of the city. Visit eventsdc.com to see what they are cooking up!

DC Central Kitchen is an iconic nonprofit and social enterprise that combats hunger and poverty through job training and job creation. The organization provides hands-on culinary job training for individuals facing high barriers to employment while creating living wage jobs and bringing nutritious, dignified food where it is most needed. To learn more, please visit dccentralkitchen.org

Restaurateur, chef, and experience-architect Rose Previte doesn’t just run restaurants—she builds worlds. The creative force behind Compass Rose, Maydān, and the new Maydān Market in LA joins Spike to talk about crafting spaces that connect people through fire, flavor, and story.

From convincing Georgian ambassadors she wasn’t a spy to fighting neighborhood boards for her liquor license, Rose shares how she turned her Sicilian-Lebanese heritage and global travels into one of DC’s most distinctive culinary voices. This episode dives into identity, hospitality, and the art of creating places that feel like home—filled with the warmth of oak smoke and za’atar.

On The Menu This Episode:

– The small Sicilian village where everyone shares Rose’s last name

– Growing up Lebanese and Sicilian in small-town Ohio with homemade sausage in the basement

– Convincing a Georgian ambassador she wasn’t a spy while trying to import cheese

– Why Compass Rose was born on a Trans-Siberian train ride

– The fight to open her first restaurant (and win a liquor license battle with angry neighbors)

– Building Maydān around live fire and learning to let the flames lead

– Why she’s reclaiming the word “chef” for the women who taught her to cook

– The origin of “No White Plates” and designing experiences instead of perfect plating

– Opening Maydān Market in LA and bringing her gathering-place philosophy west

– Finding connection, identity, and purpose through food, travel, and story

Listen & Connect With Us Here: https://www.intheweedspod.com/itw-links

We have teamed up with Odd Chef for an official merch collab! Check it out here and get 10% off your order with code INTHEWEEDS10.

🎙️🎙️ In The Weeds Podcast is proudly sponsored by:

Events DC is the official convention and sports authority for the District and a key player in making some of DC’s most exciting events and experiences happen. From world-class sports to cultural festivals and everything in between, they help power the energy of the city. Visit eventsdc.com to see what they are cooking up!

DC Central Kitchen is an iconic nonprofit and social enterprise that combats hunger and poverty through job training and job creation. The organization provides hands-on culinary job training for individuals facing high barriers to employment while creating living wage jobs and bringing nutritious, dignified food where it is most needed. To learn more, please visit dccentralkitchen.org