Danny Lledó is the chef and owner of Xiquet and Taller de Xiquet. The former is a Michelin-starred, tasting-menu restaurant in Washington, D.C., and the latter offers similar food in an à la carte setting downstairs. 

Born in the United States, Lledó  comes from a family of cooks—his father is an accomplished chef from Dénia, Spain, located between Valencia and Alicante, and he focuses on that region’s cuisine at his restaurants, particularly paella. That rice dish is the centerpiece of his tasting menu, which starts with small plates and ends with dessert and drinks outside the dining room on the restaurant’s mezzanine.

Lledó is the most awarded paella chef in the United States, with six first-place honors in competitions such as the Paella Wine & Beer Festival in Los Angeles. His was named the best Valencian Paella at PaellaFest in Washington, D.C., and it won the people’s choice award at the Paella Wine & Beer Festival in California’s Orange County. 

He recently discussed his paella and other aspects of Valencian culture and the D.C. dining scene for this podcast. 

Our guest on this week’s Menu Talk is Ahu Hettema, chef-owner of Istanbul Hawai’i restaurant in Honolulu. 

Chef Hettema came to California to study art and psychology but was unable to return to her homeland of Turkey because of a string of immigration snafus. She visited Hawaii and fell in love with the culture and climate, which reminded her of Southeast Turkey.

Chef Ahu Hettema and her mother run the kitchen at Istanbul Hawai'i. 

Cooking was a way to ease her homesickness and connect with people, and she began making Turkish food to sell at local farmers markets, alongside her mother who moved to the U.S. Soon, a catering business was born and eventually the mother-daughter team opened Istanbul Hawai’i—the only Turkish restaurant in the Islands.

The restaurant’s seasonal menu reflects the food of the Ottoman Empire, modernized with chef Hettema’s artistic touches. She works with local farmers to source ingredients and infuse the cuisine with Hawaiian spirit. A shareable Sultan’s Table menu offers a spread that includes winter salata, mercimek soup, mezze spread, sourdough pide, safran pilav, pirzolas, lamb tenderloin sis, wagyu ribeye sis, Jidori chicken sis, baba’s köfte, cultured yogurt tzatziki and seasonal vegetables. At $265, there’s plenty of food for three or four diners to share. 

Istanbul Hawai’i has built a large following among locals and tourists for its warm hospitality and unique cuisine. Listen as Hettema shares her culinary journey and passion for food, family and culture.

Billy Dec is the owner of Sunda New Asian, a Pan-Asian concept with a heavy bent toward Dec’s own Filipino heritage. The original location in Chicago’s River North neighborhood is 17 years old, and the concept’s fifth location, in Detroit, is slated to open in a couple of weeks. 

There are also Sunda locations in Nashville and Tampa.

The décor of the Detroit location reflects Dec’s own heritage more deeply than the other restaurants, with images from his documentary Food Roots, which is currently screening across the country as it prepares to air on PBS.

In this conversation he shares a bit about the documentary as well as his own upbringing and the natural fusion that occurs when taking non-direct flights to the Philippines—stops in Hong Kong, Tokyo or Seoul are common. Dec’s own background is also Eastern European, and that wasn’t lost on him as he was growing up and his household had a cuisine all its own. 

He discusses how culinary curiosity has evolved in the United States, but also how food delivery has taken a bite not only out of profits, but also out of the joy of running restaurants—seeing guests enjoy their meals and embracing the hospitality that is presented to them. 

He also shares his opinion of Detroit, a vibrant, beautiful and welcoming city that Dec thinks other restaurateurs ought to consider for business.

Dozens of menu trend forecasts came in towards the end of 2025 from culinary and restaurant industry experts. Included in that pile were the top trends from market researcher Technomic, the sister company of Restaurant Business and Nation’s Restaurant News. 

Lizzy Freier, senior director of menu research & insights at Technomic, has her finger directly on the pulse of chefs and menu developers, tracking the latest in flavor, R&D and global cuisines. During the podcast, she zeroes in on the predictions she and her team made last fall to see how they’re panning out about a month into 2026. We talk about protein, GLP-1 diets, emerging flavors, limited-time offers, beverage innovation and more. 

Listen to find out what else is on Technomic’s radar and discover the trends that menu expert Freier finds most intriguing. 

When it comes to Mexico and spirits, most people think of tequila, which has now surged past whiskey and even vodka to become the most widely consumed alcohol in the United States. But Max Reis goes well beyond that, and not just into mezcal (now ubiquitous enough that you can get it at Applebee’s) or even lesser-known indigenous Mexican spirits such as sotol, raicilla and bacanora.

At his Los Angeles bars Miraté — Spanish for “look at you” — and the new Daisy Margarita Bar, the native of California’s Napa Valley delves into Mexican gins, eaux de vie, rum and more.

In this podcast, Reis discusses his approach to mixology and to operating successful bars, and discusses his upcoming bar Gilbert Perez, which will focus on rum.

Kevin Lee grew up in a Korean-American family in Oklahoma City, a place not known as a dining destination 20 years ago. There were the usual chains, Korean mom-and-pops and some chef-driven restaurants, but few if any places that focused on global cuisines. 

Lee majored in hospitality management at UNLV, and while there, he worked part-time in a restaurant and fell in love with cooking. That changed the trajectory of his career. With Las Vegas chef Joon Choi as a mentor, Lee immersed himself in Japanese cooking. Then at age 21, the luck of being in the right place at the right time landed him the job of executive chef at a Mandalay Bay hotel restaurant. 

Las Vegas burnout pushed Lee to return to Oklahoma City, where he worked in various restaurant kitchens before opening his own place—Birdie’s, a Korean fried chicken concept. He wanted a restaurant where families could take their kids and have a great time, but when you’re selling $10 chicken baskets and working 24/7, the revenue just didn’t make sense, he said. 

Nevertheless, Birdie’s was super-popular and Lee got a call to compete on a Food Network show called “Tournament of Champions.” He had a few big wins, and that gave him the courage and drive to change course again. He converted Birdie’s into a modern Korean-American steakhouse, where Lee feels he is finally cooking food close to his heart. 

Maht, which just opened in late 2025, is a modern American steakhouse with Korean influences. Two menu items that reflect this direction are a Caesar salad made with fish sauce instead of anchovies and chili crisp instead of croutons, and a Korean crab cake with sea urchin, Fresno chilies and scallions finished with soy-caramel sauce.

Lee explains how several forces are converging to bring more visitors to Oklahoma City and chefs are gaining the confidence to try new things and open successful restaurants. He is also a member of Kikkoman's Kitchen Cabinet where he innovates recipes that reflect his take on Korean cuisine. Listen as he talks about his next ventures on TV and in the kitchen, and why he thinks Oklahoma City is poised to become a sought-after destination on the culinary map. 

David Burke has been working in kitchens since graduating from the Culinary Institute of America in 1982, and he’s still going strong, currently running 10 restaurants up and down the East Coast, including his latest, SeaHawk Prime by David Burke at Nautilus 220, a luxury residential tower on the Intracoastal Waterway of West Palm Beach, Florida. It’s his first restaurant in the state. 

Burke also operates Park Ave Kitchen and David Burke Tavern in New York City, three Red Horse restaurants in New York and New Jersey, Red Salt Room in Garden City, New York, named for the Himalayan salt he popularized, and half a dozen other restaurants. 

The chef has been setting trends for decades — he invented cake pops and clothesline bacon, among other items — and although he’s an accomplished entrepreneur, he said menu development is what he does best. That’s what he discusses in this interview, as well as his observations on the latest trends and strategies for pricing in ways that are profitable while also attractive to customers.

To earn her own way through theater school in Philadelphia, Tai Ricci bussed tables at one of Stephen Starr’s restaurants. With her naturally outgoing personality and drive, she moved up the ranks to become a high-earning server and realized the restaurant business was her true calling.

That calling took her to LA and eventually San Francisco, landing at one of Michael Mina’s restaurants and meeting up with Ryan Cole and Chef Jason Halverson. Over lunch one day, the three came up with a plan to open their first restaurant. Twelve years later, the partners lead Hi Neighbor Hospitality Group in the San Francisco area and operate five diverse independent restaurants that have become neighborhood favorites.

Ricci oversees events and people operations for the group, developing a vibrant team culture that fosters growth and creates a workplace where the next generation of hospitality professionals can thrive. But she also has a keen sense of what diners are seeking in restaurants today, and the group’s concepts including Trestle, MAMA Oakland and The Vault Steakhouse deliver on that with their menus, ambience and service.

Listen as Ricci shares how her love for hospitality has shaped Hi Neighbor’s restaurants into dining destinations admired by guests and team members alike. 

Te’Sean Glass is chef de cuisine of True Laurel, a cocktail bar in San Francisco’s Mission District where he takes a farm-to-table approach to dishes such as chicken katsu topped with Caesar salad and patty melts. 

Originally from St. Augustine, Florida, Glass grew up in a family of enthusiastic family cooks, but he had a dream early on of running his own restaurant. His first job in a professional kitchen was as a teenager working for Meals on Wheels, where he learned about preparing high-volume food on a budget made for off-premises dining—lessons that would be useful at pretty much any restaurant. From there he worked at The Ice Plant, a bar in St. Augustine, and went on to culinary school at Johnson & Wales University in Miami. 

His ambition eventually landed him in San Francisco, where he started working in fine-dining restaurants including Saison and Ernest. In the podcast, Glass discusses his journey from St. Augustine to San Francisco and offers advice for young chefs about following their dreams. 

Our guest on this week's Menu Talk is Isabel Coss, executive chef at Pascual, a contemporary Mexican restaurant in Washington, D.C.

A native of Mexico City, Chef Coss actually studied ballet—not cooking—as a way to get into arts school and become a filmmaker. But once there, she realized she was more passionate about cooking than film, and enrolled in culinary school.

She quickly landed an externship at Pujol, the Michelin-starred Mexico City restaurant on the list of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants. She worked at the pastry station, honing her bread baking skills. In 2011, she brought those skills to New York City where she was hired as a pastry chef at Empellón, Chef Alex Stupak’s renowned Mexican Restaurant, followed by a position at Enrique Olvera’s Cosme, another award-winning Mexican restaurant.

Isabel Coss in front of Pascual. | Photo by Alex Lau.

In 2020, Chef Coss moved to Washington, D.C., and overhauled the pastry program at Lutèce, a notable French bistro in Georgetown. She now heads the kitchen at Pascual, developing menus for both the sweet and savory sides. The centerpiece of Pascual is a hearth oven where the chef crafts the restaurant’s specialties. 

Coss’s culinary skills have landed her on lists like Food & Wine’s Best New Chefs in America and as a semifinalist for a James Beard Best Chef Mid-Atlantic award. Listen as she describes her love affair with masa, what she’s cooking and baking now and what’s next in her culinary journey.