Sweet'N Up with Jeff Spencer

Joe Attonito is the founder and owner of jjstacks a dive restaurant located in Brookfield, CT on Federal Road complete with not only food that is to die for, especially his famous wings, but a mini golf course as well! Joe was the previous owner of Tigers Den Sports Bar in Ridgefield, CT and has worked with some of the great chefs of our state. Food has been a passion of Joe’s for a long time and it was great to catch up with him to see how he has faired during COVID-19, how everything is going at jjstacks and what the future holds!

Chef Dan Kardos is a CT legend and the owner of Oar & Oak and Oar and Oak Birdhouse in Stratford as well as Oar & Oak Birdhouse in Milford and Oar and Oak Creamery as well as the Oar and Oak food truck! Basically Dan Kardos has all your bases covered. He is known as the chicken sandwich KING, the co-founder of Liberty Rock Tavern and the absolute pride of Stratford, CT. He has worked with some of the great Chefs of our state, great restaurants of our state, as well as traveled the country opening BarTaco Restaurants and so much more! 

When I say Chef Dan Kardos has done it all…. I mean it, and recently he won Guys Grocery Games and made CT proud! We covered it all and I had an absolute blast listening to Dans stories and everything in-between!

Chef Vanessa Sena is the founder & owner of My Local Chefs a new Hartford-based food-delivery service that wants to be thought of as the “anti-GrubHub or anti-Uber Eats. My Local Chefs launched on July 5th, 2021 with 11 Hartford-area culinary talents ranging from restaurateurs, meal-prep chefs, caterers, food-truck owners, farmers, condiment makers, wellness coaches and shop owners. Deliveries are made twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays. My Local Chefs makes it easy to order home cooked meals and so much more from your favorite chefs! 

Vanessa is a rockstar entrepreneur and boss lady with an incredible story! We sat down together at the lovely Better Half Brewing Company located in Bristol, CT and had some incredible food from BirriaDilla! Seriously, you have to get out to Better Half and say hello to owners Mike & Rachel! They are the real deal! Thank you both so much for having us!

Paul Mannion is the owner of the Green Grunion Food Truck, Mannion has wowed foodies at breweries across Connecticut and at his home base at 100 Mill Plain Road not too far from our studio in Danbury slingin his critically acclaimed San Diego-style burritos. A few years back Paul joined forces with Lisa Tassone (owner of La Zingara and Ecco in Bethel), Chris Sanzeni and Kevin Arrington to open Broken Symmetry Gastro Brewery at the historic railroad station in Bethel. 

I had a blast chatting with Paul in Part #1 which if you haven’t heard yet, pause this right now and go listen their first! However if you have already listened to Part 1 we will now begin from where we left off.

This episode of the show is part number 2, a continuation of my conversation from last week with my good friend, the always wonderful, Lisa Nichols!!

Lisa Nichols is the founder and owner of Bread & Beast Food Photography. She has covered food photography for the biggest chefs in the state as well as Hearst Media, CT Magazine and numerous other publications. Lisa also came to my hometown of Newtown and took the photos for Sweet’N Up Podcast.

If you haven’t listened to part 1 of our conversation definitely pause this and listen there first, but if you already have sit back relax and enjoy part 2 of my 2 part podcast episode, with my friend, an incredible photographer & human, Lisa Nichols!