Tinfoil Swans

When Killer Mike and El-P were 10 years old, they both knew they wanted to be emcees, but it took a few decades for them to meet, form Run The Jewels, and go to war against one another over salad. The legendary rap duo joined Tinfoil Swans for a laugh-out-loud (and also cry a little) conversation about childhood meals, musical awakenings, midlife reflections, and the right way to eat a bagel. They dish on growing up on game meat and matzah brei, surviving lean years on egg sandwiches and fried fish, and building food ventures rooted in love, legacy, and community. There’s a philosophical breakdown of “rich people ice,” tales of Atlanta strip club wings and sentimental steakhouses, and the kind of brotherhood that only forms over bars, beats, and deli meat.

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2001 Food & Wine Best New Chef and Stretch Pizza impresario Wylie Dufresne joins Tinfoil Swans to talk about his job lording over the ice truck at the New York Renaissance Festival, how team sports inform his work ethic, what the heck molecular gastronomy actually is, and why the pursuit of the perfect pizza dough has him so fired up.

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2022 Food & Wine Best New Chef Ana Castro and her sister and business partner Lydia Castro are powerhouse duo behind New Orleans' beloved Acamaya. They're not just redefining contemporary Mexican cuisine — they’re reshaping what it means to lead with vulnerability, resilience, and fierce sibling love. In this conversation they dive deep into their shared childhood in Mexico City, parallel journeys through grief and healing, and the epic road trip that led them to create one of the most emotionally resonant and culturally rooted restaurants in the country.

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In our debut episode, Food & Wine's executive features editor Kat Kinsman spoke with the one and only chef Guy Fieri. He's become a household name as a restaurateur, cookbook author, host of Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, Guy's Grocery Games, Tournament of Champions and more smash-hit shows — and in recent years, as a mega-philanthropist who has raised millions for first responders and hospitality workers. But before all that, Guy was just a kid with big dreams and a Kool-Aid stand in a small town in California. Kat and Guy chatted about how he hustled enough cash to send himself to high school in France, the thing Emeril Lagasse said that gave him chills, his adventures as a flambé captain, and the most defining moment of his career so far.

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25 years ago, James Beard Award-winning chef and Top Chef alum Karen Akunowicz received a compliment from a Food & Wine Best New Chef that changed her entire career path. On this episode, she opened up about her journey from musical theater kid and hardworking diner waitress to acclaimed restaurateur, the power of embracing her queer identity, the heartbreak of a dropped dessert, her enduring love of Houston's, and the importance of visibility for the next generation.

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Dr. Jessica B. Harris is a scholar of the African food diaspora, an award-winning and prolific writer, a gifted storyteller and speaker, a teacher, and an icon to many. But what gets lost sometimes is that she's a person, first and foremost — one whose bookishness as a kid made it hard for her to connect with other kids. One raised by two artists whose dreams had to be deferred to make a living in New York but who supported their daughter's aspirations to be onstage. One whose curiosity and itchy traveling feet led her to explore the world and examine how the threads of many cultures wove together to end up on our dinner plate. She joined Tinfoil Swans to talk about being an outsider, her new book "Braided Heritage," about being Anthony Bourdain before Anthony Bourdain, and what it's like to live inside a mountain of cookbooks.

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You have a favorite Matthew Lillard film or TV performance. It might be SLC Punk, the Scream franchise, Scooby Doo, Hackers, She's All That, Twin Peaks: The Return, or the new Stephen King and Mike Flanagan movie The Life of Chuck. He's been working in Hollywood for over 30 years, and has a reputation for being kind to fans. But connecting with people is exactly why he got into acting as a kid — the community that comes from putting on a play together and hashing it all out at the diner afterward. It's what drew him to Dungeons & Dragons, and then a spirits company celebrating fantasy and horror fandoms. Lillard joined Tinfoil Swans to talk about growing up not fitting in, the thrill of finding your people, the punk rock high school movie he directed, his wedding cheese wheel, and so much more.

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Season 3 of the smash hit FX/Hulu show “The Bear” roared to life just days ago, but Will Poulter (the actor who plays fan-favorite Luca) and 2014 F&W Best New Chef Dave Beran had been prepping for weeks. Poulter — like his co-star Jeremy Allen White — staged with Beran at his Santa Monica restaurant Pasjoli to learn how to accurately portray a professional chef onscreen. The lessons went so well, Beran says he’d hire Poulter as a cook — even despite a messy mishap with a pastry bag. The two dished all about getting kitchen culture right on and offscreen, what it takes to be at the top of your craft, and the pure magic of a great restaurant service.

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The first food memory Curtis Stone has is getting in trouble for eating too much butter. Then again, the Australian chef and TV host has never been one for restraint. Once he realized he wasn't going to be a professional athlete, he went to work for Marco Pierre White — notoriously one of the most hard-driving chefs of all time, then hosted 140 episodes of Take Home Chef, and then back into the fray, opening restaurants on his own without investors. The brand new James Beard Award nominee joined Tinfoil Swans to talk about his ham bathroom, the exhilaration and exhaustion of running a restaurant, how he wooed his wife — the actress Lindsay Price — with whiskey, the naked prank Joel McHale played on him, and so much more.

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When Hawa Hassan was five years old, she was living in a refugee camp in Kenya. By seven, she was resettled in Seattle with a few other refugees from Somalia, and waiting for her family to join her. Then the political climate changed, and she came to realize that they were never coming; she was on her own. The thing to know about Hawa Hassan is that she will always find the light in any situation, and use it to guide the way forward for others. The author, host, entrepreneur, and chef joined Tinfoil Swans to talk about her stunning new cookbook celebrating the lives of refugees, surviving as a kid far away from the world and family she'd known, how Doritos shaped her life, and the scent that transports her to her mother's kitchen.

For more info visit: foodandwine.com/tinfoilswans

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