Fell Into Food Podcast

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Accidental Cook to Culinary Empire: Chef Adrianne Calvo on Building Legacy Sep 21, 2026

Show notes

Chef Adrianne Calvo is an award-winning Miami-based restaurateur, best-selling cookbook author, and Emmy-nominated, 9x Telly Award-winning media personality known for her signature "Maximum Flavor" style. Her flagship restaurant, Chef Adrianne's Vineyard, has grown from a strip-mall startup into a national "must-eat" institution, and she's built a full media presence around it — TV appearances on Chopped and Beat Bobby Flay, a million-plus social following, and a newest cookbook, Maximum Flavor at Home, bringing that same cooking into everyday home kitchens.

At 22, with no investors and no real restaurant experience beyond an internship, she opened Chef Adrianne's Vineyard in a Kendall strip mall — right before the 2008 financial crash. Nineteen years later, it's a national "must-eat" institution, and she's built an entire "Maximum Flavor" world around it: an Emmy nomination, nine Telly Awards, appearances on Chopped and Beat Bobby Flay, a million-plus followers, and a new book, Maximum Flavor at Home, out November 3rd.

Website: chefadriannes.com

Instagram: @chefadrianne

YouTube: youtube.com/user/ChefAdrianne

Maximum Flavor at Home (out November 3, 2026)

Book Tour Dates

November 6 — The Last Bookstore, Los Angeles
November 12 — Books & Books, Coral Gables, FL
November 18 — The Chopping Block, Chicago

Timestamps

01:14 — The accidental cooking class and the French toast that rerouted her life

04:56 — Opening the restaurant at 22, right before the 2008 crash, and leading a kitchen full of veterans twice her age

07:55 — Inside Dark Dining: blindfolds, heightened senses, and the champagne trick that still gets 19-year regulars

14:13 — Where AI helps in the kitchen — and where it can't touch human creativity

17:16 — Maximum Flavor at Home (out November 3): the new book, standout recipes, and the tour

30:57 — Her sister Jennifer, "Make It Count," and the difference between burnout and dedication

33:24 — 19 years as St. Jude's Culinary Ambassador, and the one standard she wants tied to her name

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Ken MacKenzie: Fresh Victor / Quitting Tequila To Go Fresh Sep 14, 2026

Show notes

Ken MacKenzie is the visionary founder and CEO of Fresh Victor, a premium line of all-natural, cold pressed, refrigerated mixers for effortlessly delicious cocktails, low-alcohol and spirit-free drinks. With over 20 years of experience in the

creation, import, and distribution of spirits and craft beverages, Ken is a successful serial entrepreneur with a rich history in the industry. Before launching Fresh Victor, Ken co-founded Republic Tequila and Republic Spirit Blends. His impressive career also includes the import, development, and launch of unique spirits like Onyx Coffee Liqueurs and his highly demanded 100% agave tequila brand, Amate.

Ken's journey in the spirits industry began in 1997, when he apprenticed in Guadalajara, learning the premium pure agave tequila business from the ground up. He soon launched his consultancy, La Mission, S.A. de C.V., dedicating the next decade to pioneering the importation of high-end 100% agave tequila into the United States. After returning to the U.S., Ken founded Travesia Import Group, continuing to import, distribute, and consult on premium liquor brands. He then expanded his portfolio to include bespoke Texas spirits and mixers, distributed by Republic National Distributors. Ken is a frequent and respected speaker at high-profile industry events, educating the beverage market and hospitality

industry on 100% agave tequila. His Republic and Amate tequila brands have garnered over 15 top industry accolades, including recognition from Wine Enthusiast magazine and numerous medals at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition and Denver International Spirits Competition.

In this conversation, I talk with Ken about what actually convinced him tequila wasn't a phase — and why he never went home. He walks through how agave tequila is really made, from an eight-to-twelve-year growing cycle to a single glass carrying over 300 distinct flavor compounds, and how that same discipline shaped everything about Fresh Victor. We get into why he refused every piece of advice to make it shelf-stable, what it cost him to spend 18 months chasing the right acid balance on one flavor, and the early stretch where the company was pouring out almost as much product as it was selling because the shelf life was too short to survive distribution.

We also get into where the non-alcoholic and zero-proof movement is really headed, and why Ken built Fresh Victor so the same drink works whether or not there's alcohol in it. Nine flavors in, he says they've barely scratched the surface of where this goes next.

Website: Freshvictor.com

Instagram / Facebook / Linkedin / Tiktok: @freshvictorcocktails.com

X: @freshvictormix

For being a listener Ken has decided to give everyone 20% off their next order from their website freshvictor.com using promo code FELL2FOOD20. No minimum purchase requirement. Can’t combine with other discounts. Active from today until Dec 31, 2026

0:00 From Tequila to Fresh Mixers — How the Pivot Started

2:23 Why Food and Drink Actually Bring People Together

5:42 Following Love to Guadalajara — and Never Leaving

8:19 How Tequila Is Actually Made, From Agave to Bottle

13:55 What You Should Actually Be Tasting For

17:24 Building Fresh Victor — Four Ingredients, No Shortcuts

19:00 Refusing to Go Shelf-Stable

24:56 The 18-Month Fight for the Right Acid Balance

28:21 The Hurdles That Almost Ended It

34:44 Zero-Proof, Connection, and What's Next for Fresh Victor

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Nicole Bentler: Pocono Maple, Before The Syrup Aug 31, 2026

Show notes

I sat down with Nicole Bentler this week — a health and wellness pro turned maple farmer, who bought a run-down, two-hundred-year-old farm in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania back in 2019 with no real plan beyond having a place to bring her family.

That farm is now Pocono Maple Water, a farm-to-bottle maple water and maple syrup brand, and Nicole's one of only a handful of female-owned maple farms in the country. We got into what maple water actually is before it ever becomes syrup, the finding about our water supply that made her trademark the phrase "What's In Your Water," and why she's turned down Target and Walmart more than once to stay direct-to-consumer.

Website:

www.poconomaplewater.com

Instagram: @poconomaplewater

Instagram: @poconomountainmaple

Listen to the full episode and more! It would mean the world to me if you could leave a 5 star review on your listening platform to help grow and expand the Podcast.

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Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fell-into-food/

CHAPTERS / TIMESTAMPS

Timestamps pulled from raw transcript markers — confirm exact in/out points against the edited cut before publishing.

00:00 — Cold open: cracking a maple water on mic, and the question everyone asks first

00:44 — What maple water actually is, and how it's different from syrup

02:57 — Buying a run-down farm in 2019 with zero plans to build a beverage brand

05:19 — Six to eight miles a day tapping trees in the snow

06:27 — The estrogen finding behind the "What's In Your Water" trademark

09:53 — Big bottled water brands, spring-water lawsuits, and knowing where your water comes from

14:08 — Three bears, a raided bee yard, and building a team in a corner of agriculture with almost nobody under 40

18:17 — The six-week harvest, the subscription model, and turning down Target and Walmart on purpose

20:32 — The cans-vs-cartons-vs-glass packaging fight with her partner Dante

25:10 — What maple water actually does for the body, and the empty-stomach test

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Jason Olinik: Discernment / The Dining Room Disagrees Aug 24, 2026

Show notes

Jason Olinik is Senior Vice President of Operations & Partnerships at Rudy's Hospitality Group, where he leads growth strategy and every client relationship across workplace dining, markets, and restaurant concepts. He's spent 23 years in hospitality — starting at sixteen scrubbing grease off the back dock of a Chili's in Brighton, Michigan, then running a limited-service hotel in Naples, building restaurant concepts inside an airport, and working luxury resorts in Florida before landing at Rudy's. He's also the author of Discernment: Seeing Through the Narrative Economy.

I sat down with him to talk about the gap between what a report says and what's actually happening on the floor — and why the leaders who stay close to the floor are the ones who catch it before it costs them. Jason talks about the meeting culture that crept in after the pandemic, the seventeen systems his teams were juggling just to load a menu, and the moment he realized he'd drifted too far from the work that built him. He also tells me about a ledge in the Jemez Mountains outside Albuquerque, and the jump that changed how he's approached every hard decision since.

Book & author site: jasonolinik.com

Rudy's Hospitality Group: rudyshospitality.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jason-olinik-57355464

Instagram: @j.olinik_author

Book: Discernment: Seeing Through the Narrative Economy

TIMESTAMPED CHAPTERS

0:00 Intro

0:10 The Chili's Loading Dock, Age Sixteen

2:22 What Makes a Great Operator

11:07 Why Workplace Dining Needs Restaurant Standards

16:10 Thin Center, Strong Field

18:15 AI, Automation, and Where It Actually Helps

26:41 Writing Discernment

33:41 The Meeting Culture Rant

36:06 The Jemez Mountains Jump

41:30 Where to Find Jason

Listen to the full episode and more! It would mean the world to me if you could leave a 5 star review on your listening platform to help grow and expand the Podcast.

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Jeff Tonidandel & Jamie Brown Making Charlotte the “City of Hospitality” Aug 17, 2026

Show notes

Jeff Tonidandel and Jamie Brown are the husband-and-wife owners of the Tonidandel-Brown Restaurant Group (TBRG) in Charlotte, NC — six restaurants (Supperland, Haberdish, Ever Andalo, Growlers Pourhouse, Leluia Hall, Olivelli Deli), three of them Michelin Guide American South recommended. They co-host the podcast Jeff and Jamie Feed and the national PBS series Fork & Hammer, recently nominated for a Daytime Emmy in Outstanding Culinary/Cultural Series. Jamie's first book, Eleven Tables: A Wild Ride Through Food, Failure, and Figuring It Out, is out now.

Jeff Tonidandel and Jamie Brown left corporate jobs at the peak of the economy, backpacked across Europe and Asia for eight months with paper maps and a burner phone, and came home to the 2008 recession with an idea and no restaurant experience. They found their first space in Charlotte's NoDa neighborhood because of a pink slip taped to the door — an unpaid gas bill. That eleven-table crepe shop is now Tonidandel-Brown Restaurant Group: six concepts, three of them Michelin Guide American South recommended, a national PBS series (Fork & Hammer, just nominated for a Daytime Emmy), a weekly podcast, and Jamie's first book.

In this conversation, Jeff and Jamie talk about why Jeff is campaigning to brand Charlotte the "City of Hospitality," what the city's food scene was already doing right before Michelin ever showed up, and what it actually takes to turn a 100-year-old church into a working restaurant kitchen. They get honest about the harder calls too — closing a thirteen-year, still-profitable restaurant to become Ever Andalo, and retiring their doughnut shop after one too many equipment failures. Plus: running a 330-person team across six kitchens, two shows, and three kids, and what's next — dry-aged fish, a new commissary, and hotel projects on the horizon for 2029.

Website: tonidandel-brown.com

Podcast: Jeff and Jamie Feed

PBS series: Fork & Hammer

Book: Eleven Tables — Amazon / Barnes & Noble

Restaurants:

Supperland

Haberdish

Ever Andalo

Growlers

Pourhouse

Leluia Hall

Olivelli Deli

Wyatt's Superfine (coming soon)

Chapters

0:00 Welcome, Jeff & Jamie

1:01 The one thing they want listeners to take away

2:29 Why Jeff is campaigning for Charlotte as the "City of Hospitality"

5:03 Transplants, small-city warmth, and Bible Belt hospitality

7:48 What Charlotte's food scene was already doing right before Michelin arrived

10:02 Charlotte as a culinary crossroads — and the 200-farm network behind it

12:07 Turning churches, a clothing store, and a general store into restaurants

14:25 Supperland's 14-foot fire grill, and blending old-school with tech

17:30 Why they closed a profitable restaurant to become Ever Andalo

20:22 The 82-square-foot doughnut shop that broke one too many times

23:02 The eight-month backpacking trip — and the pink slip that found their first space

27:05 Where the entrepreneurial fortitude actually came from

29:15 Jamie's six years working a day job to fund the dream

32:56 Running six restaurants, two shows, and three kids with a 330-person team

36:26 How Fork & Hammer landed on PBS — and just picked up a Daytime Emmy nomination

42:08 Jamie's book, Eleven Tables

43:58 What's next: dry-aged fish, a new commissary, and 2029 hotel plans

Listen to the full episode and more! It would mean the world to me if you could leave a 5 star review on your listening platform to help grow and expand the Podcast.

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Matthew Cutolo: Gargiulo’s & The Last Cannoli Recipe Jul 27, 2026

Show notes

Matthew Cutolo is the Executive Pastry Chef and third-generation chef at Gargiulo's Restaurant, a Coney Island institution since 1907. He helps oversee both front and back of house, preserving rare Italian-American dishes seldom found elsewhere. A sought-after culinary voice, Cutolo has been featured on the Today Show, CBS's The Dish, The New York Times, NBC New York, PIX11, and Fox's Good Day NY. Beyond the kitchen, he creates content championing classic Italian traditions and is now building his own digital platform dedicated to his culinary philosophy, signature recipes, and entrepreneurial ventures, establishing himself as a culinary entrepreneur for the next generation of food lovers.

Chef Matthew Cutolo was halfway through an accounting degree when his uncle called and asked one question — you coming to work when you're done? That was it. No speech, no pitch. He's been in the kitchen at Gargiulo's ever since, third generation now, running a Coney Island restaurant his family's had since 1965 in a building that's been slinging Italian food since 1907. A hundred and nineteen years in one spot.

I've had guys work under me for years before I'd actually show them anything real — call it selfish, call it survival, but you learn fast who wants to be great and who just wants the paycheck. Matthew's version of that is a guy named Mike the Bake, forty years as Gargiulo's pastry chef, the only man alive who ever had the cannoli recipe. He didn't just hand it to Matthew. Months of watching, no bowl, no measuring, nothing written down — and there's a theory on why Mike kept walking away mid-recipe for years that's got nothing to do with baking. It's about figuring out who's serious and who's just talking.

Socials

Website
Instagram @Matthewcutolo

Listen to the full episode and more! It would mean the world to me if you could leave a 5 star review on your listening platform to help grow and expand the Podcast.

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Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fell-into-food/

CHAPTERS / TIMESTAMPS

Timestamps pulled from raw transcript paragraph-start markers — confirm exact in/out points against the edited cut before publishing.

00:00 — Cold open: a family business, a phone call, and the third generation who said yes

01:25 — Mike the Bake — the pastry chef who trained Matthew for over 40 years

06:28 — Was disappearing mid-recipe actually a test of whether Matthew really wanted it

08:57 — The pressure of running solo, and why no two written versions of the same recipe matched

12:16 — The phone call from Uncle Louie that pulled him out of an accounting degree

16:23 — Working with family — who wins the argument when the food's on the line

17:50 — Staying true to tradition while everyone else chases what's viral

20:28 — From an internship on The Chew to his first solo TV hit

27:22 — Jarring the sauce, shipping nationwide, and the real math on freight cost

29:17 — The Gargiulo wine on the way, and why he keeps building past the restaurant

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Rameking / The GlobalNova Growth | Michael Smith Jul 13, 2026

Show notes

I had Michael Smith back on the podcast this week — round two with the guy behind Rameking, the only pre-filled portion cup dispenser out there, still running the whole operation with one other person out of Ohio. And yes, that jingle is still stuck in my head. It plays at the end of this episode too. You've been warned.

This episode is less about the product and more about what happens once you actually start posting. Michael went from 200 followers to a video sitting at three million views — no music, no editing, nothing polished about it, and the same thing that made people mad about it is the reason it worked. We get into that, and then into the real meat of the conversation: a private group he built called Global Nova, forty-some business owners trading warm introductions instead of competing for the same cold leads. No dues, no catch. Sounds like a nice idea in theory until you realize it's actually working for him.

Somewhere in the middle of all that we also cover why the standard sauce cup isn't cutting it anymore — blame the chicken tender for that one — and the one-word email trick that actually gets telemarketers to leave you alone. That's how these conversations go with Michael.

If you're trying to figure out what to actually do with the people already watching you, or you just want that Rameking song stuck in your head for the rest of the week — this one's for you.

Michael Smith / Rameking: rameking.com — available through US Foods, Sysco, and Amazon.

LinkedIn: Rameking / Michael Smith

Instagram @ramekingdom

Facebook @therameking

TikTok @ramekingdom

Listen to the full episode and more! It would mean the world to me if you could leave a 5 star review on your listening platform to help grow and expand the Podcast.

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Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fell-into-food/

CHAPTERS / TIMESTAMPS

00:00 — Welcome back Michael Smith, and the jingle nobody can get out of their head

01:00 — What Rameking is, and the new 3.5–4oz cup coming because of chicken tender culture

02:59 — Rebuilding social media from 200 followers, and switching to an educational content style

05:20 — Recording 30–60 fifteen-second videos in a day, and the jingle sign-off on every one

06:33 — The Robopost CSV trick for scheduling a week of posts at once

09:45 — The raw, no-music TikTok video that hit 3 million views

13:25 — Why he built Global Nova instead of just growing a following

21:22 — What surprised him most about who joined — a Bar Rescue celebrity chef and Dart Containers

26:46 — Warm intros vs. cold outreach, and the trick to get telemarketers to actually leave you alone

29:03 — Audience vs. community vs. support group — the real difference

RESOURCES MENTIONED

Rameking (rameking.com) — portion cup dispenser, available through US Foods, Sysco, and Amazon

Robopost — social media scheduling app Michael uses to batch content, including CSV bulk uploads

Global Nova Group — private LinkedIn networking group Michael founded, ~42 members, free to join

George / Grill Advantage — mentor who helped shape Michael's educational content style

Brian Duffy — celebrity chef (Bar Rescue), Global Nova member

Dart Containers — sustainability lead is a Global Nova member

Levy Restaurants — Michael's former employer (GM, Ohio State) — kept as a warm-intro resource for the group

Episode Art

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Oryx Desert Salt / Hydration From Ancient Underground Lake | Samantha Skyring Jul 06, 2026

Show notes

Samantha Skyring is the founder and CEO of Oryx Desert Salt, a mineral-rich salt sourced from an ancient underground lake beneath Africa's Kalahari Desert — now stocked by Whole Foods and Woolworths, served in more than 3,500 restaurants, and supplied to JetBlue Airlines. We get into desert salt versus sea salt, the sodium and hydration science most people get backwards, and what's actually sitting in the "natural" sea salt in your pantry.

This one starts with Samantha walking 75 miles across the Skeleton Coast in Namibia in her twenties — the trip that put her face-to-face with the oryx antelope the brand is named after — and gets a lot more intense from there. Fifteen years ago, with a toddler to care for and no guarantee any of it would sell, she sold her house, bought 34 tonnes of desert salt, stored it in a garage unit, and started bottling it herself at her dining room table. That's how Oryx Desert Salt began. She'll also tell you, on tape, that table salt was invented as an industrial product around 1910 for paint and textiles, and that the chemicals added to make it "flow freely" are still in the shaker on your table today.

We cover what's actually harvested out of the ocean when a bag says "sea salt" — plastics, sewage, and in some cases radioactive waste from decades-old ocean dumping. Samantha walks through why sodium and hydration are more connected than most people realize, why she thinks "salt is bad for you" might be one of the more persistent food myths out there, and how she landed a national Whole Foods listing off three cold emails to a category buyer. We also get into the plastic-free, ceramic-mechanism grinder that kept over 894,500 plastic grinders out of landfill in 2024 alone.

Website: https://oryxdesertsalt.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/oryxdesertsalt/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oryxdesertsalt/?hl=en

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@oryxdesertsalt4081

Oryx Desert Salt can be found at

Amazon

Whole Foods

Direct on website

CHAPTERS / TIMESTAMPS

00:00 — Cold open: the five-month desert journey that started it all

01:18 — What Oryx Desert Salt is, and why an antelope is the logo

05:42 — She sold her house to buy 34 tons of desert salt

06:25 — Inside the Kalahari salt pan: 55 million tons, bigger than Texas

10:00 — What's actually in your sea salt (plastics, sewage, radioactive waste)

12:27 — Table salt's origin story: an industrial product from 1910

17:15 — "Salt is bad for you" — dismantling the biggest nutrition myth on the planet

26:26 — How she landed a national Whole Foods listing with three emails

32:15 — Getting on JetBlue and Amtrak

37:12 — The "tequila fist" taste test and what chefs are saying

Listen to the full episode and more! It would mean the world to me if you could leave a 5 star review on your listening platform to help grow and expand the Podcast.

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Chris Valdes: The Chef Storyteller / BAM / Smell—O-Vision Jun 29, 2026

Show notes

Chris Valdes is a Miami-based chef and TV personality best known for Food Network Star, who's spent the last eleven years building a media career out of catering, storytelling, and refusing to let anyone else write his story for him.

This one didn't feel like a normal chef interview. We got into what it actually takes to build a brand before you have a team, how much of yourself you let a producer or a platform write for you versus protecting your own voice, and where AI actually earns a place in a professional kitchen instead of just taking over. Chris talks about grit in a way that doesn't feel like a quote on a slide — it's lived in.

We also ended up in Miami's Latin fusion food scene, the right way to cook a pot of black beans, and somehow my own Father's Day cookout. That's how these conversations go.

Connect

Website

Instagram

Youtube

Listen to the full episode and more! It would mean the world to me if you could leave a 5 star review on your listening platform to help grow and expand the Podcast.

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/55qBuFe9dQh5jLLdg0KLoL?si=08455ef88e554b91

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Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fell-into-food/