Bitefully

Chef Mawa McQueen was born in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, the oldest of 21 children. She was raised in Paris, trained at culinary school there, and now runs six restaurants in Aspen, Colorado, including Mawa's Kitchen, Mawita, and Crepe Therapy Café. Her strongest food memory, though, is something she wouldn't share with anyone: the once-a-year school lunch of canned sardines stuffed into a fresh baguette. In this episode, Chef Claudia Sandoval finally gets her friend Mawa across the table. They trace her food memories back to the markets of Abidjan, where papaya, goat, and fermented fish wake up every one of your senses. They also dig into the plantains, yucca, corn, and hibiscus that connect West African and Mexican kitchens across an ocean. Mawa shares the first look at Abidjan Epicure, the first West African food and wine festival, and why she wants the world to see Africa as more than The Lion King. She also tells the story of the day Thomas Keller taught her golf with cigars and music, twenty years after she stood outside The French Laundry unable to afford a meal. At its heart, this is a conversation about kindness. It covers razor-thin restaurant margins, the Yelpers who close small businesses, and the mentors at the very top who turn out to be the most humble people in the room.  Abidjan Epicure takes place October 14–17, 2027. New episodes every Wednesday. You can find Mawa McQueen on Instagram @mawamcqueen Follow along on Instagram ⁠@bitefullypod⁠ and ⁠@chefclaudiasandoval⁠ Host & Executive Producer: Claudia Sandoval | Producer: Shei Yu I Executive Producer: Saadia Khan I Sound Designer & Editor: Lou Raskin I Theme Music: Lou Raskin | Other Music: Epidemic Sound | Cover Art: Mike Fennessy Bitefully is an Immigrantly Media Production. If you like what you hear, write a review at Bitefully and subscribe to Immigrantly Uninterrupted for ad-free episodes For advertising inquiries, you can contact us at [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, we're re-releasing our very first episode. Actress Angélica Celaya grew up straddling borders: Tucson and Mexico City, Spam sandwiches and slow-cooked pozole, margarine and manteca. On screen, she's played everyone from Spanish-language telenovela heroines to unapologetic women on English-language TV. In this debut episode, Chef Claudia Sandoval and Angélica trace their food memories back to the dishes that shaped them: a father's refried beans eaten with ketchup, a mother's pineapple upside-down cake, and the kind of flour tortilla you can only get in Sonora. Along the way, they talk about cooking for their family at 12 years old, what it means to feed people from your most honest place, and why the best thing you can do, in food and in life, is be the weirdo at the table. New episodes every Wednesday. You can find Angelica on Instagram @angelicacelaya1 Follow along on Instagram ⁠@bitefullypod⁠ and ⁠@chefclaudiasandoval⁠ Host & Executive Producer: Claudia Sandoval | Producer: Shei Yu I Executive Producer: Saadia Khan I Sound Designer & Editor: Lou Raskin I Theme Music: Lou Raskin | Other Music: Epidemic Sound | Cover Art: Mike Fennessy Bitefully is an Immigrantly Media Production. If you like what you hear, write a review at Bitefully and subscribe to Immigrantly Uninterrupted for ad-free episodes For advertising inquiries, you can contact us at [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Top Chef finalist and James Beard-nominated author Chris Scott has spent nearly 40 years in professional kitchens, tracing his family's story to the intersection of Black Southern cooking and Pennsylvania Dutch Amish foodways. In this episode, Chef Claudia Sandoval and Chris remember a penny candy store in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, the grape-flavored Swedish Fish he's still looking for, and the scrapple his ancestors reworked into something between a poor man's pâté and a dish worthy of the James Beard House.  From there, the conversation turns to the overlooked people in every kitchen—the dishwashers, the servers, the produce drivers—and the marginalized stories Chris is telling in his new short film What's Left. They get into why he thinks competition cooking shows have run their course, and the real rules for a proper cheesesteak (hint: don’t call it a "Philly" cheesesteak). Recorded on September 11th, the episode also sits with grief, memory, and what restaurants come to mean for the people who keep them running. New episodes every Wednesday. You can find Chris Scott on Instagram @chefchris512 and learn more about his film What's Left and his cookbook Homage. Follow along on Instagram ⁠@bitefullypod⁠ and ⁠@chefclaudiasandoval⁠ Host & Executive Producer: Claudia Sandoval | Producer: Shei Yu I Executive Producer: Saadia Khan I Sound Designer & Editor: Lou Raskin I Theme Music: Lou Raskin | Other Music: Epidemic Sound | Cover Art: Mike Fennessy Bitefully is an Immigrantly Media Production. If you like what you hear, write a review at Bitefully and subscribe to Immigrantly Uninterrupted for ad-free episodes For advertising inquiries, you can contact us at [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Six-time James Beard Award winner, Emmy-nominated host, and New York Times best-selling author Pati Jinich has spent her career proving that the food of the US-Mexico borderlands isn't fusion. It is its own permanent, ever-evolving place, full of stories most people never get to hear. Chef Claudia Sandoval and Pati trace their food memories back to a marbled pound cake eaten square by square in front of a Pedro Infante movie, a grandfather who fled poverty in Poland, and a plate of huevo rancheros ruined by a curious kid who wanted every spice in the cabinet at once. Along the way, they talk about why "fusion" is the wrong word for what happens at the border, the Japanese American ranching family raising Wagyu-style cattle on corn masa in the Rio Grande Valley, and the real, proudly Mexican history of the nacho. They discuss language, legacy, and why the recipes we inherit were never really ours to begin with. We're just the ones lucky enough to carry them for a while. New episodes every Wednesday. You can find Pati Jinich on Instagram @patijinich and purchase her new book, Foods of La Frontera, out September 15th. Follow along on Instagram ⁠@bitefullypod⁠ and ⁠@chefclaudiasandoval⁠ Host & Executive Producer: Claudia Sandoval | Producer: Shei Yu I Executive Producer: Saadia Khan I Sound Designer & Editor: Lou Raskin | Theme Music: Lou Raskin | Other Music: Epidemic Sound | Cover Art: Mike Fennessy Bitefully is an Immigrantly Media Production. If you like what you hear, write a review at Bitefully and subscribe to Immigrantly Uninterrupted for ad-free episodes For advertising inquiries, you can contact us at [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode of Bitefully is a little different. It's a Spanglish episode, with the majority of the conversation en español, as Chef Claudia sits down with Chef Adria Marina to talk food memories, life on both sides of the border, and the experiences that shaped her. Prefer to follow along in English? The full video episode is available on YouTube with English captions. Adria es la mujer y Chef detrás de Georgina, uno de los restaurantes más reconocidos de Tijuana. También la hemos visto como juez en Top Chef VIP, MasterChef Celebrity Colombia y otros proyectos de televisión. Más recientemente, abrió las puertas de su nuevo proyecto, Café Cometa. Bilingüe y criada entre Tijuana y San Diego, Adria creció devorando tortillas recién salidas de la tortillería camino a casa, renegando de niña de la sopa de pollo y los sándwiches de atún de su mamá, que ahora pide para su cumpleaños, y comiendo un meatloaf que su madre hacía suyo con jalapeños y chipotle. Adria abre su archivo de memorias culinarias y nos lleva a los viajes de su infancia al Convoy District de San Diego, mucho antes de que el pho y el Korean BBQ se pusieran de moda, a los árboles de higo de su abuela y a aquel restaurante al aire libre que ella y su prometido apodaron "Café Cometa" mucho antes de que se convirtiera en un lugar real. Adria y Claudia hablan de por qué replicar una receta sin alma puede ser uno de los mayores pecados en la cocina, del viaje a Israel que dejó huella en el menú de Georgina y de lo que significa pasar ocho años viendo crecer un restaurante y, con él, a las personas que lo hacen posible. Y luego la conversación se pone verdaderamente seria: Trader Joe's como "happy place", mantequilla de maní crunchy vs. creamy y, por supuesto, el orden definitivo de las diferentes formas de los chocolates Reese's. Nuevos episodios cada miércoles. [ENGLISH] This episode of Bitefully is a little different. It's a Spanglish episode, with the majority of the conversation in Spanish, as Chef Claudia sits down with Chef Adria Marina to talk food memories, life on both sides of the border, and the experiences that shaped her. Prefer to follow along in English? The full video episode is available on YouTube with English captions. Adria is the woman and Chef behind Georgina, one of Tijuana's most well-known restaurants. We've also seen her as a judge on Top Chef VIP, MasterChef Celebrity Colombia, and other television projects. More recently, she opened the doors to her new project, Café Cometa. Bilingual and raised between Tijuana and San Diego, Adria grew up devouring tortillas fresh off the press on the way home, refusing as a kid to eat her mom's chicken soup and tuna sandwiches — which she now requests for her birthday — and eating a meatloaf that her mother made her own with jalapeños and chipotle. Adria opens up her archive of culinary memories and takes us back to childhood trips to San Diego's Convoy District, long before pho and Korean BBQ became trendy, to her grandmother's fig trees, and to that outdoor restaurant that she and her fiancé nicknamed "Café Cometa" long before it became a real place. Adria and Claudia talk about why replicating a recipe without soul can be one of the biggest sins in cooking, about the trip to Israel that left its mark on Georgina's menu, and about what it means to spend eight years watching a restaurant grow and, with it, the people who make it possible. And then the conversation gets truly serious: Trader Joe's as a "happy place," crunchy vs. creamy peanut butter, and of course, the definitive ranking of the different shapes of Reese's chocolates. New episodes every Wednesday. You can find Chef Adria Montaño on Instagram ⁠@adriamarina⁠.  Follow along on Instagram⁠ ⁠@bitefullypod⁠⁠ and⁠ ⁠@chefclaudiasandoval⁠⁠ Host & Executive Producer: Claudia Sandoval | Producer: Shei Yu I Executive Producer: Saadia Khan I Sound Designer & Editor: Lou Raskin I Theme Music: Lou Raskin | Other Music: Epidemic Sound | Cover Art: Mike Fennessy Bitefully is an Immigrantly Media Production. If you like what you hear, write a review at ⁠Bitefully⁠ and subscribe to ⁠Immigrantly Uninterrupted ⁠for ad free episodes For advertising inquiries, you can contact us at ⁠[email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices