Ride the Swan

Dear Pros,

You've got Kat this week and as usual, I'm all up in my feelings. We launched Season 3 of the Tinfoil Swans podcast on Tuesday, and this many episodes in, you might think the initial thrill had worn off — but nah, not even close. I remain completely gobsmacked that it's part of my job to have soul-baring conversations with people about food, which is pretty much all I want to do with my time anyway, on or off-mic.

And this season in particular, hooboy. We've got episodes in the can with Roy Choi (airing this coming Tuesday), Laurie Woolever, 2023 F&W Best New Chef Ana Castro and sister Lydia Castro, Matthew Lillard (yes, the actor who you have known and loved for decades), Vikas Khanna, Karen Akunowicz, Romy Gill, Hawa Hassan, and Curtis Stone. There's also plenty more on deck including conversations with Padma Lakshmi and Ayesha Curry live onstage from the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, and some celebrity guests we're excited to reveal in the coming months.

The thing that doesn't always make the final edit: We cry. Often. There's something so intimate in the medium of audio interviews where the world around you simply melts away and you forget that anyone else may be listening. It's just two people (occasionally three) speaking from the heart about the things that matter most to them, and our season opening with Top Chef alum Byron Gomez was no exception.

"I am sober now. I went through a very dark moment in my life where everything was just falling apart. That was because I was addicted to substances. I was addicted to alcohol," he told me. "The lifestyle and the kind of restaurants that I worked on — you needed to do that in order to fit in or survive or numb yourself because of the amount of work that you are responsible for. I saw that I only had this opportunity, I got to go full sprint into it, not realizing that I was forgetting about myself. I was forgetting about self-love. I was forgetting about being gentle to myself."

He continued, "I don't have to have everything together. I have accomplished one star, two star, three-star Michelin; number one restaurant in the world; becoming a sous chef; being the first Costa Rican to be a sous chef at that caliber. That became my whole world. I didn't have an identity outside of being a cook. Once you lose who you are, it's extremely scary because you fall into other things that lead on to worse things. I had to make these changes, and I had to look at myself in the mirror and say, 'You lost yourself. What are you doing? You derailed yourself. Let's get back on track.'"

I hope you'll listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, streamed straight from foodandwine.com, or wherever you get your podcasts. Maybe you'll even pore back through the archives for conversations with guests like Daniel Boulud, Dolly Parton, Pati Jinich, Guy Fieri, Rodney Scott, and others and send me a note about who you'd like to hear from next.

And speaking of happiness, Food & Wine has just won its first-ever National Magazine Award for the story "The City That Rice Built." Many hands went into researching, writing, illustrating, editing, fact checking, producing, and otherwise bringing this extraordinary piece of journalism to life, and it's a joy to see my colleagues recognized for their work. I may just cry from happiness.

Be well,
Kat