Kat Petonito and Rochelle Cooper run three Washington DC restaurants together, and before any of that they came up through kitchens that made them pay for being there. Rochelle was told that if she could not work with the chef who was harassing her, she would be the one moved. Twenty minutes into this one, the conversation stops being polite.Nycci Nellis takes Industry Night out to The Point in Southwest DC, where the Potomac and the Anacostia meet, and sits down with two of the most decorated women working in this city. Kat Petonito is executive chef across The Duck and The Peach, La Collina, and The Wells for Eastern Point Collective. Rochelle Cooper is executive pastry chef across all three and the 2024 RAMMY Pastry Chef of the Year.This chef interview podcast goes two directions at once. First into harassment in professional kitchens and what it did to two careers, including an HR conversation that ended with Rochelle choosing between a step back and a step out. Then into what they built afterward, a three restaurant group with a no touching policy, no drinking on the clock, good insurance, paid time off, mental health days, and a team that has mostly stayed six years.Along the way there is goat butter, primal cuts, 22 quarts of duck fat a day turned into bar soap, and an ice cream label born out of a walk-in full of leftovers. For anyone in the DC food scene or the hospitality industry, this is a working model, not a mission statement.Watch it on YouTube or listen to the podcast episode here. 

Virginia Miller has eaten and drunk her way through more than 30,000 restaurants and bars, and she is now one of the people who decides which ones the world calls the best. On this DC food podcast she explains exactly how that vote works, who gets to cast one, and why so many of her own picks never make the list. We recorded it at Bar Betsie with a cocktail competition running in the background.Virginia Miller is Academy Chair for The World’s 50 Best Restaurants and for North America’s 50 Best Restaurants, sits on the James Beard Awards Committee, and serves as a lead judge at San Francisco World Spirits and at the American Distilling Institute awards, which she has judged for seventeen years. She has written for more than 60 international outlets and publishes The Perfect Spot, the Substack she started in 2007 as a blog.Nycci Nellis gets her to walk through the parts of the awards world people usually only speculate about. How many voters there are. How chairs select them, and why a quarter get swapped out every year. What blind spirits judging feels like, closer to a lab than a party. And why she insists there is no single best restaurant anywhere.Then the show moves to the bar. Bar Betsie co owner JP Sabatier talks about why he and his partners kept circling the Union Market District, how Jane Jane and Bar Betsie were built to feel like different places on purpose, and what a culinary school education actually contributes to a cocktail program. He builds a Love Yuzu on camera, and he and Tom Martinez go head to head on a flavor profile Virginia calls out live.Watch the whole thing unfold here, or listen in here.

Greg Engert is the Washington DC restaurant insider who made this city care about beer, and he is the first person to tell you the math has changed. Happy hour is dead, the double turn is gone, and the generation walking through the door wants something his whole career was not built for. So we sat down at Modan in Tysons and got into what he is actually doing about it.Greg Engert has been Beer Director and Managing Partner at Neighborhood Restaurant Group since 2006, which means he has had a front row seat to every swing of the DC dining scene for twenty years. Church Key. Bluejacket. Rustico. Josephine. Iron Gate. Snallygaster, now the biggest beer festival on the East Coast. In this chef interview podcast episode of Industry Night, Nycci Nellis gets him talking about the parts nobody puts in a press release: what it costs to keep a seventeen year old restaurant relevant, why NRG is closing a play cafe that did not pencil out, and why he reads every single guest review across the entire group every day.He is candid about the generational shift too. Younger drinkers are not abstaining more than Gen X did, they are just drinking less per visit, and he points at inflation and healthcare costs before he points at wellness culture. His answer is to stop treating cheap drinks as a two hour window and start building low price points into the menu all day long.Then Nycci pulls Chef Chico Dator out of the Modan kitchen. He came up through Nobu in Lanai, Malibu and Kuala Lumpur before landing in DC, and he now runs the only dry aging fish program in the region. He will not call it aging. Listen for why, here, and Watch the full episode here.

Ereka Vetrini has four million people asking her what’s for dinner, and before any of that she was an operational auditor at Estee Lauder, a contestant on the first season of The Apprentice, and a host on NBC, TLC and HGTV. Then she walked away from all of it. What pulled her back was a dare from her daughter and one video that got three million views in three days.This is the kind of conversation that only happens when two people who have been in food and media a long time stop performing and just talk. Nycci Nellis sits down with Ereka Vetrini, the first generation Italian American recipe creator behind the gnocchi video that changed her career, and they get into the parts of the job nobody posts about. Ereka grew up inside her parents’ pizzeria in Westchester, learning to cook by tasting, by watching, and by getting yelled at, with a mother from a farm town outside Naples where lard hung from the ceiling because olive oil was not a given. She takes Nycci through the business path that came first, Boston College, GE, Estee Lauder, then the audition she almost did not do and the non-compete that nearly ended her television run before it started. She explains why she left hosting, why she says no to the word influencer, why she is putting money into a blog instead of Substack, and what it actually takes to make five recipes a week that work in a real kitchen. For anyone tracking the DC food scene or the hospitality industry more broadly, this one is about building something that outlasts an algorithm. Listen to the episode here, or watch it here.

Ashok Bajaj and Chef Vikram Sunderam built the modern Indian dining scene in Washington DC, and in this chef interview they tell Nycci Nellis exactly how, starting with the night Ashok found out his landlord thought a building worth 40 million dollars still deserved a rent increase.Ashok Bajaj is the founder and CEO of Knightsbridge Restaurant Group, the man Forbes calls DC’s gastronomic power broker. Since opening the Bombay Club in 1988, he has built a ten restaurant empire that includes Rasika, Bindaas, Sababa, Rosselli, and his newest concept, Malabar, a coastal Indian seafood restaurant in Van Ness. On this episode of Industry Night, Nycci Nellis sits down with Ashok on location at Malabar, along with his partner of two decades, James Beard Award winning Chef Vikram Sunderam. They talk about Ashok’s path from hotel management in India and London to building an empire in Washington DC, why he tore down a struggling concept called Rosedale to build Malabar in its place, and his honest read on downtown DC’s post pandemic restaurant economics. Vikram walks through his own path from Mumbai to Rasika, the technique behind the restaurant’s famous palak chaat, and what excites him about coastal Indian cooking at Malabar. This is a DC food podcast conversation with two of the people who actually built the DC dining scene, thirty five years and ten restaurants in the making.Listen to the episode here, or watch it all unfold, here.

Chef Steven Fretz has spent two decades cooking in some of the best kitchens in the country, and now Michelin has finally noticed Utah. In this chef interview, he tells Nycci Nellis what actually happened when he got the email announcing it, and why his first reaction was pure disbelief. Chef Steven Fretz built his career across San Francisco’s Fifth Floor, the Michael Mina Group, and his own restaurant Church Key in LA before co-founding Coast Range, a Michelin recognized steakhouse in Solvang, California. Now he is home in Utah as culinary director and partner at South Hill, a luxury community on the Wasatch Back, where he is opening two restaurants, Montbleu and Charlay. On this episode of Industry Night, Nycci Nellis sits down with Steven right as the Michelin Guide announces its first ever Southwest edition, putting Utah on the map for the first time. They get into what Michelin recognition actually felt like the first time it happened, why he calls himself a resting chef who sears and rests a single steak up to ten times before it is served, and why he believes hospitality, not cooking, is the hardest part of running a restaurant. It is an honest conversation about accolades, ego, and building a serious hospitality business from the ground up, in California wine country and now the Utah mountains. This is a DC food podcast that goes wherever the best chefs and restaurateurs are, and this week that is Midway, Utah. Listen to the full episode, or watch it all here.

Gus Constantellis, the comedian behind the viral Greek Mom videos, joins this DC food podcast to talk about the cookbook his mother's death made him write. Four days after she passed, he posted a meatball video that changed everything, and comedy turned out to be the only way he knew how to survive what came next.Gus Constantellis is the Greek American stand up comedian and writer behind the Greek Mom videos, the ones where he becomes his late mother, Julia, on camera with more love than most tributes manage. The character went viral during the pandemic and never really stopped. The real story is what happened after Julia died. Four days later, Gus posted a video making her meatball recipe, the first thing she ever taught him to cook, and that grief turned into My Greek Mom's Recipes, a cookbook with the tagline she died, I wrote this cookbook. On this episode of Industry Night, the DC food podcast hosted by Washington DC restaurant insider Nycci Nellis, Gus talks about the forty years his mother spent in America without learning English, the difference between the edited version of her the internet fell in love with and the real woman who complained about restaurants and got sick from fish, and how he decided which family recipes and stories belonged in the book. It is a conversation about comedy as a coping mechanism, food as a language that outlives the person who spoke it, and what it means to keep someone's voice alive on the page after it is gone from the room.Watch the interview here, or listen to it here.

Victor Albisu, the chef behind Taco Bamba, just did something no chef wants to do on this DC food podcast episode: he read his own restaurants' worst reviews out loud, live.Victor Albisu is the chef and owner behind Taco Bamba, the fast casual taco chain he grew from one Falls Church location into seventeen restaurants across the Mid-Atlantic and into Nashville. Nycci Nellis sat down with him back at Taco Bamba in City Ridge for this DC food podcast conversation that covers twenty years of DC restaurants, from his fine dining runs at Del Campo and Poca Madre to his new anti-steakhouse, Electric Bull, opening in his hometown of Vienna, Virginia. Victor also debuts Roasted, a brand new segment where he reads his own restaurants' harshest online reviews and responds live, no notes, no filter. Later in the show, Karen Harris, a working vocalist, vocal coach, and rock band frontwoman, joins from the patio at City Ridge to talk about curating the Friday night music series that brings local musicians to the development's happy hour crowd. This is a Washington DC restaurant insider conversation about fine dining, fast casual, failure, and why talent is the smallest part of the formula for success. If you care about the DC food scene, the hospitality industry, or just want to hear a chef read his own bad reviews, this one is for you.Listen to the full episode, or watch it all here.

Jade Floyd walked into this DC food podcast conversation with a hard truth: most leadership advice is written by people who never had to survive the room. She spent two decades inside DC's most powerful rooms, and she is done keeping the lessons to herself.Jade Floyd is Senior Vice President at Bryson Gillette and the author of The Leadership Labyrinth, Women Navigating Power and Purpose in a Changing World. Nycci Nellis sat down with her live at Tony and Joe's on the Potomac for this DC food podcast conversation that somehow covers oysters, burnout, and boardrooms in the same hour. Jade spent twenty years building her career in Washington, from the Champagne Bureau to a decade as VP of Communications for Jean and Steve Case, before she started interviewing the women who shaped her own path. Seventy women considered, thirty interviewed, twenty made the final book, and twelve of them are Washingtonians. Jade and Nycci get into what the hospitality industry can teach corporate leaders about reading a room, why burnout stopped being something to brag about, and how to figure out the difference between what you want and what you actually deserve. This is a Washington DC restaurant insider's favorite kind of conversation, big ideas, no pretension, and a live oyster shucking lesson at the end. If you care about DC dining, DC leadership, or just want to hear two women who have been in the room tell the truth about what it took to get there, this one is for you.What You Will LearnJade Floyd explains how seventy considered women became the twenty leaders featured in TheLeadership Labyrinth.Restaurateur Stephen Starr taught Jade a lesson about reading a room that has stuck with her for years.Jade breaks down why burnout is no longer something leaders should treat as a badge of honor.Nycci and Jade talk about the difference between mentors and friendtors, and why every leader needs both.The book's workbook walks readers through separating what they want from what they actually deserve.Listen to the full episode, or watch it all here.

Drew Baker, Lisa Hinton, and Ashli Johnson turned a rocky hillside in Clarksburg into Burnt Hill, the most talked about winery in Maryland wine, and this DC food podcast conversation tells the whole story. An old farmer warned Drew the land only grew rocks. He bought it anyway. Then came a leukemia diagnosis, a 5 percent survival chance, and two sisters who became his bone marrow donors.Nycci Nellis sits down with the sibling founders of Old Westminster Winery and Burnt Hill for a chef interview podcast conversation about family, farming, and what it takes to build a world class wine destination an hour from Washington DC. Drew Baker farms the land, Lisa Hinton makes the wine, and Ashli Johnson runs the brand, and together they have gone from a kitchen table decision during the recession to a regenerative farm with Leicester Longwool sheep, Mangalitsa pigs, eleven beehives, and wines fermented in barrels made from their own ash trees. They talk about the frost that created what Drew calls the lost vintage, the Chefs Counter partnership with Chef Tae Strain, the Temperance non alcoholic program, and the moment Drew learned he had acute myeloid leukemia while building it all. Then, live from RPM Italian in Washington DC, Nycci pulls up to a caviar station with Executive Chef Massimo Vicidomini and RPM Events and Catering managers Luis Zelaya and Arrica Ashe to talk Amalfi Coast dinners, private dining, and how one of the busiest hospitality industry rooms in the DC dining scene executes events for 8 to 300 guests.What You Will LearnWhy rocky, depleted soil was exactly what Drew Baker wanted for the Burnt Hill vineyard.How the family produces 18 different wines from only 1,000 cases using single barrel selections.What regenerative polyculture farming looks like with sheep, pigs, bees, and log grown shiitake mushrooms.How Drew survived a 5 percent prognosis with his sisters Ashli and Lisa as his bone marrow donors.How RPM Italian DC builds custom private events, from Kaluga caviar stations to full off premise kitchens.Listen to the full episode here, or watch it here.