Chef's PSA Podcast

The no-nonsense chef podcast for culinary leaders. Chef's PSA with André Natera gives cooks direct insight into kitchen management and what separates the pros from the rest. Featuring conversations with James Beard Award winners, Top Chef champions, and Bocuse d'Or competitors, we reveal the Michelin standards and discipline required to build a serious career. Weekly mentorship for BOH pros who want to GET CHEF BRAINS.https://chefspsa.com

Chef's PSA Podcast is a business podcast hosted by Chef, with 217 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Chef hosts Chef's PSA Podcast, a business show with 217 episodes published.

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  Episode #217

  Why San Antonio Is Texas's Most Underrated Food City With Enrique Lozano Ep. 217

  Aug 14, 20261h 3m

  Enrique Lozano is a Chopped champion, James Beard nominee for Best Chef Texas, and executive chef at Aguazul in San Antonio, with roots at Benny Frank's in El Paso and Mija opening soon in San Elizario. He'd been trying to get on Chopped for over a decade before the call finally came, right after his James Beard nomination. His strategy once he got there: cook exactly what he already knew, nothing more ambitious, nothing borrowed. It won him ten thousand dollars and, once the embargo lifted a year later, a wave of business he hadn't planned for. Why he thinks contestants lose on cooking competition shows by trying dishes they've never made before, instead of doing what they already do well What actually separates Beat Bobby Flay from Chopped once the cameras are off, and why one felt like being treated like a rock star Why he doesn't strain his ramen tonkotsu broth anymore, and the tare trick a friend talked him into trying André Natera and Enrique Lozano cover what it actually takes to build a 100% sustainable restaurant from the ground up at Mija, why a 200-item menu at Aguazul isn't chaos but cross-utilization, San Antonio's quiet run of Michelin recognition, the deep well of chef talent coming out of El Paso, two restaurant closures and the identical tax mistake behind both of them, who actually showed up when things fell apart and who didn't, and whether music belongs in a kitchen at all. It ends where every episode ends, with the Mount Rushmore, and the one addition to his tonkotsu broth that isn't a spice. Guest Instagram: Chef Enrique Lozano Links Lead Like a Chef App → https://studio.com/apps/andre/leadlikeachef Get the Books → https://chefspsa.com/books Shop Chef's PSA Merch → https://shop.chefspsa.com/ Get Episodes Early on Substack → https://chefspsa.substack.com/ Follow Chef's PSA on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/chefspsa/

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  Episode #216

  He Is The Third Generation To Run One Of NYC's Oldest Italian Restaurants Matthew Cutolo Ep. 216

  Aug 7, 20261h 4m

  Matthew Cutolo is a third-generation chef at Gargiulo's, the Coney Island restaurant his family has run since 1965 and that has fed Brooklyn since 1907. In 1977, The New York Times gave it three stars, unheard of at the time for a restaurant outside Manhattan. He learned to bake from Mike the Bake, the restaurant's pastry chef of over forty years, who refused to write down a single recipe, including for family. Matthew asked to learn anyway. Mike's answer was, "If you want to learn, you have to watch." For the first two months, Matthew stood at the mixing bowl and watched Mike add ingredients with no measurements at all, a scoop of this, a lap around the kitchen, a conversation with someone else, back to the bowl. Only after two months did Mike start telling him what was actually going in. Why the same holiday recipe came out different every year, because it was never really written down, it was feel Why Matthew never uses a thermometer frying cannoli, and the one thing his uncle said that changed his mind about tradition versus evolution How a summer internship on The Chew turned into a decision to go all in on content, and why cooking videos never worked for him but talking to the camera did André Natera and Matthew Cutolo cover the difference between Italian food and Italian American food and why that argument goes back to Ellis Island, the family's daily 2:30 lunch that nobody is allowed to skip, guys' night and the right way to make a negroni, the meatball debate settled once and for all, sauce versus gravy, dried pasta versus fresh, Parmigiano versus Pecorino, what actually makes a video do well on YouTube versus Instagram, and why toxic kitchens exist in family restaurants too. It ends where every episode ends, with the Mount Rushmore, and the correct cannoli filling. Guest @matthewcutolo https://www.matthewcutolo.com/ Gargiulo's on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/gargiulosrestaurant/ Links Lead Like a Chef App → https://studio.com/apps/andre/leadlikeachef Get the Books → https://chefspsa.com/books Shop Chef's PSA Merch → https://shop.chefspsa.com/ Get Episodes Early on Substack → https://chefspsa.substack.com/ Follow Chef's PSA on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/chefspsa/

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  Episode #215

  The Century Where Food Stopped Being About Food | Bobby Hicks Ep. 215

  Jul 30, 20261h 12m

  Bobby Hicks read roughly 800 mid-century cookbooks to write one, and what he found was not a list of bad recipes. It was the exact point where American home cooking lost its thread. The Great Depression ran into World War II with almost no recovery in between. Two generations of mothers cooked without butter, without sugar, without the ingredients their own mothers' recipes assumed. What did not get cooked did not get taught. By the time the post-war boom arrived with canned soup and boxed everything, and women moved from house labor into factories and still had to put dinner on the table, the chain was already broken. The dishes we laugh at now were what filled the gap. Why a pineapple was a status symbol, and why people rented them by the party Why aspic was proof you owned a refrigerator, not something anyone wanted to eat What actually broke the transmission of technique, and who put it back Bobby Hicks is a food historian, a Next Level Chef season four alum, and the author of Retro Recipes: Vintage Dishes with a Modern Twist from Countryman Press. He shows up with a vintage basting spoon from an estate sale and opens with the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to him in a kitchen. He was telling an extern that onion skin works as a bandage. Mid-sentence, he cut off the tip of his finger. André Natera and Bobby Hicks cover the three books he studied before going on television, why sleep and food were what actually wrecked him on set, the market exercise he still gives private chefs, why he believes you can teach technique but not adaptability, what happens once a publisher wants 100 recipes in six months, twelve years of content advice from before it was a career, and how to order a drink without embarrassing yourself. It ends where every episode ends, with the Mount Rushmore. Guest Retro Recipes Kitchen on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/retrorecipeskitchen/ This Fellow on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/thisfellow/ retrorecipeskitchen.comRetro Recipes: Vintage Dishes with a Modern Twist → https://www.amazon.com/dp/1324117257 Links Lead Like a Chef App → https://studio.com/apps/andre/leadlikeachef Get the Books → https://chefspsa.com/books Shop Chef's PSA Merch → https://shop.chefspsa.com/ Get Episodes Early on Substack → https://chefspsa.substack.com/ Follow Chef's PSA on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/chefspsa/

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  Episode #213

  The Food Is a Bonus. Hospitality Is the Point. Chef Geno McWilliams Ep. 213

  Jul 17, 20261h 4m

  Geno McWilliams is the self-taught chef and owner of Lucia's Italian Kitchen in Effingham, Illinois, a 39-seat open kitchen Italian restaurant three hours south of Chicago that has become a destination in rural America. He spent decades as a construction contractor while teaching himself to cook, traveled with more cooking equipment than construction tools, fired pizzas in hotel rooms with an Ooni Koda, and opened Lucia's in November 2020. He is a member of the US Pizza Team and Women in Pizza certified. He attended the Rewiring Hospitality conference in Irvine, California the week before this recording. His biggest takeaway became the central argument of this entire episode: after years of obsessing over the food, the food is not the point. The food is the bonus. Hospitality is what brings guests back. Why Lucia's pre-shift meetings never discuss 86 items, cover counts, or operational details and spend every minute on one question: how are we going to make the guest experience better tonight The difference between Italian and Italian American cuisine and why Geno built his menu around traditional Italian dishes in a town that walked in expecting fettuccine Alfredo and chicken Parm The pasta economics that every small Italian restaurant needs to understand: 90 percent extruded, 10 percent stuffed, and why pushing that ratio in the wrong direction will destroy your labor and your consistency André Natera and Geno McWilliams cover the wedding dance moment that went viral on social media, reading guests through body language and NLP, the Roman tonda meets New York style pizza hybrid that defines Lucia's pizza, the discovery that French toast originated in fourth century Rome, and the construction contractor financial discipline that gave Geno a foundation most self-taught chefs never develop. The episode closes with his Mount Rushmore of chefs by category, his yellow tape kitchen in honor of the Pittsburgh Steelers, and his tagline: cheaper than a ticket to Italy. Guest Geno McWilliams on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/chefginomc/ Lucia's Italian Kitchen on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/luciaseffingham/ Lucia's Italian Kitchen Website → https://luciasik.com/ Links Subscribe on Substack → https://chefspsa.substack.com/ Shop Chef's PSA Merch → https://shop.chefspsa.com/ Visit Chef's PSA Website → https://chefspsa.com/ Lead Like a Chef App → https://studio.com/apps/andre/leadlikeachef

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  Episode #212

  Matt McCallister on Getting Sober, Losing His Restaurant, and Why He Is Going Back Ep. 212

  Jul 10, 20261h 1m

  Chef Matt McCallister is the Food and Wine Best New Chef 2014, three-time James Beard Award finalist, and one of a handful of chefs to ever receive a five-star review from the Dallas Morning News. He opened FT33 in Dallas in 2012, followed it with Homewood, and is now opening River Sing, a 24-seat tasting menu restaurant in Fair Park, Dallas, in fall 2026. He has been sober since 2016. This episode is the less glamorous side of the chef world that people do not talk about. How the success of FT33 accelerated access to every vice that was already available, and what that looked like by 2016 The morning he called his business partner's wife two days before Valentine's Day, ready to say something stern, and she answered and said Michael's dead What imposter syndrome actually feels like when you move from being one of the best fine dining chefs in Texas to being a food and beverage director at a casual dining group André Natera and Matt McCallister trace the full arc from FT33's peak to Homewood's collapse to getting sober to disappearing from public view to building River Sing. The conversation covers the intervention, the shame of public failure, what forgiveness actually costs over time, and why he is doing it again. River Sing is named after a line in a Grateful Dead song and his lifelong love of fly fishing in the Arizona mountains. It enters through a courtyard garden. It opens this fall. It is 24 seats. Guest Matt McCallister on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/matthewt.mcallister/ Links Subscribe on Substack → https://chefspsa.substack.com/ Shop Chef's PSA Merch → https://shop.chefspsa.com/ Visit Chef's PSA Website → https://chefspsa.com/ Lead Like a Chef App → https://studio.com/apps/andre/leadlikeachef

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