Raphael Brion and the Road to the 2024 Best New Chefs
Food & Wine's restaurant editor reveals what it's like behind the scenes of a life-changing accolade.
Paula Forbes
Raphael Brion and the Road to the 2024 Best New Chefs
Welcome to Season 2, Episode 17 of Tinfoil Swans, a podcast from Food & Wine. New episodes drop every Tuesday. Listen and follow on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen
On this episode
Food & Wine's restaurant editor Raphael Brion talks about the tremendous impact that the Best New Chefs accolade has had on people's careers, why each member of the 2024 class was selected, his time working in New York City kitchens, the time Anthony Bourdain gave him a paper bag full of $100 dollar bills, and what it does to the human body when you spend months on the road eating one billion restaurant meals a day.
Related: Every Food & Wine Best New Chef Ever, Since 1988
Meet our guest
Food & Wine restaurant editor Raphael Brion has led editorial teams at publications including The Infatuation, Wirecutter, Bon Appétit, and Eater National, where the website earned James Beard Foundation Journalism Awards for Best Food Blog in 2013 and 2014 under his direction. Brion co-founded the pioneering mid-2000s food blog Eat Me Daily, and has cooked in Michelin-starred restaurants in New York City. Brion lives in Austin, Texas, but is originally from Brussels, Belgium, thus instilling his lifelong love of mayonnaise and Liège waffles.
Meet our host
Kat Kinsman is the executive features editor at Food & Wine, author of Hi, Anxiety: Life With a Bad Case of Nerves, host of Food & Wine's podcast, and founder of Chefs With Issues. Previously, she was the senior food & drinks editor at Extra Crispy, editor-in-chief and editor at large at Tasting Table, and the founding editor of CNN Eatocracy. She won a 2020 IACP Award for Personal Essay/Memoir and has had work included in the 2020 and 2016 editions of The Best American Food Writing. She was nominated for a James Beard Broadcast Award in 2013, won a 2011 EPPY Award for Best Food Website with 1 million unique monthly visitors, and was a finalist in 2012 and 2013. She is a sought-after international keynote speaker and moderator on food culture and mental health in the hospitality industry, and is the former vice chair of the James Beard Journalism Committee.
Highlights from the episode
On learning English from watching TV
[After moving to the United States from Belgium at age 10] "I'd just started picking up the English language from Sesame Street. It was absolutely huge. It was stuff like the Count who I thought was great, but Oscar the Grouch — always, always good. I could never really understand why he lived in the garbage can. Were there not better places to live? But it was so important and helpful to learn English via that. It was a whole new window into a very, very different culture. All of a sudden, I was in a place where I could barely communicate with other people and Sesame Street gave me that entry point."
On his vegetable awakening
"My mom was never a great fan of vegetables. So it was this duality of my mom microwaving a lot of food for us, but then on the flip side, summers would be spent with my grandma, who was just this, this very accomplished, curious cook. It was a lot of going to farmer's markets. I remember green beans with shallots and butter. I didn't realize at the time how impactful that was, how different it was. And I always looked forward going back to Belgium every summer because it just meant that the food was going to be significantly better."
On how he started working in restaurants
"Basically, I went to a restaurant that I liked a lot. It was French meets New American. I walked in and asked to talk to the chef. 'Hey, I'm interested in cooking. I don't know how this works.' And they were like, 'Yeah, just come, come for a sub. Bring your knives.' I had knives, I was cooking at home so I had a sense of what I was doing. So I would go after work and help prep. And all of a sudden they were like, 'Hey, do you wanna stay for service?'"
On becoming a restaurant critic
"Infatuation was the first place I did restaurant reviews. I reviewed Pasta Bar in Austin — a tasting menu that actually did not have very much pasta at all. At a place called Pasta Bar! It made me so mad that I went home and was like, 'I have to write this, like, I can't not.' I was actually surprised by the reaction that I got from the chef and restaurant community — that they were happy that someone would actually write a negative review, because they hadn't seen that."
On what the Best New Chef accolade means to a chef — and to him
"I know that this accolade is deeply important. I've heard from chefs who were literally selling their cars to make payroll when they found out that they got this accolade. I do not take it lightly; I take it very seriously. I know the impact that it can have on people's lives. And not only their lives, but their spouse and their families. So I put in the work. I know what it takes."
On the perfect dinner companions
"You've gotta pace yourself and not overdo it. A few bites here and there, and go with people who are willing companions, who are willing to take leftovers home so nothing goes to waste. The best dining companions come with their own Tupperware."
On the future of Best New Chefs
"Always be scouting. I think that there are so many young culinary voices out there. You go sometimes and it's not fully formed yet. And you can see that there's a vision. You can see that there's something there and it's just not there yet — and whether it's gonna take. It just needs to cure a little bit. And it's a year or two or three for people to truly find their own voice."
Related: Previous Episode: Ti Martin and the Hospitality Revolution
About the podcast
Food & Wine has led the conversation around food, drinks, and hospitality in America and around the world since 1978. Tinfoil Swans continues that legacy with a new series of intimate, informative, surprising, and uplifting interviews with the biggest names in the culinary industry, sharing never-before-heard stories about the successes, struggles, and fork-in-the-road moments that made these personalities who they are today.
This season, you'll hear from icons and innovators like Daniel Boulud, Rodney Scott, Asma Khan, Emeril and E.J. Lagasse, Claudia Fleming, Dave Beran and Will Poulter, Dan Giusti, Priya Krishna, Lee Anne Wong, Cody Rigsby, Kevin Gillespie, Pete Wells, David Chang, Raphael Brion, Christine D'Ercole, Channing Frye, Nick Cho, Ti Martin, Dolly Parton, and other special guests going deep with host Kat Kinsman on their formative experiences; the dishes and meals that made them; their joys, doubts and dreams; and what's on the menu in the future. Tune in for a feast that'll feed your brain and soul — and plenty of wisdom and quotable morsels to savor.
New episodes drop every Tuesday. Listen and follow on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
These interview excerpts have been edited for clarity.
Editor’s Note: The transcript for download does not go through our standard editorial process and may contain inaccuracies and grammatical errors.
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Read the original article on Food & Wine.
