Menu Talk

We Got Company is a subtly music-themed bar in the trend-forward neighborhood of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, New York. The founders, Jify Shah, Ian Everall, and Paul Ramirez met when working at the Cameo Gallery, a beloved music venue in Williamsburg owned by Shah that closed in 2015. They opened We Got Company four years later, and Ramirez, who had tended bar at Cameo and elsewhere, ended up as the head bartender. The cocktails are almost all named after a song, but not necessarily a well-known or popular one. Instead, they’re often inspired by the songs of bands that the owners or friends of theirs played in. There are other unusual aspects to the bar. It’s a seated-only venue — no standing around and jostling for the bartender’s attention — and the cocktails are generally made without heating any of the elements. Instead, Ramirez stirs them a lot, sometimes for hours during shifts. The result, however, is distinctive-tasting drinks that can’t be had elsewhere. Listen as Ramirez discusses We Got Company and his approach to cocktail making.

Menu Talk: The executive chef followed his passion, pivoting from a teaching career to the restaurant world, and is making waves with his inspiring seafood menu. Josh Hunt, executive chef at Cordelia Fishbar in Washington, D.C., started out as a high school Spanish teacher. After several years on the job, he realized his true passion was cooking — a passion he developed from a foundational memory of mom and grandma in the kitchen. Although he had no formal culinary training, he landed a job at Hog & Hominy in Memphis, Tennessee, a lucky break since the restaurant’s head chefs had just been named to Food & Wine’s Best New Chefs list. Hunt was fortunate enough to work at Hog & Hominy for nine years and his career took off from there. When the pandemic threw a wrench into the industry, he moved to D.C., bounced around at different restaurants and hotels, and landed at Cordelia Fishbar, one of the concepts in the well-known Clyde’s Restaurant Group. Cordelia specializes in open-fire grilling and cooking in charcoal ovens, both of which infuse seafood with unique flavor. Hunt tries to source local species as much as possible, including rockfish, striped bass, crab, and oysters, gravitating toward simpler, more approachable preparations. He also dry ages salmon, turbot, and other seafood to deepen the flavor and enhance the texture. Listen as he explains what differentiates the menu at Cordelia Fishbar, how he’s balancing the menu to offer value, and the innovative dishes he’s cooking up for fall and the holiday season.

Ryan Poli opened the first restaurant where he was the boss just three years ago. Before that, he’d spent decades running other people’s restaurants in Chicago — Butter, Perennial, Tavernita — as well as Catbird Seat in Nashville, but Iggy’s, an Italian restaurant in the Nashville neighborhood of Wedgewood-Houston, is the first one that he fully owns, with his brother Matthew Poli. Ryan’s the chef, and Matthew, a certified sommelier and cicerone, runs the front of the house. Ryan Poli is highly credentialed, having trained at The French Laundry in the Napa Valley under Thomas Keller as well as at Le Français in the Chicago suburbs under Jean Banchet. He also worked overseas in Europe, Asia, and Australia, and gained further acclaim at Catbird Seat in Nashville. Next came a somewhat tumultuous period in his life when he traveled the world to recenter himself. He staged with other chefs, including Dan Barber and Marc Vetri, worked overseas, and spent several months working with Will Goldfarb on the Indonesian island of Bali before returning home at the onset of the pandemic. He and his brother opened in Iggy’s in 2023 under a business model that allowed everyone to get paid well while also turning a profit, and he has similar plans for Claymore, which the Polis plan to open a few blocks away in the first half of next year. Listen as Poli discusses his journey, his management philosophy, and his plans for Claymore.

JoJo Hernandez worked as a chef at country clubs and fine-dining kitchens, but his culinary heart was always with his family’s Filipino cooking. He began introducing those cherished dishes to the Jacksonville, Florida, community through pop-ups at events, eventually operating a food truck while still helming the stove at his day job. But his lifelong dream was to have a brick-and-mortar restaurant with a menu highlighting Filipino recipes. That dream became a reality in 2023, when, with his wife’s support, he took the plunge and opened Abstrakt Filipino Essence. It’s one of several Filipino restaurants in Jacksonville, which has the largest Filipino population in the state. In fact, Hernandez is co-founder of Jax Filipino Chefs, and every April, the city hosts a Filipino Food Month Trail, guiding residents and visitors to these culinary destinations. He and his wife developed Abstrakt Filipino Essence with the goal of familiarizing diners with the cooking from his family’s culture, but he says it’s 80% authentic Filipino and 20% his own twist, garnered from years of experience working as a chef. Menu items like lumpia, chicken pancit, adobo chicken wings, and pork belly sisig embody his signature style. Listen as chef-owner Hernandez describes how he blends Filipino cuisine with contemporary touches, how his dream restaurant continues to evolve, and why he relishes his role as an ambassador of Filipino culture.

Eric Leveillee is the culinary director of The DeBruce, a 12-roomboutique hotel in the Catskills community of Livingston Manor, N.Y., where he has worked since 2020, offering a seasonal tasting menu as well as regular à la carte service. He spent his formative culinary years in Philadelphia aftergraduating from Temple University with a degree in economics. He started at a Mexican restaurant called El Camino Real, where he fell in love with his waitress and got a job in the kitchen to try to get to know her better. It worked — they’re still married — and Leveillee went on to pursue a cooking career, working at Vernick Food & Drink under Greg Vernick and then heading up the kitchen at Marigold. His next stop was Lacroix at The Rittenhouse Hotel, wherehe worked during the runup to the pandemic and then ended up at The DeBruce. He recently shared his perspective on highlighting theingredients that he sources from the area, buying most of his produce from a farmer within walking distance of the property, as well as the occasional import, such as the Mexican herb epazote that he said goes well with trout.