Tinfoil Swans

Aaron Franklin, the Hot Luck Festival founder and James Beard Award-winning pitmaster behind Franklin Barbecue, talks about the long road from tinkering with guitars at his grandparents' music shop and playing punk shows to teaching himself brisket on a $99 backyard smoker. He shares stories of the warmth and support of Austin community that helped turn backyard barbecues into a national pilgrimage site, the exhaustion and family strain that came with explosive success, the choice not to become "another cranky barbecue guy," President Obama’s unforgettable visit, and why supporting local restaurants matters more than ever.

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Episode Art Courtesy of Food & Wine /Paul Shirley
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With her shows Pati's Mexican Table and La Frontera and cookbooks Treasures of the Mexican Table and Mexican Today, Pati Jinich uses her exceptional empathy, political science background, and fearless curiosity to share the stories of the people living, creating, and cooking all around Mexico, and celebrate our shared humanity. For the Season 2 finale, Jinich joined Tinfoil Swans to talk about learning English by watching Sesame Street, her comfort with being laughed at, cooking nopalitos with eggs, and why now more than ever, she wants to celebrate the beauty of the U.S.-Mexico border.

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When Arjav Ezekiel arrived in America at age 12, the first person he met was Simpsons creator Matt Groening. Years later, after navigating life as an undocumented immigrant, he would help build Birdie's in Austin, Texas, into one of the country's most celebrated restaurants. He reflects on the burden of keeping secrets, the people he calls his "guardian angels," why making people feel seen has become the foundation of his work with his wife, Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel, and the color he believes hospitality can bring to people's lives.

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Episode Art Courtesy of Food & Wine /Eva Kolenko
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Over the course of three months, Cybille St. Aude-Tate and Omar Tate met, got married, and started the project of Honeysuckle. It's one of the most ambitious and personal restaurant projects in America right now, with a mission of preserving Black history, honoring Haitian and African American foodways, and creating a welcoming to all space where guests can encounter stories, traditions, and people who have too often been left out of the narrative. The James Beard-nominated duo talks about using art and music as an escape from a hostile world, food as both joy and survival, their responsibility to the ancestors, the luxurious whimsy of a gilded Big Mac, and the power of finding your person.

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Episode Art Courtesy of Food & Wine /Clay Williams
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Scott Conant wanted to be a plumber, but getting shut out of a vocational school class set him down a different path. The 2004 Food & Wine Best New Chef and Food Network star reveals the exact dish that convinced him to devote himself to Italian cooking, the emotional fan encounters — from a grieving mother to a man struggling to stay alive — that reshaped how he thinks about television fame, how the best thing he's ever done in his professional life isn't in a restaurant, and why Alex Guarnaschelli calls him the "most human" of the Chopped judges.

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Episode Art Courtesy of Food & Wine /Ken Goodman
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