Transcript:

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Welcome to Hospitality On The Rise, the podcast about the people shaping the hospitality industry and their journeys. I'm your host, Alice Cheng, Founder and CEO of Culinary Agents, hospitality's go-to hiring platform. And I'm here to give you your dose of virtual mentorship.

Here, we'll be sharing the stories, lessons learned, and advice from hospitality leaders who've carved out their own path to success. After all, this industry is where many get their start and go on to do incredible things.

Whether you're a pro, starting out, or just love the hustle, this podcast highlights what makes hospitality extraordinary, the people.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

I'm so excited to have Hunter Lewis here with us today. Hunter is the Editor in Chief of Food & Wine Magazine. Some of you might have heard of it before. He's also working on a new cookbook that will be out next year. So hopefully we'll hear a little bit of tidbits, whatever he can share with us on that. Hunter, thank you for joining us today.

I'm always extra excited to have folks who are in the business of literally writing and talking about people in the industry and highlighting them because I get to flip the script back to you. So, Hunter, how did you get into the hospitality industry?

GUEST: HUNTER LEWIS

So, it wasn't hospitality at first. It was a restaurant kitchen. My first restaurant job was at Jersey Mike's when I was 18. And I really got bit by the bug. I loved the camaraderie and the adrenaline and just working with food. And that really was my gateway. And then hospitality writ large really came years later when I started working in restaurants in New York City and began to better understand the full scope of what made a restaurant home.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Nice. There's something about making sandwiches, right? And Gavin Kaysen’s first job was at a Subway, so we'll have to see if there's a pattern there. Now, when you were kind of early on and dabbling in this, did you think that you were going to go the actual restaurant route, or were you always really focused on something adjacent or involved with it?

GUEST: HUNTER LEWIS 

Yeah, I was an athlete in college, played lacrosse at UNC as a walk-on, and working in restaurants seemed like a means to an end. You know, I was trying to make money. I was trying to use it to go on these epic road trips across country, and it wasn't until later that I really realized that, okay, hey, this journalism thing is something I want to do, but I also want to pursue work in restaurants too. Once I figured that out and realized that there was a path where I could do both, that's really where it came together for me.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, and I would say over the past 10, 15 years or so, not only has the industry changed so dramatically, but media has also changed pretty dramatically. And probably career paths back then weren't as obvious, I should say, whereas now you can point to people, you can point to people like you that said you basically married these two things and brought them together to have a career. 

For those who are kind of starting out in their career nowadays, and they're looking at how things have evolved and and they feel like they love the industry, but they love the media side of it. Do you see a clear entry path? What's a suggestion you might have for them?

GUEST: HUNTER LEWIS 

There's no linear path in either hospitality or media, and I think that's kind of the beauty of it. You make that path, you forge that path. I mean, first, of course you've gotta open the door, you've gotta get a foot in the door. You've gotta go work for somebody who you respect, work for an organization where there's an actual tangible culture that you can learn from. But you've gotta get that foot in the door on either side. For me, it was a foot in the door at a digital website covering sports while I was also working in restaurants, and that was kind of my thing. Weekends I was covering sports and I was covering the copy, and then weekdays I was a prep cook in North Carolina, and both of those jobs, all three of those jobs really were my entry point in. And that helped me develop a voice that helped me figure out what I want to do next. 

And so I think when it comes to getting started, understand that every job you take, every boss you have, that's going to be a learning experience. And that's going to be your step ladder up to the next thing and the next thing. And we talk a lot about networking. We don't talk enough about networking within your current job and networking with your past employers. Every job is an opportunity to open up a whole new network of contacts and people and the hospitality space, especially if you've got all these people coming into your restaurant, all these people that you're interacting with on a daily basis, those are folks that you can tap into down the road too.

HOST: ALICE CHENG 

Yeah, it's truly one of those industries where you get to be kind of in the intersection of so many different types of personalities–the guests that are coming in and dining, you get to make them have a wonderful experience, and then the people that you work with, right? You said you were in sports, and working in a kitchen or working in a restaurant is a team sport, basically, people coming together for a successful service. So that probably translated pretty well.

GUEST: HUNTER LEWIS

Yep. It's the ultimate parallel to me. I can't think of anything more similar to the teamwork required to have a great night of service or to have a great practice or game. I mean, it's very much the same thing. There's clear lines of leadership, and there's a coach and there's a team captain. But if everybody's not rowing in the same direction that night, the service is not going to go well. And I think that when you've got prima donnas, you've got divas, and you've got people who are hogging the ball, not sharing the ball, it's the same thing. If you've got a line cook or a server or somebody who's not looking out for everybody else, it's not going to go well.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, and not to draw out this whole sports thing, because, you know, Super Bowl just happened this past weekend, but now more than ever, also taking care of yourself, right? Making sure if you're in a leadership position or you're hoping to become one, this industry, it's the long game. Take care of yourself. There's more focus and talk, quite frankly, about what it takes to build a career in this industry and how that toll it takes on your body and both mental and physical.

GUEST: HUNTER LEWIS 

Well, we have so many more friends in the industry now, I know you do too, of people who are loud and proud about taking care of themselves. You know, it used to be people were beating their chest about how late they stayed up and how many days in a row they worked. And that's obviously not sustainable. We know that. So I love folks like Gregory Gourdet, who's celebrating his own personal health journey, and exercise is a big part of that mental health too. So yeah, super important.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah. So I'm going to take it back a little bit because I don't want to jump over these fun years of you going to New York City here. Take us back–you worked in the kitchen in the city at Barbuto, right?

GUEST: HUNTER LEWIS

I did. My first restaurant job in New York City was at Barbuto as a line cook, and Jon Waxman took me under his wing and really opened up that kitchen door for me in a big way. And that was my education, that was my proving ground, that's where I met lifelong friends. It's where I met my eventual wife, Jen Davidson, who ended up running the restaurant for 15 years. Pro tip for hospitality, you should marry a general manager. They make fantastic spouses, and they can run the hell out of your household too. So she's like the ultimate GM. 

Yeah, so Barbuto was… That was everything for me, and it's still home. It's the place where my kids want to go eat when they come to the city. It's a place where we gather. I'm going to have a business lunch there on Thursday. So still super important to me.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, and while you were there, and you have a background, and you studied journalism and communications, so there's logic most likely in you marrying those things as you were talking about before and building a career for yourself. Did it ever enter your mind that you're like, “Oh, I want to do this. I want to work in a kitchen for the long run”?

GUEST: HUNTER LEWIS

I thought I was coming in for a year, and I was gonna give a year to Barbuto and either go work for the Times and be the restaurant critic. I'm gonna talk about hubris. Or I thought I was gonna write some great nonfiction book about restaurant life. And that's when Bill Buford's book Heat came out. And I read it in a couple days, and I just realized, like, “I am not good enough to do this. I need to stick with the restaurant game for a while. I need to really sharpen my skills here.”

And I realized on the first day of working in the restaurant that I didn't want to be a critic. I didn't want to have any kind of negative impact on the livelihoods of all the people I was working with, all of the porters and the dishwashers and the prep cooks and the barbacks and the servers and the hosts. And all the people that supported it too in terms of the farmers and the producers and the wine folks. It's a whole ecosystem, and I didn't want to have that kind of power or negative impact on a business like that. So that was a great lesson. Day one of working at Barbuto, of what I didn't want to do. And then Bill Buford and his freakish talents at reporting and writing also taught me I wasn't ready to write that kind of nonfiction book either.

HOST: ALICE CHENG 

Yeah, well, I mean, sometimes knowing what you don't want to do is actually the best step forward towards what you do want to do. Oftentimes, especially if people are starting out their career and you ask them, “Well, what do you want to do?” They may have hopes and dreams and long-term goals, but many people struggle with, “I don't really know,” right? And that's great. That's another great thing that this industry is, it kind of accepts everyone from all walks of life. It could be absolutely a career path. It could also be your side hustle as you're pursuing other things, right? But asking yourself those hard questions and realizing, “Yeah, I don't want to do this” for whatever reason is part of the process, an important part of the process.

GUEST: HUNTER LEWIS

Yeah, and I think the negative side of things is a great teaching tool. You learn what you don't want to do and maybe what path you're not gonna take next, but you also learn how to manage better and how to show up better when you have bad bosses. You know, you get a shitty boss, you realize very quickly you don't want to be like that person. You analyze what they're doing, what they're doing wrong, and how they're not motivating you. And then once you can step into those shoes in a different way, you can take that as a learning lesson and as fuel. And rightly or wrongly, I really have learned a lot by trying not to model some of the folks that I've come across in my path.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, well, I mean, that's also the process of learning, right? 

GUEST: HUNTER LEWIS

Sure.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

I guess getting exposed to all different types of leaderships, working for different restaurants or for different businesses with different people. And then as you progress in your career, you kind of collect these positive experiences and not so positive experiences and figure out for yourself what kind of leader do you want to be, right? How did you feel when you were under certain situations that were not so great and how can you avoid that, right?

And we see–I'm sure you see this as well–we see this in a lot of the new leaders or just leaders that are evolving, and they're thinking about how things can and should be done now versus how they were done 10, 15, 20 years ago, right? Things have changed, and there's generational diversity in this industry. You're running restaurants or businesses that have 20 year olds and people that have been in the industry for 30+ years, and everyone has to come together and work as a team. Like a sports team, no I'm kidding, I'm over that one. 

After you were working at Barbuto and you're like, “Okay, I'm probably not gonna pursue a lifelong career in cooking professionally," did you start looking at where you wanted to go, where you wanted to work after you were like, “I'm not gonna be a critic either”?

GUEST: HUNTER LEWIS 

Yeah, but the whole point of my New York experiment of moving to New York, getting a restaurant job was to get into food media. And I moved out to California for a year to help Jon Waxman open up a restaurant in Sonoma County. And that's when I actually really, really fell in love with the work. That's when it was the first time I really felt like I was at a crossroads of am I gonna actually train to become a chef and do this thing for real? Or am I going to fulfill the dream I had when I moved to New York a couple years before and try to get my break in media? And I felt like I owed it to myself to move back to New York, to try to get into magazines or newspapers after having left a newspaper job at a mid-sized daily in North Carolina several years before that. 

So that's what I did. I moved back to New York. I got my foot in the door at SAVEUR running the test kitchen. And I'm really glad I gave that a shot because I think I would have been happy staying in restaurants, but being able to climb the ladder through the test kitchen and really thinking about going from SAVEUR to Bon Appétit to several other brands, it gave me a great opportunity to move up quickly and to learn on the fly in a way I don't think I would have in restaurant kitchens. Because I'll be honest, I was a pretty good line cook, but I don't think I would be winning any Best New Chef awards.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

And I think what's great now, to your point earlier about why you didn't want to go down the critic route, now on the flip side, you have the responsibility–and you all do it really well–of highlighting, identifying people and elevating them across your platform, which is wonderful. And I think everything is, as we evangelize careers in this industry and helping people understand and inspire them by sharing stories such as yourself, just as important, or I would say even more important because you're getting butts in seats differently. But identifying future leaders, highlighting the leaders now, and elevating the overall industry, that's a lot of pressure.

GUEST: HUNTER LEWIS

It's a lot of pressure, but it's beautiful and it's fun and you're honoring people's excellence and how dynamic they are, and you're honoring their talents. That doesn't feel like a lot of pressure. Of course, you want to get it right. You want to honor people doing things the right way. But ultimately, once you're honoring these folks for something they have earned and sharing this platform from Food & Wine with them, then you're also building relationships. 

We talk a lot about it's not just about an award. It's not just about some kind of title. It's about advocacy and supporting these folks who are now in our ecosystem. And for Best New Chefs, that's about mentorship and making sure that folks are getting that mentorship when they get the award, so they understand how to navigate a very different year ahead than the year in their rear view. Once you get named a Food & Wine Best New Chef, your career has changed. People are coming to you with new kinds of opportunities that maybe you didn't have before. 

So it's not just, “Hey, here's your award, we'll see you later.” It's, “Hey, here's this award. We want to support you. Here's how you can tap in. And here are the meaningful moments throughout the next couple years where you can also tap in and participate.” It really, now more than ever, as I've done this now for about nine years, it's, like everything else, is about relationships. These are the folks who are in your orbit. These are the folks who are in the Food & Wine ecosystem. 

We're doing more events than we ever have before. There's more opportunities to participate, more opportunities to plug a chef in with maybe a marketing partner for some kind of sponsorship opportunity. And so there's more ways to connect the dots of opportunity with these Best New Chefs and other folks that win our accolades.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, absolutely. With your involvement also in seeing growing leaders across many different, well, first of all, across the United States and probably exposed to others as well, do you see any common threads in the folks that you're meeting, the ones that really stand out? And even if they don't make it to Best New Chef, you're exposed to so many.

GUEST: HUNTER LEWIS

I mean, I don't want to reduce it down to the simplest atom, but there's a common thread of kindness. There's a common thread of empathy. There's a common thread of looking out for other people. And I think that's what makes these Best New Chefs such strong leaders. There's also a hunger and a desire to be different, to step out onto the edge and to push a particular kind of cuisine forward, to take chances, to cook something or cook a style of cuisine through ingredient-sourcing and through techniques and through management in the kitchen that maybe doesn't exist anywhere else. Or it's a more refined version of what we've seen somewhere else. These people are path-breakers. So there is an overall unified common theme, and that's that empathy I mentioned. But there's also this desire to really, and almost this allergy to doing the same thing that anybody else is doing. And that's really that sort of good friction where you find the Best New Chefs.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, well and you're also a regular as a judge on Top Chef. So not just within your own realm, you get exposed to this all. And that is a competition, per se. But leaders, as we've seen as well, they have this internal kind of drive to also be better and be competitive with themselves as well. So I would agree that is a common thing as well as empathy in hospitality, of course.

GUEST: HUNTER LEWIS

You know, what’s interesting about Top Chef is that if you think about the arc of the show and all of these seasons and the quality of humans that typically win, you've got some very key people over the past two decades who have become leaders in this industry. And the show itself, it's fascinating. I mean, it's very well-produced. There's a great team behind the scenes that do it.

And once I realized that my job at the judge's table as a guest judge was to give the same kind of constructive feedback I give in a test kitchen, that's when it really opened up for me. It's like, okay, what was your aim here? What does it taste like? And then if I've got constructive feedback, how do you frame that in a way where this is how you could take it to the next level, here's how you could make it better? And it sounds simple and reductive, but that's really what sort of unlocked things for me for Top Chef and made me more excited to come back.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Obviously it's been on also for many, many years and it's evolved itself. Did you think you would be on that one day? I mean,the media has evolved.

GUEST: HUNTER LEWIS 

No, no. I remember when James Oseland, my editor-in-chief at SAVEUR, left the office to go and film in LA. I think it was maybe the first or second season. And he was editing remotely in between shoots in LA. And I remember that like it was yesterday. And then I remember when Jonathan Waxman went on the first Top Chef Masters. After that season aired was when I really realized the power of that show because business at Barbuto, it got really busy. People were watching, and fans of his would come and eat. That's when I first really realized, okay, there's something here.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, and it's still there. It still continues.

So speaking of mentorship and everything, because that's something that is so incredibly important, especially in this industry. Can you think back to some of the mentors that you've had along the way? Because it can also be kind of lonely. Once you reach leadership, it changes a little bit. And most leaders will focus on, “OK, who am I mentoring now? I have a responsibility to look out for others and to teach.” But sometimes they forget about themselves.

Can you think of a mentor you've had or someone perhaps that you're still actively talking to and a piece of advice that they gave to you as you were going through your career?

GUEST: HUNTER LEWIS

I'll be very honest with you, I don't have a mentor currently. I really need one. So, Dorothy Kalins, Ruth Reichl, if you guys are out there, mind if I give you a ring? No, it's time for me to reach out to a new mentor. Not a mentor, but I think one of the best pieces of advice I ever got from my grandmother–Pat Erickson, who was the consummate host and the best dinner party guest, the most empathetic restaurant customer–she pulled me aside one day and she said, “Your job when you're at a dinner party, your job when you're in a room, your job when you're at an event is to find the person who's the least comfortable in that room and go start a conversation with them, make them feel good.” And I think, to me, that's the ultimate hospitality. I mean, isn't that what we want to do, is we want to make people feel good and feel warm and feel included and invited? And it was such great advice. And I think about it all the time.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, wise woman. So as we're thinking about, I mean, you're involved in a lot of different projects. What are some of the things that keep you inspired?

GUEST: HUNTER LEWIS

I find inspiration outside of hospitality and outside of media. I think because we're just so saturated day to day and on our screens all the time. I find inspiration in nature. Hiking. I find inspiration exercising and doing something good for my body. That's really where I find it. It's not about tuning out or turning off work. It's more about putting myself in a different environment. And that's really where my ideas begin to flow.

I also found inspiration where I might be dog-tired and I'm traveling and I'm going to a second city within a week, and I sit down at a restaurant like Chubby Fish in Charleston, South Carolina. And I just have a glass of wine and a couple of bites, and I'm like, “Oh shit, this is why I got into this business.” It's just a simple reminder of like, hey, you wake up, you're really lucky, you're really fortunate. Stop feeling sorry for yourself about all this work you're doing and like, this is it, this is why you got into this. You know, this feeling you're having right now with these incredible people and an amazing chef and restaurateur. So it's outside the industry, but it could be a simple thing like that caviar sandwich at Chubby Fish.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah. I mean, we hear that pretty often actually is sometimes people are like, you just remove yourself for a little bit. And it's a great reminder of why you got into it when you kind of reenter, if you will. But yes, Chubby Fish is great. And by the way, I do know Jen is always the dancer. She brings the dance party every time she walks into a room.

GUEST: HUNTER LEWIS 

That's right. Professional dance party starter.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Exactly. So what's next for you?

GUEST: HUNTER LEWIS

What's next? So work-wise, we just finished deliberations for the 2026 class of Best New Chefs. Very excited for you to meet them. They're gonna be unveiled in the fall, as we typically do. We are launching a new travel franchise called Global Tastemakers. Well, not new, but our next iteration of Global Tastemakers that's coming up.

And then events. We are planning Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, our 43rd. We're planning our third annual Food & Wine Classic in Charleston, and cooking up some more events down the road too. So that's really the name of the game right now when it comes to food media for us and where the opportunities are. It's keeping the magazine healthy, the website humming, shoot compelling video, but events and creating spaces for people to gather is where we're spending a lot of time and energy. 

And then on the personal front, I'm working on a cookbook. It's all of the weeknight recipes and all the hits that I cook for my family compiled together in one book. Manuscript's due in a month. Been recipe testing every night and really pressure testing these recipes and using a busy schedule and my own kids’ feedback and their palette and our time constraints of work and coaching lacrosse and these other things and using those really as filters. Are these recipes achievable for the home cook? Can these recipes help them level up their cooking game with the constraints of a busy life? 

So it's thrilling. It's thrilling to be doing something while I'm also running the shop of Food & Wine that really is personal. It's the first time I've ever worked on a personal project like this and really put myself forward in this way as this glorified home cook. So it's been a fun process.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

I love it. I mean, I've been following your content that you put out on Instagram and what you cook, and I didn't realize this cookbook was coming out until we chatted today. I don't know why you just blew my mind with–makes so much sense–if you're creating a cookbook that is supposed to be for busy people, to test run it with yourself and literally be busy while you're doing it. Right?

GUEST: HUNTER LEWIS 

Yeah, I mean, 6 p.m., you get home and the kids are hungry and they're doing their homework at the table and asking when dinner is going to be ready. That's a really good bullshit detector for a Wednesday night pasta recipe. Is this actually doable? Can I make that kale salad and do this carbonara at the same time? It's a great editor. The time constraints and then the pressures of two hungry kids asking when dinner is going to be ready.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, and probably little finger is going in and taste-testing while you're cooking as well.

GUEST: HUNTER LEWIS

You know, I don't mind that. I like that curiosity. I'm all for that. But they're gonna have to grate some cheese and pick some herbs and keep those hands busy while they're at it.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

I love it. Give everyone a task list, right? Well, on that note, we're gonna go to quickfire. What advice would you tell your younger self?

GUEST: HUNTER LEWIS 

Relax. Everything that you're doing right now is building the foundation for what you're gonna be doing down the road.

HOST: ALICE CHENG 

What's your advice for someone struggling in the industry?

GUEST: HUNTER LEWIS

Are you here for a reason other than to make money? And if you're here for a reason other than to make money or in addition to making money, what's your end goal? And just know that you're creating that foundation, that stepping stone for what's to come. If it was easy, everybody would do it.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

What's your advice for fellow hospitality leaders?

GUEST: HUNTER LEWIS

Look outside of the industry for inspiration. Let's make sure we're not staying in an echo chamber when it comes to principles and standards of leadership. There's so many good examples from other industries to emulate and to follow. And it's important to look for that inspiration from folks outside of your own industry.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Well, on that note, thank you so much, Hunter, for joining us today and for sharing your career advice and experiences. Can't wait to see what's next.

GUEST: HUNTER LEWIS

Thank you, Alice.

HOST: ALICE CHENG
Remember, success looks different for everyone in hospitality. No two paths are the same. If you have a leader or a topic you want to hear about, email [email protected].

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