The 11 Most-Beloved ‘Tinfoil Swans’ Podcast Episodes of 2025

11. Regina King and the Wine that Stops Time

You recognize Regina King from her many years of extraordinary performances — from her teenage roles on the sitcom 227 and the film Friday to Watchmen, The Leftovers, The Boondocks, If Beale Road May Speak, and so many extra. However a dialog on the Meals & Wine Traditional in Aspen confirmed a distinct facet of the Oscar-winning actress: the daughter, the sister, the mom, the cook dinner, the traveler, the dreamer, and now the wine entrepreneur.

She revealed how as a child, she and her sister would placed on performances, reciting poems and doing one-act performs. She talked about her grandmother’s pound cake recipe she has framed on her wall, the extraordinary method her mother cooks greens, and the liberty she discovered touring solo in France. And he or she opened up about her son Ian, and his distinctive expertise for locating magnificence in essentially the most mundane issues — bringing new life to forgotten objects, going barefoot and in shorts within the winter, and discovering a lot pleasure in a glass of funky wine. 

10. Tristen Epps and the Scrambled Egg Revelation

Rising up in a army household, Tristen Epps moved round lots. However irrespective of the place he occurred to be residing, Friday nights had been sacred. These had been the nights he obtained to decorate up, go to a restaurant, not order from a children menu, and really feel like he was attending to know the place he was residing — for now. His entire world at residence modified the day his mother taught him to scramble an egg. He was mesmerized by the alchemy — that one easy ingredient may rework into so many issues.

It is that marvel and curiosity that remodeled him into the chief, visionary, and High Chef winner he’s at present. He joined Tinfoil Swans on the Meals & Wine Traditional in Aspen to speak about his mission to “un-colonize colonized meals,” the liberty he felt when he realized he may cook dinner in Air Jordans, why it is necessary to him to have fun oxtails with Michelin-level finesse, and his perception that cooking has the ability to right historical past.

9. Antoni Porowski and the Proper Time to Depart a Get together

You in all probability know Antoni Porowski because the meals and beverage professional on Queer Eye or his profoundly shifting biography-meets-history-meets-food-and an entire lot of emotions Nat Geo docuseries No Style Like Dwelling. Onstage on the 2025 Meals & Wine Traditional in Aspen, he revealed a lot extra of himself. He shared his hard-won perception on vulnerability, self-care, psychological well being, and the quiet energy of realizing when it’s time to depart a celebration. He obtained deep about what it means to essentially be your self in public, how meals can anchor reminiscence, his actually particular food-centric fears, the one merchandise he insists on in his rider, and even shed a few tears — together with loads of laughs.

8. Karen Akunowicz and the Praise That Modified Her Life

25 years in the past, James Beard Award-winning chef and High Chef alum Karen Akunowicz acquired a praise from a Meals & Wine Greatest New Chef that modified her total profession path. On this episode, she opened up about her journey from musical theater child and laborious working diner waitress to acclaimed restaurateur, the ability of embracing her queer identification, the heartbreak of a dropped dessert, her enduring love of Houston’s, and the significance of visibility for the following technology.

7. Ayesha Curry and the 5 Night time a Week Pineapple Fried Rice

2025 Foo & Wine Sport Changer Ayesha Curry is such a shock of a human being. On paper, it is pure to marvel how somebody might be an actress, cookbook creator, restaurateur, founding father of a skincare line and way of life model, winemaker, and co-creator of a basis that helps children get fed in numerous methods. However as quickly as she begins speaking, it is easy to see that she’s simply at all times been this fashion.

Reside onstage on the 2025 Meals & Wine Traditional in Aspen, Curry rewound the sport tape to her childhood in a household the place her Jamaican-born mother would make meals large enough to feed the entire neighborhood; her transfer to Los Angeles as a young person the place she had to determine how you can feed herself; her early days as a blogger; and the Meals Community star who embraced her with open arms. She additionally opened up concerning the important work she and her husband Stephen Curry’s basis Eat.Be taught.Play. does for teenagers in Oakland, discovering her place within the wine world, and the type of outdated particular person she needs to be.

6. Tavel Bristol-Joseph and the Yard Coal Pot

From three-mile walks to highschool in Guyana and “punishment baking” along with his aunt to turning into the primary pastry chef named a F&W Greatest New Chef, Tavel Bristol-Joseph has by no means adopted the anticipated path. On this episode, he shared the chaos and music of touchdown in Brooklyn as a young person, the quiet ritual he retains every birthday to honor his late father, and why he believes cooking is simply the vessel for one thing a lot greater.

5. Paola Velez and the Man Fieri FaceTime

From fixing radios and writing slam poetry as a child within the Bronx, to turning into some of the celebrated pastry cooks and neighborhood builders of her technology, 2021 F&W Greatest New Chef Paola Velez has by no means adopted the anticipated path. Alongside the best way, she’s embraced subcultures that gave her belonging, constructed areas the place strangers join over shaved ice and cocktails, and redefined what it means to be a chef on social media, in eating places, and within the wider world. On this dialog, she shared the braveness it takes to decide on pleasure within the face of battle, the humility behind turning down a serious accolade, and the celeb chef who made a video for her mother.

4. Dana Cowin, Hunter Lewis, the Rose, and the Thorn

Meals & Wine’s longest-serving editors in chief, Dana Cowin and Hunter Lewis, invited us right into a revealing dialog concerning the historical past and impression of the Greatest New Cooks accolade because it began in 1988. From the early days of scouting expertise with notebooks and stringers to at present’s rigorous course of formed by mentorship, neighborhood, and tradition, they shared behind-the-scenes tales, heated debates, and the unforgettable moments which have outlined this system — and American eating — for almost 4 many years. Plus, are you able to beat them in a chef trivia quiz? 

3. Bryan Caswell and the Possum Cops

After a hiatus from the business, 2009 F&W Greatest New Chef and Houston icon Bryan Caswell is prepared for his subsequent chapter. He opened up about his childhood desires of being a sport warden, single fatherhood, second possibilities, and his comeback along with his new restaurant Latuli — plus the “redemption lies tomorrow” mindset reshaping his kitchen, and the time he sneaked into Jean-Georges Vongerichten‘s kitchen and got here out with a job.

2. June Rodil and the Cove Beneath the Comforter

On the 2025 Meals & Wine Traditional in Aspen, Houston-based sommelier and restaurateur June Rodil shared her journey from an immigrant child decoding American tradition via Babysitters Membership books to a bar and restaurant visionary redefining what it means to serve with empathy. She opened up about becoming in, what Waffle Home and Olive Backyard taught her about hospitality, and the refuge she finds beneath her comforter when the world will get too loud.

1. Padma Lakshmi and the Cathartic Scream

Padma Lakshmi might be in sizzling water proper now — not metaphorically however bodily. The bestselling creator, award-winning TV host and producer, fledgling comic, and activist has a squillion totally different jobs to do all through the course of a day, and her favourite place to get a few of that work carried out is from the tub.

She was variety sufficient to towel off and are available onstage on the 2025 Meals & Wine Traditional in Aspen to speak about what comes subsequent after High Chef and Style the Nation — together with a large new CBS present that she’s constructing from the bottom up, full with a million-dollar prize, her beautiful new e book Padma’s All-American, how comedy is like intercourse with out touching, why she’s constructing what she calls an “outdated broads community,” and the significance of embracing your rage.