Erin Detroit Vesey is a queer cyclist and chef living in Los Angeles. They have worked all over the city and most recently owned their own queer centered cycling cafe, Detroit Vesey’s. They're also a seven time participant in AIDS/Lifecycle, an annual 545 mile bike ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles. I typically rode with Erin once a week into the hills and mountains of Southern California, and I recall sharing with Erin the earliest ideas for this podcast on such rides. They would swap back with the earliest ideas for Detroit Vesey’s an inclusive space that could become a landmark for the L.A. cycling community. Community is something hard to find in a city as sprawling as Los Angeles. Yet all of the makings for it are there. People like Erin who refuse to drive a car in favor of riding a bike, make it so.

Giovanna Musumeci is a master pastry chef and dessert empress of the highest magnitude. She is the multi-generational owner of Pasticceria Santo Musumeci a pastry and gelato shop that is arguably the heart center of Randazzo, Sicily - a small town nestled in the foothills of Mount Etna, the tallest active stratovolcano in Europe.

Arnold Byun has always been interested in building the infrastructure surrounding the experience of food and culture via his impeccable taste, drive and refusal to compromise. His resume includes fine dining juggernauts 11 Madison Park and Atomix, creating his own pop up takeaway NAEMO in LA, and is currently the founder of Maum Market, a marketplace celebrating Korean-American makers and business owners.

Marti Buckley is an American writer, chef, and cultural expert hailing from Alabama, who has lived in Basque Country since 2010. She's the author of the acclaimed cookbooks 'Basque Country' and 'The Book of Pintxos,' each detailing and archiving the immense cultural gastronomic significance of Euskadi.

Alex Garcia and Elvia Huerta own and operate 'Evil Cooks' a death metal themed pop up experience based in Los Angeles. They describe it as “new-traditional Mexican food with an evil twist." With shades of fine dining on the streets. Their “HELL MENU” contains items such as “the Prince of Darkness burrito”, “chilla(kill)es torta”, the McSatan bacon cheeseburger taco. They even offer a reservations-only Kamikaze prix fixe menu cementing their boundless creativity in showing you how exciting better tasting food can be.

Stacey Mei Yan Fong is a home baker living in Brooklyn, NY. She was born in Singapore, lived in Indonesia, grew up in Hong Kong, and moved to the States to pursue a degree from the Savannah College of Art and Design. She spent a decade designing in the fashion industry, and during that time she launched her "50 Pies, 50 States" project which led to her slinging pies at Four and Twenty Blackbirds Pie Shop. Now, her pies have been featured by CBS Sunday Morning, NPR, Eater, and beyond.

After working in fashion and as the editor for a major food journalism outlet, Katherine opened BIG NIGHT - a New York-based brick and mortar selling everything you need for an epic dinner party - food, drink, kitchenware, glassware, etc. Everything is brilliantly curated from talented makers from across the world.

Jacqueline Blanchard is a 10th generation Cajun from Bayou Lafourche in Southeast Louisiana’s Assumption Parish. Her family fled Nova Scotia during the Acadian exile and settled into the Lafourche Valley in the late 1700’s as farmers, and they’ve been there ever since. Cooking has always been in the fabric of her family - taking part in traditions such as crawfish boils in the Spring and the old Cajun boucheries each fall. Her star studded resume' includes working alongside the best of the best at Benu, Bouchon, and Blue Hill at Stone Barns, all while intensely traveling across Asia whenever her schedule allowed. In 2015, she moved back home to New Orleans to open Coutelier, a highly curated knife shop focusing on hand forged Japanese cutlery - a business decision she felt was based on the needs of her peers and fellow cooking community of South Louisiana. She and her business partner travel annually to Japan, sourcing the tools of this ancient craft they have come to foster an immense respect and understanding towards. Their goal is to support and promote the unrivaled focus of the multi-generation craftsmanship executed by Japanese blacksmiths who hand forge professional cutlery and tools for their culinary community. Her love for Japanese culture and cuisine and technique has deepened immensely along the way, and she will be opening her first restaurant, Sukeban in Spring of 2022.

Pete Treiber Jr. has always wanted to work in a creative field — he just didn't know it would happen so literally. He started as a camp counselor, granola maker, photo and video production assistant, and more before digging into the farm with his Pop, and he brings both his clever resourcefulness and his playful perspective to every bulb of garlic he grows. He's an artist and farmer who left the hustle and bustle of Brooklyn, New York behind to build an organic produce farm from the ground up with his father, Peter Treiber Sr. on the North Fork of Long Island. After eight years of hard work, he's turned Treiber Farms into a successful enterprise and while keeping everything organic, like farming should be. And while he is certainly not the first person to leave a large city to become a farmer, he's the only example I know of who intertwines his love of visual art within his farming practices. Take a walk with Pete around the farm, and he'll regale you with stories of previous events hosted for art exhibits, artist-in-residence programs, and just good times in general. A sculptor himself. He also seems to be cultivating his own artistic vision to deepen his practices of feeding and nurturing others in a way that is distinctly human. He's a seeker, a self actualizer, a lightening rod of community, and a unique individual who I'm proud to call a friend.

Marian Cooper Cairns is a food stylist and recipe developer based in Los Angeles with 20 years of experience in the food industry. Originally from Birmingham, Alabama, she still sports a southern accent and is known for making really bad food puns on social media and can make you a darn great buttermilk biscuit, just ask. When she is not poking at food with tweezers she loves to talk about all things Pimento Chz Club, her small batch pimento cheese company. Her passion for food styling and recipe development serves clients for ad campaigns, product packaging, cookbooks, and commercials.