Adrienne Cheatham: From Top Chef to Top Food Podcaster

Some people spend their entire careers supporting others before they finally step into the light themselves. Adrienne Cheatham spent eight years at Le Bernardin, years supporting Marcus Samuelsson at Red Rooster and Street Bird, and a lifetime believing she was meant to be the operational person behind the scenes. And then a call to Top Chef and a family gumbo challenge changed everything.Adrienne Cheatham is a Michelin-starred chef, James Beard Media Award nominated cookbook author, Food Network personality, and co-host of The Chef's Cut podcast alongside Top Chef co-finalist Joe Flamm. And now she is launching something brand new: Eating History, a deep-dive food history podcast she is co-hosting with her husband Stephen Bailey, with its first season dedicated entirely to the origins and history of pizza.In this episode, host Sarah Perkins sits down with Adrienne for one of the most layered and beautiful conversations The Perfect Bite has had yet. From a childhood of chaotic, massive family gatherings with a mom from a family of twelve and a dad from a family of fourteen, to cooking Christmas cookies in batches for a solid week because they were too broke for gifts, to faxing her resume to Charlie Trotter's kitchen and ending up at Le Bernardin instead, to finally finding her voice through her family's Southern food heritage on Top Chef and pouring all of it into her cookbook Sunday Best.This is a conversation about what happens when someone who spent their whole career making other people shine finally gives themselves permission to be the person out front. And about what a marinara pizza and a husband who nerds out about history on his morning walks can do to change the entire direction of your life.In this episode, we cover:Growing up in a big, chaotic Chicago family where food was always a massive, joyful productionHer mom's famous "restaurant night" where leftovers became a candlelit dining experienceWhy her parents refused to let her go straight to culinary school and what journalism and business classes taught her insteadGetting her internship at Le Bernardin by faxing, mailing, and physically showing up with her resume for three weeksEight years at Le Bernardin, becoming exec sous chef, and copy editing Eric Ripert's cookbook Why she stayed past the one-year anniversary that most cooks treated as their exit dateLeaving Le Bernardin after a toxic kitchen situation and being recruited by Marcus SamuelssonBeing pushed out front by Marcus before she was ready: The New York Times documentary, meeting Gail Simmons, the De Gustibus demoTop Chef: Going in without watching the show and not knowing who she was as a chef yetThe gumbo challenge that changed everything: Winning with her mom's recipe and discovering the Sunday Best conceptThe real story of Southern fried chicken and why it was only made a few times a yearSunday Best: Writing the cookbook to honor her family's history, her grandfather, her mom, her mixed heritageThe James Beard Media Award nomination and what it meant to have her family's stories recognizedThe Chef's Cut podcast: Why Joe Flamm was always the obvious co-host choiceEating History: Co-founding a podcast production company with her husband Stephen and deep diving into the history of pizzaBarbecue Brawl on Food Network: Her first long-term showWhat it felt like to realize she is now actually a founderAdvice for founders: Perfect is the enemy of progress, just get startedFind Adrienne:Instagram: @chefadriennecheatham, @chefscutpod, @eatinghistorypodThe Chef's Cut: Available on Apple, Spotify, and YouTubeEating History: Available on Apple, Spotify, and YouTubeSunday Best cookbook: Available wherever books are soldBarbecue Brawl: Airing on Food Network nowSubscribe to The Perfect Bite podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen! Want to watch the entire episode? Head here to our YouTube!You can follow us on social media @perfectbitepod and sign up for our newsletter!