Chef's PSA

About Chef Gabe Erales Gabe Erales is a James Beard Award semifinalist and one of the most recognized voices in modern Mexican fine dining. He is the chef and owner of Bacalar in Austin, Texas, a restaurant rooted in the traditional cooking of the Yucatan Peninsula, and Ometeo in Washington, D.C. His cooking is grounded […]

Episode Overview In this solo episode, André Natera identifies ten specific habits that quietly hold back culinary careers, often without the cook even realizing it is happening. Drawing on 27 years of experience hiring, developing, and evaluating kitchen professionals, he breaks down the behavioral patterns that consistently separate the people who advance from those who

About Chef Lorin Peters Lorin Peters is an Austin, Texas native, University of Texas alumna, and the founder of Cookie Rich, an Austin-based cookie company she launched in 2020. She built a decade-long career as a savory chef that included a position as chef de partie at the three Michelin-starred French Laundry in Yountville, California

Episode Overview In this solo episode, André Natera takes a different angle on kitchen leadership by applying universal laws and strategic frameworks to culinary operations. He walks through principles like Murphy’s Law, Parkinson’s Law, and the Pareto Principle and explains what each one looks like inside a professional kitchen, how they shape the decisions chefs

About Chef Aaron Bludorn Aaron Bludorn is a Houston-based chef and restaurateur who built his career in New York before relocating to Texas to open his own group. He spent nearly a decade at Cafe Boulud in Manhattan, rising to Executive Chef under Daniel Boulud, where he earned a James Beard Award semifinalist nomination for

Episode Overview In this solo episode, André Natera explores one of the quieter career killers in the culinary industry: missed opportunities. He shares a pivotal personal story about a job opportunity he did not seize and what the experience taught him about the cost of staying silent about your ambitions. Most cooks and chefs assume

Go to my New Substack Here: https://chefspsa.substack.com/ In this episode of Chef’s PSA podcast, host André Natera invites pastry chef Casey Doody for an in-depth conversation about her journey in becoming a celebrated pastry chef, her experiences working in high-end kitchens across New York, Dallas, and Chicago, and the evolution of her career from hotels

Episode Overview In this solo episode, André Natera takes on a deceptively simple question that the culinary industry rarely examines seriously: what actually makes food good? He works through the answer from multiple angles, drawing on technique, memory, context, and the subjective nature of taste to build a picture of what chefs mean when they

Episode Overview In this solo episode, André Natera addresses one of the most universally experienced and least openly discussed realities of professional kitchen life: the bad service day. Every chef has them. What separates the operators who recover well from those who spiral is not talent. It is how they respond in the moment, how

Episode Overview In this solo episode, André Natera makes the case for respecting and actively honoring the generations of chefs who built the craft before us. The culinary industry has a tendency to celebrate innovation and novelty while dismissing or ignoring the foundational work of older chefs and cooks who developed the techniques, standards, and