F&W’s editor in chief knows he can make a phone call that will change a chef’s life in an instant.
Hunter Lewis and the Road to the 2025 Best New Chefs
Welcome to Season 3, Episode 21 of Tinfoil Swans, a podcast from Food & Wine. New episodes drop every Tuesday. Listen and follow on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
On this episode
Food & Wine editor in chief Hunter Lewis shares the untold story behind the magazine’s iconic Best New Chefs list and reveals the 2025 class. From the intense debates that shape each year’s Best New Chefs decisions to the lessons he’s carried from his days as a three-sport “prep jock,” line cook, and local journalist, Lewis reflects on the long, strange trip that led him to the helm of Food & Wine. Along the way, he opens up about why he still calls himself a “glorified home cook,” his upcoming cookbook, his brush with Anthony Bourdain, how he approaches leadership, and the future he sees for restaurants in America.
Related: Every Food & Wine Best New Chef Ever, Since 1988
Meet our guest
Hunter Lewis has been the editor in chief of Food & Wine since 2017, leading a team that has earned multiple James Beard and IACP Awards and a National Magazine Award from the American Society of Magazine Editors. Prior to that he was the editor in chief of Cooking Light, executive editor of Southern Living, food editor of Bon Appétit, and kitchen director of Saveur. Lewis cooked under chef Jonathan Waxman in Sonoma County, California, and as a line cook at Barbuto in New York City. A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he was also a reporter for The Herald-Sun in Durham, North Carolina. You can find him in his home kitchens in Birmingham, Alabama, and New York City cooking for his friends and family, on Instagram @notesfromacook, and as a guest judge on Bravo’s Top Chef. His upcoming cookbook, Just Play the Hits, will be be published by Union Square & Co.
Related: How Three Decades of Food & Wine Best New Chefs Shaped Dining in America
Meet our host
Kat Kinsman is the executive features editor at Food & Wine, author of Hi, Anxiety: Life With a Bad Case of Nerves, host of Food & Wine’s Gold Signal Award-winning podcast Tinfoil Swans (currently a finalist in the Folio Awards), and founder of Chefs With Issues. Previously, she was the senior food & drinks editor at Extra Crispy, editor in chief and editor at large at Tasting Table, and the founding editor of CNN Eatocracy. She won a 2024 IACP Award for Narrative Food Writing With Recipes and a 2020 IACP Award for Personal Essay/Memoir, and has had work included in the 2020 and 2016 editions of The Best American Food Writing…