Evan Hennessey is a James Beard award winner and a Top Chef champion. His restaurant in Dover, New Hampshire is Stages adjacent to the Living Room, with an ever-changing tasting menu. In 2026 he opened a second restaurant, Topolino, for a more casual experience.

Chef Evan Hennessey from New Hampshire Business Review

Chef Hennessey has much on his plate, so to speak. And one of the ways to recover and refresh is to leave it all behind and let nature replenish the soul. He has started a culinary travel company, Finding Thyme, to do just that with new projects surfacing to file away the rough edges of life.

There is much to explore. Listen. It’s on Tip of the Tongue.

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As we continue to think this year about 250 years since 1776 and we examine and celebrate our beginnings as a nation, how can we not talk about our communal table? Nancy Siegel has written a wonderful book about this very thing, called Political Appetites: The Power of Food in Revolutionary America. Whether it is Washington Cake or a huge Election Cake or the Boston Tea Party, food was an important part of forming a new and cohesive nation. Listen. It’s on Tip of the Tongue.

Nancy Siegel

Federal Cake

Election Cake

Discount code for preordering the book

Marielle Songy has written a new book about the coffee culture of the city of New Orleans. It is part history and part tasting and part exploring all of the ways of coffee.Coffee Culture New Orleans is a book that carries lots of weight, because coffee means so much to New Orleans. It gave the port a good foundation; it helped formed the culture of business as business happened over a cup of coffee; it helped developed the coffee business in the city that sent coffee around the developing country; and it has done so much more.

Federal Cake

Election Cake

Nancy Siegel

This QR code will give you a discount on a preorder of the book.

Marielle Songy has written a new book! Coffee Culture New Orleans. The book explores the history of coffee importation and drinking in the city of New Orleans, and the political and economic impact coffee has had on the city. She talks about the myths about coffee and chicory. And she explores how modern coffee drinking has changed. Listen! It’s on Tip of the Tongue.

Marielle Songy

Marielle has also been on our podcast about another beverage associated with New Orleans - the absinthe frappé. You can listen to that earlier podcast here.

Chef Alon Shaya has written a new book,  Memories of a Good Meal: Recipes of Resilience Inspired by Stories of World War II Survival, full of stories and recipes which represent the sometimes hidden and sometimes forgotten people from World War II.

Shaya is a James Beard award winning chef and the co-founder of Pomegranate Hospitality. He is the author of Shaya: An Odyssey of Food, My Journey Back to Israel

and his most recent book, written with June Hersh.

We talk about his new book and what it means. Listen. It’s on Tip of the Tongue.

As we celebrate all things about the founding of America this year, we can look at the contributions of Spain to the founding of this country. One of the places touched by Spain was New Orleans and the territory of the Louisiana Purchase. The influences from France are often noted when speaking of this history. Those influences from Spain are often less emphasized, but the amount of territory that was influenced by Spain was vast and varied. Listen, it’s on Tip of the Tongue.

We speak with Begoña Santos, President and CEO of the Queen Sofia Spanish Institute and Antonio Sanchez de Mora of the Archivo General de las Indias

Begoña Santos

Antonio Sanchez de Mora

Here is the ticket link to the opening event at the St. Louis Cathedral.

Sheil Shukla has written a new cookbook, Kari: Reimagined Plant-Based Indian Recipes, that picks up where his first book, Plant-Based India, leaves off. It was named one of the New York Times best cookbooks of 2022 and was nominated for a James Beard Award.

Sheil is a recipe developer, content creator, food photographer, and a Northwestern Medicine board certified internal medicine physician.

Listen! It’s on TIp of the Tongue.