Sally Schmitt is the original founder of the French Laundry and one of California’s most influential food pioneers. She was born and raised in Northern California and started cooking professionally in 1967. After 11 years spent in Yountville running a café and a restaurant, she opened the French Laundry with her husband, Don. She designed her menus around local, seasonal ingredients—a novel concept at the time. This style of “locavore” cooking caught the attention of critics and inspired other local chefs, helping propagate the farm-to-table movement. After selling the restaurant in 1994, Sally taught cooking classes in a renovated farmhouse on an apple farm in Mendocino. Nowadays, she lives on the Mendocino coast.
Born November 11, 1989, Kwame Onwuachi is a Nigerian-American chef based in New York City, New York. A published author and restaurateur, he also appeared as a contestant on Top Chef in 2015.
Lori Fredrich is the Senior Food Writer and Dining Editor for OnMilwaukee. She is also the author of Milwaukee Food: A History of Cream City Cuisine (History Press) and the co-host of FoodCrush, a podcast “for people who eat.”Lori is an avid cook whose accrual of condiments and spices is rivaled only by her cookbook collection. Her passion for the culinary industry was birthed while balancing A&W root beer mugs as a teenage carhop, fed by insatiable curiosity and fueled by the people whose stories entwine with each and every dish.Over the years, her recipes and writing have also been featured in a variety of publications including Cheese Connoisseur, Cooking Light, Edible Milwaukee, Milwaukee Magazine and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Bricia Lopez is a Mexican-American restaurateur and author. Lopez is the co-owner of Guelaguetza, an Oaxacan restaurant in Los Angeles, California in the United States. Lopez is one of America’s foremost authorities on Oaxacan culture and cuisine and is credited with helping to popularize mezcal in the United States.
THOMAS MCNAUGHTON is the executive chef and co-owner of flour + water, Central Kitchen, and Salumeria in San Francisco. He has worked at some of the most respected restaurants in San Francisco, including La Folie, Gary Danko, and Quince. He has twice been nominated for Rising Star Chef of the Year by the James Beard Foundation.
Our mission at America’s Test Kitchen is to inspire confidence, community and creativity in the kitchen. We are a digital broadcast company which publishes award-winning cookbooks along with Cook’s Illustrated and Cook’s Country magazines. Our television shows, America’s Test Kitchen TV and Cook’s Country TV, are the longest running culinary shows in the US and we enjoy wide home cook appeal as the #1 and #2 shows on PBS. You can also watch our TV shows and original programming on ATK’s YouTube and a wide variety of OTT channels. We have a unique creative process with over 50 professional cooks in our 15k square foot kitchen in Boston, MA and are rigorous in our quest to create the best recipes to exceed expectations every time.
Suzanne Lenzer is a New York City-based food stylist and writer and the author of Truly, Madly Pizza. Her styling has appeared in magazines, on television, and in over two dozen cookbooks while her writing has been featured in Tin House and The New York Times, among other publications. Suzanne lives with her husband in Manhattan and Connecticut. Visit her at www.suzannelenzer.com.
