Nadia Brandt
Pastry Chef & Bakery Owner
Portland, OR
I opened Fold Bakehouse in 2019 with one deck oven and a sourdough starter I have kept alive since culinary school. We are known for laminated pastry built on Pacific Northwest fruit — marionberry, Italian prune plum, quince from a neighbour's tree. Before Fold I ran the pastry program at a 120-seat restaurant, which taught me how to plate under pressure. Owning a bakery taught me something harder: how to build a schedule people can actually live inside. I speak often about wage structure and daylight hours in bakery work.
Marcus Oyelaran
Chef de Cuisine
Brooklyn, NY
Nigerian-American cooking that does not apologise for itself. I run the kitchen at Ìsàlẹ̀ in Bed-Stuy, where we build a nightly tasting menu around West African pantry staples — egusi, iru, smoked catfish, scotch bonnet — using technique I picked up in French kitchens in Manhattan. I came up through fine dining and spent four years wondering why nothing on those menus looked like the food I grew up eating. Ìsàlẹ̀ is the answer to that question.