Kevin Boehm cofounded the Boka Restaurant Group, built some of Chicago’s most celebrated restaurants—Boka, Girl & the Goat, Momotaro, Swift & Sons—earned a James Beard Award for Outstanding Restaurateur, and appeared as himself on The Bear. He also slept in his car, battled depression and alcoholism, and spent three decades running from a secret he learned at 18 years old: the man sitting across from him at a Springfield diner wasn’t his biological father. All of that is in his enthralling memoir, The Bottomless Cup: A Memoir of Secrets, Restaurants, and Forgiveness. In this episode, we talk about helping build iconic Chicago restaurants and what it took to sit down and write the story of his life.

Also on the show, we have a great conversation with the Washington, DC, chef Fabio Trabocchi. We talk about cooking around the world and his influence on Italian food in America.

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763: The $100 Million Restaurant Man with Kevin Boehm of Boka Restaurant Group