Jonathan Kauffman is a features writer for the SF Chronicle’s food section, reporting on food culture, such as the history of Burmese restaurants in SF or the effects of gentrification on practically everything we eat. He was a restaurant critic for 11 years in the Bay Area and Seattle as well as the SF editor for Tasting Table. His writing has won both a James Beard and an IACP award. This year, his book Hippie Food: How Back-to-the-Landers, Longhairs, and Revolutionaries changed the way we eat was released to great acclaim.

Randy Fertel is a writer, author, teacher, and philanthropist and is the author of A Taste of Chaos: The Art of Literary Improvisation and The Gorilla Man and the Empress of Steak: A New Orleans Family Memoir. He has taught English literature at Harvard, Tulane, LeMoyne College, the University of New Orleans and the New School of Social Research. He has contributed to many publications, including The New York Times, NPR, Smithsonian, Kenyon Review, Gastronomica, Esquire, among others. The son of the founder of Ruth’s Chris Steak House, Randy is president of both the Fertel Foundation and the Ruth ...

Stefanie Demong is a writer, creative strategist, and amateur illustrator based in San Francisco. Before going freelance, Stef spent over eight years at Tipping Point Community, a non-profit that fights poverty in the Bay Area.

Shanna Farrell is an interviewer at UC Berkeley's Oral History Center, where she specializes in contemporary cocktail culture. She is the author of Bay Area Cocktails: A History of Culture, Community and Craft and her writing has appeared in PUNCH, Imbibe, Life & Thyme, The San Francisco Chronicle, and Edible San Francisco. You can occasionally hear her voice on various podcasts, like Gravy.

Rosa Martinez was born in a small town in the state of Oaxaca. As a child, she loved cooking with her mother. In 1989, she left Mexico for San Francisco with a dream of one day cooking for many people and sharing with them her culture. Now, many years later, after a long journey that included all sorts of jobs serving others, she is an entrepreneur in the La Cocina incubator and can see a path to fulfilling her dream.