Chef Karen Akunowicz: A Maine Lobster Meal

Your Last Meal with Rachel Belle

Rachel Belle

Arts, Food

4.8 • 730 Ratings

🗓️ 26 March 2026

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Chef Karen Akunowicz is a Northeast gal through and through. The James Beard Award winning Top Chef alum is chef-owner of Boston’s Bar Vulpe and Fox and the Knife, named best new restaurant in America in 2019 by Food & Wine Magazine, Eater and USA Today. And her last meal is sun-drenched and summery, enjoyed on the deck of her favorite Maine seafood restaurant, overlooking sparkly water and the Five Islands.

Karen tells host Rachel Belle what it’s like raising a bougie, foodie toddler; ranks French fry shapes from best to worst; tells the story of how she fell in love with cooking (spoiler: she was trying to get a coworker to fall in love with her) and her secret to making fantastic, award-winning Italian food (an Italian couple once made a reservation at her restaurant 17 nights in a row!). She also talks about her management style, and how she has worked to make her employees happy in a fair and equitable way.

Then Rachel chats with John Birdsall, author of the book What is Queer Food? John shares several stories from his book, from a charming, personal childhood tale about the culinary awakening he had when his gay neighbors cooked for him in the 1960s, to the story of the man who invented the chiffon cake, to the historical connection between lesbians and potlucks.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Rachel Bell, and this is your last meal.
0:12.2	The show where celebrities share stories about the foods they love most,
0:15.8	and we dig into the history, the culture, or the science of those meals with experts from around the world.
0:22.2	Today on the program, Karen Akunowitz, the James Beard Award-winning chef who competed on
0:27.9	Top Chef, Top Chef All-Stars, and Netflix's Tournament of Champions.
0:33.2	She is chef-owner of Boston's Bar Volpe and Fox and the Knife, which was named Best New
0:38.6	Restaurant in America in 2019 by Food and Wine magazine, Eater, and USA Today.
0:44.4	Karen and I rank French fries from best to worst.
0:47.6	She talks about her toddler's bougie taste in food and tells the story of how she took up
0:52.6	cooking to try and get someone to fall in love with her.
0:56.0	Later in the show, I chat with John Birdsall, author of the book, What is Queer Food?
1:01.2	But first, my conversation with Karen Okunowitz.
1:16.2	I read an article where you said restaurants are magic and that's something that came from your childhood. Could you kind of start with childhood and talk about why restaurants were so
1:21.2	magical to you as a kid? Yeah, I mean, restaurants to me as a kid were so magical.
1:29.4	We didn't go out very much.
1:30.4	We didn't have a lot of money.
1:36.0	So when we went somewhere, when we went to a restaurant, no matter how casual, it was such a big deal.
1:39.2	And I think that they made me feel like a grownup.
1:41.2	They felt really special.
1:45.5	I felt really included in what my mom or my parents were doing.
1:51.5	And I just felt it made me feel so good to be there. And I think that that, I've carried that with me my whole life. Restaurants for me are always the place that I want to. You have some
1:55.4	great news to share. Let's meet in a restaurant. Something terrible has happened. Please meet me for
	...

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