Giving it all up for food
The Food Chain
BBC
4.7 • 545 Ratings
🗓️ 12 March 2026
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Ruth Alexander meets three people who gave up well-paid, high-flying careers to start all over again in the world of food.
Nisha Katona left a career as a child protection barrister behind to start Mowgli, a chain of Indian restaurants in the UK, physically building her first restaurants herself.
Judy Joo worked in finance on Wall Street but decided to give it up to go to culinary school. After starting at the bottom in various restaurant kitchens she founded the Korean restaurant chain Seoul Bird, which has outlets in the UK and the US.
Duc Ngo was an engineer who felt he lacked purpose and joy. So he left his job to start a sandwich shop in Helsinki. But it wasn’t easy. He took to Tiktok to document its rise, fall and rebirth as a bistro, The Alley.
So did they all make the right decision and would they change anything? Ruth finds out...
If you would like to get in touch with the show, please email: thefoodchain@bbc.co.uk
Produced by Lexy O'Connor.
Sound Engineer: Annie Gardiner
Image: A smiling woman is behind a cafe door. She is turning the “closed” sign to “open”. Credit MoMo Productions/Getty images.
Transcript
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| 0:10.6 | And if you're into true crime. |
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| 0:16.1 | Somebody must know something. |
| 0:18.0 | Because there's a caseload of award-winning podcasts. |
| 0:20.7 | Do you think this is actually going to go to trial? |
| 0:22.8 | That cast light on shady cyber criminals, |
| 0:24.9 | mysterious drownings and unsolved murders, from Bergen to Belfast. |
| 0:29.0 | I didn't know who I could trust. |
| 0:30.8 | Search, true crime on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:33.3 | The only thing left to do now is run. |
| 0:39.6 | Imagine you've got a great job, well paid, prestigious, your family are proud. |
| 0:45.7 | And you walk away from it to chase a dream. |
| 0:49.4 | I thought if I don't do this, I will have lived a half-life and that is where the thought came. |
| 0:54.9 | And then, reality hits. |
| 0:57.1 | It was very dreadful. |
| 0:58.9 | The thought of going bankrupt was very vivid. |
| 1:01.8 | In today's episode of The Food Chain from the BBC World Service with me, Ruth Alexander, |
... |
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