2024 Culinary Chair

Steve Dolinsky has won 13 James Beard Awards for his TV, radio and podcast work. He is currently the Food Reporter at NBC 5 (Chicago), where his “Food Guy” reports air every Thursday night at 10 p.m. He won a regional Emmy Award for his reporting in 2023. As the Food Reporter for ABC 7 (Chicago) for 17 years, his “Hungry Hound” reports also covered a range of food and drink-related topics. Steve is also the Producer and Host of “Pizza City” – a bi-monthly podcast started in 2019, featuring some of the greatest pizza makers in the nation and was previously Co-Creator and Co-Host of The Feed Podcast with Chef Rick Bayless (which garnered a Beard award in 2015 for best podcast). He has also written food and travel stories for the Travel sections of the Chicago Tribune and Canada’s Globe and Mail. Steve is the author of “Pizza City, U.S.A.: 101 Reasons Why Chicago is America’s Greatest Pizza Town” and the follow-up, “The Ultimate Chicago Pizza Guide: A History of Squares & Slices in the Windy City” (Northwestern University Press). In order to write both books, he visited more than 200 places in Chicagoland over the course of nearly a year of eating. The book led to “Pizza City U.S.A. Tours,” which began in May of 2018. Steve curates four weekly tours throughout the city, each one giving guests a chance to sample four styles of pizza in three hours (pizzacityusa.com). In 2022, Steve launched Pizza City Fest – a series of annual events in various cities, bringing together the best pizza makers, dough pros and industry experts to share their knowledge and passion with the public. The first event, in July of 2022, focused on Chicago; the next one will be in April of 2023 in L.A. On the consulting side, Steve runs Culinary Communications, a food industry-focused media training company that works with chefs and other food and beverage professionals outside of Chicago, teaching them how to prepare for and handle all kinds of media exposure. He also works with real estate companies to curate spaces involving food and drink clients (he acquired his brokers license in 2020), organizes and leads virtual pizza and/or cocktail experiences for companies and works with individual clients to curate unique culinary experiences. From 2009-2022, Steve was one of 26 Academy Chairs for the World’s 50 Best Restaurants, recruiting and overseeing 40 voters in the Mid-USA/Canada region. He has spoken and/or moderated at several industry events, including the James Beard Awards, the Food & Wine Magazine Classic in Aspen and the New York City Wine and Food Festival. Before joining ABC 7, Steve was Executive Producer and Host of “Good Eating.” The weekly, half-hour show aired on CLTV, the 24-hour cable news channel owned by The Tribune Company. He produced and hosted 52 shows per year for 8 years, garnering six Beard Awards for his work there. You can follow his eating adventures on Twitter and Instagram @stevedolinsky, as well as his website: stevedolinsky.com