A searing expose of the restaurant industry, and a path to a better, safer, happier meal. Join Corey Mintz, author of The Next Supper: The End of Restaurants as we Knew Them, and What Comes After, for this exciting conversation with celebrated Toronto restaurateurs Hemant Bhagwani and Kate Chomyshyn.

About The Next Supper by Corey Mintz

In the years before the pandemic, the restaurant business was booming. Americans spent more than half of their annual food budgets dining out. In a generation, chefs had gone from behind-the-scenes laborers to TV stars. The arrival of Uber Eats, DoorDash, and other meal delivery apps was overtaking home cooking.

Beneath all that growth lurked serious problems. Many of the best restaurants in the world employed unpaid cooks. Meal delivery apps were putting restaurants out of business. And all that dining out meant dramatically less healthy diets. The industry may have been booming, but it also desperately needed to change.

Then, along came COVID-19. From the farm to the street-side patio, from the sweaty kitchen to the swarm of delivery vehicles buzzing about our cities, everything about the restaurant business is changing, for better or worse. The Next Supper tells this story and offers clear and essential advice for what and how to eat to ensure the well-being of cooks and waitstaff, not to mention our bodies and the environment. The Next Supper reminds us that breaking bread is an essential human activity and charts a path to preserving the joy of eating out in a turbulent era.

About the Presenters

Corey Mintz is a freelance food reporter (New York Times, Globe and Mail, Eater and others), focusing on the intersection between food with labor, politics, farming, ethics and culture. He has been a cook, a restaurant critic and is the author of How to Host a Dinner Party, which chronicled 192 dinner parties he hosted with fascinating people including politicians, refugees, criminals, artists, academics, acupuncturists, hi-rise window washers, competitive barbecuers and one monkey.

Hemant Bhagwani helms the Amaya Group of Restaurants, where his focus now lies with mentoring chefs, cooks, and service staff alike. He has a true passion for food and is incredibly innovative in bringing that passion to life for his customers, employees and business partners. His leadership style was born out of this passion and vision to make a difference as well as his life experiences.

Kate Chomyshyn is a professional chef with 18 years of experience working in Canada’s best restaurants. After meeting her husband, Julio Guajardo, at Le Cordon Bleu Ottawa in 2004 they moved to Montreal together to pursue their careers, working at many of the country’s best restaurants. Over the next decade K&J would research and travel through Mexico in the hopes of bringing true Mexican cuisine to Canada. K&J owned LA CaTRINA Paletas in Montreal and opened as executive chef and consultants El Rey Mezcal Bar, Rosalinda, Quetzal, Birria Balam and are now partners in the newly opened Fonda Balam.

Karon Liu is a staff food reporter for the Toronto Star. He recently helped launch a new food section focusing on the hidden gems and culinary vastness of the Greater Toronto Area. His writing can be found every Thursday in the paper.

About The Word On The Street

The Word On The Street is an annual celebration of storytelling, ideas and imagination, hosting Canada's largest FREE book and magazine festival each September and promoting great books by Canadian and Indigenous authors year-round.