BBQ Buddha is the award-winning brand that focuses on making BBQ products that are free of additives, artificial flavors, and colors – or as founder Ray Sheehan likes to say – he’s making sauce and rubs that have “all the flavor without the junk.” On the eve of launching his latest cookbook, Ray talked with us about his journey, being a certified BBQ judge, and how the Big Green Egg he won as champion of FKP’s inaugural Sauce King NYC led to the publication of his newest cookbook.

Mike Lapi is officially the Visiting Instructor of Animal Science for SUNY Cobleskill where he teaches all the meat processing courses through the federal inspection facility on campus. He went from accidental busboy to owning his own restaurant to building furniture and then teaching culinary classes before he took the helm of the meat processing program. We talked with Mike about his journey, his goals for the program and how he gets to keep cooking through events like Pig Island where he won an award for his homemade sausage served with charred slaw with house made fish sauce and pickled chanterelles.

When Max Toste of Lone Star Taco Bar told us he had recently eaten some great pozole at Barra in Somerville, we knew we had to get the team on board for Bowl of ‘Zole. We are excited that the restaurant will be bringing a classic pozole based on a family recipe to the event. We talked with owners Paola Ibarra and Yhadira Guzman about how Barra came to be, their feelings about mezcal and pozole and what aspects of Mexican cuisine are under appreciated in the US. You can visit the restaurant in Somerville and taste their pozole at Bowl of ‘Zole on April 6th – tickets are on sale now!