Joiners · 2026-06-22 · 1h 7m
This week’s guest entered the restaurant business by offering strangers free labor at a dinner party. Sixteen years later, he’s still at it. Chef Nate Chung is the co-owner of Mott St, the enduring Logan Square restaurant known for Asian-American comfort food, one of the most celebrated burgers in the city, and the kind of hospitality that turns regulars into friends. He joins us at Joiners HQ to talk about growing up between Honolulu and Hong Kong, earning an MFA in sculpture and printmaking, and finding an unexpected creative home in Chicago restaurants. This week we talk: surviving bad reviews, knowing when to pivot, the complicated pursuit of awards, what makes restaurant math actually work - and so much more!
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