Chef Kevin O'Donnell on Freestyle Italian Cuisine in Newport

He was sixteen years old, court-ordered to an alternative school in Rhode Island, looking for a way to pass the time. A retired Johnson & Wales chef named Andy ran a vocational culinary program there. Kevin signed up. Chef Andy saw something in him. And that was the beginning of everything.

Chef Kevin O'Donnell is a multi-time James Beard Award nominee and the owner of Giusto and Mother Pizzeria in Newport, Rhode Island. Giusto is his flagship restaurant at Hammett's Hotel on the Newport waterfront, serving what Kevin calls freestyle Italian cuisine: not Roman, not Tuscan, not southern Italian, but Italian cuisine seen through a Rhode Island lens, cooked with the seasons, and built around the relationships with local farmers, fisheries, and artisans that Kevin has spent a lifetime cultivating. Mother Pizzeria is his sister concept built around a 100% sourdough pizza program using stone-ground heirloom wheat from a local mill and mozzarella from the only mozzarella producer in Rhode Island.

In this episode, host Sarah Perkins sits down with Kevin for a conversation that covers one of the most genuinely moving arcs The Perfect Bite has ever told. From a North Kingstown childhood where food was about gathering rather than cooking, to turbulent high school years where his parents split and he moved out at sixteen and made choices he has spent twenty-five years building something beautiful beyond. From Ocean Tides to Junction Pizzeria to Johnson & Wales to a walk through an Italian farmers market that changed how he understood food forever. From Del Posto to Paris to a Boston restaurant nominated for Best New Restaurant by the James Beard Foundation the year it opened, to the moment he and his wife found out they were having a baby and he knew it was time to come home to Rhode Island.

This is a conversation about what cooking can do for a person. And what a person can do with cooking when they decide to give everything back.

In this episode, we cover:

Growing up in North Kingstown, Rhode Island in an Irish-Italian-Swedish household where food was about gathering rather than cookingA huge childhood appetite that eventually pointed him toward the kitchenHis parents splitting when he was going into high school and moving out at sixteen to live with a friendPoor decisions, difficult choices, and a court-ordered stint at Ocean Tides, an alternative school in Rhode IslandChef Andy, a retired Johnson & Wales instructor who ran the vocational culinary program at Oc