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Jaren Bates
ChefChef Jaren Bates is a full Blooded Native American from the Navajo Tribe. He is currently 33 years old and hails from the Navajo Reservation in Northern New Mexico. Chef Jaren has been cooking his whole life, starting with baking cakes alongside his mother and grilling steaks next to his father as a kid. After opening restaurants across the country and being able to travel to some amazing cities and towns and working alongside some of the best chefs in the world, he has now come full circle. Back to where it all began on the family farm in New Mexico, to the hot desert and beautiful mountains of Arizona of The Table to showcase food in a way that is very creative but also honors our ancestors as well as the land we live and walk on today.
Chad Hyatt
Chef & Author at The Mushroom Hunter's KitchenChad Hyatt spent a decade cooking in restaurants and private clubs around the San Francisco Bay Area and, for the last 5 years, has worked as a freelance chef specializing in private events. He has been deeply connected to the mushroom community for the last 10 years and has taught about mushrooms and mushroom cookery all over the USA. He wrote and published the groundbreaking The Mushroom Hunter's Kitchen in 2018. Chad is working on a 2nd edition, which should be available in summer 2025. Chad and his wife Rosa first fell in love with the mountains and mushrooms of Arizona in 2015 and return every chance they get.
Brian Konefal
Chef & Owner at Square Root FoodsHi, my name is Brian! I have always loved Flagstaff for its natural beauty and small community feel. I graduated from NAU with a degree in Spanish and then attended a culinary school in Costigliole d’Asti in the Piedmont region. After culinary school, I “staged” (worked for free) at a few Michelin starred restaurants in Europe before returning to the states to work for my mentor, Daniel Humm at The Campton Place in San Francisco. We gained the highest available accolades possible at the time and, afterwards, Chef Humm was offered to take over a restaurant called Eleven Madison Park where I joined him for a few more years. These were the toughest, most exhilarating years of my life. In order to expand my experience, I went to work for the most highly awarded Michelin chef of all time, Joel Robuchon. The food was pure art, beauty and absolutely delicious.
I moved back to Flagstaff with my wife, Paola Fioravanti to open a speakeasy named The Piano room. We opened Coppa Cafe a year later and ran it for 8 1/2 years. I loved cooking for this great community. Food helps join people together to create great memories. People often ask me where they can get my food now that I don’t own a restaurant, so switching our company focus to catering provides that solution. Also, don’t pass on our Tot Box! Home-Made-Mashed--Potato-Tots!
Julie Schreiber
Consulting Winemaker at Chez Julie SJulie has been collecting, cooking, and eating mushrooms for 30 years. As a professionally trained chef, she has been teaching others about cooking and eating mushrooms for a significant portion of those three decades. In addition to her personal passion for good food and cooking, her formal training in the food and wine industry includes degrees in Hotel Restaurant and Travel Administration from the University of Massachusetts, Culinary Arts from the Culinary Institute of America, and a Master’s Degree in Enology from the University of California at Davis.
She has worked as a chef and is currently a professional winemaker. Additionally, she was on the Sonoma County Mycological Association board for 14 years and the lead chef for culinary events and demos at mushroom forays for David Arora, the Sonoma County Mycological Association (SOMA), the Mycological Society of San Francisco, the North American Mycological Association (NAMA), Wild About Mushrooms (WAM), and Relish Culinary Adventures.
She is a business partner in Mycoventures (https://www.mycoventures.com/wam), a company that organizes local and international mushroom forays. She organizes the events, helps lead the forays, and teach people how to cook cultivated and wild mushrooms.
Most recently she has become the Culinary Arts Committee Chair for the North American Mycological Association (NAMA).
Visit her webpage at: https://chezjulies.com/
Jess Starwood
Chef & Author at Mushroom WanderlandJess is an author, naturalist, herbalist and wild foods chef with a Masters of Science degree in Herbal Medicine. She recently published Mushroom Wanderland: A Forager’s Guide to Finding, Identifying and Using More Than 25 Wild Fungi with Countryman Press. Jess has worked as a wild-foods consultant and forager for Los Angeles chefs Aitor Zabala of Somni and Niki Nakayama of n/naka. Jess has been teaching wild foods and nature education classes for children and adults since 2014. She founded The Wild Path School, a wild-food apprenticeship and education program, in 2020 that strives to connect the community to nature and the foods we eat in a positive, healing and sustainable way. She also leads immersive foraging adventures, multi-course gourmet wild food dinners and other food-focused experiences on the West Coast, Southwest United States and Mexico. Jess is the editor of The Sporeprint, heads the Mycophagy & Culinary Group (McLAMS) for the NAMA-affiliated Los Angeles Mycological Society, as well as a new board member for the NAMA-affiliated Arizona Mushroom Society. Visit her websites at thewildpath.org and jstarwood.com.
Dr. Gordon Walker
Fascinated By FungiDr. Gordon Walker is originally from Cambridge, MA but also spent time growing up on the Northshore of Massachusetts. He attended UC Santa Cruz, obtaining a B.S. in Biochemistry. He then attended UC Davis, where he completed his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. He then worked for Opus One winery, isolating wild yeasts and pioneering new wine technologies. He spent time working in biotechnology around the Bay Area, then returned to UC Davis where he completed post-doctoral work on fermentation process control. Besides his passion for all things fungi and fermentation, he is an avid chef, forager, sailor, SCUBA diver and gardener. He resides in Napa, CA.
