Industry Night with Nycci Nellis

About Industry Night with Nycci Nellis

Industry Night is the long-talk format radio show and podcast that brings you up close and personal with the trends and trendsetters across today’s diverse food, wine, spirits, brews and hospitality landscape. For in-depth insights and insider tips, join your host, Nycci Nellis, cohost of Foodie and the Beast, the DC area’s one and only food and wine variety show, and all the locally, nationally and globally renowned chefs, restaurateurs, cookbook authors, mixologists, somms, distillers, brewmasters, pit-masters and more that you’ll hear from on Industry Night.

Publisher

Nycci Nellis

Category

arts

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

28 Jul 2020

Latest episode

8 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

226 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   8 Oct 2026

   A Deep Dive with Neighborhood Restaurant Group's Greg Engert & Aged Fish with Chef Chico Dator, Recorded at Modan

   The man who taught this city to care about beer is watching a generation drink less of it. I have been doing this long enough to remember when you could not get a decent beer in this town, and Greg Engert is a big reason that changed. So when I sat down with him at Modan, our newest partner for the series, I did not want the victory lap. I wanted to know what it actually feels like to run twenty concepts right now, when happy hour is dead, labor costs what it costs, and there is a new restaurant on every corner. If you care where the DC dining scene is headed, this one is for you. Greg has watched the pendulum swing since 2006, from farm to table to hyper local to the craft beer boom, and he is blunt about the fact that what a Gen X diner wants is not remotely what the Gen Z diner walking in behind them wants. Any Washington DC restaurant insider will tell you the double turn is gone. Greg will tell you what he is doing about it. Greg Engert is the Beer Director and Managing Partner at Neighborhood Restaurant Group, the group behind Church Key, Bluejacket, Rustico, Josephine, Iron Gate and Snallygaster, the biggest beer festival on the East Coast. He came to DC for grad school to become an English professor and ended up waiting tables at the Brick Cellar instead. I also pulled Chef Chico Dator out of the kitchen, an old friend from his Nobu days, who runs the only dry aging fish program in the region right here at Modan. Key Takeaways Greg Engert walked away from an academic path in modernist literature and fell for hospitality while waiting tables at the Brick Cellar around 2004. Neighborhood Restaurant Group now runs about twenty concepts and roughly as many locations, nearly all in the DMV, with Junebug in New Orleans as the outlier. Moving away from happy hour toward low price points available all day is a deliberate answer to the fact that people no longer go out early or late. Younger drinkers are not abstaining more than previous generations did, they are drinking less per visit, and inflation and healthcare costs drive that more than wellness trends do. Chef Chico Dator calls his process conditioning rather than aging, because he does not want a guest to think they are being handed old fish. Greg Engert said, “This question energizes us every day when we get up and keeps us up at night every night.” Chef Chico Dator said, “There is this one guy that says fresh fish is boring.” Timestamps 00:00 Welcome to Modan in Tysons 01:27 Meet Greg Engert of Neighborhood Restaurant Group 02:56 From English grad school to the Brick Cellar 07:45 Four restaurants in 2006 to twenty concepts today 12:02 Church Key, Birch and Barley, and 14th Street in 2009 13:24 How 2008 reset the hospitality business 15:42 Real estate, competition, and the end of the double turn 21:44 Keeping long running restaurants relevant 23:50 Columbia Firehouse, Josephine, and a reconcept that worked 27:27 The constriction in beer and in alcohol generally 29:36 Why the next generation of diners is different 33:18 Killing happy hour and rethinking price points 35:49 Feedback, reviews, and the us versus them problem 41:38 What is opening next in Del Ray 46:46 Snallygaster, fourteen years in 48:22 Rapid fire with Greg Engert 52:44 Chef Chico Dator on Nobu and landing in DC 55:16 Inside Modan’s dry aging program 58:55 Closing thoughts Connect with Greg Engert Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sonoffreng (https://www.instagram.com/sonoffreng)

2. 

   1 Oct 2026

   Ereka Vetrini Breaks Down the Business of Food Content & Being Well Fed on Industry Night

   Host Nycci Nellis interviews recipe creator Ereka Vetrini about building a sustainable food business beyond viral trends and owning her audience.

3. 

   17 Sept 2026

   Chef Steven Fretz on Leaving Big Cities for Michelin's New Southwest Frontier

   Host Nycci Nellis interviews Chef Steven Fretz about his journey from acclaimed California kitchens to Utah's burgeoning culinary scene and the true meaning of industry accolades.

Who has been a guest on Industry Night with Nycci Nellis

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Ereka Vetrini
• Steven Fretz
• Ashok Bajaj
• Vikram Sunderam
• Gus Constantellis

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

2 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 51 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

89

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

32

Contact Industry Night with Nycci Nellis

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

Questions about Industry Night with Nycci Nellis