Meet The Chefs
Devour Details About Five Local Culinary Artists
Our area restaurant scene is full of multicultural cuisine, fusion dishes and stellar teams made up of eclectic, passionate people. Step behind the scenes and into the kitchens to get to know the humble and hardworking leaders responsible for some of the most sought after food in the Fox Cities.
Philip Bennett
Owner/Head Cook at The Cozzy Corner, Appleton
The Cozzy (pronounced “cozy”) Corner in Appleton got its name based on its location from its previous owners, but current owner and head cook, Philip Bennett, is bringing his own charm to the space that makes it the coziest it’s ever been. But it was also a whirlwind in the beginning.
“I grew up cooking with my mom and grandma,” he says. “But my first day (at the Cozzy Corner) was the first experience I had in a restaurant. I literally did everything… it was crazy but I’m very attentive and hands-on. It was a lot of learning and trial and error. If you panic you can’t think, and I’m a thinker. It’s just a self-taught love.”
Fast forward to today and they’ve added a second location—The Cozzy Express at the Fox River Mall—and The Cozzy Corner caters for local schools, hospitals and area businesses like Neenah Foundry, Amazon, Amcor and others.
“To see our food get devoured by 1400, 1700 people, you know you’re doing all right,” Bennett says. “It’s a joy when people actually like your food, you know, it’s a good feeling because I like being in the kitchen. I like cooking, the whole process of it. It’s also cooking and showing other people how to do it.”
While the restaurant does offer ribs and pulled pork, Bennett doesn’t consider The Cozzy Corner a “barbecue joint.”
“It’s Southern comfort food, soul food. We make everything from scratch. We make our cakes from scratch, our Peach Cobbler from scratch. For our Mac and Cheese, we actually make a fresh roux, add all the cheese, the noodles are nice and firm, and we have a special seasoning. We add a little zazz to it,” Bennett says. “I just put my heart, my all into everything we make (at The Cozzy Corner). We really like to take our time. We’re not just throwing stuff together, I wouldn’t serve anything I wouldn’t eat myself.”
First memory in the kitchen: When my mom was cooking, she was teaching us. I remember we always used to do homemade pizzas… we’d roll out the dough, add a little sauce, stuff like that. She always wanted us to be independent and be able to do anything. Everything I cook is really from my mom and grandma.
Most popular dishes at The Cozzy Corner: Smothered Pork Chops, deep fried and smothered under gravy. Chicken and Waffles. Our chicken in general is award winning.
Favorite food to prepare: It’s the prep work. I just like the art of cooking.
Favorite food to eat: I literally eat the chicken at The Cozzy every day. No exaggeration. Smoked, baked, fried. However we do it, I eat it.
What might surprise readers about what you’re doing at The Cozzy Corner? A lot of people probably don’t know about everything being homemade. We literally make everything from scratch. We’re in the restaurant at four, five o’clock in the morning prepping everything for the two restaurants.
New for 2025: We also just redecorated the whole inside. We’re going to be adding new things on the menu. We’re going to try ox tails. We smoke them and they get more tender. We’re going to do more spaghetti—it’s not like a regular Italian spaghetti, it’s a sweeter sauce and we put the noodles with the sauce, not on top.
Cody Cottrell
Executive Chef at Cannova’s Pizzeria, Neenah
Beginning in 1921 in Freeport, Illinois, Cannova’s Pizzeria’s history is just as hearty as its signature dishes. It started as a restaurant and grocery store, and included a bus in which the current owner Debbie’s grandfather sold tomato sauce.
“The one in Freeport is actually still operational,” Executive Chef Cody Cottrell says. “Debbie’s older sister and her husband run that one. So there are two Cannova’s, one family.”
Cottrell has been a part of the Italian restaurant for thirteen years, having been a part of Fox Cities’ Gather Americana and Bella Vita previously. He completed Fox Valley Technical School’s base culinary program and received an advanced baking certificate.
“I always wanted to be a pastry chef,” he admits. “I was in my last year of culinary school when I started here as a pizza cook.”
He may have completed school, but he continues to love to learn.
“There are so many facets to this industry. The history of food, the scientific part of food. Every year, I find myself peeling back another layer and being like, ‘Gosh, I just want to dig into that,’” he says.
While more and more learning is always on Cottrell’s mind, his philosophy in the kitchen is anything but.
“I definitely try to embody that KISS Rule: Keep It Simple, Stupid,” he says. “My mentor loved that rule and I do the same… I do simple things but execute them well. But I like to play with flavors so there’s always a bit of mischief in there.”
Cannova’s isn’t lacking in innovation with Cottrell at the helm, and that includes a new pizza that’s gaining in popularity.
“It is quickly becoming a favorite of our clientele,” Cottrell says. “It’s a honey mustard base with our mozzarella blend, an old world style pepperoni (cupping pepperoni), red onions, arugula and reduced balsamic. It kind of plays on that hot honey trend.”
“One of the really special things about being in this industry is being a part of so many things for so many people,” Cottrell says. “You know, whether it’s their birthday or it’s an anniversary or the more somber side like funeral gatherings. We give up our holidays, our special occasions, so we can make them special for the people who are coming here.”
First memory in the kitchen: I have a very clear image of being in my grandmother’s kitchen, right here on Main Street (in Neenah). It could have been any holiday, any get together. It was me in the kitchen, seeing all of my aunts, my grandmother making caramel corn, Christmas candy. I have a very big maternal side of the family, and food is very important. We were fortunate enough to have my grandmother until she was 99.
Most popular dishes at Cannova’s Pizzeria: I kind of have to look at the restaurant as two separate entities, because we have the pizza aspect of it which is a whole separate animal. I mean that is what kept us afloat during the pandemic. Our Sicilian pizza is by far the number one selling pizza that we have. It’s thin crust and Chicago Tavern style. It has a garlic olive oil base, shredded mozzarella, diced tomatoes, pepperoni, Italian sausage, and then our house cheese blend. It’s a very simple pizza, but the flavors are there.
On the restaurant side, our salmon entrée is probably one of our most popular and that rotates. It’s seared salmon over a cauliflower puree with squash gnocchi, shiitake mushrooms, brussels sprouts, red onions, and then chili oil.
Our Shrimp Piccata comes with angel hair, classic piccata sauce with capers, garlic, white wine, a lot of lemon and vegetable stock. Always made to order.
Favorite food to prepare: Anything that entails knife work is really fun for me. Whether it’s cutting a bunch of vegetables or breaking down fish. I can kind of go on autopilot.
Favorite food to eat: My favorite thing is just a good cup of noodles, good Asian noodles, whether it’s Udon or a good cup of ramen.
New for 2025: Just maintaining what we have here and continuing to be Cannova’s.
Salvatore Friedel
Executive Chef at the Green Fountain Inn, Waupaca
While it’s technically his title, Salvatore Friedel at the Green Fountain Inn in Waupaca doesn’t like the word ‘chef.’
“Kids come out of culinary school with this graduated sense of self and I don’t think a title will ever make me a better cook,” he says. “I think sometimes there’s a loss of connection with food and it becomes about the person and not about the food or not about the customer or farmers. I just like to be called Sal.”
Friedel’s down-to-earth attitude toward life is translated into his food at the bed and breakfast. He’s been at the inn for six years.
“I was in transition from a consulting position for a restaurant opening up north,” he remembers. “My friend was working here as a kind of chef-in-residence. I contracted for one night on New Year’s Eve of 2018 and then I started about a month later. And the rest is history.”
Friedel went to the New England Culinary Institute in Vermont, and spent time as an intern in Italy.
“It was the hottest summer in 400 years,” he remembers. “It was so hot and we were working so much. I was drinking four or five gallons of water a day. I almost died.”
Thankfully he didn’t—although memories of an Italian emergency room and a scar or two has lingered. He’s also brought back a philosophy about using local goods as often as possible, and the inspiration for one of Green Fountain Inn’s most popular installments: Thursday Night Ramen.
“My friend Jeff, the kid that I apprenticed with in Italy, is Asian. And when we got back to the states, he had a food truck, was the chef at a Best Restaurant winner and won a bunch of awards,” Friedel explains. “And then he got MS. And seven months later, his wife was diagnosed with MS. I wanted to do something Asian that really was a conscious way of honoring him and wanting to connect with him.
“The most important ingredient in the kitchen is salt, and it is the most important skill of a cook to know how to use it. I think that I use salt appropriately, I use local pork for the broth. I had a Japanese woman from Chicago tell me that she didn’t believe that I made the broth myself. What makes it so elevated is I have my friend to help.”
It also helps that Fridel is a master forager, gathering the majority of the mushrooms the kitchen uses.
“One thing that has a lot to do with my identity is that I forage for all the mushrooms that we use. So from May to November, you know, all the mushrooms that we use in the restaurant or mushrooms that I foraged.
“Supporting local farmers is really the most important thing to me,” Friedel says. “We have one farm that we buy a lot of our stuff from. At the end of the year we buy hundreds of pounds of different squash and potatoes to try and get us through the winter. But it is the hardest season.”
In the warmer months, Fridel creates “Salt and Pepper Menus,” which means everything served is sourced locally, except for the salt and pepper.
First memory in the kitchen: I guess it would be with my Sicilian grandmother cooking. She made something called Spiedini. It’s an Italian skewered meat. That is a big memory. Another is of my mom’s 3-day soups. She was a fantastic cook. But she’s a textbook procrastinator. She would start the soup and then put it in the fridge and pull it out and do a few other things. So she wouldn’t get to the soup ‘til three days later. But she was also building all these flavors. It ended up being a positive.
Fun fact: A woman wrote an article about the restaurant I was at and called me “The Chemist of Chefs in Milwaukee. I had the opportunity to get on the show Top Chef but made decisions professionally to allow me to be with my daughter. That was always huge.
Favorite food to prepare: Right now it’s probably ramen.
Favorite food to eat: My favorite thing to eat is scrambled eggs and burnt toast. Not really burnt, still edible.
Nick Morse
Chef/Owner, Rye Restaurant in Appleton
Rye Restaurant in Appleton is celebrating their 10th Anniversary this month, and that means chef/owner, Nick Morse, is doing the same. But his experience spans much longer, coming from a long line of successful restaurants in Northeast Wisconsin.
“My parents open restaurants,” he says. “They originally started with Chives in Suamico. Then Bleu in De Pere was their second restaurant, which I was head chef of. They opened Rye with another chef who left in February and opened up the opportunity for me to take over.
“All of the chefs have all kind of had the same background and almost grew up in the industry together. had the same background, almost grew up in the industry together. We have a tight network.”
Morse fits in seamlessly, but the culinary world isn’t something he originally expected to be a part of.
“I went to UWGB for three and a half years. I was going for dietetics, but I just did it because I didn’t know what to do out of high school,” he admits. “I had been cooking the whole time. I worked up in Door County before my parents even had restaurants at the Whistling Swan. I gained a lot of experience from that. Then I moved to Martha’s Vineyard. I immersed myself in it.”
Morse spent two seasons on the East Coast at the Harbor-View Hotel.
“They had Henry’s, which is more of a sports bar, which I primarily worked the first year. And then Water Street was their high-end restaurant, which I worked at exclusively the second year. But the second season was pretty much about chasing after my now wife.”
Long before he met Charlotte, who is now an integral part of Rye Restaurant as the co-owner and Marketing Manager, Morse started out at Thornberry Creek in Hobart.
“I was young and I started with chopping parsley,” he laughs. “The team always had me do it and messed with me, but I was so proud of that.”
Most popular dishes at Rye Restaurant: We try to rotate our menu seasonally, but it’s at the point where we can only change about 40% of it because some dishes are staples now and people get upset! No. 1 is our Filet. It comes with creamy spinach, Parmesan hash. Another is our Whiskey Bacon Shrimp. It’s an appetizer and has five sauteed shrimp with bacon, garlic and a butter sauce with a reduction of white wine and whiskey.
First memory in the kitchen: It’s gotta be at Thornberry Creek. What really sticks out was on a New Year’s Eve. There was a dual sided kitchen, kind of like the restaurant prep side and then they had a banquet prep side with an island of ovens in the middle. At almost 13, they put me in charge of putting all the lobster tails in the oven. I ran out of room on the banquet side, so I went to the other side… I burnt about a third of the lobster tails. I had to tell them instantly. I don’t remember how we recovered but it worked out.
Favorite food to prepare: There’s something about braising I really like, but that’s a seasonal thing. It works best in the cold months. It’s typically a shank or a short rib or something like that. You have to make sure that you have enough salt penetration into it so it’s not flavorless. Then being able to cook it so it’s cooked properly, you know, tender, almost fall off the bone, but not too rubbery. There is just an art to it.
Favorite food to eat: Grilled steak, my favorite are rib eyes.
What might surprise readers about what you’re doing at Rye? We started our own Dry Age program. That’s not happening everywhere around here. We have a dry age cooler and we do them for a minimum of 30 days, typically 35 plus.
Eduardo Sanchez
Owner-Operator/Chef, Solea Mexican Grill in Neenah and Menasha
Eduardo Sanchez never cooked in his native home of Veracruz, Mexico, but when he was 20 years old and found himself in the United States, he landed in a kitchen learning English and flavor profiles.
It wasn’t something he originally planned for, but Sanchez opened and is now running the show at the two locations of Solea Mexican Grill in Neenah and Menasha.
“I started working in the kitchen back in 1995. And I did it for about 10 years,” he says. “I’ve experienced every single facet of the restaurant industry. You have to work your way up. I’ve been the prep guy, the kitchen manager, in charge of hospitality, the server, a bartender… then the general manager. I’ve done the whole thing. You have to in order to do things right.
“I opened Menasha first. It’s very small, only 12 tables. I was young then and had a lot of energy! We opened Neenah after just two years. I was 33 so I could do it all, I had a lot of pride,” he laughs.
Solea Mexican Grill got its name from “Sol” meaning sun. Sanchez added a couple of letters and the restaurant’s brand was born. Its unique menu items are inspired by Sanchez’s Veracruzian roots.
“When I first started, I had to tweak things a bit. People’s bodies weren’t prepared to try new things,” Sanchez laughs. “But now people are so open to trying new things. It’s easy now!
“Veracruz is in the Gulf of Mexico and so there’s a lot of seafood there. It’s completely different from other parts of the country. In Oaxaca you might get ten different kinds of mole, you’ll get different things in Mexico City. But Veracruz is known for their seafood.
“Some of my recipes come from my grandma. She didn’t teach me, but as a child, you see it. You learn that way.”
Most popular dishes at Solea Mexican Grill: Enchiladas are very popular. You can get many different kinds: chicken, pork, beef, seafood. We use a green salsa we make with tomatillos. It is so flavorful. We have a lot of salsas to choose from too.
Favorite food to prepare: Fish tacos using Mahi Mahi and with fresh guacamole. Mahi Mahi is a very pretty fish and it tastes fantastic.
Favorite food to eat: I’m very simple when I’m here. A lot of the time I’m eating a plate of rice and beans.
What might surprise readers about what you’re doing at Solea? Tequila Tastings are something unique we do here. It’s very popular. We have about 100 people. We’ll advertise it and you can make reservations. And I think we’re the only Veracruzian Mexican restaurant around here.
New for 2025: We are thinking about opening a Solea Mexican Grill in Appleton, we just have to decide on the location. My wife is a chef too and she wants to do a breakfast place.
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