Adam Sappington, former Executive Chef at Wildwood restaurant in Portland, Oregon, has been performing in the kitchen for more than twenty years. A self-taught chef and mid-western boy at heart, Sappington’s passion for food goes back to the way he was brought up on the farmlands of central Missouri, where he spent hours with his mother in the kitchen and attended the local farmers market with his grandmother. “It’s the value of a sense of place, and the comfort of being together at the dinner table that lured me into this industry,” says Sappington. “I love how food is innately conversational and brings people together.”