Sam Chapple-Sokol

Who?

I’m a James Beard Award-winning and New York Times-bestselling writer who focuses on food, storytelling, and culture.

I work as Senior Editorial Director for José Andrés Group, where I oversee editorial and content for José Andrés and his restaurants. In 2026 I co-authored the cookbook Spain My Way: Eat, Drink, and Cook Like a Spaniard (Ecco Books), an NYT bestseller, and in 2023 I co-authored The World Central Kitchen Cookbook (Clarkson Potter), an NYT bestseller that won the 2024 James Beard Award for best international cookbook.

I also helped build the academic study of using food as a tool of diplomacy—I call it culinary diplomacy. I teach a course about it at the Global Food Institute at the George Washington University. If you want to read more, check out this paper I published in 2013 that’s become a classic of the field.

I’ve worked in kitchens and restaurants in both back of house and front of house, including as a pastry chef at the White House (during the Obama administration!). Twice I’ve brought the so-called “Club des Chefs des Chefs”—the group of chefs of heads of state—to the White House to meet President Obama in 2013 and Dr. Jill Biden in 2023. Photo proof (kind of) below.
Photo: Official White House, Le Club des Chefs des Chefs

Photo: Official White House, Le Club des Chefs des Chefs

I was off-stage back in 2013...and in 2023 I was in the kitchen, cooking for Dr. Biden and the Chefs of Heads of State, along with the crew from José Andrés’s culinary team.

I studied Government at Bowdoin College in small-town Maine and have a Masters in International Relations from Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.