Karen Akunowicz
Chef, Author, Top Chef Alum, Restaurateur
Karen Akunowicz is the 2018 James Beard Foundation Award winner for “Best Chef: Northeast” and the 2020 James Beard Award finalist for “Best New Restaurant.” She is the Chef/Owner of Fox & the Knife Enoteca in South Boston, recently named one of Food & Wine’s "Best New Restaurants in America, 2019." Chef Akunowicz became a fan favorite when she competed on Top Chef Season 13. She has also appeared as a judge on Top Chef Season 16, Top Chef Canada and came back to compete on Season 17 of Top Chef: All-Stars L.A. Most recently, she can be seem as a judge on Food Network's Beat Bobby Flay and competitor on the network's biggest show Tournament of the Champions. Named one of the “21 Badass Women Changing the Food World” by Marie Claire Magazine, she is the co-author of the cookbook Myers+Chang at Home (Houghton Mifflin; 2017) and published her second cookbook Crave (Countryman/Norton) in fall of 2023. In 2019, Karen opened Fox & the Knife, inspired by her time spent living and cooking in Modena, Italy. She created a fresh pasta company, Fox Pasta, that ships sauces and her handmade pasta nationwide. Her second restaurant, Bar Volpe, opened in November 2021, and is focused on wood-fired, Southern-Italian cuisine. She has been profiled on CBS Saturday Morning’s The Dish series, The Today Show and Access Hollywood. Akunowicz has also been featured in national publications such as The New York Times, Entrepreneur Magazine, People, Bon Appetit, Food & Wine, Forbes and Wall Street Journal Magazine.