Joey Milenkovic was born and raised in South Florida, and at the age of 33, he now commands the kitchen at one of the Southside’s exciting new restaurants, Bona Fide. But it wasn’t until he was 20 that he set his sights on a career in the culinary arts.
“It was when I started working in a kitchen that I was bitten by the bug,” he says.
So he took jobs in restaurants wherever he could in his hometown, learning as he progressed through the school of hard knocks, before moving to Chattanooga in 2020 to work with James Beard Award semifinalist chef Erik Niel at Easy Bistro.
Read on to discover what it takes to open a new restaurant, as well as what he thinks of the food scene in the Scenic City.
Q: What’s it like opening up a new restaurant, and have you ever done this before?