While studying chemistry and business at Mercer University, Frank Fodor was known for one thing outside the classroom: making food for his whole fraternity. He was the tailgate cook and his friends would always compliment on his food. And, while he nodded at the compliments, he didn’t take them too seriously. Cooking was something he enjoyed, something he thought he was good at, but not something he planned to build a career around.
After graduation, he left his college food service jobs behind and pursued what he thought made more practical sense: a corporate sales job. It didn’t last long. Restless and uninspired by the corporate life, Fodor picked up a weekend shift at a kitchen in Atlanta and immediately felt at home in a way his sales job never made him feel.
Quickly thereafter, Fodor left his sales job, went full time in the kitchen, and within a month had landed an interview at Kevin Rathbun Steak. “If I’m going to take cooking seriously and make it my passion,” he says, “I need to be in a place where I can learn from really great chefs.”
Seeing his tenacity, Kevin Rathbun quickly hired him as a line cook, and what followed was two years of keeping his head down, rotating through every station in the kitchen, coming in early to work alongside the pastry chef or sous chef before his shift even started. If Fodor’s work ethic could be described as anything, Rathbun, who nominated him for Rising Star, said he would describe it as a sponge, but Fodor just calls it the only way he knows how to operate.
“That’s been my whole mantra,” he says. “Take in as much information as possible and learn from it.”
It didn’t take long for that mindset to reveal Fodor’s natural instinct for leadership. The station that first made it obvious was the one in the “middle,” an in-line expo role that requires a cook to manage their own responsibilities while simultaneously coordinating timing across every other station in the kitchen.
“There’s a lot of moving pieces,” he says. “I found I was really good at the multitasking: cooking my own stuff while coordinating with everybody else. It sort of felt like an introduction to managing a kitchen.”
That instinct shapes how he leads today. Rather than running his kitchen with an iron fist, Fodor prefers to observe before correcting and to encourage the curiosity in his cooks that was encouraged in him. “I bounce ideas off people and foster growth the way I was fostered,” he says.
Now, four years later as the sous chef at Kevin Rathbun Steak, his appetite for learning hasn’t changed. Fodor went up to Chicago to stage for a few days and came back with new techniques and ideas to incorporate into his work. At home, he keeps experimenting and has even worked with food-grade chemicals (his chemistry degree proving quite useful in the kitchen) to create new dishes and try new things.
As far as the future is concerned, Fodor’s primary goal is to continue growing as a chef and learning as much as he can. “My whole philosophy is that I never want to be the most talented person in a room,” he says. “And I’m definitely not right now. I’m still surrounded by really talented people who support me and teach me the things I want to know. That’s not changing anytime soon.”
Read More About the Other 2026 Rising Stars
Michaela Finlayson
Austin Goetzman
Remy Loet
Sebastián Montero-Hernández
Alexandria Rogers
Richard Wilson
Thank you to our presenting sponsor, Georgia Natural Gas, and table sponsors, Society Insurance and Savannah Distributing, for making this event possible:
Presenting Sponsor
Table Sponsors
Savannah Distributing and Society Insurance
