These are the people cooking your food. We think you should get to know them.

What The Lineup Is

We create access between diners and cooks through events, content, and collaborations that feel personal, social, and rooted in restaurant culture. Everything we do is designed to feel human and lived-in, not staged or overly explained.

The platform is intentionally flexible. Sometimes it shows up as a dinner. Sometimes it looks like a story, a collaboration, or a room full of people meeting each other for the first time. The format changes. The point stays the same.

We believe dining is better when cooks and diners understand each other a little more, and when the culture around restaurants feels open and welcoming rather than distant.

Join Our Community
Elena Besser and Matt Migliore wearing aprons speaking in a restaurant setting with warm lighting.
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    Elena Besser

    FOUNDER

    The Lineup project from the mind of TV Host and Chef, Elena Besser (Food Network, Breakfast with Besser). Elena has developed recipes for Bon Appetit, Food Network and Food 52, and is currently a culinary contributor to the Today Show. After training at the International Culinary Center, Elena cut her teeth working in one of the top restaurants in the city, Lilia Ristorante. During her time there, she was inspired daily by the work of the talented people who worked alongside her, and always kept the idea in her mind that they deserved a platform as much as anyone else. Her connections to the industry still run deep, and her knowledge and passion for platforming new culinary perspectives is the beating heart of The Lineup project.

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    Jackson Cook

    CREATIVE DIRECTOR

    Jackson’s employment history has taken him on parallel tracks in his 13 years in New York City. He has worked as a creative in various forms from design, to producer, to creative director, and even to small business owner with co-collaborator Graham Burns. Additionally, he worked in the hospitality industry in the grueling but rewarding world of food halls, as the General Manager and Project Manager of Urbanspace Vanderbilt and 570 Lexington respectively. He met Elena in 2017, and along with Graham, the three of them have completed many culinary focused projects together, including concepting and selling a show to Food Network, and the first iteration of The Lineup which was cut short by COVID before it could get off the ground.

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    Graham Burns

    CONTENT DIRECTOR

    Graham has worked as a videographer, producer and director in New York City for the better part of a decade. Under his own company, Coolburns, he produced short films, commercials, and music videos before starting a food focused Instagram account called The Brothers Buoy with collaborator Jackson Cook in 2013. This eventually led he and Jackson to turn that into an agency where the two would take on projects both large and small for brands like Mack Weldon, The National Parks Association, and Visible Mobile. The agency was aquired in 2020, and Graham has since gone on to help establish the creative arm of their parent company, Blue Wheel Media, running operations and leading a team of 6 to produce ad focused content.