Inside Robb Report’s Pasta Masters 2025

For Selim Ülker, his love of food can be traced back to his mother’s cooking in his hometown of Ankara, Turkey, where sharing meals was embedded in the culture. After sharpening his culinary skills at five-star hotels dotted around Istanbul, Ülker came to the U.S., where he worked as chef de cuisine at Edessa, in Nashville. Now, he has donned the role as head sous chef at Yolan, the Italian restaurant nestled in the James Nashville. His next move, though, is serving up a series of canapés at Pasta Masters. On the menu is bomboloni, with stracciatella, prosciutto, and caviar; arancini al ragu, with braised duck, Parmigiano-Reggiano fonduta; and foie gras cannoli, with espresso, milk, and hazelnut.

After working at some of the world’s best restaurants from French Laundry to Noma, Ryan Poli eventually wanted to open a place with his own culinary vision leading the way. The result was Nashville’s Iggy’s a restaurant devoted to his love of pasta—and almost exclusively to pasta. But this is far from an Italian restaurant. Here pasta acts as a vessel for a wide variety of flavors and combinations, one that he explores throughout many dishes dotting Iggy’s menu. At Pasta Masters, Poli has opted to serve a sweet corn agnolotti, complete with chanterelle mushrooms, dashi butter, thyme, and French Perigord truffles.

Brandon Jew’s career has spanned the world of noodles. From Shanghai to Bologna to San Francisco’s Michelin three-starred Quince, he’s cooked Italian and Chinese food at a very high level. At his groundbreaking Chinese American restaurant Mister Jiu’s, he’s been serving Michelin-starred fare for nearly a decade. For his course at Pasta Masters, it’s more a case of noodle masters, as the James Beard Award winner will prepare chee cheong fun, a tightly wound rice noodle that he’ll serve with Dungeness crab, XO sauce, and garlic chives.

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Douglass Williams is all about exploring the Italian cuisine with his culinary creations. Just pop into Mida, found in four spots dotted throughout the Boston area, or Apizza, a perch found in Boston’s TD Garden area, to see what we mean; at each space, Williams (the chef-owner) digs deep into the Italian cooking ethos, building a sense of community with every dish he makes. And part of his process has been his love of handmade pasta, which made him an ideal chef to cook the final savory course at our event. For the folks at Pasta Masters, you’ll get to enjoy Williams’s ribeye ravioli, a dish featuring aged saba ragu, mascarpone, and crispy gremolata.

Wells’s love of cooking grew out of her mother preparing meals from the family garden and matured at Johnson & Wales, where she earned a degree in Baking & Pastry Arts. She joined the Joseph in 2020 as part of the opening team and her outstanding creations are available morning, noon, and night. As the pastry chef of the hotel she leads a team crafting stellar breads, pastries, and desserts across the property. She’s going to close out Pasta Masters with one of her outstanding confections: a citrus mille, with feuille, caramelized puff pastry, and ricotta mousse.