Wildweed, the pasta-focused restaurant tucked into Over-the-Rhine, is hosting a one-night-only collaboration dinner with the head chef of a Michelin-starred restaurant all the way from Vancouver. Gus Stieffenhofer-Brandson of Published on Main will cook alongside David Jackman and the Wildweed team for a single evening, pairing a chef's-counter tasting menu with several à la carte options on the side.
The dinner brings together two chefs with more in common than it might first appear. As reported by Cincinnati CityBeat, both Jackman and Stieffenhofer-Brandson grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, before moving their culinary careers to the West Coast, where the two chefs collaborated frequently. Now their paths are crossing again, this time in Cincinnati, with Wildweed opening its dining room for the collaboration and running the special chef's-counter tasting menu alongside its regular à la carte offerings.
Who Is Coming to Town
Stieffenhofer-Brandson leads the kitchen at Published on Main, the Vancouver, British Columbia restaurant that holds a Michelin star. The restaurant has built a reputation around sourcing and foraging ingredients from local farms and forests, a style that has earned it national recognition: Published on Main ranked No. 1 on Canada's 100 Best Restaurants and placed No. 17 on the 2026 North America's 50 Best Restaurants list. Vancouver Magazine also named it the 2024 Restaurant Awards winner for Best Upscale, according to Vancouver Magazine.
On its home turf, Published on Main is known for its 10-course Flourish tasting menu, a showcase for the kind of hyper-local, foraged cooking that put chef Stieffenhofer-Brandson on the national map. The restaurant has even commissioned a local farm, Vive le Veg, to grow crops specifically for its menu, a detail that underscores just how deep its sourcing philosophy runs.
Wildweed's Own Rising Profile
Wildweed has its own trajectory worth noting. The restaurant started as a pasta pop-up founded by David and Lydia Jackman in 2018 before the couple opened a full-service restaurant in Over-the-Rhine in 2024. Since then, Wildweed has staged more than 225 pop-ups, including two full-time residencies and a multi-state tour, according to the restaurant's own account on its website.
The restaurant now operates two sides of the house: a 12-seat tasting-menu experience at the chef's counter and a more standard à la carte menu, per CityBeat's reporting. Wildweed describes its overall approach simply as “fun-dining.” That approach has paid off with outside recognition, too — Wildweed won the One To Watch award from North America's 50 Best Restaurants, and David Jackman was named a James Beard finalist for Best Chef: Great Lakes in April 2025.
How to Get a Seat
Wildweed has made dining-room reservations available for the collaboration dinner and opened chef's-counter reservations Friday, October 23, at noon. Reservations can be booked through OpenTable, and further details are posted on the restaurant's official website, wildweed-restaurant.com.
For diners hoping to catch two celebrated chefs in the same kitchen without a flight to Vancouver, this is a rare chance. The dinner takes place Nov. 9, and the collaborative tasting menu at the chef's counter and the à la carte options on the main floor give diners more than one way to be part of the night.
