Outside EpicCentral in Grand Prairie, “Smooth Operator,” “Lil Boo Thang,” and “Cha-Cha Slide” soundtrack a lively scene. Chefs and vintners stand under white-canopied stalls, sheltered from the sun, tending to festival-goers. Guyanese restaurateur Tavel Bristol-Joseph, whose Hestia just snagged a Michelin star in Austin, spoons salted cream onto little servings of apple sorbet. Celebrity chef Arnold Myint, also known as Suzy Wong and crowned Miss Gay America in 2017, lays Thai beef jerky on miniature beds of lettuce. Nigerian American megastar Kwame Onwuachi, chef of the New York Times’ favorite restaurant in New York and the James Beard Foundation’s 2019 “Rising Chef of the Year,” poses for selfies with fans. This is Tiffany Derry’s inaugural Shef Food + Wine.
“In Dallas, there are tons of great food festivals,” Derry says, “but there wasn’t one for me.”
When most chefs say “me,” they mean “me.” When Derry says “me,” she means “us”: women chefs, Black chefs, queer chefs, anyone for whom kitchen doors don’t magically swing open.
Derry, who with business partner Tom Foley owns Roots Chicken Shak, Roots Southern Table, and Radici, twinkles among Dallas’s gastronomic luminaries—“Fan Favorite” on Top Chef Season 7, a couple of James Beard nods, Eater Dallas’ 2022 “Chef of the Year,” a never-ending list of philanthropic and political contributions—but she was once a 15-year-old waitress at IHOP, barred from cooking because women weren’t allowed in the kitchen. (Imagine telling Tiffany Derry, No, you may not make pancakes.)
In the past few decades, IHOP may have caught up to reality, but the fine-dining sphere maintains a diversity problem. A January 2023 study showed that of all the Michelin-starred restaurants in the country, 120 had White executive chefs while one had a Black executive chef. (That number increased slightly with Hestia and Bristol-Joseph.) Another study found that of all the Michelin-starred restaurants in the country, only 6 percent are helmed by women. This is less an indictment of Michelin than a reflection of a systemic issue; multiple studies show gender-based and race-based wage gaps and obvious biases in hiring practices.
Doling out lamb and harissa sliders with slaw, Erick Williams of the Chicago-based Southern restaurant Virtue cites okra as a symbol of fine-dining inequity: “My counterparts…could charge three times the amount for the same okra that I was putting on a dish, but because…‘the Black man is serving soul food,’ [my okra is supposed to] be discounted.”
“Many times, I saw other chefs moving up and I thought, ‘I work harder than them! I cook well!’ But I didn’t get those opportunities,” Derry says.
Brittany Conerly
For their first endeavor, Roots Chicken Shak, an order-at-the-counter spot in Legacy Hall, Derry and Foley (whose company is called T2D) granted opportunity to themselves. The food-court business was a means of both testing the market and gaining the capital to open Roots Southern Table. They have since maintained that business model of funding each project not through outside investors, but with their earnings from previous projects.
“You can’t wait for someone to give you an opportunity,” Derry says. “Don’t be discouraged if you can’t get $5 million to open a restaurant. You start where you can start.”
Derry chose Grand Prairie for Shef Food + Wine, and for the upcoming second location of Radici, for the same reason she chose Farmers Branch for Roots Southern Table and the original Radici. “We’re intentional about being in the suburbs,” she says. “I want people to have somewhere to go in their own neighborhoods to enjoy great food.”
Bristol-Joseph credits her approach for his eagerness to make the trip here from Austin: “She could have done this in any city. She’s nationally known. But she chose her own backyard. She’s giving directly back to her community.”
Derry heaps her time and energy not just on her own community, but on global causes such as hunger and diabetes. She also mentors dozens of culinary hopefuls. “We have people who started with us as line cooks or servers who are now running operations,” she says. “Just show us that this is what you want to do and we’ll give you everything we have to make you successful.”
One example is Ivana Marsh, who became a stage at Roots Southern Table right out of culinary school and worked her way up to her current role as sous chef at Radici. “When I started, I was the worst cook in the kitchen,” says Marsh, who coordinated the chefs’ equipment for the festival. “But anyone who wants to learn, Tiffany’s willing to teach.”
In her own words, Derry notices who has “a seat at the table” and pulls up chairs for those who don’t. Shef Food + Wine showcases her colleagues who, like she did, fought their way to the table, and now effectively own the table. Most aren’t just celebrated chefs but TV personalities. They’ve been contestants and judges on Top Chef and Chopped. James Beard awards abound. Onwuachi will be in charge of food at next year’s Met Gala. But even this star-studded event doubles as an opportunity for openhandedness. Derry and Foley gave out 100 free tickets to local chefs, awarded scholarships to culinary students, and donated proceeds to the Texas Restaurant Association to support Recipe, T2D’s education-and-growth platform for industry professionals. “We want to push the industry in a different direction,” Derry says.
In some ways, that push is not the Sisyphean task that it once was.
“I don’t want to dwell on the lack of representation,” says Arnold Myint, “drag-queen chef” and owner of Nashville-based Thai restaurant International Market. “The world is more savvy now about food. We’re being celebrated and getting more opportunities because, let’s be honest, there’s more to life than salt and pepper and an occasional herb sprig. And we’re the ones bringing that flavor.”
“I hope we are helping the industry continue to recognize that we are fine dining,” Onwuachi says, “and our food does not need to be ‘elevated.’ Our cuisine is at the top, and showcasing chefs from all backgrounds should be the norm.”
Saturday night, as I’m leaving the festival, I run into Derry, who says that she’ll be flying to Australia on Sunday for more work. She speculates she’ll sleep then, on the plane. I’m humbled and slightly horrified by the thought of making plans to sleep, not that night, but some day in the future. But ask anyone who knows her and they’ll gush about Derry’s work ethic.
They’ll also gush about her grace, her charisma, her generosity.
And to quote Erick Williams, “She can flat-out cook.”
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