High Chef’s Latest Champion Is Altering the Definition of New American Delicacies

“Make it value it. Simply make it value it. Make it value it.” 

These are the phrases that Patricia Lynch Epps spoke over the cellphone late one night time from her residence in Virginia to her son, Tristen Epps, in Canada. Her husband and Tristen’s father, Russell Lengthy, had died, leaving Tristen Epps with a call to make: proceed to compete on Season 22 of High Chef or return residence. His mother’s phrases fueled him. He wouldn’t simply keep — he would win. 

Epps had already determined to heart his life’s work as a chef to lift the profile and perceived worth of Black meals world wide. At first, competing on High Chef was simply one other platform to rejoice foodways from the African and Caribbean diaspora, he says. However his father’s demise gave him a singular focus. 

“My motivation modified midseason as a result of my father handed away,” he says. “It turned a selection of do I go together with what I’ve been doing? Or do I’m going again to my household? In the end, I selected to remain and double down. I might assist my household, honor them, and honor my authentic objective to compete, all on the identical time.”

Epps’ household waited till he completed filming in Canada so he might attend the funeral in Virginia. He then flew to Milan for the High Chef finale with the obituary in his pocket. 

“I used to be within the second in Milan,” he says. “We might have been in Detroit for all I cared. It wouldn’t have mattered if it have been there on the moon. I had a singular focus: I wished to inform my story, cook dinner my meals.” 

The problem for Epps and his fellow contestants Bailey Sullivan, from Chicago, and Shuai Wang, of Charleston, was to make the very best four-course progressive dinner of their lives. 

No strain. 

For the judges on the desk, together with me, it was clear by the top of the meal that irrespective of how good Sullivan’s and Wang’s dishes have been, and irrespective of how evident their expertise, Epps was cooking and competing at a special degree. His third course, an distinctive riff on oxtail Milanese, doubtless sealed his win. To make it Epps braised the oxtails, picked the tender meat from the bone, sauced it, and shaped it into the form of the normal round Milanese reduce of ossobucco. He served the fragile, sticky oxtails over curry-spiced Carolina rice grits, conjuring flavors of West Africa, the Caribbean, and the American South whereas additionally paying homage to Milan. 

In my eight years of visitor judging on High Chef, I’ve tasted many distinctive dishes, together with Melissa King’s plum sauce-lacquered quail and Buddha Lo’s blue lobster with squash and curry bisque. Nonetheless, I can’t bear in mind one other dish that mixed such skillful mastery of approach as Epps’, which layered taste, texture, and storytelling. With the cameras and lights educated on him, he reworked humble oxtail and rice, symbolic meals of battle and uplift, right into a regal dish. 

I acquired goosebumps whereas consuming it. And sitting to my proper on the judges desk was chef Gregory Gourdet, guffawing with delight at Epps’ ability, acknowledging a peer whose time within the highlight had lastly come — very like Gourdet’s had years earlier than whereas competing on High Chef. 

Epps began accumulating taste reminiscences at a younger age by touring the world together with his navy mother. After graduating from culinary faculty, he gained expertise at The Greenbrier in West Virginia and labored carefully with chef Marcus Samuelsson, his mentor, on Samuelsson’s tasks in London, Sweden, Bermuda, the Bahamas and Miami, the place he gained a following earlier than opening his personal restaurant. 

Samuelsson calls Epps “a complete throwback, a cook dinner’s cook dinner and a chef’s chef,” who put in his time to study and develop in his profession. “He’s an American chef impressed by heritage who makes scrumptious dishes that really feel and style like now,” says Samuelsson. 

Now Epps relies in Houston, elevating an toddler son together with his associate Casey Giltner, taking part in just a little pickleball, Topgolf, and rising a backyard of herbs and chiles in his downtime. High Chef followers coming to the Meals & Wine Traditional in Aspen can style his meals, together with gnudi with egusi butter and black truffle and duck pilau with foie gras, subsequent week. He’ll additionally proceed cooking at pop ups across the nation, and he’s planning a brand new intimate wonderful eating restaurant known as Buboy, the nickname of his grandfather Ken Lynch, that celebrates meals of the African and Caribbean diaspora. Fittingly, for a storyteller nearly as good as Epps, the brand new restaurant’s emblem will likely be an oxtail bone.

As for High Chef, Epps says the one cause why he competed on season 22 was to “give validation and format and credibility to my delicacies.” 

Mission completed. He made the journey to Canada and Milan value it.