A Houston ‘High Chef’ Contender Showcases the Breadth of the African Diaspora in New Tasting Menu Dinner Sequence

Houston High Chef contender Tristen Epps has plans to teach diners concerning the Transatlantic Slave Commerce and its lasting social, cultural, and financial impacts in a pop-up eating expertise. In honor of Black Historical past Month this February, the James Beard semifinalist and Marcus Samuelsson protege is launching a three-part tasting menu at Heights restaurant Jūn, which additionally provides a glimpse of his anticipated Afro-Caribbean restaurant, Buboy (pronounced bUH-boy). “I need to ensure that this story behind this delicacies is advised,” he says. “Black meals is American meals. Black historical past is American historical past, and I need that to be actually proven and in methods as finest as I can.”

Epps says the eating sequence will supply an omakase-like, experiential meal however in a “Black means,” with vibrant Afro-Caribbean flavors centered in a fine-dining setting; the purpose is to make it a protected area that celebrates Black pleasure and resilience however is accessible to anybody. “[People from other cultures] can come to be launched to our delicacies, which has had a huge impact on American delicacies,” Epps says, including that he’ll additionally punch up acquainted dishes like oxtail and gumbo with luxe substances like caviar, foie gras, king crab, and truffles.

The pop-up sequence, which Epps has supplied for greater than six years in different cities, together with New York, Denver, and Miami, illustrates the chef’s journey via kitchens all over the world and his personal examination of his culinary heritage. However this 12 months’s Houston debut is a bit of completely different: The pop-up comes forward of the opening of his first Houston restaurant and, in some ways, serves as a preview of what’s to return. Named after his grandfather’s nickname, Buboy strives to make Black foodways extra mainstream. Epps says that simply as French and Italian cuisines are dynamic in that they’ve “peasant meals” and extra elegant, storied displays, Epps needs to see the identical for Black diasporic cuisines. “I need to do nothing however construct worth on [its past] whereas celebrating what it’s now,” he says.

The dinner sequence launches on Tuesday, February 11, and can spend three weeks specializing in the Transatlantic slave route — exploring Black tradition, substances, and culinary strategies which have formed foodways all over the world. In its first week, six programs will illustrate West African foodways, with dishes like grilled oyster with rundown stew and crispy provision; Dasheen Dumplin’ with groundnut stew and native sheep’s milk cheese; Texas wagyu with smoked peanut suya and grilled gai lan (Chinese language broccoli); and grilled Gulf fish with plantain pudding and oxtail spinach stew. Epps dives deeper into the Caribbean through the second week with stew rooster made with Texas quail, truffle rice and peas with burnt sugar quail jus, and foie gras served with curried duck. The sequence culminates within the Americas, beginning with Central American dishes like Epps’s rendition of Mexican peanut stew with rooster and roti, after which via the Deep South of the USA, the place dishes like perloo, which takes its basis from Carolina gold rice, was a staple within the Gullah Geechee group within the Carolinas.

When slavery ended and numerous U.S. industries may not depend on free labor, the chef says, the USA’s rice trade modified totally. “That’s what America’s wealth was constructed on,” he says of the advanced historical past round rice within the Carolinas. “[My dish is] a strategy to re-celebrate the individuals who cultivated the land.” Diners may also style an expansive tackle gumbo made with substances similar to king crab and selfmade duck sausage.

The Virginia native says his love for meals was codified by his time spent dwelling overseas together with his household and Black Trinidadian mom, who was within the navy. As a toddler — whereas his mom was stationed and dealing in Japan — Epps says he would watch the cooking channel and QVC (the one channels that had been in English) and experiment within the kitchen. Scrambled eggs had been the gateway. “I believed it was probably the most superb factor that eggs can go from a shell to this vicious orb and that you could possibly flip it into one thing actually scrumptious,” he says. “That alchemy blew my thoughts.”

Bravo

Household and mates took discover of his deep curiosity in cooking and additional inspired him by gifting him cookbooks and different tomes about meals. As he traveled from nation to nation together with his household, Epps says he grew to become extra attuned to how cultural foodways might be completely different however have many related threads tying them collectively. He enrolled in culinary faculty at Johnson & Wales College’s Charlotte campus and later did a three-year apprenticeship on the Greenbrier Lodge in West Virginia. In 2014, he determined it was time to maneuver on. “I used to be craving a big metropolis with some variety, and I appeared for the largest metropolis I may discover that wasn’t New York,” he says. He couldn’t afford Los Angeles, so he moved to Houston, the place he labored for the 4 Seasons Lodge and, later, the now-closed Cross & Provisions.

All of the whereas, Epps says, most restaurant house owners employed him for his French coaching and appeared much less thinking about his aptitude for Caribbean flavors and delicacies. However Epps’s trajectory modified when he landed a spot on ABC’s The Style, the place movie star chef Marcus Samuelsson grew to become his mentor. Epps adopted Samuelsson to New York, Sweden, Bermuda, and Washington, D.C, earlier than opening his personal restaurant in Brooklyn. “It was the primary time I may make Caribbean meals, and the chef was like, ‘Go more durable,’” he says. “I discovered a ton, and I discovered quite a bit about myself.” Epps later did a brief stint in Denver, the place he labored for chef Tory Guard of Guard and Grace, however says he craved one thing else totally. That landed him in Aspen, after which in Miami, the place, whereas working at Samuelsson’s Pink Rooster outpost in Overtown, he was named a James Beard semifinalist for the Greatest Chef: South class; he additionally helped Pink Rooster earn Michelin Bib Gourmand recognition.

Epps lastly returned to Houston in March 2024 to plant roots with Buboy. “Houston is such an open metropolis for meals,” Epps says, noting that every neighborhood affords a distinct cultural expertise, with town being house to giant Black, Vietnamese, and Latin diasporic communities. “I like that I can contact all of these folks on the similar time [with my food], and nobody is essentially scoffing at it.”

Buboy doesn’t have a house but. Epps says he’s nonetheless on the lookout for an area the place he could be in the course of the eating room or a bar to ship a narrative and meals straight to the plate. “Somebody must be there to say what these dishes are and what they imply to our nation, our historical past — all of it,” he says, “And that historical past must be advised till it’s only a regular factor.”

Buboy

Epps’s Black Historical past Month pop-up sequence affords two seatings every evening for $95 per individual, with an possibility of a $45 wine pairing. Dates are Tuesday, February 11; Tuesday, February 18; and Tuesday, February 25. Diners could make reservations on OpenTable.