Top Chef’s Newest Champion Is Changing the Definition of New American Cuisine

“Make it worth it. Just make it worth it. Make it worth it.” 

These are the words that Patricia Lynch Epps spoke over the phone late one night from her home in Virginia to her son, Tristen Epps, in Canada. Her husband and Tristen’s father, Russell Long, had died, leaving Tristen Epps with a decision to make: continue to compete on Season 22 of Top Chef or return home. His mom’s words fueled him. He wouldn’t just stay — he would win. 

Epps had already decided to center his life’s work as a chef to raise the profile and perceived value of Black food around the world. At first, competing on Top Chef was just another platform to celebrate foodways from the African and Caribbean diaspora, he says. But his father’s death gave him a singular focus. 

“My motivation changed midseason because my father passed away,” he says. “It became a choice of do I go along with what I’ve been doing? Or do I go back to my family? Ultimately, I chose to stay and double down. I could support my family, honor them, and honor my original goal to compete, all at the same time.”

Epps’ family waited until he finished filming in Canada so he could attend the funeral in Virginia. He then flew to Milan for the Top Chef finale with the obituary in his pocket. 

“I was in the moment in Milan,” he says. “We could have been in Detroit for all I cared. It wouldn’t have mattered if it were there on the moon. I had a singular focus: I wanted to tell my story, cook my food.” 

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

No pressure. 

For the judges at the table, including me, it was clear by the end of the meal that no matter how good Sullivan’s and Wang’s dishes were, and no matter how evident their talent, Epps was cooking and competing at a different level. His third course, an exceptional riff on oxtail Milanese, likely sealed his win. To make it Epps braised the oxtails, picked the tender meat from the bone, sauced it, and formed it into the shape of the traditional circular Milanese cut of ossobucco. He served the delicate, sticky oxtails over curry-spiced Carolina rice grits, conjuring flavors of West Africa, the Caribbean, and the American South while also paying homage to Milan. 

In my eight years of guest judging on Top Chef, I’ve tasted many exceptional dishes, including Melissa King’s plum sauce-lacquered quail and Buddha Lo’s blue lobster with squash and curry bisque. However, I can’t remember another dish that combined such skillful mastery of technique as Epps’, which layered flavor, texture, and storytelling. With the cameras and lights trained on him, he transformed humble oxtail and rice, symbolic foods of struggle and uplift, into a regal dish. 

I got goosebumps while eating it. And sitting to my right at the judges table was chef Gregory Gourdet, giggling with delight at Epps’ skill, acknowledging a peer whose time in the spotlight had finally come — much like Gourdet’s had years before while competing on Top Chef. 

Epps started collecting flavor memories at a young age by traveling the world with his military mom. After graduating from culinary school, he gained experience at The Greenbrier in West Virginia and worked closely with chef Marcus Samuelsson, his mentor, on Samuelsson’s projects in London, Sweden, Bermuda, the Bahamas and Miami, where he gained a following before opening his own restaurant. 

Samuelsson calls Epps “a total throwback, a cook’s cook and a chef’s chef,” who put in his time to learn and grow in his career. “He is an American chef inspired by heritage who makes delicious dishes that feel and taste like now,” says Samuelsson. 

Now Epps is based in Houston, raising an infant son with his partner Casey Giltner, playing a little pickleball, Topgolf, and growing a garden of herbs and chiles in his downtime. Top Chef fans coming to the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen can taste his food, including gnudi with egusi butter and black truffle and duck pilau with foie gras, next week. He’ll also continue cooking at pop ups around the country, and he is planning a new intimate fine dining restaurant called Buboy, the nickname of his grandfather Ken Lynch, that celebrates food of the African and Caribbean diaspora. Fittingly, for a storyteller as good as Epps, the new restaurant’s emblem will be an oxtail bone.

As for Top Chef, Epps says the only reason why he competed on season 22 was to “give validation and format and credibility to my cuisine.” 

Mission accomplished. He made the journey to Canada and Milan worth it.