Texas Chef Tiffany Derry Channels Her Southern Roots at SOBEWFF

Southern cuisine — what is it? If you attempt to define it, you must first consider its varied history.

For some, it’s Floribbean — where cooks use tropical elements from the Bahamas and Caribbean islands. To others, it’s Cajun and Creole, the seafood-heavy dishes that hail from Louisiana’s rich tapestry. And still, there’s low-country and soul food, offering a wide swath of dishes we often refer to as “comfort” food, from cornbread and fried chicken to biscuits and gravy.

For South Beach Wine & Food Festival guest chef and Texas native Tiffany Derry, Southern food goes deeper than its American roots.

“It goes back to Africa, the Haitians, the Caribbean, all those flavors influence my menu. These are also the people who make up the South," she tells New Times.

Growing up, Derry understood Southern cuisine most intimately, spending countless hours in her grandmother’s kitchen just over the Texas border in Louisiana. On the family farm, her grandmother would turn fresh-picked fruits and vegetables into hearty meals, be it a from-scratch pie or a pot of gumbo.

Today, Derry’s creative approach to Southern cooking landed her here, cooking for the 2023 South Beach Wine & Food Festival (SOBEWFF).

For those that don't know her, the Beaumont, Texas, native has several accolades to her name. She is a judge on The Great American Recipe on PBS and a 2022 James Beard Award finalist for “Best Chef: Texas” and “Best New Restaurant.” Derry is one of Bobby Flay’s culinary titans on Bobby’s Triple Threat on the Food Network and a “fan favorite” on Bravo’s Top Chef Season Seven, where she finished in the top four.

In Texas, however, Derry’s fans know her as the queen of duck-fat fried “everything.” It’s also the ethos behind Roots Chicken Shak, the restaurant she opened in 2017 and has since expanded to three locations, where even the bread crumbs on the kale Caesar salad are cooked and crisped in duck fat.

When she opened her formal restaurant, Roots Southern Table, in 2021, Derry’s goal was to do more than cook Southern comfort food — It was also to push its boundaries.
Derry's goal is to elevate Southern food in an exploratory way, simultaneously honoring the past while pushing the boundaries that currently define it. At her Dallas restaurant, she draws inspiration from the global cultures that provide a historical and modern context for Southern cuisine, spiking recipes with hints of the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and the Caribbean.

"I want people to understand that Southern food isn't just what you may know it to be," she explains. "Our food has a history, and it's evolving. It's not one-dimensional, and it's not one-sided."

During the 2023 edition of SOBEWFF, Derry will share that mission with Miami when she cooks her favorite dishes alongside chefs who present their food history to guests.

At the Cookout, a sold-out event hosted by JJ Johnson and D-Nice on Saturday, February 25, that spotlights dishes that give Black culture its richly layered flavor, she'll prepare her famous duck-fat fried chicken. A barbecue must, it will be accompanied by her flavorful Scotch bonnet mango ginger sauce.

But she's saved a special treat — her family's gumbo and cornbread — for the guests of the sold-out Eater Event Series dinner at the Bath Club, hosted alongside South Florida chefs Timon Balloo and Jeff Masanz tonight, Friday, February 24.

When Derry was growing up, gumbo was served several times a month, flavored with ingredients that would change according to what was fresh and available, be it chicken, seafood, or locally caught wild game. It was a hearty meal that could feed her grandmother's 11 children and, later, all 50 of her cousins.

Originally her grandmother's recipe, Derry's mother perfected it, finishing it in the oven to enhance and condense the flavors into a rich, savory broth. Now, her own tweaks make it extraordinary. Derry cooks the okra to eliminate the vegetable's naturally slimy texture and prepares chicken ahead of time to keep it from shredding while the roux cooks down for 36 hours.

It's also part of why the chef has decided to haul her rich, time-consuming roux from Texas to Miami.

"It's this dish in particular that tells the story of my family, the love, the tradition," sums up Derry. "We all have a different type of understanding of food and a different way of appreciating things we didn't grow up eating. That's why I chose to cook with Timon [Balloo]. Like me, he's unapologetic about the food he cooks, and it's my hope that people read this, or taste our food, and feel inspired to step into their roots and do what makes them happy."