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Tiffany Derry: Life-Changing Call & Culinary Journey

Chef Tiffany Derry

In today’s episode, I talk to Chef Tiffany Derry of Roots Chicken Shak and Roots Southern Table. From the comfort of these Dallas, Texas kitchens, she’s taken Southern food to new heights. Inspired by the dishes her family made when she was young, she always felt that this cuisine deserved a place at the table. And since no one else had done it to the level she was searching for, she sprung into action.
You’ll hear about the concept behind Roots Southern Table and her smaller operation Roots Chicken Shak, and you’ll get a little taste of the Chicken Sandwich that’s making them famous. She also talks about the misconceptions people have about Southern cuisine, what makes it so unique, and why it deserves to be honored and shared. She also talks about what it’s really like to be a chef on TV and a prominent voice for the long-held traditions of Southern food.

Listen to my conversation with chef Tiffany Derry on Apple Podcast here!

Listen to my conversation with chef Tiffany Derry on Spotify here!

What you'll learn with chef Tiffany Derry

The phone call that changed her life (3:31)
How being on Top Chef changed her (4:55)
What drives her towards the adrenaline rush of competition (7:43)
How she learned to appreciate her Southern roots (8:31)
The misconceptions of Southern food (9:30)
The best fried chicken sandwich in Dallas (11:00)
Why she keeps the menu small (12:50)
How Roots Southern Table was finally born (14:00)
The family memories that inspired the menu (15:20)
What “Southern food” means to her (17:07)
Representing as Black female chef when there were few others (20:12)
How she’s paying it forward to other aspiring female chefs (22:21)
The fresh angle of her new TV show on PBS (23:29)
The truth about Gordon Ramsay (27:03)
Her absolute favorite ingredient to cook with (27:56)
How the menu is divided at Southern Kitchen (29:11)
The one thing everyone tries to steal from the table (30:25)
Her other sources of culinary inspiration (31:29)
How to make her mom’s Bacon, Egg & Rice dish (33:33)
The Southern dish that most reminds her of childhood (35:19)
Her top food stops in Dallas (36:11)
Her favorite guilty pleasure and how enjoys it without blowing her diet (39:02)
A French-inspired Southern duck dish (40:41)
Her most influential cookbooks (42:04)
Series of rapid-fire questions.
Link to the podcast episode on Apple Podcast

Links to other episodes in Dallas

Conversation with Chef Misti Norris from Petra and The Beast

Links to most downloaded episodes (click on any picture to listen to the episode)

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There are just so many different people who make up the south and created what we consider to be Southern cuisine. Southern cuisine is not anywhere else in the world. They didn't bring that from somewhere, it was a melding of all of these different people coming together. 

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I wanted Southern Table to be almost like an homage to the way I grew up, the things that I love the most about my family's farm, and picking greens and being able to transition that into something so delicious. 

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The one thing I wanted and I craved was the foods I grew up eating that were not being represented well. Either they weren't being represented at all, or it wasn't being represented well, in the ways that I grew up. 

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I got so tired of seeing people only talk about dishes when they talked about the South. They forget about all the abundance of beautiful produce we have, all of the people in our families who were hunters and fishermen, and all of that… and that's what the South was about. 

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You have to first always honor the dishes that you're doing. There is a fine line where you can lose the dish's identity.

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