Meet Our 2025 Iron Fork Opponents | Cowl Tales

1 Kitchen’s Chris Crary

Chris Crary is an skilled competitors chef, named “Fan Favourite” on Season 9 of Bravo’s High Chef: Texas — however his ardour for cooking reaches far past profitable prizes. Raised in small-town Ohio, Crary realized to cook dinner at his mom’s and grandmother’s apron strings, mastering basic American recipes and creating a respect for regional and seasonal substances.

He continued his training at Johnson & Wales College and took kitchen jobs all around the nation, from Florida to California. Alongside the best way, Crary started to refine his private cooking model into an attention-grabbing melange of California delicacies and worldwide components from Italy, Iberia and Asia. His private journey additionally included dropping greater than 70 kilos by paying shut consideration to what he ate and getting away from a number of the Northern Italian meals he had been cooking.

Because the culinary director at 1 Resort, Crary is returning to his roots, significantly the Southern consolation meals he realized about from his Tennessee-born grandmother. His newest menus replicate the property’s laser give attention to sustainable practices as he sources substances from native producers to create wholesome dishes that commemorate the area whereas creating minimal influence on the atmosphere.

Etch’s Jess Lambert

As legendary native chef (and previous Iron Fork champion) Deb Paquette progressively transitions from the kitchen to spending extra time with visitors within the eating rooms at Etch and and many others., Jess Lambert has taken extra accountability over the menus and operations. Since beginning out as a cook dinner at Etch in 2014, Lambert has earned the belief and respect of her mentor alongside the best way, rising to sous chef, chef de delicacies and now govt chef.

Paquette and Lambert nonetheless collaborate on seasonal menu creation, however Lambert now leads the method with Chef Deb’s enter. Lambert shares the identical ardour for world substances and flavors that has set Etch above different Nashville eating places for greater than a decade, and the longer term is vibrant for the chef and the 4Top Hospitality ideas in SoBro, Inexperienced Hills and Franklin.

Lambert’s expertise working alongside Paquette at final 12 months’s Iron Fork might additionally show helpful on this 12 months’s battle as she steps to the fore.

Tutti da Gio’s Giovanna Orsino

Because the namesake of Tutti da Gio, her Sicilian restaurant hidden in a tiny Hermitage strip mall off Outdated Hickory Boulevard, Giovanna Orsino was one of many metropolis’s best-kept culinary secrets and techniques. Her standing as an “if you understand, you understand” favourite amongst native foodies modified when she opened a brand new location within the former Half Batch Brewing house in Hendersonville, the place she’s simpler to search out.

The ebullient chef has an enchanting background: born in New Jersey earlier than shifting to Texas, then Sicily, then Salt Lake Metropolis and eventually to Nashville. Alongside the best way, Orsino cooked for Catholic monks, transformed to Mormonism, turned the lead chef for a Sicilian restaurant group and married a person from Nashville whom she met in Utah.

Collectively they opened the primary Tutti da Gio in a nondescript house with virtually no seating, but she nonetheless earned legions of followers who sought out her home made pastas, pizzas and panini. Her model of hospitality makes visitors really feel like they’re eating with their nonna, and her persona is as candy because the ricotta in her cannoli.

Alebrije’s Edgar Victoria

Chef Edgar Victoria was born in Mexico Metropolis and has lived in Music Metropolis for greater than 25 years. After working in kitchens throughout town cooking different individuals’s meals, he lastly determined to construct a enterprise across the acquainted (and familial) meals that he loved in his dwelling kitchen after a protracted shift in a restaurant.

Alebrije began up in the course of the pandemic as a sequence of pop-ups, serving from borrowed kitchens at spots like Bastion, Bar Sovereign, By no means By no means and Geodis Park or from meals vehicles and trailers at farmers markets in East Nashville and Richland Park. Utilizing heirloom corn that he imported from Mexico and nixtamalized himself to create masa, Victoria launched many Nashvillians to dishes that prolonged past tacos. His huaraches and tlayudas characteristic substances just like typical taco truck choices, however they extra authentically replicate the road meals of the chef’s native metropolis.

Now that Alebrije lastly has a everlasting house in East Nashville, Victoria can get extra refined and experimental together with his delicacies, which he describes as “if Momofuku was Mexican.” He has all the time made every part from scratch — his tortillas, moles, salsas, ceviches, pozoles and tamales. However now that he has his personal kitchen to play in, anticipate much more magic from Victoria.