Lee An­na Ma­haraj

leean­na.ma­haraj@guardian.co.tt

Top Chef 2025 win­ner and Trinida­di­an-Amer­i­can chef Tris­ten Epps-Long is hop­ing to con­tin­ue rep­re­sent­ing Trinidad & To­ba­go’s cui­sine and cul­ture on the glob­al stage.

Epps-Long re­turned to T&T from May 6 to 10 for a home­com­ing culi­nary ex­pe­ri­ence host­ed by Had­co at the Asa Wright Na­ture Cen­tre.

There, the 38-year-old chef col­lab­o­rat­ed with a team that in­clud­ed Had­co Ex­pe­ri­ence’s Culi­nary Man­ag­er Jacque­line Lobin and New York-based Trinida­di­an chef Os­ei Black­ett, al­so known as Chef Picky.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, Epps-Long said that al­though he spent much of his life trav­el­ling with his moth­er, who served as a Judge Ad­vo­cate Gen­er­al in the US mil­i­tary, he has al­ways re­mained con­nect­ed to his Tri­ni roots.

“I kind of had the priv­i­lege of be­ing able to trav­el a lot, so my life has al­ways been a lot about as­sim­i­la­tion of be­ing in Eu­rope or be­ing in Asia be­ing in the States, dif­fer­ent parts of Asia Japan the Philip­pines, Guam. But what’s al­ways been great is like every sum­mer was al­ways time for Trinidad, you know like be­ing be­tween grand­moth­er, aunts, every­thing like that. That’s where my food cul­ture came from. It’s where my dis­ci­pline came from my val­ues kind of came from and then my ad­ven­tur­ous­ness came from,” he shared.

Al­though his roots re­mained firm­ly in Trinidad, trav­el­ling was what first drew him to cook­ing.

“With her [his moth­er] be­ing in the mil­i­tary, there’s not a lot of con­trol you get right? Food was the on­ly thing I could kind of con­trol and when I was by my­self. I would ex­per­i­ment and do every­thing, and we were blessed to have a pantry full of spices and it was al­ways kind of an amaz­ing jux­ta­po­si­tion of be­ing Amer­i­can but with lots of Tri­ni roots, and lots of Tri­ni food al­ways around,” he re­called.

Af­ter start­ing out at Mc­Don­ald’s, Epps-Long went on to earn a bach­e­lor’s de­gree in Culi­nary Arts be­fore fur­ther ad­vanc­ing his skills through ap­pren­tice­ships and men­tor­ships.

“I did an ap­pren­tice­ship pro­gramme in the moun­tains and then I went to work in New York, which is where I met my first chef who said it’s okay to do Tri­ni food. It’s okay to do African food. It’s okay to do black food,” he said.

He added that he al­ways felt a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to rep­re­sent Tri­ni cui­sine with­in the wider Caribbean culi­nary tra­di­tion.

“The jour­ney to Top Chef was some­thing I wait­ed a long time for un­til I felt like I could do the cui­sine proud. When I fi­nal­ly got on there, I made the promise; make my fam­i­ly proud, make my cul­ture proud and be un­fil­tered. There’s a lot of times in the States where, de­pend­ing on who you’re cook­ing for, you have to make it less spicy, and I re­fused to di­lute it any­more. I want­ed to el­e­vate it and ed­u­cate peo­ple who think Caribbean food is just Ja­maican jerk chick­en, or when you think of Trinidad, it’s on­ly Car­ni­val and dou­bles. I want­ed them to know more, and it was hard to do and bring val­ue to it,” he ex­pressed.

In 2025, Epps-Long won sea­son 22 of Top Chef with a four-course Afro-Caribbean-in­spired menu, fea­tur­ing an “ox­tail mi­lanese cre­pinette with Car­oli­na Gold rice grits, cur­ry but­ter, and bone mar­row gre­mo­la­ta”.

But the sig­nif­i­cance of the win ex­tend­ed be­yond the com­pe­ti­tion it­self, rep­re­sent­ing per­se­ver­ance through a deeply dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od in his life.

“Dur­ing the ex­pe­ri­ence, I un­for­tu­nate­ly lost my fa­ther. While I was there, every­thing in me was like quit and go home, stay with your fam­i­ly, make sure every­one’s okay. But I end­ed up mak­ing the de­ci­sion to stay, with the sup­port of my fam­i­ly. So when I did fi­nal­ly win, it felt amaz­ing­ly worth it for me to stay. I felt so proud be­cause now in In­sta­gram all my di­rect mes­sages were from Tri­nis and Caribbean peo­ple, and every­one’s say­ing thank you. All that made me feel proud to tell my fam­i­ly and just made me feel good,” he re­flect­ed.

Mean­while, his moth­er, Pa­tri­cia Lynch Epps-Long, told Guardian Me­dia that much of his in­flu­ence al­so came from his grand­moth­er in San Fer­nan­do. She shared that de­spite the dev­as­ta­tion of los­ing her hus­band, the fam­i­ly re­mained sup­port­ive through­out the com­pe­ti­tion.

“It was a very hard time for my fam­i­ly be­cause I had just lost my hus­band and he just lost his fa­ther, but I was proud and I was hap­py for him that some of this hard work is start­ing to ma­te­ri­alise for him. You want your chil­dren to suc­ceed, and you hope you live long enough to see that your chil­dren are suc­ceed­ing and are be­ing bet­ter than you are. So, if that was the plat­form that he need­ed to tell his sto­ry, I was so proud of him,” she said.

Dur­ing his culi­nary home­com­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, Epps-Long col­lab­o­rat­ed close­ly with lo­cal chefs to cre­ate a menu that reimag­ined fa­mil­iar Caribbean dish­es.

Chef Jacque­line “Jack­ie” Lobin, who has worked in the culi­nary in­dus­try for more than 30 years, ad­mit­ted the ex­pe­ri­ence was ini­tial­ly in­tim­i­dat­ing.

“It was some­thing out of this world. Work­ing with Tris­ten Epps was nerve-wrack­ing at first, be­cause he is the top chef of Amer­i­ca, but then com­ing to­geth­er and hav­ing to tweak our menus, bounce our ideas off each oth­er, it was won­der­ful,” she said.

Lobin said the col­lab­o­ra­tion worked well be­cause it com­bined her Caribbean culi­nary back­ground with Epps-Long’s more ex­per­i­men­tal ap­proach.

“In terms of putting the menu to­geth­er, it would have been my idea to pull to­geth­er the dish­es and then throw it out to Chef and say, hey, what do you think? How can we do this? And he was like, I’m see­ing this as some­thing we can re­al­ly hit out of the park. We just went to town with it in terms of how we can now el­e­vate it and make it dif­fer­ent. Not the same thing that you’re go­ing to have on Sun­day, for a Sun­day lunch or the typ­i­cal dish that we all know it as, but how can we rein­vent it for the din­ers to say they hadn’t thought about some­thing like this?” she ex­plained.

Had­co’s Group co-Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer John Hadad thanked Epps-Long for rep­re­sent­ing T&T on the world stage and said he hopes the col­lab­o­ra­tion will in­spire greater pro­mo­tion of the coun­try’s food in­dus­try. Mean­while, rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Tourism Trinidad pre­sent­ed Epps-Long with a minia­ture steel­pan to­ken and wel­comed him back home soon.

Epps-Long and Lobin, along­side their team and spe­cial guest, New York-based Trinida­di­an chef Os­ei Black­ett, pre­pared a four-course din­ing ex­pe­ri­ence in­spired by Caribbean flavours and tra­di­tions.

First on the menu was corn and lentil soup – sep­a­rate but in the same bowl. Chef Epps-Long de­scribed it as a yin and yang soup, as half the bowl was a smooth yel­low corn soup, and the oth­er half, a brown puréed lentil soup, gar­nished with what he de­scribed as “pro­vi­sion gra­nola”.

Epps-Long: “So I want­ed to start you guys off with some­thing that had kind of a beau­ti­ful jux­ta­po­si­tion of some­thing a lit­tle lighter, but fa­mil­iar in taste. You could kind of cus­tomise each bite. You could have a bite of corn soup by it­self, you could have a bite of split pea soup by it­self, you could have a chunk if you re­al­ly want­ed to and have just kind of dif­fer­ent tex­tures rather than just all of the oth­er stuff. I just want­ed to show a lit­tle yin and yang of like the two colours.”

Sec­ond up was per­haps the most un­ex­pect­ed dish — de­con­struct­ed cowheel souse. The cowheel meat was ten­der enough to be eas­i­ly pulled from the bone, and gar­nished with veg­eta­bles in­clud­ing cu­cum­ber, car­rots, and red cab­bage. For guests who did not eat beef, a shrimp souse was pro­vid­ed.

Epps-Long: “The [de­con­struct­ed souse] wasn’t my idea, but that’s what’s great about work­ing with Chef Jack­ie. I do some­thing very sim­i­lar, but with oys­ters. So, I still want them to have the cow heel, the pig foot. I still want them to have all of that and in a nice lit­tle re­fined way.

So, when some­one who’s Caribbean in the States comes and they see souse on the menu, they can be trig­gered and feel like oh man look what I just had from home, and then peo­ple who’ve nev­er had it say this is what you guys are eat­ing?”

Lobin: “The most in­ter­est­ing one for me in terms of pulling to­geth­er was the souse, be­cause we all know we are serv­ing Trinida­di­an and every­body’s used to the souse be­ing on the bone. At Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah or Ed­die Hart Grounds, you’re buy­ing a cup of souse and the ex­pec­ta­tion is hav­ing it in a cup with the whole thing put to­geth­er. So, we thought, when they see it de­con­struct­ed, and then with the pick­led veg­eta­bles and all the top­pings and then the brine, it will give you the same taste and flavour as a tra­di­tion­al souse, but yet el­e­vat­ing it to the lev­el of fine din­ing.”

The en­trée was served in two parts. First came cou-cou reimag­ined not in its tra­di­tion­al firm form, but with a tex­ture clos­er to mashed pota­toes, along­side stewed king­fish.

Sec­ond was the cen­tre­piece of the af­ter­noon: stewed ox­tail braised in red wine, which was a nod to Epps-Long’s win­ning Top Chef dish.

But be­sides the flavour, the pre­sen­ta­tion al­so turned heads. Un­like the tra­di­tion­al chopped prepa­ra­tion fa­mil­iar to many Trin­bag­o­ni­ans, the chefs served full ox­tail bones gar­nished with flow­ers and paired with cas­sa­va sal­ad for the ta­ble to share.

Lobin: “The ox­tail was his win­ning dish on Top Chef. When he first came, I told him he has to do this dish, there’s no way he’s com­ing to Trinidad and not do the dish. He told me that’s go­ing to take like eight hours and six hours of prep­ping. I’m like, I don’t care if you’re go­ing to take for­ev­er, but I think every­body’s com­ing here to taste what was that win­ning fac­tor on the pro­gramme that he won.”

Epps-Long: “Most peo­ple don’t know that’s what ox­tail looks like. [I served it that way] to cel­e­brate it. I think one of the most trig­ger­ing things for peo­ple in the Caribbean is to hear ox­tail and every­one has such a pure mem­o­ry of the flavour, the tex­ture, the way it looks, and how they’ve had it. I want­ed to cel­e­brate ox­tail the way that every­one else cel­e­brates these oth­er, while good, less flavour­ful pieces of meat. Every­one’s had a steak, but like you can’t say it tastes bet­ter than an ox­tail. There’s a piece of salt and pep­per on the oth­er steak, but then we have this, which is braised low and slow, sea­soned, mar­i­nat­ed, cooked. I want­ed Caribbean peo­ple to come and say look at my dish, it’s the most ex­pen­sive menu item on there, but I’m proud of it.”

Dessert was the cher­ry on top, or rather, the cof­fee bean on top. Guests were served Asa Wright’s sig­na­ture Bras­so Choco­late Cheese­cake, made with choco­late from Bras­so Seco and topped with cof­fee beans grown and roast­ed on the es­tate.

The ex­pe­ri­ence con­clud­ed with cock­tails and light mu­sic as guests lin­gered on the bal­cony, tak­ing in the hum­ming­birds and green­ery.