Tiffany Derry is an American celebrity chef and restaurateur. She is a

Top Chef ''Top Chef'' is an American reality competition television series which premiered on Bravo on March 8, 2006. The show features chefs competing against each other in culinary challenges. The contestants are judged by a panel of professional ch ...

television series alum, and known for her appearances on '' Cutthroat Kitchen'' and ''Hungry Investors'' ( Spike tv). She is based in

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...

Early life

Derry was born on December 26, 1982, in Beaumont, Texas. She is

African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...

. Derry graduated from

The Art Institute of Houston The Art Institute of Houston is a for-profit college in Houston, Texas. It is owned by Education Principle Foundation. Founded in 1965 as the Houston School of Commercial Art, the school joined The Art Institutes system of schools in 1978 and mov ...

in 2003 with an Associate of Applied Science degree in culinary arts. She started her culinary career at the local International House of Pancakes at the age of 15, where she later had a management position.

Restaurant career

Derry was the chef and owner of "Private, Social" in Dallas from 2011 to 2013. In 2012, Derry founded her professional website promoting her culinary career and her restaurant, "Private, Social." In 2013, Derry expressed interest in opening her own restaurant in her hometown of Beaumont. Derry has also working with the

Dallas Independent School District The Dallas Independent School District (Dallas ISD or DISD) is a school district based in Dallas, Texas ( USA). It operates schools in much of Dallas County and is the second-largest school district in Texas and the seventeenth-largest in the ...

to improve their school lunch program in order to provide healthier options. Derry opened Roots Chicken Shak in Plano in 2017. Derry, partnering with investor Tom Foley of T2D Concepts and Indigo Group, to opened ''Roots Southern Table'' in June 2021 in Farmers Branch, Texas as an expansion concept to Roots Chicken Shak. The concept is chef driven and the menu consists of high end twists to the classic southern recipes Derry grew up with. ''Roots Southern Table'' was included in the "2021 Restaurants List" by

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

, as one of the fifty best American restaurants of the year.

Television appearances

Derry competed in ''Top Chef'' season 7 in

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and won "fan favorite" after placing fifth. She also competed among the All-Star chefs in

season 8 A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and pol ...

and finished fourth as a finalist. Derry appeared on an episode of Spike TV's ''

Bar Rescue ''Bar Rescue'' is an American reality television series that airs on Paramount Network (formerly Spike during the first five seasons). It stars Jon Taffer, a long-time food and beverage industry consultant specializing in nightclubs, bars and p ...

'' in June 2013, and has appeared in a commercial promoting her alma mater, "The Art Institute of Houston". In November 2013, she was the day's winner on an episode of

Food Network Food Network is an American basic cable channel owned by Television Food Network, G.P., a joint venture and general partnership between Warner Bros. Discovery Networks (which holds a 69% ownership stake of the network) and Nexstar Media Group ( ...

's '' Cutthroat Kitchen'' and she started to appear on the Spike TV series ''Hungry Investors'', which debuted in 2014. In 2022, Derry was on Guy Fieri's television series, ''Tournament of Champions'' (Food Network), season 3.

Awards

In 2013, Derry was awarded the Hall of Fame by the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities.

References

External links

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"Eight Questions for Top Chef’s Tiffany Derry"
from ''Seattle Met''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Derry, Tiffany Top Chef contestants Living people People from Beaumont, Texas African-American chefs American women chefs American chefs Chefs from Texas Businesspeople from Dallas Bar Rescue 21st-century African-American people 21st-century African-American women 1982 births