Top Chef star Tristen's foraged jerk pork dish is a testament to the fact that food unites people

Top Chef season 22 has reached the last stage of its competition, with four contestants remaining, who will compete for the winner's title in a two-part finale, airing on June 5 and 12, 2025. One of those participants is Chef Tristen Epps, who, I think, has the potential to win the show.

In the previous episode, aired on June 29, the chefs were challenged with creating a dish using foraged ingredients from the Canmore Forest in Alberta. It is a place located in the traditional territory of several Indigenous Nations. Consequently, it has served as a source of life for Indigenous communities, as they depend on it for food, clothes, shelter, and more.

For the chefs, it was a difficult challenge as they had to not only forage the ingredients but also respect the produce they sourced, since the place and its offerings held cultural and historical significance.

However, for Tristen, it was not an easy feat. As an African-American chef, he struggled to find a connection with the Indigenous cultures of Canada, which prevented him from drawing inspiration for the impending challenge.

After a little brainstorming, he stumbled upon jerk, a style of cooking native to Jamaica, in which meat is dry-rubbed or marinated with a spice mixture and slow-cooked over an open flame. While speaking to the cameras, the Top Chef star explained:

"The Taíno people were the Indigenous people of Jamaica, and they used to hide in the mountains, and cook with all the foraged ingredients and greens, and I immediately just ran with that. I'm gonna make a version of jerk pork."

So, Tristen used Canadian local ingredients to create a version of an African Indigenous dish. By doing this, he honored not only Canadian culture and history but also his own. He brought two distant communities together and created an amalgamation of styles, proving that food has the power to blur borders and differences, uniting all and everyone.

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Top Chef star Tristen's dish was more significant than the competition itself

Throughout Top Chef season 22, Tristen prepared dishes that brought African cuisine to the forefront. He had been vocal about wanting to promote his culture and roots, so he could inspire others to do the same. In my opinion, Tristen has been successful in achieving his goal so far.

However, in the previous episode, Tristen did something truly spectacular that would be remembered for years to come. Despite struggling to identify with the culture and its ingredients, Tristen managed to present an extraordinary plate of food to the Top Chef judges. It all happened when he realized that there was an Indigenous African community, like the Canadian Indigenous, that depended on foraged ingredients.

Tristen drew inspiration from the Taíno people, a Jamaican Indigenous group responsible for inventing jerk.

He then developed a recipe for jerk pork, in which he planned to use ingredients from the Canadian wilderness. It was mesmerizing to witness the Top Chef alum use his imagination and skills to prepare a dish that highlighted two disenfranchised communities on one plate.

Food, in my opinion, is healing and powerful enough to erase demarcations and bring people together, and so it did through Tristen's preparation. His "Canadian version of jerk pork" included pork, plantain miso glaze, Quarry Lake callaloo, and coal-roasted roots. He also used poplar bark as cinnamon and yarrow as thyme.

While tasting his dish, Top Chef guest judge Brenda Holder said that she could taste "the land" in Tristen's dish. For the unversed, Holder is the Cree knowledge keeper of traditional medicine, and owner of the Mahikan Trails.

Judge Tom praised Tristen for spending time with unfamiliar ingredients and connecting them to his own roots, thereby presenting a fusion that beautifully united two different flavor palates. Later in the Top Chef episode, Brenda complimented Tristen, saying:

"I was astounded how you came to the point of translating the language from my land through to the food and into your own culture."

Hearing that, the contestant said:

"I think food connects us no matter where we're from."

Tom further mentioned that Tristen's use of the unknown foraged ingredients was so professional that it seemed as if he had been cooking with them for ages.

It perfectly illustrates how one plate of food, representing two different Indigenous communities, united distant groups of people. Both Indigenous Canadians and Africans found representation in Tristen's recipe, further proving my claim that food is capable of uniting people no matter how different they are or where they come from.

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Top Chef season 22 episodes are currently streaming on Peacock.