Chef Daybreak Burrell Returns to Houston With ‘Sound and Coloration’ Dinner Sequence

High Chef alumna Daybreak Burrell has been on a hiatus from Houston’s restaurant scene. The Olympian, who switched gears from being a protracted jumper to turning into a chef, is thought for her soulful cooking in kitchens across the metropolis, a popularity that led her to a James Beard semifinalist nod in 2020. She later served as chef-partner of Lucille’s Hospitality Group, helmed by lauded Houston chef Chris Williams. However in July 2023, issues took a swift flip. Burrell introduced her departure from the restaurant group that now runs Lucille’s, Rado MKT, and Late August, the latter of which she was supposed to guide.

On the time of her departure from Late August, Burrell expressed in a press release her gratitude for her friendship with Williams and partnership with Lucille’s Hospitality Group, however famous that alternatives to journey and collaborate with different cooks have been “main [her] in a special course.” Now, Burrell tells Eater Houston that the enterprise relationship simply wasn’t a superb match. “I made a decision I wanted to depart. The partnership was not wholesome, nor viable. It was simply finest to half methods,” she says.

Burrell is in a brand new stage of her culinary profession — what she conceives as her colourful re-entrance into the Houston meals scene — and she or he’s doing it her manner. This summer season, the chef will launch a multidisciplinary eating collection, Sound and Coloration, and she or he desires diners who attend to make use of all of their senses to grasp and recognize the expertise.

Jenn Duncan

Impressed partly by the Alabama Shakes track of the identical identify, Sound and Coloration will function Burrell working alongside fellow cooks, musicians, and combined media artists. Every dinner, Burrell and her collaborators will change issues up and have some surprises, together with a brand new secret location that’s solely revealed when diners safe their tickets. The collection kicks off on June 29, that includes Burrell’s good pal Dominick Lee, who is about to lead the much-anticipated progressive Creole restaurant Augustine’s that can open this fall. Burrell may also group up with Beard semi-finalist chef and Chopped champion Tristan Epps on July 12, adopted by a collaboration with Second Ward brewery Equal Components Brewing on July 26.

Future dates and cooks shall be introduced later, however in July, Burrell says she additionally has plans to collaborate with multidisciplinary artist Robert Leroy Hodge, in addition to Janavi Folmsbee, an Indian-born up to date and marine conservation artist. Folmsbee is accountable for sensory installations at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport, together with the Aquarius Artwork Tunnel.

Burrell says her purpose for Sound and Coloration is for collaborators to indicate up in the best way that they want to symbolize their artistry. Culinarians will showcase tales about their meals or tradition, presenting an array of flavors and kinds that relate to particular themes. Consolation meals will nonetheless be on the root for Burrell, who says she plans to offer diners a sneak peek into her many pursuits and culinary thoughts. “I imagine consolation meals may be elevated to no matter platform,” she says. “It may be plated properly and be stunning, and it may possibly nonetheless really feel like a heat hug to you.”

Joseph Boudreaux

In some ways, this dinner collection got here from a interval of uncertainty. Following her abrupt departure from Lucille’s Hospitality, Burrell headed to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for two-and-a-half months, serving to acclaimed chef Marcus Samuelsson prepare his kitchen group for his newest hometown restaurant Marcus Addis. The expertise felt refreshing, Burrell says. She was working inside a well-functioning kitchen ecosystem, making meals that was new and thrilling to her in a spot that she had by no means been. “I discovered so much,” Burrell says. “Marcus is a superb particular person and nice help. I felt honored to be part of his [task force] group.”

She returned to Ethiopia to help Samuelsson with the grand opening later that fall, after which, earlier this 12 months, jetted with Samuelsson to France for practically two weeks as part of the James Beard Basis’s culinary diplomacy program. There, Burrell’s seemingly disparate worlds of chef and Olympic athlete collided. She traveled to Paris, the place the 2024 Summer time Olympics will happen, and cooked for the U.S. Ambassador of France. Later, she visited Lyon, the place she talked to numerous podcasts, athletes, and future culinarians about her athletic background and profession as a chef, and taught teams of ladies immigrants searching for careers within the culinary world find out how to make American dishes.

“As soon as an Olympian, at all times an Olympian,” Burrell says, including, “It feels extremely particular to be part of it once more, and to take part otherwise is absolutely cool.”

Behind the scenes, Burrell was shaping the thought for her dinner collection — occasions she hoped would enable diners to expertise the vibrancy of Houston’s meals and humanities panorama otherwise. The Alabama Shakes track — one about rebirth and a fearless emergence into an unknown new world, the place the listener is assured “the whole lot shall be OK” — was her soundtrack, and Dominick Lee, the primary chef featured in her upcoming collection, was her confidant. “He’s at all times very useful to speak to, and we’re at all times in related locations,” Burrell says. “It makes it simple to have a pal who’s going by related issues.”

The 2 have recognized one another for round a decade, first assembly at Austin’s Uchi, the place Burrell labored and the place Lee staged. They collaborated with different cooks in a Meals Apartheid dinner collection, held at completely different Houston eating places, the place they raised cash for the communities in Trinity Gardens, a neighborhood that has been impacted by a scarcity of entry to supermarkets and recent, reasonably priced meals.

“In the end, I discover that she is simply some of the proficient cooks I do know,” Lee says. “She has a typical that comes from the repetition of working in a spot like Uchi and being anticipated to current a really particular fashion and high quality each time. She’s continuously having to construct and transfer into a brand new house, and I believe that’s simply what she’s doing.”

This part for Burrell appears much more so like a brand new starting as a result of now, like Lee, she’s telling her personal tales about her life and travels by her meals, he says. “For folks to have the ability to re-experience her stuff as herself is necessary,” Lee says, including that although Late August has a significant lens, it wasn’t hers. The dinner collection, in distinction, “lives and breathes based mostly on how she handles it, and I believe that’s an necessary distinction.”

Jenn Duncan

For the second, as her first Sound and Coloration occasion approaches, Burrell is targeted on transferring ahead. The chef says the multiphase collection will lead as much as her debut restaurant. She’s nonetheless searching for an area however has a reputation and conceptual theme in thoughts. “I simply needed to supply one thing that shared [what] I’m curious about and the broader image of who I’m as an individual whereas [diners are] ready for the restaurant.”

The aim is to launch her restaurant by the top of 2025, however Burrell says it’s a transferring goal — she’s in no rush. This summer season, she’s rising, exploring, and testing her talents. In late July, she’ll return to Paris to cook dinner for the USA Home, the place all U.S. Olympians are anticipated to remain, and she or he’ll proceed creating dishes for her new restaurant and getting her “geese lined up,” she says.

Her street to restaurateur, she says, is destined. “It’ll simply be a special path as a result of what’s mine is mine authentically so,” she says. “Now, I’ve to do the work for my subsequent part and belief in my talents. That’s my new starting.”

Reservations for chef Daybreak Burrell’s dinner collection Sound and Coloration may be made on-line.