Chef Tai Davis to appear on Food Network’s 'Chopped' next week

The St. Louis chef will compete against 3 other chefs on the competition

If you’ve followed the career of St. Louis chef Tai Davis, then you already know he has many talents and passions. As an artist, Davis creates colorful paintings, plays cello in the string ensemble Blck Bird and the chef is currently hosting a monthly pop-up dinner series, called Lineage, which he creates with Kellen Myers. But his culinary resume also includes being on national TV cooking shows, and on Oct. 29, Davis will add another TV appearance, when he competes in an episode of Chopped. 

For anyone unfamiliar, Food Network’s competition cooking show presents four chefs with mystery ingredient baskets that each chef must turn into an appetizer, an entree and a dessert during three rounds of cooking. After each round, one chef is eliminated until the remaining two compete in the dessert round. 

As one could imagine, this intense form of competitive cooking creates a sense of pressure and stress, but it’s also a way to push the limits of a chef’s creativity. 

“Anytime you do a cooking competition you’re going to have a stretching of your culinary prowess when it comes down to what [ingredients] they have,” he said. And given that the parameters of the show also dictate that the chefs must whip up their creations under a strict time limit of 20 minutes for the appetizer round and 30 minutes in the entree and dessert rounds, it adds another layer of pressure.

“It’s gonna be nerve-wracking. You get a mystery basket and anything can be in there,” Davis continued of the experience.

While Davis couldn’t share specific details about his appearance on the TV show or what was in those mystery baskets, he explained that this experience was different from other cooking competitions he’s done in the past. 

“I’m a savory and a sweet chef and this one felt more conducive to my talents and how I wanted to showcase myself, so it was a really cool opportunity for me to do all of those things. And I was extremely happy to compete against such talented chefs,” he said of the experience.

According to the Food Network website, the Oct. 29 episode of Chopped is called “Zhoug-topia.” Zhoug is typically made with fresh cilantro, green chiles and olive oil and is seasoned with spices such as cardamom, cumin and coriander. 

The website description of the episode teases a “jiggly surprise” in the appetizer basket, the use of zhoug in the entree round, and “an oddly colored citrus fruit meets mooncake” in the dessert basket. 

In addition to the TV cooking competition appearance, Davis has a few other things coming up to round out 2024 that he’s excited about. Next month guests can expect a Friendsgiving event pop-up, and in December Lineage will celebrate the end of the year with a New Year’s Eve brunch. The dates of future food-related events and menu details can be found on Davis’s website closer to each event. 

The episode airs on Food Network on Tuesday, Oct. 29, at 7 p.m. Central Time.