As many of the week’s speakers made clear, the North American story is very often a story of immigrants—a story of leaving, and a story of coming home. “The food industry doesn’t exist without immigrants. In the back of every Michelin star restaurant is a bunch of people from the Caribbean, people from Mexico, people from all over the world,” Christopher Binns, a farmer and co-owner of Stush in the Bush, a “garden to table dining experience” in St. Ann, Jamaica, (number 49) said in a video presentation during a 50 Best Talks event on Wednesday. “It’s the backbone of American food, of the American dream.” And for Binns and his wife, chef Lisa Binns, being the children of immigrants is “always going to be a point of pride.”
“Stush in the Bush is our home. It’s a place where love grows and reaches deep into your soul. It is an experience rooted in local, inspired by seasonality, and cemented in creating conscious connection,” Lisa said. “While we can be inspired by and informed by external [and foreign practices], the memory of Caribbean foodways, intentionality of expression, flavor, heritage, and authenticity are the keys.”
50 Best recipient Gregory Gourdet, James Beard Award winner and chef-owner of Kann in Portland, Oregon (No. 27; and a Bon Appétit Best New Restaurant of 2023), echoed Binns’s sentiments in his own talk. After years of honing French technique at Jean-Georges in New York City, then cooking pan-Asian cuisine in Portland, Gourdet realized: “I had been immersing myself in everyone else’s traditions, but not my own. I was learning ever