Assembled With Real Intention
Five chefs and pitmasters, credentialed at the highest levels of American and Jamaican cuisine, evaluate the Championship. A Jamaican-majority panel, brought together to set a standard on the ground where jerk was born.
Andrew Black
Andrew Black was born in rural Jamaica to an Indo Jamaican family, where he learned to cook outdoors and built clay ovens for his grandmother as a child. He began his culinary career working without pay in Jamaican resort kitchens as a teenager, an apprenticeship that carried him from the island into some of Europe’s finest hotels and restaurants, then back across the Atlantic to Oklahoma City, where he was recruited to lead the reopening of the historic Skirvin Hilton Hotel.
Black’s culinary voice earned him the James Beard Award for Best Chef Southwest in 2023, following a semifinalist nod for Outstanding Chef the year before. He has built a four restaurant footprint in Oklahoma City, including Grey Sweater, Black Walnut, Gilded Acorn, and Perle Mesta at the Skirvin Hilton. He is also the author of Foraging in Oklahoma: Tales and Recipes from the Open Road, and his work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Wine Enthusiast, Zagat, Thrillist, and Andscape.
Nicola Blaque
Nicola Blaque was born in Mandeville, Jamaica, and immigrated to the United States at age five, growing up as a military child who moved frequently across the country. At eighteen she enlisted in the United States Army, serving ten years of active duty and rising to the rank of Staff Sergeant before enrolling at the Culinary Institute of America.
In its first year of business, Blaque’s restaurant The Jerk Shack was named one of America’s sixteen best new restaurants and earned a Michelin Bib Gourmand. She was later named a James Beard Award semifinalist for Best Chef Texas in 2023. Beyond The Jerk Shack, she also operates Mi Roti and Freight Fried Chicken, and her restaurants have been featured on Food Network’s Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, GQ, Eater, Southern Living, and Texas Highways.
Andre Fowles
Andre Fowles was born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica, in a tenement yard, where he learned to cook from his mother and grandmother, crediting his grandmother, Mama Cherry, as his foundational culinary influence. He later moved to the United States to pursue formal training at the Culinary Institute of America.
Fowles is a three-time champion on Food Network’s Chopped and a semifinalist on Chopped: Grand Champions, and he has appeared at multiple James Beard House dinners as well as on Good Morning America and the Today Show. He currently serves as personal chef to musician Bruce Springsteen. In 2026 he released his debut cookbook, My Jamaican Table, with a foreword written by Springsteen.
Dae Kim
Dae Kim was born in South Korea and moved to the United States at age fourteen, a transition that shaped a palate spanning Korean, French, Chinese, and Japanese culinary traditions. He trained at Per Se in New York City, one of only a handful of restaurants in the country to hold three Michelin stars.
Kim became the youngest chef in New York City history to earn a Michelin star at his own restaurant, when his nine-course tasting counter Noksu received the distinction in its first year of operation. Noksu also received a 2025 Wine Spectator Restaurant Award, and Kim was featured in the debut episode of Apple TV’s Knife Edge: Chasing Michelin Stars.
Rodney Scott
Rodney Scott was raised in Hemingway, South Carolina, where his family operated a roadside barbecue pit. He began his apprenticeship there at age eleven, and by seventeen whole hog barbecue had become his full-time career and lifelong calling.
In 2018, Scott received the James Beard Award for Best Chef Southeast, becoming only the second pitmaster in the foundation’s history to receive a chef award. He operates Rodney Scott’s BBQ locations in Charleston, Birmingham, and Atlanta, and Chief’s on Broadway in Nashville with Eric Church. His cookbook, Rodney Scott’s World of BBQ, was the first barbecue cookbook written by a Black pitmaster and earned the IACP Cookbook of the Year Award.
Adrian Miller
Adrian Miller joins the Jamaica Jerk Championship as Cultural Correspondent and Host, serving as the narrative voice of the inaugural weekend. Known widely as the Soul Food Scholar, Adrian is a James Beard Award–winning author who has spent his career studying the food of the African diaspora and telling the stories behind it.
Adrian studied at Stanford University before earning his law degree at Georgetown University Law Center, and built a career in public policy that led him to the White House, where he served as a Special Assistant to President Bill Clinton. He eventually left law and policy behind to study Black culinary history full time, producing Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time, which won the James Beard Award, and Black Smoke: African Americans and the United States of Barbecue.
As Cultural Correspondent and Host, Adrian brings the full history of jerk into the room: its roots in Maroon culture and the Blue Mountains, and its living, evolving role in Jamaican culture today. A judging panel can tell you who cooked the best jerk. Adrian Miller tells you why that matters.
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