The Most Credible Judging Panel in Jerk History

Most people believe that what makes an event worth attending is what happens on stage. They are wrong. What makes an event worth attending is who is in the room, and whether you will be able to say, years from now, that you were there when it began.

With the confirmation of Chef Rodney Scott as the fifth and final member of our Founding Panel, the most credible judging body ever assembled around the craft of jerk cooking is complete. That is not a promotional claim. It is simply a description of what has been built.

Rodney Scott is a James Beard Award-winning pitmaster from Hemingway, South Carolina, and owner of Rodney Scott’s Whole Hog BBQ across the American South. He began his apprenticeship at his family’s roadside barbecue pit at age eleven; by seventeen, whole-hog barbecue had become his full-time career. In 2018 he became only the second pitmaster in James Beard Foundation history to receive a chef award.

He joins a panel that includes Andrew Black (James Beard Award, Best Chef Southwest 2023), Nicola Blaque (chef-owner of the Michelin Bib Gourmand-honored Jerk Shack in San Antonio), Andre Fowles (three-time Chopped champion and personal chef to Bruce Springsteen), and Dae Kim (the youngest chef in New York City history to earn a Michelin star at his own restaurant).

Jerk is not a recipe. It is a fire tradition, built on the same slow, attentive relationship between cook, wood, and heat that has shaped the great fire-cooking traditions of the world. The techniques differ, the cultural roots are profoundly distinct, but the discipline is the same — and this panel, together, understands it from every angle.

The Founding Panel is now complete. The venue is set. The cooks are preparing.

There will only ever be one first.

National in soul. International in stature.

Respect the Jerk.

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