When Edouardo Jordan won the James Beard Foundation’s 2018 Best Chef: Northwest Award, it celebrated the eccentric story of a black chef innovating Italian and French food in Seattle.

When he won a second James Beard award recognizing his second establishment as 2018’s Best New Restaurant, he became a trailblazer as the first black chef to receive one of cooking’s top honors.

That this second and now Best New Restaurant serves a cuisine most easily described as “black southern soul food” could not have been a sweeter cherry on top.

Visit the website of any given national award-winning chef, and you might find technical definitions for cuts of meat, the terminology of a cocktail, or the difference between poaching and sous-vide.

But at Edouardo Jordan’s JuneBaby, food isn’t just defined, it’s given a place in history.

There, you’ll learn the branches of the African Diaspora; find cool cups, yams and chitlins on the menu; discover why Aunt Jemima has racist roots; and of course, leave with a deeper appreciation of why black food is American food and has been since our ancestors arrived here.

So when JuneBaby’s unapologetically black cuisine won it the equivalent of the “Best Picture of the Food World,” yeah, it was a really big deal.

And yet, Edouardo wasn’t always so bold.

His first establishment Salare Restaurant (the one for which he won Best Chef: Northwest) was born from his journey to master and then personalize the classic arts of Italian and French cuisines. But Eduardo readily admits it was also where he started to avoid being known as “THAT chef.”

“I didn’t want to become ‘the chef that opened a black restaurant because he’s a black chef and that’s what he’s supposed to do.’ I wanted to bring another aspect to who I am and showcase myself as a chef. I trained to become a great chef. That’s what I want to be recognized as: a great chef — not a great Southern chef, not a great black chef, but a great chef.”

But as the reservation list at Salare grew and his name gained status in culinary circles, Edouardo realized that rather than becoming cliche and niche, he had an opportunity to cast a new light on the black Southern food he grew up with in the Deep South and bring it the reverence it deserved.

He had a new ambition to break “the stereotypes of like, ‘Oh, that’s black-people food.’ No, actually, it’s the food that fed America. That’s the reality. There were many hundreds and thousands of people that were not slaves that ate that food and really enjoyed that food and took something away from that food. We’re talking about what’s American cuisine.”

The fact that soul food itself wasn’t exactly new to the modern culinary world actually gave him even more motivation to push ahead in getting back to his roots.

“There’s some great chefs of non-color telling beautiful stories about Southern food, and that’s appreciated and needed. That helped put Southern food back on the map, but my issue was, well, what happened to all the African-American chefs that been grinding it all this time and may have had a small shop and never got recognized? Because I’m like, wow, this is not the Southern food that I know of. There was no one of color truly talking about the food from their perspective, in their eyes,” he observed.

It feels like such a poetic storybook ending that the food Edouardo once shied away from cooking for an elite audience is that one that earned him the most acclaim, but he wouldn’t have done it any other way, explaining that “the path I was on helped me to express myself as a culinarian first.”

Anyone who’d doubt his dedication to his second and Best New Restaurant need only read how he describes his menu to understand that he’s in it for the long haul: “Southern food reflects hard times and resourcefulness and is nothing short of beautiful. It is a cuisine to be respected and celebrated.”

And with that outlook, it’s not hard to imagine that Edouardo Jordan’s got many more successes and culinary delights to share with the world – his award-winning reputation and personal investments notwithstanding, he’s literally got generations of skin in the game.

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