“This young food activist makes Southern cooking healthy and cool.”
—New York Times
Bryant Terry is an eco chef, food justice activist, and author of two critically acclaimed books–Vegan Soul Kitchen: Fresh, Healthy, and Creative African-American Cuisine and Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen (called “ingenious” by New York Times). In regard to his work, chef Alice Waters says “Bryant Terry knows that good food should be an everyday right and not a privilege.” For the past ten years he has worked to build a more just and sustainable food system and has used cooking as a tool to illuminate the intersections of poverty, structural racism, and food insecurity. His interest in cooking, farming, and community health can be traced back to his childhood in Memphis, Tennessee, where his grandparents inspired him to grow, prepare, and appreciate good food.
Since the publication of his first book, Bryant has made dozens of national radio and television appearances including being a guest on The Martha Stewart Show, Emeril Green, The Splendid Table, and The Tavis Smiley Show. He was also a host on the first season of The Endless Feast, a 13-episode public television series that explores the connection between the earth and the food on our plates. Bryant contributes essays and recipes to a number of online and print outlets, and his work has been featured in Food and Wine, The New York Times Magazine, Yoga Journal, Jet, Vegetarian Times, and many other publications. Bryant travels regularly to hundreds of cities speaking at public events as well as colleges and universities such as Brown, Columbia, NYU, Smith, Stanford, and Yale.
Bryant has garnered many honors and awards for his work. From 2008-2010 he was a fellow of the Food and Society Policy Fellows Program, a national project of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. He was selected as one of the 2008 “Hot 20 Under 40” in the San Francisco Bay Area magazine 7×7. In 2007 he received the inaugural Natural Gourmet Institute Award for Excellence in Health-Supportive Food Education. Bryant’s first book (coauthored with Anna Lappé with a foreword by Eric Schlosser), Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen, is a winner of a 2007 Nautilus Award for Social Change.
In 2002, Bryant founded b-healthy! (Build Healthy Eating and Lifestyles to Help Youth), a multi-year initiative designed to empower youth to be active in creating a more just and sustainable food system. Along with Ludie Minaya, Elizabeth Johnson, and Latham Thomas, Bryant helped elevate cooking as an important tool for organizing and base building in the food justice movement.
Bryant completed the Chef’s Training Program at the Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts in New York City. He holds an M.A. in American History from New York University and a B.A. with honors in English from Xavier University of Louisiana.
Bryant is currently working on his third book and a television project.
He lives and creates in the Laurel District of Oakland, California with his fiancée Jidan and their bird Kiwi.