September 22–23, 2023 @ Various Venues
Celebrity chefs are among the keynote speakers featured during Kingsport’s 2023 Arts@Work Summit, Sept. 22 and 23. Torrece Gregoire, better known as “Chef T,” and Tanya Cauthen, award-winning chef and butcher, share their experiences in a session called “Food in Film and Television: The Real(ity) Story.” The discussion is based on their experiences as contestants on reality television cooking shows and Cauthen’s experience creating food for film and TV.
Chef T first appeared as one of 18 contestants on Fox’s "Hell’s Kitchen" in 2015, where she was the runner-up. In 2018, she returned for the show’s “Rookies vs. Veterans” edition. She also appeared on Food Network’s “Big Restaurant Bet” and was runner up for the season. In March of this year, Chef T opened Union 41, an open-kitchen style restaurant in Bristol., Virginia. Union 41 features farm-to-table dishes inspired by her Caribbean heritage and traditional Appalachian cuisine. The menu includes plenty of fresh seafood as well as specialties like grilled oysters, jerk chicken, and wood-fired beef.
In 2006,Cauthen opened Belmont Butchery in Richmond, Virginia. She drew upon her experiences as an apprentice butcher in Bern, Switzerland and later as an intern at the Queen Victoria Market butcher shop in Melbourne, Australia. Only two years later, the butcher shop, which offers choice meats, cheesesand wines, won accolades and Cauthen was listed as one of America’s “Maverick Butchers” byFood & Winemagazine. Cauthen has also been featured inBon AppétitandSaveur. The shop has consistently won recognition and awards from several Virginia-based publications, includingRichmondandVirginiamagazines. In 2017, she was a winning contestant on Food Network’s "Chopped." Because she is registered with the Virginia Film Office, Cauthen also does food styling for television and films. She has prepared on set food for TV mini-series such as "Dopesick," "The Good Lord Bird"and "Walking Dead" Three, and films like "Hannibal" and "Lincoln."
This program is one opportunity in the two-day Arts@Work Summit, which also features Kingsport native Dan Cox, the award-winning Special Effects Director of theAvatarMovies. The Summit is designed to provide media professionals, entrepreneurs,students, educatorsand economic development stakeholders with networking opportunities to help build a regional hub for film production and post-production in East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia. The Arts@Work Summit is co-sponsored by Create Appalachia, Northeast State, The City of Kingsport, and Launch Tennessee. Sessions will begin at the Kingsport Center for Higher Education, with some sessions at Kingsport’s Create Appalachia Center for Arts &Technology.
To register, and for more information, visithttps://www.createappalachia.org/artswork-economic-development-summit-2023/