Press & Media

Official Bio

Chef Dawn Burrell has traveled the world, representing USA in the sport of Track and Field. She is a 2000 Olympian and 2001 Indoor World Champion in the long jump. Her travels exposed her to global cuisine and ignited a deep love for the language of food. She returned home with a strong desire to become a chef and a passionate vision to unite the exotic flavors from her travels with the familiar comforts of the best-loved dishes of her childhood, using fresh, local, and seasonal ingredients of her environ as a foundation.

Burrell attended culinary school, followed by an influential stage experience with Chef Tom Aikens in London. Back stateside, she worked alongside Monica Pope at T’afia and Sparrow Cookshop and served as sous-chef at award-winning Uchi in Austin before being recruited to take the helm at modern Southern restaurant, Kulture, in downtown Houston. At Kulture, Chef Dawn’s vision of global comfort food garnered local and national acclaim and she was honored with a James Beard Award semi-finalist nomination in 2020.

With the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, Chef Dawn nimbly pivoted and, alongside Houston-based non-profit I’ll Have What She’s Having (IHWSH) launched 3 projects to generate commerce for out-of-work restaurant staff and to support families sheltering at home: I’ll Have What She’s Cookin’, the Zoom-based cooking class series; Pivot, providing families with prepared meals of nutrient-forward, local ingredients; Twenty for Change, donation-based local efforts to support causes important to Houston’s African American community.

She participated in Top Chef Season 18 in 2021 and was a chef-partner with the Lucille’s Hospitality Group from 2021 to 2023.

Chef Dawn is committed to her community of color. In 2019, alongside with colleagues, she led the Food Apartheid Dinner Series, to call attention to the untoward health effects of processed foods and food insecurity in many urban neighborhoods.

Chef Dawn counts her mother and siblings as major influences in her life. She endorses a healthy lifestyle and aims to serve as a role model in her cooking, personal food choices, and dedication to physical and mental fitness. Via IHWSH, Chef Burrell aims to mentor the next generation of women food and beverage leaders and is a principle in the development of the non-profit’s formal mentoring program. She can be found shopping at Houston’s farmer’s markets or speeding along the running trails about town.