Food & Wine Names Julia Sullivan Among America's Best New Chefs

Local foodies will no doubt recall that Henrietta Red chef Julia Sullivan took home the trophy at this year's Iron Fork competition in March thanks to her crab-stuffed plantain. As our own Steve Cavendish put it when he reviewed Henrietta Red last year, "Sullivan’s food is smart but never too clever" — and given some news that's just dropped, it's clear that the Iron Fork judges and your old pals at the Scene aren't the only ones who've noticed.

Today Food & Wine published its 30th annual Best New Chefs list — naming 10 chefs who "represent the country’s best restaurant cooking right now and offer a clarion call for the kind of future we’d like to see." It's a diverse and interesting list featuring 10 chefs from all around the country, including L.A., New York City, Seattle, St. Louis and more. And right in the mix is one Nashvillian, the aforementioned Sullivan, whose food — according to writer Jordana Rothman — "howls mightily into a bullhorn." Here's a particularly effusive excerpt from the section about Sullivan:

Gulf seafood dominates the menu, but it’s Sullivan’s supercharged pantry that makes it all so memorable: that butter, yes, but also the cured lemons and preserved tomato that light up tender rings of squid and fried polenta; and the olives smoked in the belly of a wood-burning hearth and scattered around chunky links of lamb sausage. At Henrietta Red, Sullivan shows her hand as a chef with a feeling for flavors that are big, uncompromising, and entirely her own.

And how! So pile this one on top of Sullivan's other accolades, including 

 and 

 and landing on

. If you still haven't visited the Germantown restaurant, I'm not sure who else is left to tell you: You're missing out.