Former Top Chef Contestant Tanya Holland Launches Podcast

For Tanya Holland, success is well-deserved. The former Top Chef contestant, author, and founder of Oakland’s Brown Sugar Kitchen spent years in the foodie trenches fighting institutional sexism and racism.

“When I was in cooking school in France, I wrote all these chefs — Daniel Boulud, Thomas Keller, Tom Colicchio,” she says. “When I got to New York, I followed up and got some interviews. But my name is very Anglo so they didn’t know I was black. They were not welcoming.”

However, it’s hard to keep down someone with Holland’s passion, determination, and talent. Today, the chef and writer has served food to actor Henry Winkler, musician Drake, and several members of the Golden State Warriors. She joins the Board of Trustees for the James Beard Foundation and became the chef chair of the James Beard Awards. 

Most recently, Holland launched Tanya’s Table, a podcast now available on Spotify. Her first guest? Ahmir Khalib Thompson, perhaps better known by his stage name: Questlove.

Who Is Tanya Holland?

Tanya Holland is a chef, writer, and personality based in Oakland, California. 

“My dad was in college in Western Massachusetts, which is where I was born,” Holland says. “But he got a job with Eastman Kodak and moved to Rochester, which is where I was raised.”

As a child, Holland became exposed to global cuisine through her parents, who ran a gourmet cooking club with five other couples.

“It lasted for twenty years,” Holland says. “And it was always three white and three black couples. Fo the 70s, I realize now that they were really ahead of their time.”

East Indian , Pennsylvania Dutch, Alsatian Rhine, Polynesian Luau. Matzah ball soup and German potato salad. These were the foods of Holland’s childhood.

After graduating from the University of Virginia, Holland took an advertising job in New York City. One day, a friend asked if she’d be interested in becoming an office manager at a local catering company. For Holland, who’d been interested in food since childhood, it was an opportunity. 

“That was the job that changed my life,” she says.

How Did Tanya Holland Become A Chef?

In her new position, Holland met chefs, food designers and stylists, and lighting photographers. And she began washing dishes in exchange for cooking classes on the Upper East Side. 

“All my teachers had gone to school in France,” she says. “And I’d always wanted to live in France. I’d taken French for eight years.” 

Holland attended a cooking school in Burgundy called École de Cuisine La Varenne, which was run by cookbook author Anne Willan. After her education, she did a stage in Provence and a stage in the Alps. When she came back to New York City, she couldn’t find a job in any of the notable restaurants, so she went to Martha’s Vineyard for a summer, and then Boston. She found a job with Gordon Hamersley and then at a small restaurant in the East Village.

“I was kind of doing food of the African diaspora,” she says. “Caribbean, North African, West African. I wanted to express my worldly interst.”

In 2001, Holland decided she was done with restaurants. She wanted to write a cookbook and appear on TV. She moved to the Bay Area and started developing modernized soul food recipes.

“People said, ‘If you want to do your own restaurant, I’ll invest,’” Holland says. “But it wasn’t a lot of money they were putting behind me, and I wasn’t able to access the kind of real estate I envisioned putting my restaurant in. I tried to negotiate a dozen leases.”

When Did Tanya Holland Open Brown Sugar Kitchen?

Without ready access to capital, Holland ended up “at a dive in West Oakland.” In 2008, she founded Brown Sugar Kitchen.

“I came up with the name just playing around with words,” she says. “And it became the little restaurant that could.”

Today, Brown Sugar Kitchen is one of the Bay Area’s most famous restaurants, often mentioned in the same breath as Chez Panisse and Nopa.

What is the Tanya’s Table Podcast?

In January 2020, a friend called Holland and asked if she might be interested in hosting a podcast.

“I’d been working on a treatment for a TV show,” Holland says. “It was going to be me having dinner party conversation with interesting people. I basically just moved the television treatment over to the podcast.”

The host role comes naturally to Holland, who has lived abroad and speaks several languages. The first episode, which dropped on July 28th, features Questlove; the second, which came out on August 4th, sees Holland interviewing fellow chef Samin Nosrat.

Other guests to be featured this season include Chez Panisse founder Alice Waters, Modern Family star Jesse Tyler Ferguson, chef and businessman Danny Meyer, and MLB player Kevin Youkilis, among others.

To learn more about Tanya Holland, listen to the Tanya’s Table Podcast on Spotify.