This ‘Top Chef’ contestant’s culinary career started at a Georgia racetrack

Jackson said she worked at her dad’s racetrack, the Winder-Barrow Speedway, while growing up. She went from taking orders in the stands to handling some of the short-order cooking, like hot dogs and fried chicken sandwiches.

“You’re in the pits at this point where people are drinking and they’re around race cars and they’re moody if they’re not winning,” she said. “You need to have their food ready for them.”

Credit: Sasha Israel/Bravo

Credit: Sasha Israel/Bravo

In addition to her experience at the racetrack, she soaked up her grandmothers’ Southern food traditions, which sometimes veered in very different directions since one was in Georgia and the other in West Virginia.

“They’re using the exact same thing, (but) how they cook was just completely different,” she said, even down to the different ways they made their cornbread.

Jackson always knew she either wanted to be a senator or own a restaurant. Her parents urged her to attend college before pursuing a culinary career, so she enrolled at Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville and worked as a host at a restaurant in the meantime.

One day, a manager asked her what she wanted to do with her life. Jackson told him she’d always wanted to own a restaurant. He asked her a little more about her experience, and when he could tell she had a good grasp on hospitality, he moved her to the kitchen, where she started as a garde manger, the kitchen station responsible for preparing cold dishes.

“I traded in my host uniform for kitchen whites and just never looked back,” she said.

Jackson ended up leaving college and attending culinary school at the Culinary Institute of America, where she met her partner, Justin Tootla, also a Top Chef contestant on Season 23.

She worked at restaurants like Chez Panisse in California and Prune in New York City before they moved to Chicago to open seafood restaurant Voyager in 2017. Jackson and Tootla then settled in Detroit, where they debuted their restaurant Bunny Bunny during the pandemic. Over the past several years, they’ve worked as restaurant consultants while searching for a new home for Bunny Bunny.

Credit: Paul Cheney/BRAVO

Credit: Paul Cheney/BRAVO

During those years, Jackson said she fell in love with the Midwest. She found that Midwestern and Southern hospitality have a lot in common, and even some of the Midwestern potluck-style foods reminded her of the South.

When they opened Bunny Bunny in Detroit in 2020, Jackson said she and Tootla wanted to make sure they could pay their staff a livable wage and offer health insurance. With that goal in mind, they began running a pop-up on Sundays called Big Girl, where they served fried chicken biscuits and smashburgers.

“Through the years, I’ve been working on both of my grandmothers’ biscuits to create my own using what they taught me and kind of making a combination of their two,” she said. “That’s what ended up being the Big Girl fried chicken biscuit.”

She even followed her grandmother’s tradition of making biscuits only on Sundays.

Jackson and Tootla were originally in talks to come on “Top Chef” in 2017, but they had just opened Voyager. It was named best new restaurant by both Esquire and Food & Wine, so they politely declined.

Nearly a decade later, Tootla reconnected with the competition series, and they ended up moving forward in the process despite the tough competition they faced. The timing happened to be perfect, and both were asked to come on the show.

“I think us getting on there together was really exciting (and) surprising, and then once you get over that it’s like, ‘Oh my God, we’re competing against each other,’” Jackson said.

It added another challenging emotional layer because they’ve been co-executive chefs and cooked together for at least a decade.

“I think all the feelings that kind of came up through each episode was what I was not ready for,” she said. “We’ve been together for 16 years, so kind of knowing what he was going through, and then him for me, was more intense than I thought it was gonna be.”

Credit: Paul Cheney/Bravo

Credit: Paul Cheney/Bravo

Jackson said she has been trying to keep up with the episodes as they premiere, but she can usually remember all the intense moments clearly enough to make watching it unnecessary. She does make a point to stay away from the online chatter.

“It’s interesting to see how (the producers) ended up producing it and what made the cuts and what didn’t, and it still has surprised us,” she said.

One of her favorite moments that has aired so far took place in the first episode when she won the Quickfire challenge with contestants Laurence Louie and Jonathan Dearden, and they got to take a lap around the Charlotte Motor Speedway.

“My dad has actually not only owned a racetrack, but he used to race cars,” she said. “That was special.”

Now that they’ve finished filming, Jackson and Tootla have a busy summer ahead as they spend some time in Miami before Jackson will head to Michigan to help out at Tootla’s old summer camp. Then, in July and August, the pair accepted a residency on Washington Island in Wisconsin, followed by another residency on Deer Isle in Maine.

“Once we’re done with that, we’re gonna take it a step at a time,” Jackson said.