Co-owner and Executive Chef Matthew Harris of Tupelo Park City woke up on Jan. 22 to a series of congratulation texts — he’s a semifinalist for the Best Chef: Mountain Award from the James Beard Foundation.
“A lot of times restaurants will nominate themselves. We had no idea,” Harris said. “It was a nice surprise when I got up that morning.”
The James Beard Foundation Awards recognizes chefs who “set high standards in their culinary skills and leadership abilities and who are making efforts to help create a sustainable work culture in their respective regions,” their website says. Candidates must have worked as a chef in their region for at least three years.
Most recently, Park City’s Chef Briar Handly of HANDLE was a semifinalist for the award in 2022, and past nominees have also included James Dumas, formerly of High West Distillery & Saloon, and former Talisker on Main Chef John Murcko, who is now the owner of Firewood.
Harris has lived and worked in Park City for 16 years now, originally from Atlanta, Georgia, and this is his first accolade with the James Beard Foundation Awards. But visitors and locals alike know how much he brings to the mountain town’s culinary scene.
His farm-to-table, Southern-influenced restaurant, Tupelo, is now in its 10th year, and Harris said this recognition from the James Beard Foundation more than affirms the values he has maintained over the years. Mainly, a do-what-you-say-you-do mentality.
“If it’s using local products, we’re using local products, then we take it the next step further and grow it on the farm ourselves. Or (if) we’re working on our carbon footprint, we actually do it, from recycling, composting to whatever we can do,” Harris said. “It’s so ingrained in what we do now. It’s like everyday business.”
Harris and his wife Maggie started a farm at their home in Midway, which now supplies 100% of the restaurant’s summer squash, like zucchini and yellow squash, and most of its Swiss chards, collard greens and tomatoes, and lots and lots of rhubarb.
Their miniature farm was a logical next step on Tupelo’s mission to serve the freshest, most-local ingredients, supplementing relationships Harris has built with other local farmers like Lynsey Gammon at Gracie’s Farm and Chris Pyper at Rustling Aspen Farm.
While this “support local” philosophy in cooking has become more popular, Harris said it’s not something he pursues as a fad, but was instilled in him from a young age.
“Not to age myself, but I came up before the farm-to-table thing was really ever very prevalent, outside of say San Francisco or New York. We’re talking like early ’90s when I started cooking,” Harris said. “I guess the culture that I was brought up in, that was always front, because we still went to the farm stand and supported farmers growing up, even my mom, cooking in the house.”
For him, sourcing from local purveyors and eating seasonally is the right thing to do, and eventually the industry as a whole began to accept that philosophy as well.
Unfortunately, Harris said there are a lot of restaurateurs cutting corners, name-dropping on their menus more for the image, which doesn’t help the community. For Harris, it’s essential to support his fellow neighbors, farmers and ranchers whose work makes Tupelo possible.
“It’s more important for me that those guys’ names get out there than it is mine. When it comes down to it, those guys do the brunt of the work. I get to have fun,” Harris said with a laugh.
Of course, Harris said he’ll be the first to admit that not everything on the menu at Tupelo is from a local provider — that’s just impossible.
“You look outside, there’s snow on the ground six-seven months of the year, that’s just not going to work,” he said. “(But) I’ll be the first one to also say, as soon as I can get it, it’s in the restaurant.”
Harris has to get creative during winter months when it comes to using seasonal produce, meaning citrus and pomegranate seeds, squash, carrots and beets become more prevalent on the menu, whereas the summer months see an abundance of vegetables.
Of course, Tupelo has its fan-favorites that will never leave the menu — the beef and barley dish with steak and a barley risotto; the shrimp and grits, chef’s “salute to the ol’ South;” the buttermilk biscuits with honey butter; and the elk bolognese.
“This is probably one of the most regional dishes,” Harris said of the bolognese. “It’s Rocky Mountain Elk out of Filmore, Utah. The pasta is handmade in Salt Lake by a company. The mushrooms are from Ogden. … That’s the embodiment of a Utah production.”
The strange seasonality of a mountain town like Park City is one of the reasons the James Beard Foundation broke off “mountain” as a category for their chef awards, which includes Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Utah and Wyoming.
“I was really excited back when they broke that out, because being in the mountain region is a completely different style and philosophy and approach to cooking. I cook completely differently here than I did in Georgia,” Harris said. “You’ll see from time to time I use a lot more legumes and beans and barley and grains here, where your growing season in the Southeast is from May to October, so it’s a lot more vegetables and things like that. So you have to adapt to where you’re at.”
Adapting is part of the territory, literally, when designing a menu that hinges on local growers. And when it comes to running a business, mountain towns share a super seasonality, with influx during winter and summer, and “mud” seasons on either side.
“All the chefs in the area deal with a lot of the same. A guy from Breckenridge won it last year. He deals with the same stuff we do in Park City,” Harris said.
While Harris said he’s thrilled to have his and Tupelo’s name in such a big spotlight, for him it’s more about emphasizing the Park City culinary scene.
“It would be fantastic to make it to the next level just to showcase what we do here in Park City. I’m not the only one doing this stuff. It’d be nice to bring it back to the community,” he said.
The James Beard Foundation will announce award winners on June 16 with a ceremony at Chicago’s historic Lyric Opera. In the meantime, Harris will do what he usually does — play in the kitchen at both his restaurant and as the consulting chef for La Stellina and RIME at The St. Regis Deer Valley hotel.
Tupelo is open 5 p.m.-close Wednesday-Sunday, and the menu is often changing with the seasons. Most recently, Harris said he’s been inspired to add more seafood options, like a lobster salad with avocado and passion fruit, a scallop crudo and a sustainable line-caught tombo tuna.
Reservations for dinner or for private events can be made on their website, tupeloparkcity.com, or over the phone at 435-292-0888.