About Tavel Bristol-Joseph
Tavel Bristol-Joseph is a pastry chef, co-owner, and Director of Hospitality for Emmer & Rye Hospitality Group, whose portfolio of restaurants spans Austin and San Antonio. Originally from Georgetown, Guyana, he moved to the United States at age 17 and earned a degree in pastry arts from the New York Restaurant School. He worked in restaurants in New York before moving to Tucson, where he joined Fox Restaurant Concepts and later met chef Kevin Fink at Zona 78. In 2015, Bristol-Joseph and Fink opened Emmer & Rye on Austin’s Rainey Street, which was named to Bon Appétit’s list of America’s Best Restaurants in 2016 and named Austin American-Statesman’s Best Restaurant in Austin in 2018. In 2020, Bristol-Joseph opened Hestia, a live-fire restaurant that became one of the first One-Michelin-Star restaurants in Texas in the inaugural 2024 Texas Michelin Guide. Canje, his Caribbean restaurant, was named one of The New York Times’ Best Restaurants of 2022. He was named one of Food and Wine magazine’s Best New Chefs in 2020, received the StarChefs Rising Star Award in 2017, and earned James Beard Award finalist nominations for Best Chef: Texas in 2023 and 2024. He also opened Nicosi, an intimate 20-seat dessert bar at Pullman Market in San Antonio’s Pearl district, which earned a Michelin star in October 2024, and received the Esquire Pastry Chefs of the Year designation in 2024.
Episode Overview
André Natera sits down with Tavel Bristol-Joseph to talk about what mental health actually looks like inside high-performing restaurant operations, and why it has taken the culinary industry so long to have the conversation openly. Bristol-Joseph talks about building a hospitality group that takes care of its people without sacrificing the creative and culinary standards that earned it national recognition, and what the process of opening multiple concepts across two cities has taught him about leadership, burnout, and the cost of doing this work at a serious level.
They cover the kitchen culture Bristol-Joseph has built across Emmer & Rye, Hestia, and Canje, how he thinks about scaling hospitality while keeping the guest experience personal, and what the shift from line cook to partner and director of hospitality required him to understand about himself as a leader. He also talks about what drives him creatively, including the Caribbean culinary traditions that inform Canje and the boundary-blurring dessert work at Nicosi, and why he believes pastry chefs deserve a much more central place in how the industry talks about culinary excellence.
Topics covered in this episode:
- Mental health in high-performance restaurant environments and why the industry avoids the conversation
- Building Emmer & Rye on Rainey Street and earning national recognition through farm-driven, daily-changing menus
- Opening Hestia as a live-fire restaurant and earning a Michelin star in the inaugural Texas Michelin Guide
- Canje and the role of Caribbean culinary identity and diaspora cooking in Austin’s restaurant scene
- Scaling a hospitality group across multiple concepts without losing kitchen culture
- The leadership transition from pastry chef to co-owner and Director of Hospitality
- Work-life balance, personal sustainability, and what chefs need to understand before building something of their own
- The case for pastry as a central creative discipline in fine dining, not a supporting role
Guest
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