Food & Wine’s ‘Best Chef,’ winner of two James Beard Foundation Awards and food advocate, Hugh Acheson brings a fresh perspective to how we grow, cook, and shop for food.
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Hugh Acheson
Chef Restaurateur Head Start Ambassador
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Food & Wine’s ‘Best Chef,’ winner of two James Beard Foundation Awards and food advocate, Hugh Acheson brings a fresh perspective to how we grow, cook, and shop for food. His local food initiatives have developed nationally, integrating healthy, sustainable, and local flavors into the menus of schools, communities, and Live Nation events. Like many in the food industry, Acheson’s business was impacted by 2020’s COVID-19 pandemic. In response, he re-purposed his Athens, GA restaurant, 5 & 10, to prepare and package meals for in-need communities through a partnership with World Central Kitchen’s initiative, #ChefsforAmerica.
In his speaking engagements and live events, Acheson discusses his life in food and passionately raises awareness about sustainable farming, shopping local, and creating healthier communities. As his culinary career has evolved, so too has Acheson’s role in the industry. From being a top chef to becoming a successful restaurateur, Acheson shares not only his journey but the unique lessons in leadership and teamwork he has gleaned along the way.
As a Healthy Living Ambassador for the National Head Start Association, Acheson speaks to Head Start families about the importance of nutritious meals and raises funds for Head Start gardens around the country. He is also a staunch supporter of No Kid Hungry, a national organization that ensures that every child in need has access to healthy food.
His own foundation, Seed Life Skills, is a contemporary approach to home economics that emphasizes real-life skills, including hands-on culinary instruction, conscious consumer economics, and D.I.Y. design principles.
Before Hugh began encouraging others to cook with the flavors grown in their own backyards, he himself learned how to cook, working under established chefs, studying traditional French wine, cuisine, and etiquette. He has since reinvented southern cooking, merging staples of the South with the flavors of Europe into his signature style of pure, honest food.
His cuisine can be tasted in several restaurants across Georgia, including 5 & 10 and The National in Athens, and Empire State South, and coffee shop Spiller Park Coffee in Atlanta. Hugh is also the Culinary Director of Denver-based eatery, Punch Bowl Social, which has several locations across the United States.
Acheson’s first cookbook, A New Turn in the South: Southern Flavors Reinvented for Your Kitchen, won the 2012 James Beard Foundation Book Award for “American Cooking.” In his fourth cookbook, The Chef and the Slow Cooker, Hugh provides 100 recipes of high-level cooking that emerge entirely from a crock-pot.
In his efforts to ensure that local farming is both sustainable and certified organic, he has worked with the Georgia school system, lobbied congress, and spoken on the matter at the Building a Healthier Future Summit, keynoted by First Lady Michelle Obama. He is partnered with Live Nation in their commitment to serving locally sourced produce, responsibly raised meats, and vegetarian options at venues.
In his podcast, Hugh Acheson Stirs The Pot, Acheson sits down with food personalities, entertainers, and activists to talk about what they’re eating and what’s eating them. In 2020, he announced a new travel podcast, The Passenger. This new travel podcast takes listeners off the beaten path with Acheson’s opinionated anecdotes and insights on where to go, what to eat, who to meet, what to do, where to stay – as well as what overrated tourist experiences to avoid.
A frequent judge on Bravo’s Top Chef, Hugh appeared as one of the Iron Chefs in the series, Iron Chef Canada. He has also appeared in The New York Times, Food & Wine, Bon Appétit, The Wall Street Journal, GQ, and Southern Living.
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Topics
Topics
BREAKFAST FOR ALL: FEEDING AMERICA’S HUNGRY KIDS
STATE OF THE PLATE: CHANGING THE AMERICAN DIET
LEADERSHIP LESSONS FROM THE KITCHEN: TURNING EMPLOYEES INTO TEAMMATES
KEEPING IT LOCAL: SUSTAINING YOUR COMMUNITY
INSIDE TOP CHEF
Videos
Videos
Chicken fried steak bites from Chef Hugh Acheson will have your mouth watering | GMA Digital
How to Cook a Steak by Hugh Acheson
Books
HOW TO COOK
SOUS VIDE: BETTER HOME COOKING
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