Recently named one of Food & Wine’s 2025 Best New Chefs, Telly Justice did not come to cooking naturally. Raised outside Philadelphia by parents who worked hard but did not prioritize home cooking, Justice left the suburbs at 18 for Columbia, South Carolina, only to realize she could not perform even the most basic tasks in a kitchen, including making eggs.
“I didn’t know how to cook, didn’t know how to turn on a stove, didn’t know how to work an oven, was pretty mediocre at using a microwave,” says Justice. “Grocery shopping was something that was totally mystifying to me.”
This period coincided with Justice’s coming of age as a queer, trans woman. A longtime musician in punk bands, she was actively seeking underground culture, community, and queerness. Those interests converged at her first food service job, a local vegan café, and through the surrounding punk rock community.
“[The café] taught me how to dice a tomato. They taught me how to make gazpacho with it. And how to put a Robot Coupe together and dump chickpeas in, and there’s hummus,” says Justice. During this time, she also became involved with the local Food Not Bombs community, as well as other food justice groups and donation-based food events.
“It felt very natural, very generous and hospitable, and I loved it,” says Justice. “That was where I would root my most formative food methods, making vegan brownies and giving them to people for donations at punk shows, or making red lentil soup with stuff that we dumpster dived from behind the Whole Foods before Amazon bought it.”
Along the way, Justice realized not only that she had an aptitude for cooking, but that she loved feeding other people.
