How Tiffany Derry and Her Family Celebrate Holidays

You know the cliches. Mother’s Day is for breakfast pancakes in bed and Father’s Day is for steaks on the grill. But what if we treated these two holidays less like Hallmark ones and more like Thanksgiving or Diwali? What if we gathered our entire extended families, showed up in our finest attire, and planned the holiday around how we are going to manage seconds and thirds at the buffet spread? 

In other words, what if we went big? Texas big, heart-bursting-with-love-big? Derry Family big? 

For chef Tiffany Derry, every holiday involves extended family and an enormous meal, but on Mother’s Day, the men, led by her Uncle LeRoy Johnson, cook a feast to honor the women with food, music, and flowers. A month later, the women return the favor on Father’s Day, a good-natured competition to see who can outdo one another with mac and cheese, red rice, sweet potato pie, and love.

“We love to cook and we love to see people enjoy our food because that is how we were raised. We love the get-togethers. We love everybody just having a good time,” Tiffany’s mom, Louisa Austin, says. 

Derry channeled her family traditions and celebrations into the regional Southern hospitality that makes her highly regarded Texas restaurants — Roots Chicken Shak and Roots Southern Table — hum, and the kind of cooking that makes her a fan favorite at the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen and on Bravo’s Top Chef.

“I look at Tiffany and how she just loves being at her restaurants, and she loves to share and see people eating her food,” Austin says. “It’s in her genes. It’s just in us to do that.”

Recently, I sat down with Tiffany, Louisa, and LeRoy to talk about their family holiday rituals that started in the kitchen of Tiffany’s grandparents’ two-bedroom house and have grown to dozens of people around the table

This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.

LeRoy Johnson: I remember back when I was 12, my mother having family and friends over [for the holidays]. When I turned 16, church people came over a lot and mama started cooking for them. And then when I turned 19 or 20, we all started getting together and bringing dishes. 

Tiffany Derry: My family is from Port Island, Louisiana, and then they moved to Beaumont, Texas. As everyone started growing up and I came along, we would have every holiday together — Fourth of July, Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Mother’s and Father’s Day celebrations as well. The men would cook for the women on Mother’s Day and the women would cook for the men for Father’s Day. And it would become this sort of contest. My Uncle LeRoy was always the one making sure the men were in order. 

LJ: If I’m hosting it at my house, then I’ll be in charge of the menu. Then everybody picks out what they want to bring so no one brings the same thing. And a lot of times, we plan things out by everybody’s special dishes — what they’re known for. So for Mother’s Day, the men would plan out our menu and have a bouquet of flowers to give to the ladies. Tiffany’s dad may play saxophone or sing Give Me My Flowers. 

Louisa Austin: They would give each mother a gift and they would have a menu on the table. The mothers will start hitting the glasses and they’ll be right there at your service and we’ll say, “We need some more drinks!” They just always make us feel real special. And on Father’s Day, we make the men feel special like they make us. For the food, our family will always cook mac and cheese.

LJ: Okra, homemade pork roast for sure, turkey wings and gravy, ham, oxtails, fried chicken, mustard greens, orange juice cake — we make sure that’s always there. Candy yams, red rice with sausage and shrimp, and mama’s famous cornbread dressing and duck. 

TD: She takes a whole duck and sits it directly on the cornbread dressing and bakes it in the oven. The duck fat is what makes the dressing. There’s nothing like it in the world. I did not understand for so long why hers was so different from everyone else. It’s why I love duck fat so much.

LA: She wouldn’t just make one pan of dressing. She would make about four or five pans of dressing. I’ve never seen that much dressing!

LJ: And she’d make sweet potato pies. She might make about 10, but then she’s going to make sure that we all have a sweet potato pie to go home. That was a big thing for her, and she’s told us she wants the kids and grandkids to carry the tradition on. There’s a separate table for desserts like lemon pies, brownies, brownies, cream cheese brownies. Yeah, there’s so many. Pound cake. Peach pie. Oh the layer cakes, the yellow cake with the chocolate, the pineapple coconut cake….”

TD: I think it’s hard for a new person. We have friends that come and they want to bring someone and the family knows when the food is something different. 

LA: But we’re real nice and we just say, “Oh, it’s good!”

TD: And we all think, “No.” 

LJ: I remember one year, Father’s Day was in the backyard and they did a seafood boil and the crab boil. I can eat crawfish, but the ladies kept on feeding us — they wouldn’t stop feeding us. But the best part of every holiday is the end when it’s time to take the plates to go. You have to have to-go plates ready for everybody to start getting in line and packing up what they want to take with them. 

TD: People get pushed out of the way because they get so excited. If you’re new to it, it’s a lot for you. You’re sitting next to some older uncle who is making a plate and then you have to just kind of push him out the way and then he pushes you.

LA: Four or five plates at a time.

TD: There are people packing up eight styrofoam containers to go. Never seen nothing like it. We have a cousin, Deedee, who has four kids. Each of them probably has their main plate, then a dessert plate — dessert is a whole other table. 

LA: You don’t just cook enough for that day, you cook double because we know everybody got to take it home for the next day. We love to cook and we love to see people enjoy our food because that is how we were raised. We love the get togethers. We love everybody just having a good time. I look at Tiffany and how she just loves being at her restaurants, and she loves to share and see people eating her food. It’s in her genes. It’s just in us to do that.