By Janet Gramza
(Image above courtesy Fox TV)
 
On the second-last episode of Fox’s “Next Level Chef with Gordon Ramsay,” Buffalo Chef Darian Bryan prepared a filet mignon so perfect that Ramsay exclaimed, “This guy cooks with so much love!”
 
That’s the impression Bryan strives to create, and it carried him to the finish line on the international cooking show’s season finale Thursday, when he won the 16-episode competition that began Jan. 29.
 
Bryan, known in Western New York as the Jamaican restaurateur who caters for the Buffalo Bills, was one of just three chefs remaining out of the starting 27. On Thursday night, some 560 fans joined him and his wife, Jessica, to watch the last episode at the Rec Room in Buffalo.

It ended with Bryan winning the grand prize, $250,000 and a year of professional mentoring with Ramsay. Not to mention a heaping side of fame.

Friends and fans traveled from around the northeast to attend the watch party, which erupted in applause every time Bryan’s face appeared on the many screens around the club. As the moment came to crown the winner,  and the couple’s two children, Darian II and Nina, gathered to watch the final seconds.

When Ramsay, said, “Darian,” 650 people screamed and 7-year-old Nina burst into tears in her dad’s arms. Soon, tears were streaming down his face, too.

Among the fans on hand for the reveal was Lisa Dawkins, mother of Buffalo Bills offensive tackle Deon Dawkins, who said before the show, “I’m thinking that since we’re all here, he must have done something great.”

In the final show, Bryan cooked three seafood dishes that bested fellow chefs Connor Caine and Cole Lawson. His second dish, a fish called sea bream that Bryan said he had never cooked before, prompted the celebrity chef judges to say, “This is the best!”
 
As the show progressed, Bryan shared his pride in his Jamaican immigrant roots and his adopted city of Buffalo, his love for cooking and feeding people and his gratitude for the support of his family, friends and fans.
 
In a Facebook post promoting the show, he wrote, “I was born in Jamaica and built in Buffalo. That alone should tell you I was built differently.”
 
Bryan threw his chef’s hat in the ring to compete on “Next Level Chef” in early 2022 but wasn’t called to step up until last fall. He spent five weeks in Ireland filming on Fox’s three-level set, “mic’d up all day long” and creating dozens of world-class dishes on the fly.
 
The field of chefs quickly narrowed from 27 to 15, then was whittled down from three teams of five to a handful of chefs cooking for their lives on the show as the three celebrity chef judges – Ramsay, Richard Blais and Nyesha Arrington – sent one chef home each week.
 
Through it all, Bryan displayed his warm, funny, “boasty” persona, kitchen confidence and the obvious joy he takes in preparing delicious food for others.
 
Bryan grew up in rural Jamaica, the son of a single mom of six who ran a cookshop from their home. Describing how they cooked meals on an outdoor grill for as many as 23 family members, Bryan said, “Watching my family work hard, sacrifice and still find joy in the little things, that stays with you.”
 
“Every time I step into a kitchen, especially on a stage like ‘Next Level Chef,’ I’m not just cooking for me,” he said. “I’m cooking for everyone who grew up like I did, for families who know what it means to turn something simple into something special.”
 
Read our profile about Chef Darian’s journey HERE.

Bryan said he was a fan of Ramsay’s cooking shows well before “Next Level Chef” premiered in 2022. He immigrated to Buffalo from Jamaica in 2012, studied culinary arts at SUNY Erie Community College and earned a BA in Hospitality from Buffalo State University, where he met his wife and No. 1 fan, Jessica Micha Bryan.
 
By the time he was chosen for the show, he owned two Buffalo restaurants and a reputation as “the Jamaican chef” whose catering clients include several members of the city’s beloved NFL team.
 
The couple also have two young children and are avid travelers who take their kids and culinary team on tasting trips. So they were a little too busy to watch the first four seasons of “Next Level Chef” – until Darian learned he would be on the 2026 season.
 
When they sat down to binge the previous five dozen episodes, Darian said he wondered, “Whoa, what did I get myself into?”

The show is filmed on a special set that has kitchens on three levels – basement, middle and top – all stocked with the same basic staples like spices, butter, cream and eggs, but with tools, equipment and choice of main ingredients that improve on each floor.
 
“In the basement kitchen they have dull, rusty knives, the lighting is dim and depressing, it’s meant for you to fail,” Bryan said. “The middle kitchen is a nice, well-equipped kitchen. But in the top kitchen, wow, you see things that you’ve never seen before.”
 
Before each “cook,” the first challenge is a “Platform” race, when a platform stocked with cuts of meat, fish, vegetables, fruits, starches and more rises through the floor of each kitchen for 30 seconds while the chefs scramble to grab the makings of their meal before it sweeps out of reach.
 
“I was like, ‘Whoa, I can’t believe that,’” Bryan said. “It’s crazy. There’s no way to study for it because you never know what you’re going to get. So stressful.”
 
But he said getting to work with Ramsay was a dream come true. “Just being next to him cooking and chatting was mind-blowing,” he said.

 
Bryan said his Jamaican childhood prepared him to be “the king of invention” on the show, because he grew up turning whatever was on hand —  “chicken back, a tuna carcass or a lamb bone with no meat on it” — into a tasty, filling meal using imaginative ingredients, creativity and, the most important element, “love.”
 
“Darian says all the time that the main thing he knows how to do is cook and to him, food is love, so cooking is how he shows love,” Jessica Bryan said.
 
She said the five weeks her husband spent in Ireland was “terrifying” because he had never been away from their restaurants and catering business that long – but their 40-member team kept everything under control.
 
Now the Bryans are in the process of hiring chefs, wait staff and other employees for their third restaurant, Reserve by Chef Darian, a steakhouse taking shape in the former Eckl’s@Larkin steakhouse this summer.
 
His catering kitchen and dining space, The Plating Society, and Jamaican restaurants, The Jerk Hut (casual lunch) and Bratt’s Hill (fine dining), are also located in Buffalo’s up-and-coming Larkinville neighborhood. He is planning to hold his sixth Jamaican Market fest there on July 18.
 
Bryan is also developing an instant version of his Caribbean porridge as a breakfast product that promises to give oatmeal, cereal and protein bars a run for your money.
 
When asked on the show what he would do if he won the $250K prize, Bryan said he would “take care of my family” – by which he meant not just his personal family, but also his home country and his Buffalo community.
 
The Bryans helped World Central Kitchen feed a grieving community in the wake of the Buffalo Massacre of May 14, 2022, and sent tens of thousands of dollars in humanitarian aid to Jamaica after Hurricane Melissa last year.
 
Bryan said going through some 300 resumes from Western New Yorkers applying to work in his new restaurant reminds him how many people in the Buffalo area “care deeply about hospitality, about craft, about creating real experiences for others.”
 
“We may not be New York City. We may not always get the recognition, the headlines or the praise we deserve, but the talent is here,” he wrote about Buffalo. “The passion is here. The future is here.”

Janet Gramza has more than 30 years experience in journalism and is a veteran of The (Syracuse) Post-Standard and The Buffalo News.