Chef Bryan Caswell: 2026 Southwest Chef Series
Chef Bryan Caswell was 14 when he started spending weeks at a time in both of his grandmothers’ Louisiana kitchens. He wrote recipes down by hand, learned to can and pickle and helped build chicken coops. The first dish he made sure to learn was Birdie-Bea’s chicken and dumplings. He was worried that if nobody else in the family learned to make it, the recipe would disappear.
Today, Caswell serves those chicken and dumplings at Latuli, the restaurant he co-founded with Allison Knight in Houston’s Memorial neighborhood. It’s a personal dish from a chef who made his name cooking Gulf seafood at Reef, and it tells another part of the story of how he learned to cook.
2026 BOSW Southwest Chef Series Hub
What to know
- Chef: Bryan Caswell, executive chef and co-founder
- Restaurant: Latuli
- Location: Houston, Texas
- Cuisine: Gulf Coast cooking with Southern and global influences
- Signature dish: Birdie-Bea’s chicken and dumplings
- Website: latuli.com
- Instagram: @latulihouston
From the Gulf Coast to kitchens abroad
Fishing was part of growing up for Caswell, a native Houstonian. Cooking took him farther from home. After attending the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, he worked in kitchens in New York, Hong Kong, Barcelona and the Bahamas. Among the chefs he worked with were Charlie Palmer, Alfred Portale, Wayne Nish and Jean-Georges Vongerichten.
Back in Houston, Caswell put Gulf seafood at the center of the menu at Reef. His work there earned him a spot on “Food & Wine’s” 2009 Best New Chefs list and multiple James Beard Award semifinalist honors. At Latuli, seafood still has a place at the table, alongside dishes that trace back to the two Louisiana kitchens where he spent so much of his teenage years.
Signature dishes: Birdie-Bea’s chicken and dumplings
Two grandmothers, one menu. Birdie-Bea, from Natchitoches, Louisiana, is the inspiration behind Latuli’s yeast rolls with jalapeño jelly, field peas and collard greens. Ma Daigle, from Opelousas, left her mark on the duck and sausage gumbo, pimento cheese and smoked redfish dip.
Of all those dishes, Birdie-Bea’s chicken and dumplings is the one Caswell felt he had to learn. As a teenager, he realized no one else in the family knew how to make it. Now he serves it at Latuli, where a recipe he once worried would disappear has become his signature dish.
Explore the 2026 Southwest Chef Series
This profile is part of The Best of the Southwest’s 2026 Southwest Chef Series, celebrating the chefs and culinary leaders shaping dining across Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Texas and Southern California.
