Taste of the South 2026

Vishwesh Bhatt

Executive Chef of Chai Pani D.C.

Vishwesh “Vish” Bhatt is the Executive Chef of Chai Pani D.C., one of the most groundbreaking Southern chefs of our time, and a fierce advocate for an evolved American South where all belong and are accepted. Vish is a James Beard Award–winning chef and author, winning the Foundation’s award for Best Chef: South in 2019 and winning the U.S. Foodways Award in 2023 for his heralded “I Am From Here” debut cookbook. 

Since 1997, Vish has worked alongside John Currence as part of the City Grocery Restaurant Group in Oxford, Mississippi, starting as a prep cook and working his way up to Executive Chef at Snackbar which he opened in 2009. At Snackbar, using his years of culinary experience and exposure to cultures worldwide, he developed a barrier-breaking menu that tells his personal story and intertwines both Southern and subcontinental foodways.

In 2022, Vish published his first cookbook “I Am From Here: Stories and Recipes from a Southern Chef” which was praised by The Wall Street Journal, bon appetit, Food & Wine, NPR, Garden & Gun, and others, for the parallels it drew between Western India and the American South. Later that year, Vish was inducted into the Southern Foodways Alliance’s Fellowship of Southern Farmers, Artisans, and Chefs for his pioneering work.

The alliance with the Chai Pani team is the ultimate in a series of collaborations between Vish and longtime friend Meherwan Irani, Chai Pani co-owner.  In January 2018, Vish and Meherwan, along with friends and fellow chefs Cheetie Kumar, Maneet Chauhan, and Asha Gomez, started the cult-followed dinner series Brown in the South, a collaborative dinner series exploring food, culture, identity, and belonging. The dinners took place quarterly in various cities until the pandemic and consecutively sold out — with proceeds benefiting the Southern Foodways Alliance. In December 2018, Southern Living magazine deemed the collaborators “Southerners Of The Year” and in August 2019 recipes from the dinners were published as Food & Wine’s cover feature.

A native of Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India, Vish immigrated to the U.S. at age 18. He moved to Oxford for grad school where he discovered his love for cooking and made his home there for more than 20 years. Vish and his wife Teresa live in Oxford and Washington, D.C., with their cat and dog. 

Photo provided by Tim Robison

Jasmine Hirsch

General Manager & Winemaker, Hirsch Vineyards

Jasmine Hirsch was born and raised in Northern California. She was baptized in champagne by her wine-loving parents, David and Rebecca Hirsch, and spent her childhood at Hirsch Vineyards.  After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 2001, Jasmine spent five years working in Europe, followed by two years in New York at JPMorgan. She escaped from corporate life to take over sales and marketing at Hirsch in 2008. In 2015, she became General Manager of the winery, and in 2019, she took over as winemaker.