Chef Austin Sumrall is a semifinalist in the Best Chef South category of the James Beard awards.
Eight hours before opening on an overcast Wednesday morning in Gulfport, Mississippi, Austin Sumrall was already at work inside Siren Social Club, preparing for a day that would stretch across two cities and two kitchens.
He treated the day like any other, moving between his restaurants and accepting interviews like this one. But it wasn’t. Earlier that morning, Sumrall had been named one of two Gulf Coast chefs selected as semifinalists for Best Chef in the South by the James Beard Foundation — the second time he has been nominated in that category.
Sumrall is part of a broader culinary shift taking shape along the Mississippi Coast and the U.S. South. He opened his first restaurant, White Pillars in Biloxi, in 2017 with a rotating farm-to-table menu that was — and remains — rare in the region. Ingredients are sourced from the Gulf of Mexico and local farms; meats are cured in-house, tomatoes blended into ketchup, dough shaped by hand into strips of pasta. A similar process guides Siren Social Club, a speakeasy-style restaurant Sumrall opened with his wife, Tresse, in 2024. Both spots were recently recommended by the Michelin Guide in its first considerations of Gulf Coast restaurants.
Sumrall shrugs off any suggestion that his approach is new or revolutionary. Food, he says simply, comes from farms. Still, the philosophy stands out in a region where butter, red gravy and frying oil might as well have their own places on the food pyramid.
Along the Coast, however, the food culture is evolving and beginning to claim a place on the national culinary map. Chefs and restaurateurs like Sumrall are driving that evolution, with accolades like the James Beard recognition offering reassurance that the region is moving in the right direction.
That said, none of it seemed to alter Sumrall’s Wednesday. His work continued through the afternoon. By 2 p.m., he was at White Pillars, giving a tour and scarcely mentioning the nomination as he trailed through the neoclassical white mansion overlooking the Gulf.
“This is, and always will be, my baby,” Sumrall said.
Zigzagging through hallways, dining rooms and even a basement, the tour stretched on for nearly half an hour as he chronicled the building’s history. Originally constructed in 1905 by an infectious disease doctor who treated patients on Ship Island, its details span centuries, states and families.
Behind the bar sits a structure commissioned in the mid-19th century from Chicago’s Blackstone Hotel, where Al Capone was once a frequent guest. Nearby, above a grand piano, hangs an oil painting from 1650 depicting a nude woman clutching a plate of gold coins and grinning at the viewer. The oldest pieces — bronze menu holders dating back to 1599 — stand at the front, still in use.
The walls are covered in paintings and portraits of former proprietors, including Virginia Mladinich, who opened the original White Pillars in 1969 with entrees like stuffed crabs and seafood gumbo — family recipes once served to an older generation of coast residents but have become antiques themselves, preserved in fine print on manila paper and framed in one of the dining rooms.
The restaurant closed in 1989, not because of natural disasters like many assume, but because “20 years in the restaurant business is a long time,” Sumrall said. The building sat vacant until 2017 when Sumrall gave it a new life with White Pillars.
Given its name and decor, White Pillars might be mistaken for a posh, white tablecloth restaurant. Sumrall shook his head and pointed to the bare tables. There is not a dress code, and the restaurant is known for its monthly brunch where drag queens flip, dance and split. Sumrall is even known to dance atop at the bar at the end of service, doling out shots of Jagermeister.
Like an avid antique collector, he prefers to preserve every bit of the past — or at least tries to — reflecting the same way he treats cooking: a refusal to cut corners. Sumrall has followed that principle throughout his entire culinary career, beginning at the University of Mississippi.
He was studying mechanical engineering but always knew he belonged in restaurants. It was in his blood — his maternal grandfather owned restaurants in New Orleans, and Sumrall grew up cooking with his family. Changing his major became an omnipresent thought until he finally committed, a decision he described as his “light bulb moment.”
His parents fully supported him pursuing a degree in hotel and restaurant management, under one stipulation from his father: he had to get a job at a restaurant.
Sumrall worked under chef John Currence in Oxford three days a week. On his days off, he hosted dinner parties at his house.
“At that point, I just never, never look back,” Sumrall said. “It was full steam ahead.”
After graduating college, he went to the Culinary Institute of America in New York, then worked at Cochon Restaurant in New Orleans. Sumrall later moved to Birmingham and worked at Hot & Hot Fish Club, a city staple.
He paused, jogging his memory, then listed his mentors over the years: Currence in 2009; Stephen Stryjewski in 2011; and Chris Hastings in 2012. Two have won Best Chef in the South — by happenstance.
“That was not a plan,” Sumrall said. “It just worked out like that.”
