Bailey was born in the Bronx and spent her early childhood in Savannah, Georgia, before returning to New York City to live in Queens. She learned to cook with her mother, grandmothers, aunts and cousins before training at the Institute of Culinary Education in NYC. After a work-study period in Burgundy, France, she spent the next 12 years in a series of jobs in NYC, including time as a personal chef on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. In 2010, she was hired at Prune on the Lower East Side, where under the mentorship of Gabrielle Hamilton she was quickly promoted to Sous Chef and spent four years developing her craft. It was through Hamilton that she met the entrepreneur Morisano, now her business partner. Morisano was looking for a chef to help him convert a former Greyhound Bus Terminal in Savannah into a restaurant, and when Bailey agreed to come and take a look, everything clicked into place and The Grey was born.
In 2019, Bailey won the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Southeast, an accolade topped in 2022 when she became the first black woman ever to win the James Beard Award for Outstanding Chef.
Restaurant
The Grey opened at the end of 2014 in downtown Savannah, Georgia, in a 1938 art deco Greyhound Bus Terminal that Morisano and Bailey lovingly restored. As the restaurant’s website puts it, “The Grey continues the building’s long tradition of transporting people to a destination, but that destination is now one of elevated hospitality and intrinsic satisfaction.” As a once segregated building now run by a white man and a black woman, the place is rich in historical and cultural significance.
The cuisine at The Grey represents Bailey’s personal take on ‘Port City Southern,’ based on southern comfort food mixed with seafood and other local ingredients and given a multicultural twist, all elevated through the techniques learned over the course of her upbringing and culinary career.
The Grey was Eater’s Restaurant of the Year in 2017 and was included among the World’s Greatest 100 Places by TIME in 2018. In 2019, it was listed by Food & Wine as one of the World’s Best Restaurants.
Together, Bailey and Morisano founded The Grey Spaces hospitality group, which also runs The Grey Market in Savannah.
Recipes and dishes
Bailey creates menus of layered, soulful, flavorful dishes, favoring regional produce, seafood, and meats. She loves browsing old recipe books and often reinterprets historic dishes with their roots in Savannah and the South, throwing in the odd influence from Europe or Africa.
Signature dishes include fish and grits with greens and Creole sauce, based on a childhood favorite; chicken meatballs with buttermilk, chicken jus, and onion; and succotash, a traditional recipe dating from the 17th century made with fresh corn kernels, okra, and lima beans.
Bailey was a featured chef on the sixth season of Netflix's Chef's Table, becoming the first African American chef to star in the show. She was also a guest on season 14 of the popular reality TV show Top Chef.
Together with Morisano she co-authored Black, White and The Grey, a book describing their journey to create The Grey, which explores issues ranging from business and partnership to race, class, culture, and gender.
Bailey also chairs the Edna Lewis Foundation, whose aim is to celebrate the rich history of African American cookery, cultivate a deeper understanding of Southern food and culture, and create opportunities for African Americans in the sector.
