2025 Virginia Black Business Leaders Awards: Torrece Gregoire

Known as “Chef T” from her time on the Fox TV reality cooking competition series “Hell’s Kitchen,” Gregoire is chef-owner of her Bristol-based restaurant, Union 41, which opened in 2023. Before that, the Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts graduate was director of culinary operations at Draper Mercantile, based in Pulaski County, and served as executive chef at Radford University.

WHY I CHOSE MY PROFESSION: I just feel like this is what I was put here to do. It’s hard to describe, but I see flavor the way an artist sees color, which is sometimes very hard to understand. Sometimes I straddle the line of being insane or being a genius. It’s an ability that I wouldn’t trade, because it’s a gift that was specifically bestowed upon me by my grandmother, Ina Forbes.

HOW I GIVE BACK: The Boys and Girls Clubs is one of my nonprofit organizations that I do give my time and my resources to, because organizations like that kept me off the streets.

PROUDEST PROFESSIONAL ACCOMPLISHMENT: Opening my very first restaurant in St. Paul, Virginia, Ina + Forbes. It was a tribute to food, to the eyes and soul of my grandmother. We stayed open a year into COVID. We basically developed a meal delivery program from St. Paul all the way to Pound, Virginia, come back down to Abingdon, go down to South Boston. And then on Thursdays we would deliver from St. Paul to Hollins, up in the Roanoke area, and sometimes do some deliveries all the way to Hillsville. That was not sustainable, so we ended up having to close.

HOBBIES: Legos. I’m currently building a Batmobile, and then I’m getting ready to start on an automatic Volvo dump truck.