The Flavor of Flow
Chef Gason Nelson and His Passion for Cooking
“If there’s ever a time I walk into the kitchen and I don't feel like I want to be there, I know it's time to stop. And that has never happened.” — Chef Gason Nelson
Gason Nelson looks around to make sure no one is watching. He turns on the TV and flips it to his favorite channel. On the screen, Julia Child gracefully whisks a perfect béchamel. Nelson is transfixed as she transforms the butter, flour, and milk into the classic white sauce.
“Boy, every time I turn around, you watchin’ them cooking shows,” his dad’s voice cuts through the room, jolting him back to reality. Nelson quickly shuts off the TV. He knows his interests aren’t those of the typical 11-year-old boy, but he can’t help it. While his peers are outside riding bikes and playing basketball, Nelson is contemplating the secret to a perfect chili.
Today Chef Gason Nelson is known for his passion for the intricacies and details of the culinary process. A two-time James Beard Scholar, Nelson has earned distinction as a personal chef to countless high-profile clients. His culinary expertise has been sought out by celebrities such as Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, Matthew McConaughey, and the Kardashians, in addition to NBA and NFL stars like Chris Paul, DeMarcus Cousins, and Reggie Bush. He competed on the Food Network show Chopped, making it all the way to the final round. He also runs a widely successful catering company, Full of Flavor, and shares his expertise in Creole cuisine online through the Chef and the Dish.
I first met Nelson early last year at an event hosted by Breaking the Chains Foundation, the nonprofit we are both involved in that aims to combat stigma around body image and mental health using art and creative expression. It was during a cooking demonstration that I first witnessed the manifestation of his passion. I was captivated by his attention to the smallest details, watching as he treated each ingredient not just as part of the recipe, but also as a crucial element of a culinary masterpiece.
He started with a shrimp ceviche, carefully assembling each ingredient with precision, then finished with a strawberry tart, the strawberries looking as if they had just been picked that morning. He put more care into this one meal than I have in all of the meals I’ve ever prepared combined. I was mesmerized.
To watch him cook is to witness a person completely in their element. In flow.
But it wasn’t always this effortless.
The Hidden Passion
Despite the early magnetic pull of the kitchen, Nelson wrestled with the fact that culinary pursuits were seen as unconventional for men. He faced raised eyebrows and dismissive comments whenever he mentioned his fascination with flavors and recipes.
“I thought in my mind I was doing something wrong,” he tells me in our interview. “Cause men, we didn't cook.”
The one place he did see men cook? The backyard. “Back then, men were just supposed to be on the grill. They come home on the weekend and grilled you the best steak.” They didn’t watch cooking shows or spend hours assembling a gourmet meal. Nelson knew he was different.
“I thought that something was wrong with me,” he says. At first, he was scared to let anyone know about his deep fascination with the details of cooking. This internal conflict led him to suppress his culinary dreams, at least for a time. Then, at eighteen, his dad got orders to go to Alaska with the military. Nelson had just graduated high school and was working at Burger King but had too much time on his hands and struggled to stay out of trouble. His dad told him that he needed to get something positive going in his life — or Nelson was going to Alaska with his mom and dad.
Nelson was clear about one thing: he had no interest in going to Alaska. “That wasn’t going to happen,” he tells me, shaking his head. So he did the only thing he could think of: he went down to the local Louisiana recruiter and applied for a job in the army. He passed the test and was offered his choice of jobs. The one that stood out, of course? Cook.
“I was like, ‘That would be pretty cool — to be a cook in the army!’” he says.
Then he found out that there was in fact a shortage of cooks in the army, and that he’d get a $5,000 signing bonus if he took the job. This was back in 1988. “I was like, ‘Man, I can retire,’” he says, laughing. He took the job.
Then he told his dad.
“So what happened? How’d it go?” Nelson’s dad asked him.
“Well, I joined the army,” he replied.
“Oh good, son, I’m proud of you. What are you doing?”
“I’m going to be a cook.”
“A cook? What you know about that?”
“I don’t know.”
Nelson kept quiet. He didn’t tell his dad that all those years, he had never given up his passion for cooking.
Shrewsbury’s Apprentice
Despite his wariness about sharing his new pursuit with others, Nelson knew deep down that he had done the right thing.
“That very first day, before I even knew how to cook anything, I walked into the mess hall and I knew that’s what I was supposed to be doing,” he says.
Early on, he knew there was something different about him. Cooking came naturally to him. It felt like common sense.
“It was so easy,” he tells me. “It was honest, and I’m trying to be humble as I say this, but it was like… effortless.”
“Other people were looking at me like it was hard. I’m like, how is that hard? All you do if that side of the grill is hotter than that side of the grill, and you don’t want that to cook as quick, you just take it and put it over there.”
But even though he was enjoying the process of cooking, he didn’t go all in on it. Not yet. He was still worried about what people would think and didn’t yet see a real future in cooking.
Then, one day, early in his U.S. Army career, Nelson was sitting in the back when he noticed how much respect people had for Sergeant Shrewsbury, one of the main cooks on the army base.
Nelson noticed that when Shrewsbury walked into the kitchen, everyone stood up a little straighter. “He was the coolest,” he says. “Everybody knew he had the best food. He was just that good.” Shrewsbury made roast for five hundred look as easy as frying one egg. Even more so, Nelson recalls, he made it look cool for a man to cook.
This revelation was a turning point for Nelson. He realized that culinary prowess and being respected weren't mutually exclusive. Embracing this, he set a goal for himself: to excel in his culinary craft so much that he, too, would be respected for his expertise, just like his new role model.
“I used to just watch him,” he tells me, waving his hands around the screen as he talks. “I watched how he moved. I watched the way he drove his car. I watched how he talked to people. I watched how he had his uniform.”
Within a year and a half, Nelson had built up a level of clout to rival his role model. Each day, when he walked into the mess hall, he noticed his fellow army cooks were now looking to him for leadership in the kitchen.
“What’s Nelson cooking today? What’s Nelson on?” It was Nelson this, Nelson that.
Nelson tells me he gets goosebumps thinking back to that transformative time.
Comfort in Craft
In spite of his successes in the kitchen, Nelson still wasn’t taking his new career too seriously. A few years in, now in his early twenties, he took a new position in San Antonio because he didn’t feel challenged enough. Then, his girlfriend got pregnant.
They welcomed their son into the world, but joy gave way far too fast to heartache when, at just six months old, their son, Keyon, was diagnosed with cancer. The prognosis was grim: his body wasn’t strong enough to fight the disease. Doctors gave Keyon a year.
During that time, Nelson’s life became a flurry of doctor’s appointments and chemotherapy sessions.
Still, amid this storm of uncertainty and sadness, Nelson kept cooking. In the kitchen, he found not so much distraction as therapeutic escape.
“Every time I was cooking, I knew I was alright,” he tells me. “When I was in the kitchen, I knew I was in control. I knew no one could hurt me. I knew no one could give me nothing I couldn’t handle.”
“Outside, okay, I got to deal with that,” he says. “But in here,” he gestures around him, KITCHEN displayed in bold black letters on the wall behind him, “I’m the man.”
The day his son died — he made it to nineteen months — Nelson was scheduled to cook for a big dinner at a restaurant in town. He called the main chef, Brian Spirro, and told him his son had just passed away. Spirro told him to take all the time off that he needed. Nelson refused.
“Look, man, you want me to be all right?’” he told him. “If you want me to be all right, you gotta let me come to work tonight. You gotta let me come cook.”
Spiro pushed back, insisting that Nelson needed to allow himself time to rest and grieve. But at Nelson’s insistence, he told him that if he walked in the restaurant doors, he wouldn’t make him go home. So Nelson went to work.
“Everyone was tiptoeing around me,” he says. “They were like, ‘What the hell is he doing? Why is he here? His son died ten hours ago.’” But Nelson was just there in the kitchen doing his thing. It was all he could do to cope. His passion was his refuge.
Nelson now has two daughters, Taylor and Tyler, and as he says on his website, which is filled top to bottom with photographs of him and his daughters, “My girls are my oxygen and my reason I wake up every morning.” He loves being a dad. The experience of losing his son, understandably, was devastating to him. It was all he could do to find comfort in his craft.
Curious About Asparagus
Nelson kept cooking and gaining notoriety in the army. He was doing what he loved, with no conscious ambition to carve out a career as a chef. But his natural flair for cooking didn’t go unnoticed.
“Everybody would always say, ‘Man, you got this. You can do this!’” he says. They told him he had that special something. And while he loved the process of creating world-class meals, he hadn’t yet thought of making a career out of it.
When a friend suggested he apply for the James Beard Scholarship, regarded as one of the culinary world's most prestigious awards, Nelson wasn’t interested. He didn’t want to write the essay required for the application.
“Nah, that’s work right there,” he told himself at the time. “That’s not cooking.”
But his friends insisted, so rather than writing the essay himself, he told one friend his story. She wrote down his words and helped him submit the application. Then one day, Nelson was in a restaurant in the French Quarters cooking when the phone rang.
“Nelson?”
“Yes?”
“This is Caroline Stewart from the James Beard House. We’ve read your story about your passion for cooking, and your son, and what it does for you. And we want to pay for your complete schooling.”
He got a full ride, a dream for most aspiring chefs — and accepted. But Nelson tells me that the funny thing was that even when he went to school, he felt like he was to some degree, wasting his time.
“I’m like, ‘Who would come here?’ Because to me it was all just common sense. I mean, I ain’t gonna say I got all A’s, but it was just, I didn’t have to try.’”
Still, the experience reaffirmed his conviction that this was what he was supposed to be doing. His career has gone nonstop from there. But at the heart of it all is his love for his craft: delighting palates with culinary art and creating unforgettable dining experiences.
“At the end of the day, I just want to make a difference,” as Nelson puts it on his website. Whether he’s putting the finishing touches on a grilled filet with smoked gouda mac and cheese and charred asparagus, demystifying gourmet cooking in person and online (#tooeasy is his mantra), or mentoring aspiring chefs in his role as a Master Chef, Nelson’s passion for culinary arts is unmistakable.
But despite his natural flair for cooking, Nelson remains a lifelong learner. “I try to learn something about cooking every day,” he says. “I like to know the why of things. So I’m always trying to study.”
He is endlessly curious about the why behind the food he makes. What’s the difference between white and yellow asparagus? Why is this pepper sweeter than that pepper? Why white potatoes instead of purple? It’s the little things that make the biggest difference, he tells me.
His clients love his passion for details, too. He recounts a time when he made a Louisiana strawberry tart for a dinner party he was cooking for.
“Why are Louisiana strawberries sweeter than others?” he asked them. “And why are they harvesting this certain time of year?” No one knew. “Because they harvest closer to the Mississippi River. All the moisture that comes in gives them a different flavor,” he told them.
It’s that simple, he tells me. But most people don’t know that. And more importantly, most people don’t put in the effort to find out like he does.
And when I ask him what his favorite things to cook are now, he brightens up.
“They put that ‘Creole Cajun’ title on me, you know, because I’m from New Orleans. But I like to cook everything. I love baking breads. I love making pasta. I love steaks. And I love Thai food.”
I tell him I love Thai food too. There’s just nothing like the complex taste of Thai spices and fresh vegetables atop a bed of fluffy rice or noodles. He tells me that he will spend two weeks in Thailand this year just to hang out and eat. And, of course, to learn.
This endless need to challenge himself shows up in different areas of his life as well. Outside of cooking, Nelson does CrossFit several times a week and plays on a tennis team. When he completes a tough workout — or beats a younger, more experienced player in tennis — he gets a confidence boost.
“Later on, when I run into an obstacle, I’ll think of those things. Like, ‘You know what? I beat that dude.’ Or ‘I lifted those weights.’” This gives him the confidence to know he can take on other tough challenges as well.
Nelson puts his heart into everything he does. He loves it, but admits that occasionally, the result is heartbreak.
He tells me about a time when he was hired to put on a dinner for a group of teachers. He wanted the meal to be really special. He traveled to get certain special ingredients, marinated the meat to perfection, and made all the bread and pastas from scratch. He wanted to make sure it was an experience they wouldn’t forget. But when he got there, he found out the whole thing was just about getting photos for social media. They didn’t even touch the food.
“Man, I was heartbroken,” he says. “I put so much into that meal.” It hurt him that the people didn’t understand or respect the amazing experience he’d worked so hard to create for them.
But, ultimately, it’s just because he cares. And so Nelson presses on with no less passion than before. Whether he’s meticulously preparing meals for the NBA’s New Orleans Pelicans or leading enthusiastic crowds through the art of crafting the perfect beignet, he is living the life he once would never let himself share out loud, even as he was imagining it, on some level, as a kid sneaking in cooking shows when no one was looking.
“I swear I get up every day and play,” he says with a smile that sparks one of my own.
“If there’s ever a time I walk into the kitchen and don't feel like I want to be there, I know it's time to stop. And that has never happened.”
Takeaways
Here is one big thing I learned this week about passion, one exercise you can do to stoke your own inner fire, and one aspect of Nelson’s intense enthusiasm that rubbed off on me — and that I now want to learn more about, too!
1. One Lesson: Stop Worrying About What Other People Think
Nelson’s journey into the world of cooking, which he initially perceived as a female-centric activity due to societal conditioning, reminded me of my conversation with Dr. Michael Gervais and how our fear of people’s opinions — what he calls FOPO — can be a significant barrier to the pursuit of our passions, especially when it challenges deep-rooted societal norms. The lesson: anytime you feel pulled toward a passion that defies the societal conditioning you’ve been exposed to, and hear a voice telling you it’s silly or unrealistic… don’t listen.
One Exercise: Take Note of Where You Lose Track of Time
Nelson talks a lot about how when he’s cooking, he’s in a state of flow, that optimal state of performance where we lose track of time, and everything just feels right in the world. According to psychologists (and in my own experience), more flow leads to greater creativity, less anxiety, and more life satisfaction. Flow and passion are linked — we tend to reach flow more easily the more passionate we are about something. Begin to notice where you reach this state the most. Then make it a priority to carve more time out in your life for that activity.
One Curiosity: The ‘Why’ Behind Certain Foods
Though I've always enjoyed good food, I’ve never delved deep into the intricacies of ingredients. Nelson's detail-oriented passion has piqued my curiosity. The next time I shop for groceries, I'll be asking more questions: Why pick yellow potatoes over white? Which fish and why? Nelson’s approach to cooking shows that real culinary magic lies in these small, thoughtful decisions.
Superb writing Krista!