When you visit the Sumlight Bistro food truck, bring a white tablecloth. Chef/owner Daris Leatherwood serves “elevated street food” — the type of cuisine you’d get at a fine dining restaurant.
Leatherwood is slated to re-launch his food truck the first week of August. Instead of hamburgers, you might be eating his truffle-crusted lamb chops.
“I have the fine dining background,” he says. “So, it’s just taking something that you would normally sit down and eat at a white tablecloth setting, but off the food truck. Same presentation. But it’s also comfortable at the same time.”
Leatherwood cooked as a child in Cleaborn Homes. “It started with me scrambling eggs. I went through two cartons of eggs. I would have too much heat, not enough heat, not enough oil, until I got the math right.
“I just kind of picked it up on my own,” he continues. “I started doing it when no one was around. I knew at an early age that I could make things taste really good.”
Cooking “went from a hobby to a passion, and a passion to a career. In the back of my high school yearbook it says I wanted to be a chef. And I’m one of two people who lived up to what they wanted to be.”
His first job was at Isaac Hayes Nightclub & Restaurant in Peabody Place, where the chef took him under his wing. “He began teaching me about the mother sauces,” Leatherwood says. “I started doing sauté. The rest is history. I started working around the kitchen mastering each station.”
Hayes? “I met him. We cooked for him. Yes, I did. I think he had the rib tips with the french fries.”
Leatherwood then got a job at Ruth’s Chris Steak House, where he went from “salad guy” to “master broiler.” He kept learning. “Learning things from other people, but I bought my own books. Like teaching myself about French cuisine.”
The old Madison Hotel was next. “That was one of the best times in my life. I was running a boutique luxury hotel in Memphis.”
Leatherwood cooked for rapper Lil Wayne. “He had a show here in Memphis, and I ended up cooking for him and his whole entourage.”
He ended up going to Miami to cook for the performer. “He didn’t talk much, but I knew when I saw those clean plates he was happy.”
Leatherwood rose to executive chef while working on the American Empress cruise ship. “On that boat, I was able to save a substantial amount of money ’cause I couldn’t spend it. I was thinking of ways to create a business for myself. What better way than a food truck. Low overhead, full creativity.”
Leatherwood, who returned to Ruth’s Chris as executive chef, bought his first food truck in 2018. He thought, “Why can’t we have fine dining on a food truck? That’s a concept I’d never heard of.”
He began serving grilled salmon sliders, seafood gumbo, Cajun pastas, lamb chops, lollipop lobster tails, crab cakes. His food “mirrored the food” he was cooking on a corporate level. “The type of food I was comfortable with.”
He continued to work at Ruth’s Chris and operate his food truck until the pandemic. He then catered and did pop-ups. Seven months ago, Leatherwood bought a bigger and taller food truck. He and chef Mary Wallace are collaborating this time.
“We just work so well together. We have the same passion about food. The love we put in the food. We’re ready to take it to the next level. I want to cater to the people who want the high-end cuisine, but I want some affordable cuisine as well,” he says. “It will be elevated street food, but I will have vegan options in there as well.”
“Sumlight” is what Leatherwood says when fellow chefs ask what he’s making. “Oh, that’s sum’ [something] light.”
But, he still could be making “something that blows your mind.”
