What Julia Child and Jacques Pepin have done for modern French cooking, what Diana Kennedy did for Mexican cooking, Grady Spears has done and continues to do for Cowboy Cooking.

Putting his indelible brand on the genre, Grady is both creator and charismatic personality, enthralling cooks of all levels of expertise with his endearing, joyous approach to hearty fare. Named one of the Top Five Chefs of 1998 by Restaurant and Institutions, and Rising Star of 1999 by Restaurant Hospitality Magazine, Grady’s work as been widely praised in such prestigious publications as The New York Times, Texas Monthly, P.O.V., Martha Stewart Living, Country Homes, Southern Living, and countless others.

A native of Fort Worth, Grady Spears would rather be called a cowboy cook than a chef. The long, tall Texan earned a meager living punching and selling cattle before turning to restaurant work to pay the bills, and his expertise in the kitchen came about unexpectedly–the moment a chef simply quit in the midst o a busy weekend dinner shift at the restaurant Grady was managing in the West Texas town of Marathon. Grady stepped up to the stove, grabbed a pan and produced meals for the dining room full of 100 hungry people. Like they say, the rest is history.

Since then, Grady has created menus and concepts in his signature cowboy style for The Reata Restaurants he co-owned in Alpine and Fort Worth, Texas, and in Beverly Hills, California, The Roadrunner in Las Vegas, Nevada, The Chisholm Club in Fort Worth, The Burning Pear in Sugarland, Texas and The Nutt House in Granbury, Texas.
His cookbooks to date are A Cowboy In The Kitchen, which he wrote with award-winning author Robb Walsh, as well as Cowboy Cocktails and The Great Steak Book, all from Ten Speed Press. He also was the primary contributor to the very popular Dallas Cowboys Family Cookbook and in 2004 he released with award winning food and travel writer/author June Naylor, The Texas Cowboy Kitchen. His latest work titled, Cooking The Cowboy Way published by Andrews McMeel was release in the fall of 2009.

Over the years, Grady has cooked on television for shows that include: Good Morning America, The Today Show, The Rosie O’Donnell Show, Donnie And Marie, as well as various shows for The Food Network including The Cowboy’s Kitchen, Food Fights and others. Grady has also cooked at the Texas Governor’s Mansion for George and Laura Bush before they made the move to Washington, D.C. and has rubbed elbows with the culinary elite, cooking with thelikes of Martha Stewart, Mark Miller, Stephan Pyles as well as the late Jean-Louis Palladin and numerous others. He has endorsed or done work for various national brands to date that include: Pepcid Complete, Bud-Light, The Texas Peanut Producers, Miller Lite, Legend Airlines, The American Beef Producers, Woodford Reserve, Nolan Ryan’s Tender Aged Beef and others.