Who is DeVonn Francis from Selena + Chef Season 4? Meet the queer Jamaican-American artist

Popular chef DeVonn Francis will be a guest on Selena Gomez's cooking show Selena + Chef, which is all set to return for its fourth season on HBO Max. The hit culinary show will begin airing three episodes on Thursday, August 18, 2022. It will see experienced chefs appear on set via video call, guiding the host through a series of fun, summer-themed recipes.

DeVonn Francis is a queer first-generation Jamaican-American artist who founded the creative studio Yardy in 2017 to explore aspects of his heritage and culture. The artist embraced his two passions, art and cooking, to open his studio and share the importance of food and culture. The team at Yardy celebrated their heritage by throwing Caribbean-themed dinner parties.

Three more episodes of Selena + Chef will hit screens on August 25 and the final four episodes will air on September 1, making it a total of 10 episodes in Season 4.

As per Deadline, the new season "will be set at a beach house where Selena will continue to learn the joys of cooking with all-star chefs," with each episode highlighting different charities.

---

DeVonn Francis discovered his love for cooking at a young age

DeVonn grew up as an introverted kid. He wasn't a big sports nut like his brother and instead preferred to stay home with his mother. Both of them would spend afternoons cooking together. After his father retired from the Navy, he started his own family business, a restaurant in Norfolk, Virginia, inspired by his childhood in Jamaica.

As the son of Jamaican immigrants growing up in Virginia, he hated being the kid who showed up to his middle school cafeteria with oxtails in his lunchbox. It wasn't until he was a teenager that he watched Food Network with his mother and working at his father's restaurant that he became interested in native ingredients and recipes from Jamaican culture.

In 2011, DeVonn moved to New York City to attend art school at Copper Union and he started working in restaurants at the same time. His first restaurant job was at Estela but he soon realized that he couldn't balance it with his class schedule. He then began waiting for tables in the restaurant and built a great relationship with the head chef, owners, and managers.

The chef would go along with the team to the market each morning to talk about ingredients and realized that creativity and dining went hand in hand. Soon after leaving Estela, he joined his friend for a food tour around the UK.

They visited Scotland, England, and Wales, and cooked on farms and over open fires just to understand the impact of food production, starting at the local business level.

DeVonn conceptualized Yardy in the summer of 2017 in New York City after his return from the UK and officially began in 2018. Through this, he embraced his family values, culture, and heritage and held salons in different spaces: in Williamsburg, at Saipua, at Lee’s in Chinatown.

Speaking about his studio, he opened up to MYKITA and said:

"It was important to me to make Yardy salons more like a home experience – and that world has coincided with my Mom and my Dad bootstrapping his way to a lounge space. It was important for me, the word “home”, and to make the experience porous and not institutionalized."

After the pandemic, DaVonn began selling takeaway meals outside of the SoHo café Smile to Go, and debuted as a host on Bon Appétit’s popular Test Kitchen YouTube channel.

---

Other popular chefs who will make their appearance on Selena + Chef include Adrienne Cheatham, Rachael Ray, Gordon Ramsay, Kristen Kish, Ludo Lefebvre, Matty Matheson, Nick DiGiovanni, Paola Velez, and Priya Krishna.

Don't forget to tune in to an all-new season of Selena + Chef this Thursday on HBO Max.