Jamie Tran

The Path

Training at San Francisco State University and Le Cordon Bleu gave Jamie Tran the formal base that later met the demands of service. She began in the low positions that teach a kitchen from the ground up, working as a dishwasher and prep cook at Northern California restaurant in Northern California, where speed, timing, and basic discipline matter as much as ambition. She later moved to line cook at Aureole (Charlie Palmer's) in Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas, a larger and more exacting setting that sharpened the day-to-day skills required of a working chef. Her career continued with work for Charlie Palmer and Daniel Boulud (until 2017), a period that sits between training and ownership. Today, Jamie is chef / co-owner and executive chef and co-owner of The Black Sheep (since 2017), and the title reflects a progression through multiple kitchen roles before taking responsibility for the whole room.

The Work Today

At The Black Sheep in Las Vegas, she serves an original take on casual modern Vietnamese American food. The restaurant describes that approach as going back to basics, and Tran’s cooking reads the same way: direct, grounded, and attentive to flavor and memory without excess. Her focus on Vietnamese American cooking gives the menu a clear point of view, with restraint doing as much work as invention. In a city built on spectacle, Tran’s food keeps its volume lower and its purpose clear. The balance is the point: casual but considered, modern but rooted, accessible without losing technical intent. As chef / co-owner and executive chef and co-owner, she translates that perspective into a restaurant shaped by clarity rather than noise.

Signature

Jamie Tran focuses on Vietnamese American cooking. That emphasis shapes both her own cooking and The Black Sheep’s identity: a return to essentials, handled with care and without decoration. The signature is specific, personal, and still in motion, defined by a cuisine she continues to work through in public.

In Their Words “I'm not big on competition because of my anxiety. I've never done any sort of competition.” “I tried to fight it as best as I could, not to be a chef.”