Sam Fore

The Path

The range of the practice is visible in the way Tuk Tuk Sri Lankan Bites and recipe development sit alongside each other. Since 2016, Fore has been the chef and force behind Tuk Tuk Sri Lankan Bites, a role that keeps the work immediate and public, while recipe development asks for a different kind of discipline: building dishes and ideas that can live beyond one service or one room. Together, those roles show a cook working across formats without losing the center of the cuisine. What holds the work together is the blend he has described himself. In Lexington, that means the food does not settle into a single category or reading. Sri Lankan heat, spice, and memory remain present, while Southern structure gives the dishes a second register. The result is not a fixed fusion statement but a working method: one that keeps tradition active by putting it into use.

The Work Today

In Lexington, the current practice runs through Tuk Tuk Snack Shop and recipe development. As chef at Tuk Tuk Snack Shop, Fore works in the pace of service; as a recipe developer, he works with a slower, more exacting kind of translation. The two roles ask for different tempos, but both depend on the same culinary language. That split gives the work range without diffusing it. One side is the practical business of feeding people in the moment; the other is the labor of shaping recipes that can hold their form outside the kitchen. Across both, the food continues to reflect the same Sri Lankan and Southern blend he has named in his own words.

Signature

The dishes most associated with Fore, The Webster and Roasted Curry Tomato Pie, point to how the work is built: recognizable formats carrying a distinct point of view. The names are direct, but the cooking behind them is where Sri Lankan and Southern influence are made to sit together.

In Their Words “Taking my Sri Lankan heritage and melding it with traditional southern recipes continues to be an adventure.”

Acclaim

Recognition has followed the work across several years and publications: James Beard Foundation Awards Best Chef: Southeast finalist (2023), Taste of the South Taste50 (2022), Southern Living inaugural Cooks of the Year (2020), and Plate Magazine Chefs to Watch (2018). Read together, those honors mark sustained attention to a body of work that keeps heritage visible while treating hybridity as a working method rather than a slogan.