Ocean Springs native returns as distinguished chef of midtown Houston restaurant
Lucas McKinney shares his story Tuesday morning with senior honor students at Ocean Springs High School.
It hasn’t been all that long since he was in their place as a member of the last senior class to graduate from the old high school.
His is not the story he had planned for his life when he left for Ole Miss to study bio chemistry.
Now 31, his career of just a decade led him to be named this year’s Hall of Fame Distinguished Alumnus at his alma mater.
“I was pretty humbled,” McKinney said.
He’s learned from James Beard chefs, put in the hard work and now is owner-chef of Josephine’s Gulf Coast Tradition, one of Houston’s most acclaimed new restaurants.
He’ll tell the students how he went from being All-District center on the Greyhounds’ football team to cooking the food he grew up on for his customers.
“I think I’m going to focus a lot on leadership and trusting the process,” McKinney said as he prepared for his presentation to the students. “I think that, especially for my journey, it wasn’t something that like when you’re 18 and in high school and about to graduate and the whole world is right there. It’s a completely different path than anybody ever thought I’d be on. So I’d like to talk to them a little just about going with it. You know, staying positive through life and trust in the process.”
Becoming a renowned chef
In a way, he was destined to be a chef and carry on the heritage of his ancestors and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. It just took awhile to figure that out.
Growing up in Ocean Springs, “I was one of those kids that would do nothing but fish,” he said. His mother told him to cook what he caught and after snagging a bunch of crabs with his uncle the tradition was, “Now we’ve got to invite everybody over.” he said.
Those are some of his favorite memories, the chef said, and now he and his staff are creating memories for people who didn’t necessarily have access to those things growing up.
It’s that tradition and those ingredients he carries into his new restaurant where the menu makes the most of fresh seafood and locally sourced ingredients and neighbors of the midtown restaurant get a 10% discount.
The menu and Coast decor
He brings flavors from across the Gulf Coast to Josephine’s, and his menu also gives a nod to his time at Ole Miss with pickle brined chicken on a stick.
Customers sit down and savor smoked redfish dip with deep-fried ranch saltines, one of his signature dishes, along with halfshell grilled redfish and snapper collars with Jamaican jerk rub and chili butter.
“They also serve shrimp po-boys with Leideneimer bread from New Orleans, muffulettas, a ‘Mississippi Hot’ catfish sandwich, hush puppies, biscuits, red beans and rice, chicken and andouille gumbo, and some of the best crawfish in Houston,” said Nick Scurfield, a Gulfport native who now owns the Scurfield Group in Houston.
“It’s the only place I know of in Houston that serves Barq’s in a bottle,” Scurfield said. He eats at the restaurant once or twice a week, he said, and takes his parents there when they visit from South Mississippi. “It’s like the food that we grew up eating, and maybe even a little better,” he said.
Finding the way
Although it’s his passion now, it took McKinney awhile to find his way into the kitchen.
He changed his college major three times.
“At some point, Lucas, you just got to pick something and go with it,” his mother, whose family, the Nikovichs, were part of the Croatian fishing community in South Mississippi, advised him.
“I started cooking because I needed money,” McKinney said. “I was always really intuitive in the kitchen and eager to learn.”
Chef Kelly English, a James Beard semifinalist who has Magnolia House restaurant at Harrah’s Gulf Coast in Biloxi, was the one who helped set his way while they were opening The Second Line in Oxford.
“This is a career path that you didn’t consider and I think you should,” English told him, “because you’re pretty naturally good at it.”
McKinney switched his career to hospitality management and learned all he could about being a chef.
Roads lead to Houston
McKinney learned from the best under James Beard Award winner John Currence at City Grocery in Oxford, James Beard winner Vishwesh Bhatt at Snackbar and chef Nick Reppond at Grit Restaurant in Taylor.
He was working in Oxford when he decided, “I think I want to get out and go see what it’s like to work in a big city. I don’t know where I want to go or what I want to do, but I wanted to just get out and see what the world had,” he said.
Others who had worked at City Grocery had gone to Houston and found good jobs.
McKinney started working with Chris Shepherd at Hay Merchant and across several Underbelly Hospitality concepts in Houston. “I met a lot of people. He helped me grow professionally a lot, and so I worked for him for about five years.”
Then his mindset changed.
“For the longest time, I thought I need to keep, keep going and working for people and learning and, you know, cooking different cuisine, widening my horizon. But at some point, I guess you just have to decide to cook what you know and like, what your culture is.”
His culture is Gulf Coast and he dreamed of one day opening a restaurant.
He was introduced to investors who wanted to open a seafood boil restaurant. He was working at the time at Jimmy Kimmel’s South Fork Lodge in Idaho and was consulting on the new restaurant when he realized this Houston restaurant was something he wanted to put his name on, and he was brought on as a chef partner.
The restaurant opened in summer 2023 and he found that Houston, so culturally diverse, is a lot like South Mississippi — on a much bigger scale. “Houston is just such a welcoming town, just like where I grew up, but it’s so big and so fast paced, it kind of all just makes sense to plant some roots.”
Why Josephine?
When it came time to open, McKinney put his grandmother’s name — and a shipwreck — on his restaurant.
The US Steamship Josephine that ran from Havana, Cuba, to New Orleans and Galveston, Texas, sank south of Biloxi during a winter storm in 1881. The restaurant takes its identity from cuisine and culture across the Gulf Coast.
Josephine is also his great-grandmother Althea’s middle name and once he has children, he plans on passing that middle name down. He has his grandfather’s middle name, Reynold. Josephine brings his family’s history to the restaurant.
“I miss home a lot,” he said, and he keeps reminders throughout his restaurant, with a Barq’s root beer sign over the raw bar and photographs of the Coast.
“I don’t get to come back too often, but every time I’m back, I make sure I go grab a po-boy from Desporte’s, bring it to my grandpa and hang out,” he says.
“Reynold” is the middle name that Lucas shares with his grandfather, Ora Reynold “Renny” Harbison, who lives in Biloxi
His long-term dream is to keep opening restaurants, keep pushing and looking at what the next concept is. “But really, day to day, it’s being a good leader and just trying to keep the door open and be the best I can be,” he said.
This story was originally published April 29, 2025 at 8:45 AM.
