The winner of Season 22 of Top Chef now goes by Tristen Epps-Long.

When the celebrity chef was at the Grand Hyatt Baha Mar in Nassau, the capital city of the Bahamas, earlier this month to celebrate the opening of Marcus Samuelsson‘s new restaurant Vibe BBQ and the anniversary of Marcus Fish + Chop House, he introduced himself by his new last name.

The addition of Long to his last name is in honor of his stepfather, Russell Long, who died while Epps-Long was in the middle of filming Top Chef: Destination Canada and competing in the epic Restaurant Wars event.

Instead of bowing out of the reality show due to personal matters, Epps-Long went on and finished Top Chef in first place. He exclusively told In Touch in the Bahamas what got him to the finish line.

“Honestly, it was resilience and the power of pride,” Epps-Long told In Touch. “Pride is what really got me through that entire journey: Pride in my culture, pride in my own skills [and] confidence in all that.”

Especially important to him was “the pride that my own dad gave me and had for me going through the entire journey,” Epps-Long said, adding: “He knew I would win more than I knew I would win.”

“He never talked about it as if I wasn’t going to win,” the Top Chef winner said. “And that gave me a lot of confidence.”

While teaching young students earlier this month about the art of cooking at The Kitchen at Baha Mar, a culinary venue where guests can take classes or experience live cooking demonstrations, Epps-Long revealed he almost decided to not go on Top Chef at all.

Epps-Long told In Touch that he grew up with the belief that “everything that you’re doing to not cook and be in your kitchen is a distraction,” so he felt like “every second” he’d be competing was time away from working toward his dreams.

However, he said, “I also saw how much Top Chef influenced my cooking. I watched for years and got inspired.”

Epps-Long said he also looked up to Samuelsson, a “mentor” who won the second season of Top Chef Masters in 2010.

“He left Aquavit, did Top Chef, and then immediately opened [his restaurant] Red Rooster,” said Epps-Long.

If Epps-Long never watched Top Chef Masters, he said, he may have “never ended up at Red Rooster,” where he said he found his “voice” and honed his skillset and confidence to compete on Top Chef.

Eventually, Epps-Long thought to himself: “I have to do it.”

In an emotional Instagram post dedicated to his late dad, Epps-Long called Russell “the man that relentlessly showed up for me, supported me, chose to be a father to me through every up and down for twenty-plus years.”

Epps-Long will return to the Bahamas for the Bahamas Culinary & Arts Festival, which will take place from October 21-25 at Baha Mar.

He will be joined by other renowned chefs including Samuelsson, Daniel Boulud, Scott Conant, Dario Cecchini, Simeon Hall Jr., Buddy Valastro, Amanda Freitag, Maneet Chauhan, Esther Choi, Claudette Zepeda, Alfredo Villanueva, Nina Compton and Lisa and Chris Binns as well as beverage experts Marv “Mr. Mixx” Cunningham and Noah Rothbaum.

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