Meet Erika (the Chef!)

Chef Erika Lipe was born into a family passionate about cuisine and exploring the world through flavor. As a girl, Erika was influenced strongly by traveling and learning about the gulf coast through art, music, and food, and perhaps most applicably as a young line cook in New Orleans. Like many artists, Erika has naturally been drawn to the water, and spent some time cooking professionally along the Golden Isles of Georgia, including a stint in the Grand Dining Room at The Jekyll Island Club Resort. A native Mississippian, Erika has called Oxford home for the last 17 years, where she is consistently voted “Favorite Chef” and “Best Boss” by her peers and coworkers for the work at her restaurant SoLa, which opened in 2014.

Though her deep-rooted southern charm and reverence for food traditions are based here at home, Erika also enjoys what she refers to as “Third-Culture” cooking: celebrating the bold influence of our immigrant ancestors and neighbors on local cuisine, especially as it relates to the geographic parallels found between the farming and fishing industries of Mississippi and around the world.

In 2024, Erika was crowned the first Queen of Mississippi Seafood and brought home a second place trophy in The Great American Seafood Cook-Off.

Photos by The Valley Imagery & Productions