Chris Shepherd Sets Jimmy Kimmel Straight on Houston

Jimmy Kimmel loves food — and the talk show host is something of a prolific amateur cook himself. But there is at least one serious gap in his culinary knowledge.

“I have to say I don’t know a ton about Houston and your food,” Kimmel tells Houston chef Chris Shepherd on his ABC late night show.

Of course, Shepherd is the perfect Houston chef to set Kimmel straight. There are few chefs who embody the city’s unique scene more than the one with the new book titled Cook Like a Local.

“Houston is one of the most culturally diverse cities in the country,” Shepherd points out to Kimmel. “So for me, I wanted to show off Houston more. I wanted people to understand what Houston was about and who we are as a people.”

For Shepherd, the quest is pretty simple. “It’s about understanding where you live,” he says.

Shepherd’s national TV appearance this week served as another chance for him to tout the city he loves. When he wasn’t praising the Bayou City, he cooked his signature Korean braised goat and dumplings. Kimmel ate some of the rice cake cubes for the dumplings prematurely — as late night hosts are prone to do on these type of cooking segments — but this wasn’t David Letterman driving Martha Stewart crazy back in the day.

No one was chugging a bottle of vodka on the air.

Kimmel largely let Shepherd cook and tell a funny story about how the chef became known for a goat dish.

“One of those things,” Shepherd says. “We tried it with beef, we tried it with lamb, tried all these different things. But at the end, one of your farmers was like, ‘You know, I’ve got a lot of goats.’ ”

Kimmel gave Shepherd more than seven minutes of air time, a long time for the third segment in the show. The host clearly has some affection for Shepherd, who cooked this same braised goat and dumplings dish at a Jimmy Kimmel Live! Emmy party.

This James Beard Award winner knows how to make friends. After all, Chris Shepherd’s a Houstonian through and through — even if he happens to have been born in Nebraska.

Watch Shepherd on Kimmel: