`Chef Tahj' cooking defenses in third year with Trojans
Over a flame, a spatula in hand and red “Chef Tahj” apron draped across a lithe frame, Tahj Washington is an artist.
His menu is varied, careful impressionistic strokes, everything from soul food to Louisiana and Italian-style meals. The crown jewel is his chicken alfredo, so gas, as fellow wide receiver Brenden Rice gushed, that mother Shanon Kuykendall prefers it to Olive Garden.
The key is a flavor mix Rice simply calls the “Tahj kick.” And spices are Washington's brushes, a jar in his kitchen filled with a blend of paprika and cayenne and parsley and secrets a good chef never reveals — “that's all I'm gon' give y'all,” he grins at the camera in one 2022 video posted to his YouTube channel. He blends colors within the canvas of his saucepan, carefully coating roasting shrimp in heavy cream and mixing to a light tan, paying close attention to regulate his desired pigment.
He started cooking when he was six, Kuykendall working two jobs and raising Washington and a little brother within a large Texan family. She'd bring them and his cousins to the grocery store and tell them it's on y'all this week, and kids being kids they all set off grabbing snacks.
Except for Washington. “I just wanted to go for the ingredients,” he smiled, “to make something new.”
He is beloved in this locker room, not just for his cooking, and in complete authenticity. Players eyes' light up when they speak of him as a teammate: day in and day out, Rice said, “everything you want in a player.” Three years into his USC career, after a slightly messy transfer from Memphis, Washington is the old guard in a stuffed-to-the-brim receivers' room, a sage senior in college speaking with a senior citizen's wisdom.
“Everybody got problems,” Washington said, simply, after Wednesday's practice.” So just knowing how to deal with those, going through those, kinda help giving younger guys — that might not be in the position that they want to be in now.”
He could've been an afterthought in 2022, when Riley took the helm and transfers Mario Williams and Jordan Addison joined the fray. Could've sank on the depth
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chart in 2023, as a slew of top recruits entered the mix. Instead, he's been one of the steadiest members in a program in desperate need of stability, and is USC's leading receiver through eight games after a 765-yard season last year.
The reason is simple, as Riley explained in September: Washington is intentional. Takes incredibly detailed, thorough notes after meetings. Consistent in his approach to his aspirations – overwhelmingly precise in the kitchen with head-chef dreams, overwhelmingly precise on the turf.
“I feel like he's a guy that goes out on the practice field every single day with a mindset to go get better, and truly only worries about what he can control,” Riley said. “And doesn't seem to give any thought to anything else.”
`HUMBLE BEAST FROM THE
EAST' ❯❯ As a kid, Washington didn't care much for burgers. Not for pizza. Somehow, not for chicken nuggets. When they'd go out to eat, Kuykendall said, he had more “expensive tastes.” Kid wanted seafood.
On his YouTube channel “Chef Tahj,” where he has a cooking series titled “No Huddle Kitchen” — now sponsored by meal-kit company HelloFresh in one of the more genius NIL partnerships in college football — Washington has a video titled “Ramen with a twist.” That recipe started young, when he couldn't be satisfied with eating plain ramen noodles. He started adding cheese, Kuykendall remembered. Then hot links. Spending time with his grandmother, a longtime dietician, learning recipes.
The Cooking Channel stayed on the family television. At Marshall High in Texas, where Washington put up numbers but was largely recruited by nearby Southern and Midwest schools, he formed what Shanon called a “Breakfast Club,” where members would chip in and buy ingredients for meals Washington would cook.
“That is, like, his happy place,” Kuykendall said.
It all came, Kuykendall felt, from a dislike of simple foods. And to date, the kitchen appears Washington's stage; the setting for flair, a flair absent from much of his football makeup. He operates with a deceptive lack of flash, polar opposite from gregarious outside-receiver complement Rice, perhaps his most demonstrative moment this entire season coming after a touchdown against Colorado where he gave a slight sprinkle-thepot celebration in a nod to his chef persona.
Even his forays into the NIL space in college — that HelloFresh partnership, and a deal announced Tuesday with salsa company La Victoria dedicated to stocking USC's food pantry for students struggling with food insecurity — have been carefully crafted.
“We call him the `Humble Beast from the East,'” Kuykendall said.
Washington originally arrived at USC, though, from what Shanon called a “conflict of interest” with Memphis after a breakout year in 2020. In March of 2021, the Daily Memphian reported that, according to Kuykendall, Memphis head coach Ryan Silverfield had allegedly called Washington “selfish.”
“That really, as a parent, was like, `Wow, you don't really know this kid at all — you don't know him, to even say that? Wow,'” Kuykendall said.
`HE'S READY WHENEVER HIS NAME IS CALLED' ❯❯ When Washington first started playing football, Kuykendall remembered, he'd get dressed for games the night before. Football pants. Shoulder-pads. Trying to go to sleep with a helmet on his head. She had to wrestle a compromise out of him; he could keep the gear physically tucked under the covers with him while he slept.
And earnest impatience has carried all the way to USC, where one of Washington's “Achilles' heels” was calming himself, particularly when it came to catching deep balls, coach Dennis Simmons said.
It was something he, himself, saw as an area of growth. So in the summertime, Washington said, he got in work from a variety of sources – utilizing a Jugs machine, real-life quarterback Caleb Williams, even tennis balls — to hone technique on a variety of overthe-shoulder and deep-ball routes.
It's paid dividends, as this USC receiver room has plenty of playmakers in the flat and across the middle but has noticeably lacked deep-outside threats. Rice filled that role more consistently in earlier parts of the season, and Washington stepped in on Saturday in an otherwise-disappointing loss against Utah with a 112yard performance – including a full-extension diving 52-yard grab on USC's second drive of the game.
According to Pro Football Focus, Washington caught just 2 of 11 deep-ball attempts thrown his way in 2021, his first year at USC. That mark went to 7-of-14 last year, and he's been close to perfect in 2023 in a tangible example of dedicated improvement, catching 6 of 8 such targets.
He was used most consistently as a short-hit threat in 2021. Now, at 5-foot-11, he's somehow morphed himself into USC's most consistent deep-ball target.
“There's no questions asked — if coach wanted him to go to running back and run the ball, he'd do it,” running back MarShawn Lloyd said earlier this season. “He doesn't have no questions of blocking whoever, he doesn't have no questions of what route to run — he's ready whenever his name is called.”