The Southern Fork

Although it's tough to say, Charleston, SC is not all postcards and porch living. It's a city that is fighting decaying infrastructure, gentrification, the pressure of tourists, and traffic, traffic, traffic as an average of 75 people move here a day. So it can be a beautiful place but a hard place to live, to work, and to build a business. And thus begins the story of  Stems & Skins , a wine bar...

When you walk into  Smyth in Chicago, there's no getting away from the kitchen. In fact, you're basically eating in the kitchen, so that's exactly where I interviewed chefs John Shields and Karen Urie Shields, in earshot (or microphone range, as it were) of two industrious sous chefs whisking things in metal bowls, getting things out of ovens when the timer went off, and generally prepping for the...

You know, it was simple: I missed cake. When I was little it was always somebody's birthday at school and some mom was always bringing in cake. Then in my 20s I started going to a lot of weddings, and well, I was all about the cake. But these days, not many restaurants serve cake, although I love restaurant fruit trifles and granitas and of course creme brulee (though, heads up chefs, none of that...

In the culinary world, many of the people making things, and many of the people consuming things, are chasing memory. It could be granny's Sunday lunch or a specific time or a specific experience or place, but it's always a chase, because food and beverage can't replicate memory, nothing can, it can only be a doorway to an edge of something familiar you can't name. That's what amaro is for me, tho...

As Americans, we talk a lot about Mom and Pop stores -- how we love them, how we need to "save" them -- but if you press many of us, me included, we can probably tell you the best place to park at Costco. Well, it's time to meet Mom and Pop. Four years ago, George and Lisa Bowen purchased  Burbage's Grocery , located at the corner of Broad and Savage Streets, in one of those Charleston, SC neighbo...

I still write extensively, and thus, I still receive a lot of food news, usually in the form of emails from PR reps. I can read beyond the hype, but when hotshot New York City chef Michael Toscano decided to come to Charleston, SC, my town, to open a restaurant in one of my former favorite downtown watering holes, well, the buzz machine seemed to hit a new level. I had the reaction that I have a l...

I learned to cook from the women in my family for sure, but I also learned to cook from  Nathalie Dupree . Probably starting around early middle school age, I would post up by the TV on Saturday afternoons to catch many of the cooking shows on PBS, and Nathalie not only showed me how to make a coconut cake, she also taught me that, just by her presence on my screen, Southern food was worth noticin...

I write and work from home and most of the time, I work in quiet, which isn't really quiet. Right now, it's the muted sounds of birds through the windows, traffic on my street, my dog Petunia, and the late summer buzzing of cicadas. When Chris Wilkins of  Root Baking Co. stopped by my house recently to record, our recording also captured that natural working environment in the background. For me,...

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I don't know about you, but sometimes when a place becomes a lunch go to and feels well, kind of like it's always been there, it's easy to overlook how wonderful it actually is. That's the way it is with Caviar & Bananas , a specialty product store and cafe that began in Charleston, SC and now has three locations in the city (including one in the airport), a location in Greenville, and is opening...

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