The Southern Fork

Eastern North Carolina is a place of flat fields to the horizon, small corner stores, barbecue spots that are only open Thursday-Saturday, and as Shorlette Ammons says, more pigs than people. She's a native of Mount Olive, North Carolina, where she grew up in a large family of farmworkers, cooks, and storytellers, and we met last year when she presented at Thrive NC in Raleigh. She's currently ser...

It seems the idea of American home cooking is back. For some of us, it never really left, but irregardless, I'd suggest that one of the most satisfying home cooked meals is a roasted chicken. I hate to brag, but it's my specialty, and although I've tried many recipes for them, my favorite to date has been the Buttermilk Herb-Roasted Chicken published in The Local Palate in 2014. The buttermilk ten...

Now, Southern foodways is my professional geography. It's what I know, and it's what eventually lured me away from academia and into the consumer writing space full-time. Race is indelibly a part of Southern foodways, and through the interviews in the five years of this show, discussion about race has intermittently been a part of the Southern Fork. But I'm committing to more consistent conversati...

Who's ready for some ice cream? After a resume build that reads like a "best restaurants in the South" list incl. Cakes & Ale in Atlanta, Empire State South also in Atlanta, Rhubarb in Asheville, and Butcher & Bee in Charleston, Chef Cynthia Wong left the pressures of a restaurant kitchen to hit the streets on her own in a food truck she calls Life Raft Treats , making and serving grown up novelty...

I think that the classic Happy Hour at home is back. The folks that liked to hop on a barstool on after work are currently looking at their home bars with a new light, missing the camaraderie of bar cocktails but also looking to have a bit of a ritual -- even in uncertain times -- at the close of the workday, whatever that means, whether Zooming classrooms with kids or sharing spreadsheets with th...

Like much of the country, Charleston, SC's food and beverage scene is reeling from the pandemic. And despite the state being one of the early states to push toward a full reopening, some restaurants are still closed, still working on plans to provide safety and retain at least some of the experience and hospitality they were known for. It's a confusing, politicized time. Add to this intense delays...

Right now, one of the main conversations in America around food is about the cracks and the faultines in the meat industry, and by extension, the idea that while it's hard and illness is an epidemic, we must force workers by decree to keep working. This assumes the validity of the system, and I'm about to suggest that we're missing the idea of questioning things that have become institutionalized....

Meet the BBQ Professor. If you're ready to up your grilling and smoking skills, then there's few out there better to learn from than Pitmaster Tuffy Stone . Based in Richmond, Va. with a catering business and restaurant, this chef has taken his self-taught knowledge of grilling and smoking all around the world and won numerous BBQ contests in the process with Cool Smoke, the name of his competitio...

When I typed the name "Kevin Gillespie" in Google, one of the suggestions that came up was Top Chef Kevin. How cool is it if that's your nickname? But if you just know Chef Kevin Gillespie from Bravo's Top Chef , then you only know half the story. He's a chef's chef, building community behind the scenes, cooking great food out of his growing number of restaurants in Atlanta, and a scholar of techn...

Chris Shepherd of Underbelly Hospitality in Houston, Tx. is one of the best chefs cooking right now. He's had numerous accolades, from Food & Wine magazine to the James Beard Foundation, and Robb Report named him the best chef in the world. Creatively, he has a curiosity that keeps him learning, a confidence to say what he feels, and a heart for the people he's cooking for and with, along with the...

Sometimes in the culinary world, we fall into the trap that being serious about craft has to mean a "serious" restaurant. You know the kind: bespoke aprons, Brandi Carlile Spotify station on the sound system, farms listed on the menu, and a quiet pat-yourself-on-the-back attitude that you are dining well. But that doesn't have to be the case. At Preux & Proper in downtown Los Angeles, North Caroli...

I'm a sucker for juxtapositions and Manuela , located in the downtown LA Arts District has it in spades. There's graffiti, gardens with chickens and finger limes, a big expansive dining space that basically feels open air inside a warehouse, and a Los Angeles native making delicious fried chicken and biscuits with butter, all within a gallery complex as a creative expression of an art aesthetic. W...

Somewhere South debuts tonight on PBS, the second television show from North Carolina chef Vivian Howard. If you don't know her, you should; she's a force in American culinary culture, through her placemaking Kinston, NC restaurant Chef and the Farmer , and it's growing number of restaurant siblings, to her first series A Chef's Life , a television show that will not only go down as an Emmy-winner...

You come to the Southern Fork to hear stories of others in restaurants, bars, and the culinary industry, but today, it's just me. And I'm at the beginning of the season, I just feel like I did this a few episodes ago. But Food writing, I feel, is at its best when it's service journalism, and today, I am led to be of service by telling a little bit about my story with restaurants. You are hearing a...

Food can make you feel at home, no matter where you are, and when I walked into Hatchet Hall , located in Los Angeles, I immediately had a sense that this was my kind of place. The best Grandma parlor decor with a hefty dose of taxidermy, hearth cooking, good whiskey, food cooked from a sense of history, and you know, one helluva whole fish, and suddenly I forgot about the thousands of miles I was...

If you've been out and about in Charleston,SC, then most likely you're familiar with Home Team BBQ . But since it's a place with multiple locations (including outside the state), those spots are  almost always busy, and they probably have your game on the TV and your favorite beer or spirit in the glass, it's easy to bypass the idea behind it all. And the idea was simple. Chef Aaron Siegel trained...

Usually, host Stephanie Burt interviews a culinary maker, but for the season finale, she hogs the mic. It's a roundup of lessons, best bites, places you should visit, and thoughts for the coming year. Cheers to 2019, and let's dig in. 

If you love shrimp like I do, you've already enjoyed some pickled shrimp, shrimp cocktail, or other shrimp delicacies at holiday gatherings this year. On the other hand, those harvesting the shrimp are still working hard as the season wanes. Shem Creek in Mt. Pleasant, SC, is these days known more for #sundayfunday with its bars and restaurants, but there was a time in a not-too-distant past when...

There are some people you just want to hang out in the kitchen with. Ali Rosen is one of those people, and she knew the kitchen was where she belonged from a young age. If you're in NYC then you're lucky enough to get a window into her kitchen life on her TV show on NYC Life, Potluck with Ali , and the rest of us can spot her regularly on the Dr. Oz show in her role as "food investigator." She has...

Years ago, I heard about this breakfast place in Rock Hill, SC where people were lining up to get in the door. I never got there, but I made a note. (I'm kind of like Santa, always taking notes). But when Greg Collier moved that restaurant, The Yolk , to Charlotte, NC, and kept it open while cooking at Loft & Cellar and was nominated for James Beard's Best Chef: South award, my chance to say "I kn...

It's a decent bet that if you have a cookbook shelf, one of Anne Byrn's books is most likely on it. She's authored 14, including the NYT-best selling The Cake Doctor , which was recently named No. 18 on Southern Living's list of the 100 most important cookbooks of our time. Her newest book, Skillet Love, takes on one of my favorite cooking tools -- the cast iron skillet -- so we sat down with her...

As godfathers go, Rick Rubel is an exceptionally nice one. But he is one nonetheless, a key player in the growing wine excellence that Charleston, SC is becoming known for. As an advanced sommelier and wine director of Charleston Grill , Rick's been studying and serving wine for close to 25 years, but it's not just his encyclopedic knowledge of the biz and the bottles that make him noteworthy -- R...

Most coffee shops sport a decor that is effusive with dark woods and low lighting, but not Sophomore Coffee in Baltimore, MD. Partners Kris Fulton and Ann Travers Fortune have created a natural light-filled spot with a brightly tiled counter out of what was once the dirty basement of a building that time forgot. On the morning I visited, the place was filled to the brim with regulars, which seems...

After this interview, I looked up if I'd written that The Ordinary , one of Chef Mike Lata's restaurants in Charleston, S.C., is a "temple of seafood." I had, but so had T Magazine of the New York Times , years before. I don't think I read that article, but it just goes to show how something seeps into a culture nevertheless. The same goes for Lata's approach to local seafood -- what he does here...

I'm not a spicy food wimp, but neither am I competitive spicy food  eater (you know the type, right?), so I love a little kick on my scrambled eggs or in my chili,my collard greens, or my noodle bowl. Through the last few years, Red Clay Hot Sauce , made right here in Charleston, SC, has become more and more my go-to for just that. This company, which began when Geoff Rhyne was chopping chiles in...