The Southern Fork

Here's a new term you might want to remember: RTD, or "Ready to Drink." It's growth in the beverage category is exponential, but I often found the cocktails too syrupy for my palate. Until now.  Tip Top Proper Cocktails in Atlanta was founded by music industry veterans Neal Cohen and Yoni Reisman (Governor's Ball in NYC) after they recognized a gap in the market for a quality portable cocktail. Th...

Next time you're at a food event, watching a commercial where someone's eating pizza, flipping through a magazine with beautiful food pictures, or enjoying a movie scene where the lead introduces her new boyfriend at the holiday table, I hope you'll think of Gena Berry of Culinary Works based in Atlanta, GA. She is, as she simply puts it, one of the people who put the food in all of these scenes....

Restaurants are immersive experiences, and while some grow organically, most are planned with intention, and it's often the architect who is bringing that intention to life, setting the stage for the nightly dance of server, food, guest, and environment. Architect David Thompson has been involved in the building or renovation of many of the restaurants that have been featured on this show. His fir...

Beautiful Briny Sea is an artisan dry goods company based in Atlanta, GA, but that doesn't really explain the magic that happens behind its humble doors. It's like an alchemist's cave full of spices, salt, and bright, shiny sugar sprinkles in all colors of the rainbow. At the center of it all is Suzi Sheffield, founder and CEO, former restaurateur turned salt storyteller. This company's salt blend...

Roots Down is redefining urban agriculture in Atlanta. Helmed by Jamie Rosenthal, a self-proclaimed reformed farmer, the business has ambitious goals in many areas, but we sat down to focus on the Fruitful Communities initiative. With it, he along with private and policy-making partners, are identifying, planning, designing, and implementing edible landscapes in urban settings in Dekalb County, Ge...

Kristian Niemi is a pioneer in Columbia, SC's food and beverage industry. He's opened some of the city's most popular restaurants, including Mr. Friendly's, New Southern Café, Gervais + Vine, and most recently, Bourbon and Black Rooster . As one of those guys that likes all aspects of the restaurant business, from cooking to mixology to front of house design, and even events and catering, he's fol...

This week is American Craft Beer Week , which celebrates independent breweries. One of the most unique stories I've discovered in this genre is Tennessee Brew Works in Nashville. CEO and President Christian Spears once was a derivative trader on Wall Street with a focus on emerging market government debt, but he wanted to remake his life into something different. While he'd always loved craft beer...

Transcending generations and geography, Lillie's of Charleston is more than sauces and spices -- it's the story of a Charleston family united by love of cooking and gathering around the table. Celebrating 20 years in business, its recipes have a much longer legacy than that. Hank Tisdale first introduced the mustard sauce to the public in 1985 at the The Rib Shack restaurant in Charleston, SC, and...

Elizabeth Heiskell was born and raised in the Mississippi Delta, a land of sky to the horizon and rich soil bordered by the Mississippi River. Although her culinary journey really started in her childhood kitchen, it took a professional turn at the Culinary Institute of America and from there, she's taken that love of cooking in many directions, from an instructor at the Viking Cooking School in G...

What does it take to commit to a creative pursuit? In Diane Flynt's case, it took planting hundreds of apple varieties high in the Virginia mountains in order to find which ones might be best to make her dream cider. What resulted was Foggy Ridge Cider , which helped fuel the American cider revival and earned Flynt four James Beard nominations during its years in production, something that might s...

Chef Lisa Marie White is someone who dares to change. During a pilgrimage in her late 30s on the Camino de Santiago in Europe, she remembered her love of baking and decided to pursue it with a professional passion and scholar's heart. She's baked all over the country, from Domenica and Willa Jean in New Orleans to The Thompson Hotel in Nashville, and she's now brought her unique style and talent t...

Chris Winn says that customer service is his love language, and if you've ever interacted with him in his role as co-owner at Tradesman Brewing in Charleston, SC, or at any one of the various events the brewery has supported since opening in 2014, you believe him. He knows the power of community and communication, and he asserts that both can happen over a cold pint of beer. He spent four years at...

I first interviewed Germaine Jenkins for Episode 14 of this show, a mere two years after she co-founded Fresh Future Farm in North Charleston, SC on a vacant city lot with limited resources. Since then, she's built and led a team that is creating abundance in a disinvested neighborhood, been featured in Food & Wine , the New York Times , and Essence Magazine , and she's shared her story with polit...

Research trips for this work are a whirlwind, trying to take in as much about an area's restaurants as I can. But during my recent trip to Nashville, we ate at Henrietta Red twice, so that should tell you something. Its chef, Julia Sullivan, is a Nashville native and graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, and in its first year, Henrietta Red was a semifinalist for Best New Restaurant by th...

On the rooftop of the Graduate Nashville hotel is White Limozeen , a pink velvet, chandelier-sporting, Nashville glam cocktail bar and restaurant with its own hashtag on Tik Tok that's been viewed 3.1M times. Since opening in July 2020, it's become a true rooftop sensation, and if you're like me, then more often than not you avoid such a place if you're looking for a proper cocktail. I ran straigh...

Nashville is a true Southern culinary scene with some seriously good food, and the chef I first associated with this pop star of a city was Tandy Wilson of City House , a restaurant whose screened in porch is as welcoming as the breezes it gets on a summer day. Wilson's focus on growing relationships with local farmers to build his Italian menus was not the norm when his restaurant began, but now...

If you're from the South, the pizza tradition here has usually centered around game night, movie night, study groups, or volunteer dinners, with big boxes lined up on a table sitting out long after we've all finished eating. It's often good, but not really a Southern Fork subject.  However, the following discussion is not about that kind of pizza, but something a lot more transcendent, at least if...

It's been such a long slog for restaurants this past year. But there are so many folks who are keeping on keeping on and John Zucker is one of them. For more than two decades, the Cru Catering and Café executive chef and owner has been creating a recipe for success in Charleston, SC. His catering division has been voted Best Caterer consecutively since 2001 and his restaurant, Cru Café, which open...

There is plenty of food content out there. I know, of course, because I am making some of it, but also because I'm reading a lot of it, and a lot of it is vacuous, shallow, and sometimes downright incorrect. But there is also so much good thinking and good writing about food out there, and one such writer/content creator/ and chef is Amethyst Ganaway . Her bylines range from Serious Eats to Garden...

This weekend usually marks the annual Southeastern Wildlife Expo, or SEWE, in Charleston, SC where close to 20,000 folks descend upon the city to celebrate wildlife art and the sporting lifestyle. So in honor of that, I'm learning more this week about a great company, Manchester Farms Quail in Columbia, SC, that began as a venture by an outdoorsman who loved to hunt quail. That man is Brittney Mil...

Few restaurants have made a more significant impact in the Southern culinary landscape in such a short amount of time than The Grey in Savannah, Ga. Housed in a restored 1938 Greyhound Bus Terminal and led by co-partners Chef Mashama Bailey and John Morisano, The Grey at once challenges and comforts with every plate of food that is served. Bailey's seasonally shifting menus are always delicious an...

It's the last show of 2020, so Stephanie takes a look back at some of her best bites and lessons of 2020. Even in a year like this year, there's been some delicious along the way.    Episodes mentioned: https://www.thesouthernfork.com/episode-184 https://www.thesouthernfork.com/episode-173 https://www.thesouthernfork.com/episode-181 https://www.thesouthernfork.com/episode-192 https://www.thesouthe...

It's not just the business of restaurants that is in dire straits right now, but also their placemaking as experimental labs of cultural creative expression. Roll up the garage door on The War Mouth in Columbia, SC, and you'll see a one-of-a-kind eclectic neighborhood joint in the truest sense, where whole hogs are smoking on the back patio, vegetables on the menu are whatever's in season, and bar...

Talk about Southern holiday baking, and it's hard to imagine it without pecans, an iconic Southern ingredient, and for many folks in the South, that specifically means Schermer Pecans, in operation since 1946. I first met Putt Weatherby of Schermer Pecans in the fall of 2016 on a trip to Thomasville, Ga., and although we tried to podcast then, he was so exhausted from harvest, it didn't work out....

A chef's life is often head down, hard work, a repetition of tasks and days where you see the sun for a few minutes on the drive in or if you have to walk out the kitchen door to take out the trash. You're more of a cooking station than an individual, but for some, the ideas of "what I would do if I had a restaurant" fill the drudgery with dreams. Opening a restaurant is always risky, but for Chef...