The Southern Fork

It's almost impossible to talk about any food scene in the Boone and Banner Elk, NC area without including Tina Houston. Once you meet her, you know in five minutes she is a force , and she's been at the forefront of seasonal, local cooking in that pocket of the Appalachian High Country since she began Reid's Catering in 1999. Her enthusiasm for beautiful product, trust of the diners to go on a cu...

The work of Jacques Pépin transcends a single title. He is at once chef, teacher, author, and television personality, but with 31 books and more than 70 years in the kitchen, his unique combination of warm personality and professional skills has impacted the world of food like few others. He's still working and cooking every day, has a new cookbook, Quick & Simple , and during the pandemic so far...

It's been a challenging, often heartbreaking year. And just like a hard rain can first make you try to run then slow down and plod through when you're soaked, that's life too, so sometimes it can be hard to look for promise, see light, hear encouragement. And then someone tells me about a chicken sandwich I have to try from a food truck based in Abingdon, VA called The Pakalachian , and the sun br...

Travis Milton is a familiar figure in Southern food, having been featured in press from Tasting Table to Atlas Obsura , talking up the goodness of heirloom vegetables, whiskey, and the power of a piece of streaky pig meat in a pot of beans. But he's more than a stereotype of the Appalachian region that raised him. This chef, born in Castlewood, Virginia, honed his modernist cooking skills at WD-50...

The blue crab is greatly cherished in the South Carolina Lowcountry. Many locals prefer its sweet meat over all other locally caught seafood, and it's an animal that can be found from New England to Texas, but much of those ecosystems are under immense development pressure. Blue crabs require both inshore brackish waters and high salinity ocean waters to complete their life cycle, but here in Char...

There's a famous quote from Julia Child where she says "A party without cake is just a meeting." But for many Southerners, that saying goes for family too. Many families have a locally-famous cake, from an aunt's cream cheese pound cake to a grandmother's applestack cake. For the Reutter family, that was Caroline's caramel cake, a labor of love and precision that is as decadent as it is time-consu...

Christian Hansen's journey in cheesemaking started as a hobby while working for Dell in Austin, TX.  His instant passion for the craft was grounded in part by a sense of ancestral connection because his grandfather and great-grandfather both operated creameries in Christian's native Denmark.  In 2015, he left behind the corporate world to open Blue Ridge Creamery in Travelers Rest, SC. His cheeses...

It's hard to imagine, but there was a time when it was often difficult to find a well-made cocktail with fresh juices, technique, and attention to detail. That was until Dale DeGroff and his talents and techniques at tending bar became well known, most notably at New York City's Rainbow Room in the 80s. It sparked a book deal for a now classic primer, The Craft of the Cocktail , and subsequently D...

Spade and Clover Gardens is located on Johns Island, SC, and the day I visited, dappled sun splashed along the country roads as I drove under a canopy of Live Oak trees, the sky a clear blue above it with little puffy clouds. It seemed easy to imagine all kinds of beautiful produce coming from a plot of land like this, and it does. John Warren is a young farmer who's committed to the belief that a...

Charlotte Jenkins of Awendaw, SC, has been cooking since she was nine years old when her mother left her in charge of the kitchen to take care of a sick family member. She was the chef and owner at Gullah Cuisine on Hwy. 17 in Mount Pleasant (just over the bridge from Charleston) for 17 years until that restaurant closed in 2014, but she's never stopped cooking, catering for a select group of clie...

Anne Quatrano has helped steer the trajectory of Atlanta's dining scene for more than two decades through one simple principle—showcase local ingredients prepared with precision and presented artfully. She's won numerous James Beard nominations and awards, is very committed to the industry through her presence on boards and with culinary non-profits, and her restaurants: Star Provisions , Bacchana...

How I think about food has evolved over the years, and that's changed how I cook as well. These three Charleston folks: Ann Marshall of High Wire Distillery, Kevin Johnson of The Grocery, and Bob Cook of Edmund's Oast, are some that inspired me onto my current path of eating local, cooking better, and practice instead of perfection in the kitchen, so I revisit three of my earliest interview subjec...

This Labor Day weekend, let's talk about the work of restaurant building. Dalton Espaillat is a native of the Dominican Republic and moved to the Charlotte NC area when he was 15 and then began learning English. Today, he's one of North Carolina's fastest rising entrepreneurs, taking the success of his first restaurant, Three Amigos Mexican Cantina , and using those lessons to build 17 locations o...

It's true that we've heard a lot about how restaurants -- if they're even remaining open -- are having to change all kinds of things, from guest flow to food prep. But what does that really look like? To answer this, I turn this week to David Bancroft, chef of Acre Restaurant and Bow & Arrow in Auburn, AL. His work has been some of the most lauded in the South, from James Beard to festivals to tel...

Years ago when I worked at The Local Palate, one of my first fancy meals as a staff member was at 610 Magnolia in Louisville, KY, helmed by Chef Edward Lee, and I can remember that the anticipation of that evening was like a holiday gift waiting under the tree. Lindsey Ofcacek was the general manager and wine director of that restaurant before she shifted gears within the restaurant group to helm...

The creativity of cooking goes beyond what we place on the plate. I don't know about you, but the main thing I miss about eating out right now is the full experience of it that I remember. I love to watch the movement behind the bar, see chefs wiping plates at the pass, hear the cocktail shaker shake and listen to the general sounds of a restaurant. And I miss being transported for a moment away f...

When it comes to bars in the US, I think we're doing a disservice just culturally throwing up our hands saying "what can we do." We're in danger of losing a lot of creativity in our culture, and my case for that point is this interview with Alba Huerta, owner of Julep in Houston, Tx. Not only is the press she's received over the years a case -- for instance, she was named Bartender of the Year in...

Creativity, when allowed room to flourish, often bubbles up in unexpected ways. It may even transform, ferment if you will, and take a person in a whole new direction. That's what happened to Zachary Smith, in the middle of a career in restaurant management when he started experimenting with preserving fruit in the back of his fridge. Now he's the creator and owner of Dalai Sophia Ferments in Char...

Restaurant work is hard work. It's long hours, hot cooking into hot clean up over a dishwasher steaming with every round , and then there's the service, the planning, the ordering, the management, and the bill-paying. But that game becomes even harder when you're the only one playing it. Angie Bellinger of Workmen's Cafe on James Island, SC, is a one-woman show of soul food greatness tucked into a...

The bounty of your garden is probably starting to take up counter space in your kitchen just about now, the fruit is in at farmers markets, and these days, you're thinking a little more about how to make your house more of a home, aren't you? Well, I have just the person to help with all of that. Ashley English is the author of 11 books, including the Homemade Living book series, which showcases a...

What happens when one of Garden and Gun's Best New Bars in the South owned by two of Food and Wine magazine's 2019 sommeliers of the year, has to reimagine their world like the rest of us in 2020? Well, since we're talking about Graft Wine Shop on Upper King Street in Charleston, SC, they double down and buy more wine, locking the doors for sip-in service for now and unlocking the potential of the...

George Motz is a well-traveled Emmy award-winning freelance filmmaker, author and photographer. He's also been called the foremost authority on hamburgers by The New York Times, and he's the author of Hamburger America, a State-by-State Guide to Great Burger Joints and a cookbook titled The Great American Burger Book. We met years ago when one of his other passions, the Food Film Fest , came to Ch...

This time of year, you have to get out early to the greenhouses at Bulls Bay Saltworks . The sun and humidity are already bearing down on the day by 10 a.m. so in order to spend time tending and harvesting the salt farm, Teresa Smithmyer has to be finishing her day in the field then, not beginning it. The salt grows slowly in a few greenhouses on her land, which is a beautiful hobby farm (as she c...

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...