What is southern food to you, and how does your style of cooking fit into that cuisine?
For starters, I think, I did a lot of training in the Mediterranean and I have a lot of family influence from the Mediterranean. But what I love is that so many of the ingredients that you think about when you think about Mediterranean food are really abundant here in Georgia, like tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant. And then when you start to think a little further afield, like to the Middle East and India, I mean okra and onions and potatoes, everything you need to cook that food grows here too. The only thing that wasn’t really growing here were olives, and now that’s starting in South Georgia. So I think you can cook food that’s seasonal and local, but that may have different spices and different combinations from what you would traditionally think of in the South.
Most importantly the South is really a melting pot, it always has been. I think the coast, the Low Country, particularly Savannah and Charleston, are really great examples of that, where you had colonists from England mixing certainly with slaves from Africa and the Carribean. There was a lot of trade between Europe and the Carribean and Africa and the American South. So there are dishes in the Low Country, such as Country Captain that has curry in it, which predated Indian immigrants to America by a long long time. I like finding those pockets. With southern food there’s a lot of things we focus on like fried chicken and buttermilk biscuits and that sort of thing, but there’s a lot more to it. There’s a lot of nuances because it’s a big melting pot of cultures and cuisines. I think that’s what makes Southern food really unique. Other cuisines in other parts of the country are very focused on what is abundant in that particular region, whereas in the South it’s really a melting pot of other cuisines. In other parts of the country, in traditional American food, there isn’t a lot of spice. That element came into Southern and Creole and Cajun cuisine because of that interaction with the Caribbean and with Africa that other parts of the country didn’t have. I think that’s what makes it different. The South is not a static place. It’s changing and evolving. I mean I love the story of Buford Highway in Atlanta with every kind of Asian cuisine and Mexican and Latin Cuisine, and how those are becoming part of the conversation here. Those people are Southerners: they live here and are becoming part of our community. I think people are slowly starting to embrace those cuisines into what is our culinary landscape.
I think [Southern cuisine] has the most stories to tell. Of course I’m biased, but I really do. Actually, my dad used to say patriotism is memories of the food you ate as a kid. That’s where a lot of that comes from. You know, people are proud to be from the South for many reasons, but one of those things is that we love bringing things to the table, literally. I don’t know that other parts of the country have this really evolved cuisine.
What do you think most contributed to the inventiveness of Southern cuisine?
Except for the few people that were very, very wealthy, traditionally the South was not a rich place. There were a lot of poor people who had to make do with what they had, so I think they were pretty creative with food preservation and using everything they had. Pig is a great example. Probably the wealthy people were eating the pork chops, but the poor people were cooking in the pork fat and eating chitlins, using all the parts that we may not even think about these days. And slowly now, creative chefs are revisiting these parts that aren’t thought of as highly. I think there’s a resourcefulness for sure.
How has the relationship between farmers and restaurants developed over your time in the industry?
When I first started cooking at Five & Ten, there were only two farmers that we got products from, Woodland Gardens and one other farmer, and a kid who would bring us chanterelle mushrooms. And that was it. There wasn’t a farmers market. Now I use 15 or 20 different local farms and producers. And when it rains in the summer, there’s three people every day coming with mushrooms. Just in ten years there’s been a huge proliferation of farms around here…We have so many more farms than other communities our size. It’s chicken farmers and lots of pigs and people making cheese, and of course all the produce. It’s pretty cool. We have a lot to work with. What’s awesome is that, for example Michael McMullen in Hart County grows potatoes specifically for us. He knows that we’re going to buy all his yellow German potatoes, so he has dedicated rows for us. What’s great about the rapport is that they ask, "What do you want us to grow?" That’s how the Pimientos de Padron started. I said I really want these peppers from Spain and Celia found the seeds and started growing them. Now they’re a huge hit.
What new directions are you looking forward to as we transition into fall?
One thing we are working on is having more dishes that are focused on the vegetable. There may be meat and it’s going to be a flavor enhancer but not necessarily the center of the plate. Vegetables have a low carbon footprint. It takes a lot less resources to grow a butternut squash than a pig. And not that pigs aren’t delicious, and they can be raised in a really beautiful way that’s sustainable. But I love highlighting the vegetables, rather than being sort of the second fiddle in a dish, letting them be the star. [In our roasted butternut squash salad we use] lamb breast, a cut that’s usually ground into ground lamb. It’s a cut that isn’t really utilized a lot, but it has a lot of flavor. You may not want to eat a whole entrée of lamb breast, so this is a great way to use it to add a little fat, a little meaty flavor to the butternut squash. But really, the squash is what sings in this dish. Starting this fall we are going to have a number of dishes like this. I hope people get into it. The way I like to eat is order a lot of small plates and maybe share an entrée. These vegetable-centric dishes make great share plates.
Story by Erin Wilson
Photographs by Paige French