S OUTHERN FOOD ● ● Old-School: New-School: Barbecue Pork Sandwich Pork Belly Sandwich in on White Bread a Deep-Fried Bun 50 from Scott Family Farm from China Chilcano IN and Barbecue FroDm ItheS TidewateHrE to theS Texas coast, from boudin to benne salsa, these great eats prove our region’s dining knows no bounds by . John T Edge Left: photograph by PETER FRANK EDWARDS; right: photograph by JASON VARNEY Aug. | Sept. 2015 GARDENANDGUN.COM 93 ● New-School: Sweet Potato Biscuit This spring, over lunch in Charleston, South Carolina, at Minero— Sandwich with Collards the Mexican canteen from Sean Brock, the chef who dismissed non-Southern products from his pantry at Husk—I from Handsome chased a dab of benne salsa with a tortilla chip and unwrapped a Carolina Gold rice tamal that had the texture of Biscuit congee. In those Mexican-inspired dishes, made with ingredients that arrived in the colonial Lowcountry via African- Atlantic exchanges, I recognized that, while the South remains a distinctive place with historical patterns of belief, speech, food, and music, old binaries like native versus newcomer and Old South versus New South no longer serve us. ● ● From Baltimore to Austin, cooks now reinvigorate and reinterpret various Southern pasts, re- framing old dishes with august pedigrees. They lavish attention on standards like hoppin’ John and whole-hog barbecue. Through gentle reinventions, they announce the continuing relevance of those cultural and culinary touchstones. Meanwhile, as new immigrants gain their footing and descendants of older immigrants claim this place, a more inclusive and multiethnic South- ern cuisine emerges. Cooks of Mexican and Korean and African ancestry are mainstreaming cow head barbacoa, collard kimchi, and thieboudienne. And a new generation of chefs is follow- Old-School ing their lead. Those two visions are not mutually exclusive. Today’s best cooks spelunk our fried chicken past while scouting our pollo frito future. They are respectful of tradition and smitten by innova- tion. Reflective of our new appreciation for the food of this region’s forebears, they cook heritage recipes with unexpected ingredients. Parsed into old-school and new-school categories, the collection that follows showcases my favorites culled from five years on the road, throughout the South and beyond. They’re the sorts of dishes I expect to be regional standbys when this magazine celebrates its twenty-fifth anni- versary. Making these choices wasn’t easy. I left a lot of gravy and a couple of racks of ribs on the cutting room floor. Think of them as edible mileposts on a turnpike to tomorrowland. The very New-School good news is, you don’t have to wait to sample the future I glimpse. You get to taste it right now. ● ● ● honey, and Korean chile paste—a blend that Morning Treats Old-School: registers both sweet and assertive. This biscuit Country Sausage Biscuit tastes bright and fresh and healthy, like a spring BISCUITS from Embers Biscuits curative, like a tonic of greens delivered as a Old-School: Country Sausage Biscuit morning sandwich. handsomebiscuit.com Embers Biscuits & Bar-B-Que; Oxford, MS Fast-food restaurants nearly killed the biscuit. PASTRIES For decades, they have churned out greasy fists Old-School: Caramelized Pecan of dough, stuffed with feeble rounds of patty Sticky Bun sausage. But Embers, a one-window drive- WildFlour; Charleston, SC through that opened in 2013, does biscuits Most cinnamon rolls are gooey messes. At this right. The secret is Earline Hall, a twenty-three- cubbyhole bakery on a Charleston side street, year veteran of the biscuit board, who pats and Lauren Mitterer streamlines the form, baking rolls and cuts dough rounds that bake off to prim little knobs of cinnamon-threaded and cotton-boll crumbs. 662-238-3565 pecan-studded pastry, and topping them with ● ● fat disks of icing that suggest the ivory sun- New-School: Hot Betty bonnets worn by promenading Victorian-era Handsome Biscuit; Norfolk, VA gentry. wildflourpastrycharleston.com The envelope is a sweet-potato biscuit that’s not ● ● too sweet. Spilling out over a fried egg is a tangle New-School: Satsuma Kolaches of shiny collard greens, flecked with garlic slices, Revival Market; Houston, TX doused with a hot sauce that tastes of vinegar, You know Tex-Mex. Meet the next Southwest- 94 GARDENANDGUN.COM Aug. | Sept. 2015 illustrations by JAMES GILLEARD; left: photograph by RUSH JAGOE; right: photograph by LISSA GOTWALS ern cuisine, Czech-Mex. Morgan Weber grew up ● ● like red rice and gumbo. But because African OKRA pasteboard box along with a cup of creamed homeland of the Garcias, who run this Little in south-central Texas eating divoted pastries New-School: Eggplants in Spicy expertise has long been felt but not heard here- Old-School: Fried Okra potato salad and a sandwich of chicken salad Havana walk-up, which opened in 1973. At La called kolaches, baked by his Czech grand- Garlic Sauce abouts, I rarely taste dishes that broadcast The Senator’s Place; Cleveland, MS on white, the deviled eggs stuffed by the wom- Camaronera, I like them best dribbled with mother. Prune and poppy seed were her fillings. Mala Sichuan Bistro; Houston, TX those antecedents. Chef JJ Johnson’s mess of Fried okra is best enjoyed as finger food, eat- en of Sally Bell’s Kitchen, in business since hot sauce. garciabrothersseafood.com Now, on Saturday mornings during satsuma A single red pepper, inscribed alongside the al dente collards, stirred with peanut butter en by the greedy handful like popcorn from a 1924, are demure. Prim even. No trout roe ● ● season, Ryan Pera, his colleague in this swish menu listing, warns of the heat to come. Cori and perfumed with cinnamon and anise, is movie theater bucket. Making it is difficult to garnish. No yard egg provenance. Just vel- New-School: Garbanzo Hush Puppies butcher shop and café, bakes kolaches bulging Xiong, born in Sichuan, and her husband, one of those dishes. mintonsharlem.com master. The crust must be so crisp that it shat- vet yolks and tight whites, an indulgent com- Dove’s Luncheonette; Chicago, IL with windfall fruit. revivalmarket.com Heng Chen, born in Liaoning, are expert ma- ● ● ters. The okra beneath should taste bright and bo that disappears in two bites. sallybells Served on a bed of shrimp cream cheese, nipulators of the yin and yang of Sichuan New-School: Killed Greens vegetal. The cooks in the employ of Senator kitchen.com capped with a hash of pickled cabbage, and ma (tingly Sichuan peppercorns) and la (fi- with Bacon Vinaigrette Willie Simmons get everything right. And they ● ● stippled with guajillo chile vinaigrette, these From the Garden ery chile peppers). While some dishes here Blackberry Farm; Walland, TN kindly look the other way when I eat it with my New-School: Deviled Shrimp and Grits Chihuahua-cheese-stuffed fritters call to mind EGGPLANT steal your breath, these velvety purple ingots, Talk to food obsessives about Blackberry hands. 662-846-7434 The Cloister; Sea Island, GA hush puppies as reinvented by a Mexican short- Old-School: Fried Eggplant served in a caramel-tinted sauce, prove as Farm, the gastro-fetishist resort in the Smoky ● ● In this shotgun marriage of deviled eggs and order cook. This diner from chef Paul Kahan Galatoire’s Restaurant; New Orleans, LA sweet as they are incendiary. 713-995-1889 Mountain foothills, and they rave about the New-School: Bhindi Amchoor shrimp and grits, David Carrier, the chef at the samples southern Texas and northern Mexico, They look like a cross between french fries dinner menus, which feature such dishes as Rasika; Washington, D.C. luxe Cloister on Sea Island, folds hard-boiled setting the cultural dance to a backbeat of and Lincoln Logs. Hot from the fryer, they are GREENS squab breast with onion soubise. But I believe Not quite stewed, not quite roasted, these yolks into stone-ground grits, stuffs that rich turntable-spun classic soul.doveschicago.com creamy at their cores. Eaten naked, or maybe Old-School: Peanut Butter the best meal here is breakfast, when Josh dusky green pods from chef Vikram Sunderam mix into a couple of boiled egg halves, and then with a spritz of lemon, they satisfy. But dipped Collard Greens Feathers sometimes doles out orange corn- arrive fragrant with cumin, onion, ginger, and drenches the whole affair in a deviled shrimp in a sauce of powdered sugar and Tabasco, as Minton’s; New York, NY meal griddlecakes with pecan butter and, the dried mango powder. Served in a two-handled gravy of ground crustaceans and house-cured Sandwiches & Stews generations of diners have done it, these slight- Southern food is West African food. That link- most platonic of dishes, bacon-vinaigrette- copper pot, in a turmeric-walled lounge with tasso. This is restaurant cookery at its playful BOLOGNA SANDWICHES ly bitter twigs straddle the realms of vegetable age is evident in African-born ingredients such wilted field greens into which he swaddles a a modern, hotel-lobby vibe, they bespeak the best. seaisland.com Old-School: Smoked Bologna and miracle.galatoires.com as okra and watermelon. It’s suggested by dishes couple of poached eggs. blackberryfarm.com flavors that connect the subcontinent and this on White Bread continent. rasikarestaurant.com DIPS Helen’s Bar-B-Q; Brownsville, TN Old-School: Comeback Sauce You’ve heard of whole-hog cookery. This is Mayflower Cafe; Jackson, MS whole-bologna cookery, in which pit master Small Bites Popularized in the 1930s by Greek restaurants Helen Turner smokes logs of pink meat on her BOUDIN like the Rotisserie in Jackson—made with oak- and hickory-fired back-porch pit. Order a Old-School: Pork Boudin mayo, chili sauce, Worcestershire sauce, and sandwich and she cuts off an impossibly thick Mowata Store; Mowata, LA a pantry’s worth of other embellishments— slice, which you can get crowned with slaw and Bubba Frey stuffs guts for a living.