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, but one of the best food shows in a generation. This interview was recorded before the current crisis halted the country, so the landscape for her businesses is shifting under her feet like it is for every one of my guests. Still, Vivian's work aims to teach us how we are more together at the table than we often realize, and that's something we're going to need to remember now more than ever.

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 lot from them asking for help, and yes, help any way you can. But I'm in a unique position to explain why they matter, through one specific, small example -- me. This is why I love restaurants and bars.

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 away from my front door. Chef Brian Dunsmoor, a Georgia-born cook who studied at Johnson & Wales, delves deep into history to create something distinctly forward thinking; he's striving to build a fuller and more broad idea of what we consider "American food." And he's doing it without modern equipment, just modern thinking.

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 at the Culinary Institute of America then cooked in fine dining kitchens for many years, and he wanted to apply his culinary training to comfort food and barbecue. And what happened was a Gamechanger, and I'm not just talking about that Home Team frozen drink. Aaron himself had to learn to build a business beyond just the food.

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 shrimp boats dominated the landscape. Some boats are still here, down the creek a bit, where the discussions about ice and weather float over the tides, and Cindy Tarvin of Tarvin Seafood is still holding down the fort on the Wando dock. In a changing sea -- literally -- she and her family are sailing on.

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 a cookbook, a vibrant life full of family and travel, and she's a native Charlestonian, so I wanted to learn how growing up Southern and being an inquisitive food lover had shaped her life. What results is a classic kitchen chat (although we actually sat in the living room for some quiet), where her passion for cooking and learning is infectious.

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 knew him when" was long past. I've since had the opportunity to enjoy his food at Uptown Yolk and work with him for a session at Atlanta Food & Wine Festival. His fun-loving style and outgoing nature are just part of the personality of this chef, one who is driven by his intelligent research, his search for a creative voice, and his ability to build community through Soul Food Sessions. He and his wife Subrina will be opening Leah & Louise in 2020, and I can't wait to see what he's going to do next.

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 dog Ella by her side to chat about a life lived through cookbooks. If anything, she's more curious about cooking and the history of recipes today than when she started, and it was hard to find a place to stop our chat, even when Ella got restless with her collar jingling.

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 -- Rick inspires and mentors, sharing knowledge with anyone who's interested, even really Southern food writers who horribly mispronounce words on wine labels on occasion. The Grill has held a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence for years, and with more than 1200 selections in its cellar rooms, there's one man who knows information about them all. And he's here to help you navigate your bottle selection this season.