The following is a travel journal entry recorded on location and delivered to you the same day. I hope you enjoy this mini-installment from the road during my Southern Fork Summer, and look for a regular full size interview to drop this Friday.

We delve into BBQ again this week, not into its past but its delicious future. Up and coming pitmaster Hector Garate of Palmira BBQ is definitely part of the cuisine’s next chapter. In Charleston, SC, he’s creating sustainable farm-to-table barbecue with old school wood fire techniques and Puerto Rican Influences. He’s in love with all parts of the cooking process, so much so that he often purchases whole animals to break down into the specific cuts he wishes to serve, and that meat he smokes in a custom cooker he built himself. Hector specializes in smoking beef cheeks, brisket, whole hog and house-made sausages, and partners with local farms for sourcing. As he builds momentum for his brick-and-mortar restaurant set to open this year, he is holding pop-ups and collaborations with other BBQ folks around the country and at home, and he routinely sells out. In short, he’s on fire for the medium, and that passion shows in every bite.

J. Drew Lanham is a 2022 MacArthur Fellowship Recipient, an Alumni Distinguished Professor of Wildlife Ecology and Master Teacher at Clemson University, an ornithologist, poet, and essayist, and he’s also a native of Edgefield, SC, where he grew up on lots of fresh veggies from the garden and the occasional Krispy Kreme doughnut from trips to Augusta. I first encountered him like many of you will today -- on a podcast, This is Love with Phoebe Judge to be exact -- and his joyful and accurate renditions of birdcalls sustained me through that dark spring of 2020 when the world was shut down and reeling. Since his work resonates with me so much, I invited him to chat about food, and when he accepted, he decided to read two never-before released poems on the subject. We dive deep into BBQ and SC Foodways here, as he invites us to consider the intersection of race, history, identity, and the very nature of language to name a thing, be it a pig or a person.

The following is a travel journal entry recorded on location and delivered to you the same day. I hope you enjoy this mini-installment from the road during my Southern Fork Summer, and look for a regular full size interview to drop this Friday.

Steph's first residency stop is ... NYC?! Let her explain why she's beginning a "Southern Fork Summer" by going North. 

If you visit Spotted Salamander Cafe in Columbia, SC at lunch any day of the week after 12:15, you’ll be in luck if you find a seat. This restaurant, housed in a commercial building constructed around 1915, oozes charm, from its handwritten menu on chalkboard to its creaky wood floors to its old fashioned shrimp salad tucked inside an avocado half, and it keeps its guests charmed as well by creating food that pulls at all the Southern party platter heartstrings. In the kitchen and always dreaming of her own next meal is Jessica Shillato, who honed her cooking chops at the former Charleston location of Johnson & Wales, and who experiments with classic dishes that have a dash of her own expansive palate. In 2019 this creativity and excellent execution earned her a spot as a South Carolina Chef Ambassador, and this year, a semi-finalist nomination for James Beard Best Chef: Southeast. The cafe has a sister spot on Main Street, but Jessica’s first love is still catering, and so there are always plenty of places beyond those business walls to sample one of her famous deviled eggs.

Craft beer is more than just a beverage, it’s a culture driver. Each brewery has its own personality that’s expressed through product and place, be it a neighborhood watering hole or concert venue or the place to play cornhole with your kids while you enjoy a pint. Resident Culture in Charlotte, NC, founded in 2017 by Amanda and Phillip McLamb, has a modern, welcoming style, in beer and design and the brewery gathering spaces, and it’s quickly become one of the hottest breweries in the country. It’s already received accolades that include “Top 10 Best New Breweries in the World” in 2018, one of VinePair's "25 Best Breweries in the Country" in 2022, and that same year, Amanda was the recipient of The VinePair 50 and The Charlotte Business Journal's 40 Under 40. When I’m in Charlotte and walk into either location, it’s evident that there is something special happening at Resident Culture, and the brewing of seriously delicious beer is just the beginning.

The Dutch Fork is a region of South Carolina including Lexington, Newberry, and Richland Counties between the Saluda River and the Broad River where they come together in a third waterway, the Congaree. Named after the German settlers of the area who first started arriving in the mid 1700s, Dutch is derived from the German word deutsch. And one of the cultural remnants that remain in this region from its immigrant past is the affinity for onion sausage, a pork sausage flavored with spices and fresh onions that still graces Christmas tables and grills around here. There are a few producers in the region, and one of the most beloved is Rhoten’s Country Sausage, made in Rhoten’s Country Store in Old Town Lexington. Proprietor Wesley Rhoten made it through the pandemic by selling the sausage out of a drive-thru window, and so I took a drive over so we could learn all sorts of South Carolina history hiding in this linked sausage.

Steph shares details of The Southern Fork Residencies Summer Tour. 

Hospitality can be a nebulous thing, and while you know it when you feel it, what are some of its concrete elements and how do you create it and maintain it in a restaurant? To explore that question, I turned to two of the most hospitable people I know, Jerry and Krista Slater. Based in Athens, GA, they currently own two restaurants: The Expat and Slater’s Steakhouse, one wine shop and bar named The Lark, and are in process to open another restaurant and a cocktail bar very soon. So they think about hospitality a lot. They’ve made a career of it, with Jerry working at Charlie Trotter’s in Chicago, Seelbach Hotel in Louisville, and being one of the consulting creators for One Flew South in Hartsfield International Airport in Atlanta. Krista, a painter and certified sommelier, worked for years in the wine and restaurant industry in the Bay Area before relocating to Georgia. You might even recognize their names from a beverage column in the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, so to say busy is an understatement. But despite that, they are always intentional in creating their spaces and guest experiences, and they do it all with a dash of humor and goodwill for the larger community.