A Chef's Life

Chef Vivian and her husband, Ben, leave New York to open a restaurant in her small North Carolina hometown. Vivian revisits the Southern tradition of “putting up” corn and shares her method for making smoked corn relish. As the episode concludes, a devastating setback threatens their new life.

Vivian and Ben rebuild their restaurant against the backdrop of the Southern harbinger of spring, the strawberry. Their twins go on their first strawberry-picking excursion, and Vivian and a friend develop a recipe for coconut cornbread strawberry shortcake with basil whipped cream.

The restaurant gears up for a practice service when the new equipment and new menu will be tested in real time — but nothing is going as planned. One of the big changes to the restaurant’s menus is the addition of a section called “Pimp My Grits,” where Vivian exalts the lowly, quintessentially Southern ingredient in four distinct ways.

Vivian goes about christening the restaurant’s new “whole animal, no waste” program with two little pigs from Warren Brothers’ farm. She uses everything — including the skin — and, on her father’s recommendation, demonstrates how to make sweet potatoes with cracklins.

Mary Vaughn shows Chef Vivian the old-timey way to can tomatoes. Vivian prepares for a Southern Foodways Alliance luncheon at the restaurant where food enthusiasts from around the country are coming to study BBQ, and Vivian plans to serve them the “ultimate tomato sandwich.”

Vivian goes to Cedar Island to explore the new culture of farm-raised oysters in the Southeast. She and Ben share plans of opening an oyster bar across the street from Chef and the Farmer in hopes it will be a place that adds character and variety to the tiny town’s “dining scene.” Vivian and her dad orchestrate their family’s first-ever oyster roast and are blown away by how much everyone enjoys it.