Whether it’s Tennessee prosciutto, South Carolina polenta or good old Kentucky bourbon, food and beverage choices in the South go far beyond the stereotypical country ham and grits. At the same time, the region is brimming with food-focused venues and activities, everything from cooking demonstrations to food tours and distillery visits that give groups the chance to appreciate what the South’s culinary heritage is all about.
Many of these options illustrate just how diverse and sophisticated the Southern food scene has become.
“Now you’re seeing more white tablecloth restaurants with menus that celebrate the local vegetables, pickles, jellies, jams,” says Mary Beth Lasseter, associate director of the Southern Foodways Alliance at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, adding that immigrant communities are also having a profound influence on Southern cuisine.
“As we look to growing metropolitan areas like Houston and Atlanta and Birmingham, we see places springing up that serve traditionally ethnic dishes with a twist. In Atlanta you’ll find folks offering mustard green quesadillas and the like,” she says. “There’s a fusion happening from street food to five-star locales which is very interesting.”
The Southern Foodways Alliance has developed food-themed trails throughout the South, including one for gumbo (www.southerngumbotrail.com), tamales (www.tamaletrail.com), the sausage boudin (www.southernboudintrail.com), and barbecue (www.southernbbqtrail.com).
Home on the Range
Attendees will enjoy slaving over a state-of-the-art range at the Viking Cooking School, located near the Viking Range Corp. headquarters in Greenwood, Miss. While the blues are played, a team can make a “Delta Dinner” of catfish and salad with “comeback” dressing.
The school offers a melting pot of flavorful options, where participants can learn to make “Tamales and Sangria” like a Cuban grandmother, train in the “Barbecue Basics” with jerk chicken and kebabs, spice it up with “Cajun and Creole” with blackened pork and praline ice cream, or take a “Floribbean Vacation” with tropical shrimp on the grill.
Viking has also taught many a non-Southerner how to make crispy fried chicken with gravy, mashed potatoes, collard greens, skillet cornbread, and homemade banana pudding. It’s all in the technique, whether groups want to focus on making a dark roux, a white sauce, biscuits, or pie crusts.
With their “Six Around the Stove” classes, Viking emphasizes one-on-one instruction. Those interested in a “Viking Test Drive” can use their broilers to convection bakers.
The Viking school can also provide guest chefs to conduct one-hour “Taste of Viking” demonstrations at meeting locations. They give samples and beverages at the venue, and later hand out recipes. Some Viking notables have written their own cookbooks or made TV appearances.
The Kentucky Bourbon Cooking School is where the proof is in the bread pudding at the Chapeze House in Bardstown, Ky. The hosts, Col. Michael and Margaret Sue Masters, add a splash of bourbon during lessons to at least five recipes whether it’s for marinated beef tenderloin or a bananas foster. The Colonel’s recipe book, Hospitality Kentucky Style, is a gift to enrollees.
The couple can teach about a dozen students at a time to make the quintessential Kentucky cocktail—the mint julep—or a bourbon martini. They offer these workshop themes: A Derby Breakfast (with a hot brown casserole and bourbon balls); Bourbon Flavored Appetizers (such as spicy glazed shrimp and sweet potatoes with caramel sauce); and Kentucky Classic Bourbon Desserts (as in brownie bottom pie and flaming peaches).
Chapeze House, which can also be reserved for private parties, is a restored Federalist mansion, which was designed in 1810 by whiskey-maker Ben Chapeze. He established the brand, Old Charter, which is one of Kentucky’s most legendary libations, after he founded Chapeze Distillery in 1846.
Culinary Central
Everything is big—including plates—in Texas, especially when it comes to the Lamar Culinary Center at Whole Foods Market in Austin. Only six blocks from where the grocery market began 25 years ago, participants can try their hand at cooking at this 80,000-square-foot superstore.
Among the options is to make a “Lunch Express” (on the go, as in mushroom lemongrass soup and green tea pudding), a “Brain Food Brunch” (for memory power, as in blueberry pancakes and spinach and bacon quiche), or “Weeknight Meals” (quick, as in spicy apricot chicken and grilled fish tacos), and more. For the eco-conscious, team-building classes can make edibles with organic ingredients reflecting sustainable and free trade principles.
Whole Foods Market can also cater and accommodate parties of up to 600 people at its Plaza Outdoor Patio or up to 40 in the Lamar Culinary Center. When guests have food allergies, spreads can be requested without dairy, nuts or wheat.
Party with Paula
As Paula herself says, “It Ain’t All About The Cookin’” on the Paula Deen Tour of Savannah, Ga. The tour provides her whole “Bags to Riches” story, which originated when Deen founded her lunch delivery service, The Bag Lady, with just $200.
The buses take groups of up to 100 around the Low Country, where they visit a few shops Deen has featured on her Food Network television shows, including the Bryd Cookie Company and Polk’s Produce.
On the four-hour trip, they go to the Historic District as well as Deen’s old Southside neighborhood. They also take a look at Bethesda, where Deen was married not long ago. As a one-woman enterprise, she also has a boutique in Savannah selling such items as her trademark reading glasses and aprons imprinted with “Put Some South In Your Mouth.”
Participants come to eat on the Paula Deen Tour, which includes dinner (that’s lunch in the South) at her newest restaurant, Uncle Bubba’s Oyster House, or supper at her well-known The Lady & Sons. And, the former Bag Lady doesn’t allow anyone to leave without a tote of her “goodies.”
Southern Spirits
The South is where liquor comes as crude as moonshine or as refined as a mint julep. From Kentucky to Virginia, there are distilleries for every acquired taste.
Bardstown is the self-professed “Bourbon Capital of the World” now, but no one knows exactly where Scotsmen in Kentucky first aged the corn whiskey in white oak barrels. At the Bourbon Heritage Center at Heaven Hill Distilleries, groups are introduced to the drink that wasn’t legally allowed to be referred to as whiskey until 1964.
At the Bourbon Heritage Center, the tour begins with a video in the Evan Williams Theater, followed by a walk past casks of the alcohol in the rickhouse. A “Personal Bourbon Host” has visitors feeling mellow as he takes them through the exhibits and then to the “Taste of Heaven” room to see if they can distinguish between an average spirit and an Elijah Craig single-barrel premium 18-year-old bourbon.
Another time-honored tradition, Maker’s Mark Distillery, located in Loretto, Ky., about 90 minutes from Louisville, is the only distillery in America to be conferred as a National Historic Landmark. Tours begin with a movie at the Visitor Center, which is inside the circa-1840 Master Distiller’s House. Then visitors proceed to the Still House where an antique roller mill crushed the grain and tubs held the sour mash.
The “white dog whiskey” becomes Maker’s Mark through fermentation in upwards of 100-year-old cypress staves. Visitors pass by 4,000 kegs each in the two warehouses, which date as far back as the 1800s. Their lasting impression is of dipping their own bottles of Maker’s Mark into red wax.
Gentleman Jack
For Tennessee sippin’ whiskey, the place to go is Moore County (which has been dry since Prohibition) in the Volunteer State to the Jack Daniel Distillery in Lynchburg. That’s where Gentleman Jack made his finest beginning in 1866 from waters around the town, with a population of 361.
Jack Daniel’s can never be called bourbon, since it goes drop-by-drop through 10 feet of charcoal before going into oak barrels. It is how the whiskey gets its smoothness, which is evident on the hour-and-15-minute tours of the milling to yeasting to aging process.
While it is possible to purchase bottles of Jack Daniels at the White Rabbit Bottle Shop on the grounds of the distillery, visitors cannot taste-test any of the brands there. The liquid refreshment will be non-alcoholic Lynchburg Lemonade.
However, groups can whet their appetites on Barbecue Hill, where parties of 50 or more are served pulled pork, cole slaw, potato salad, cornbread, and baked beans on this spot overlooking Jack Daniel’s Hollow. The only spiking is in the Tipsy Apples or the Jack Daniel’s chocolate pecan pie.
Near the picnic pavilion, teams can get into a “Bung Toss” competition. They’ll explain the rules and give everyone a “branded bung” for a souvenir. And because this is Tennessee, they also provide live music.
Another option is to let attendees practice some “boarding house reach” at Miss Mary Bobo’s in Lynchburg, where the proprietress is Jack Daniel’s grand-niece, Lynne Tolley. With meals served family-style, they’ll be passing around the country ham and okra. Tolley, who authors the Jack Daniel’s cookbooks, is available to conduct culinary demonstrations and workshops.
Moonshine and Magnolias
Virginia is also for lovers of moonshine, which groups of up to 12 can experience during the Belmont Farms of Virginia Distillery tours in Culpepper. They’ve been making “corn whiskey” for 20 years, otherwise known as Virginia Lightning.
Visitors see the copper pot still, along with the corn that is grown and ground on the land.
George Thorpe began making moonshine some 300 years ago with Native Americans on the banks of the James River in Virginia. Belmont Farms has followed that institution, although it also makes triple grain Kopper Kettle whiskey.
The moonshine making process can also be observed at the Mount Vernon Estate and Gardens, where George Washington’s Distillery & Gristmill is the only reconstructed still in America that demonstrates 18th century whiskey making. Groups can also take a private evening tour of the mansion, or have dinner at the Mount Vernon Inn Restaurant.
While today the Distillery is for educational purposes only, Washington made nearly 11,000 gallons of alcohol in 1799, in the year before he died.
For More Info
Belmont Farms of Virginia Distillery 540.825.3207
www.virginiamoonshine.com
Bourbon Heritage Center at Heaven Hills Distilleries
502.337.1000
www.bourbonheritagecenter.com
George Washington’s Distillery & Gristmill 703.780.2000
www.mountvernon.org
Jack Daniel Distillery 615.673.1191
www.jackdaniels.com
Kentucky Bourbon Cooking School 502.349.0127
www.chapezehouse.com
Lamar Culinary Center 512.542.2340
www.wholefoodsmarket.com
Maker’s Mark Distillery 270.865.2099
www.makersmark.com
Paula Deen Tour 912.234.8128
www.oldsavannahtours.com
Southern Foodways Alliance 662.915.5993
www.southernfoodways.com
Viking Cooking School 662.451.6750
www.vikingcookingschool.com
