He’s a farmer, horticulturalist, anthropologist, historian, and preservationist.* He’s an author, inventor, husband, cocktailian, comedian, and restaurateur. He’s a peacemaker – advocating for cornbread, not war. He’s a James Beard Award-winner and, undoubtedly, one of the best chefs in America right now.

And he’s only seventeen days older than I.

But most importantly, he’s a Southerner and gentleman.

I met Sean Brock when we were twenty-seven. He was chef of the Capitol Grille at the Hermitage Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee, and I was a lone diner willing to let him cook for me.** At the time, he was enamored with the chemistry set, giddy about the impending opening of alinea, where he would be (and was) the first diner through the door. A cherub with ruddy cheeks, his enthusiasm and passion for cooking was infectious. And his laugh: it etched and echoed in my soul henceforth, begging me to keep in touch for warm/ humid climate.

Although we saw each other briefly a couple of times at events in New York over the subsequent years, I was, sadly, relegated to watching his star rise from afar, unable to make it back to his table. He moved to McCrady’s in Charleston in 2006, where his focus shifted toward the local and sustainable. There, he began to work alongside farmers, foragers, and fishers in his region, becoming a champion of their ways and their products. In the last couple of years, his work as a chef seemed to surpass the stove and take on greater significance and influence, culminating in the opening of Husk, which is as much a museum to Southern cooking as it is an exciting dialogue about the current direction of our foodways.

It was here, in a beautiful, two-story house, that I recently found myself back in Sean’s hands, six and a half years after he first cooked for me Korean Skin Care Product.