Ben
Barker
I am proud to be a cook in the South because I think what we do is filled with a sense of history, a sense of pronounced regionalism in the way we cook that, even though we might do a bunch of different things or we might cook them with ethnic inflection, the broad and diverse approach to it is still very much farm driven and ingredient driven. – Ben Barker
On the first day of school at the Culinary Institute of
America, Ben met his wife-to-be Karen. After graduation (and marriage),
he lured Karen south from her native Brooklyn to his native North Carolina.
Together, they took over the kitchen at La Residence in Chapel Hill, North
Carolina, once the province of the late Bill Neal, arguably the progenitor
of New Southern cooking. In 1986, they ventured out on their own, founding
Magnolia Grill, in a former health food store, on the western fringe of
nearby Durham.
In the interim, Ben has staked a claim to delivering complicated flavors.
He has shown a sure hand at layering one taste upon another. He has cultivated
relationships with farmers and artisans. Along with Karen, Ben wrote Not
Afraid of Flavor: Recipes from Magnolia Grill.
Among the dishes to emerge from his kitchen (and the pages of that book)
– cucumber soup with buttermilk, dill, and vermouth shrimp; pan-fried
pork chops on creamy shrimp hominy; rabbit confit with marinated baby
artichokes – many evince grounding in Southern traditions and reliance
upon Southern ingredients, but eschew provincial simplicity in favor of
nuance and forthrightness.
Listen to this 4-minute audio clip of Ben Barker talking about how the food he grew up with as a child in North Carolina influences his work a professional chef today. [Windows Media Player required. Go here to download the player for free.] What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.
SUBJECT: Ben Barker
DATE: March 14, 2005
LOCATION: Magnolia Grill – Durham, NC
INTERVIEWER: Barbara Ensrud, SFA Member
-------
Barbara Ensrud: This is Barbara Ensrud, doing an SFA Founders Oral History Project with Ben Barker of Magnolia Grill in Durham, North Carolina. So what is your date and place of birth?
Ben Barker: I was born at Presbyterian Hospital in Charlotte, North Carolina, in December of 1953.
And can you tell us something about the food of your childhood? Who prepared it and what was it, and what sort of setting did you have those meals—was there any ceremony around it?
I think there is unquestionably what I grew up with from a familial eating standpoint affects who I am as a professional chef today—the way I think about the food, the way I think about the table, and the way that I assemble dishes, whether they’re original in their inflection or not comes from that early palate-forming experience. My father’s family, they were farmers and they—predominantly tobacco farmers but subsistence—it’s a long word—they raised all their own food to eat on the farm. My grandparents moved into Burlington from Alamance County in the Depression because there were jobs at the mills to be had at that point and—and the farm was not a—as far as income how would they maintain the family farm. And my grandmother’s sister and her husband continued to operate it as a tobacco farm up until at least the—the late [nineteen] ‘70s, early ‘80s. And because it was a family farm, where multiple generations were residing and they had a tenant farmer association with a black family, who also helped them do what they did—would go and spend weeks on end in the summertime and—and then the family unit was much more pronounced and close at that point, so my parents would take us to Burlington every Sunday—my grandparents. The meal was not the reason we went, although it was often the—the focus of what we did; the social structure of being with family was involved around being at the table—never in a way that made it grandiose and regarded—that was what it was. So I got to experience with my grandmother and my aunt, two resoundingly skilled cooks, who cooked in a manner that was reflective of Piedmont and seasonal eating that said this is what’s here right now and this is what we’re eating. And they canned, preserved, and raised their own hogs and, you know, cured hams and—and kept dairy cows to make butter and have butter milk and it really was quite a wonderful thing to get that exposure. And by no means unique in that regard, but I know that it’s still, to this day, brings about a link that I feel to the soil and what I put on the plates here in our restaurant in Durham and how powerful that association can be.
My grandmother taught my mother how to cook because my mother’s mother was in retail. And she would spend the bulk of her days, you know, at work and then come home and whip something together. But it was never particularly complex or even interesting. My mother learned to cook from her husband’s mother and was an extremely—and is an extremely good cook, who I appreciate for her ability to preserve what she learned from her mother-in-law.
Were there some special dishes that your grandmother taught her or—?
I think that it was less—it was less that but rather a feel for ingredients and simplicity for recognizing the inherent purity of what you’re working with and, you know, I think that the style of cooking was, you know, very straightforward and a realistic approach to using the best ingredients you could without giving any thought to this is what’s there, this is what we’re going to have and—and you know, my parents—my father was in school for, you know, the first ten years of my life. My mother did extremely well and the farm meals and my grandmother’s cooking are what still resounds with me more than anything, I think. But, you know, was it particularly singular? Well, you know, what do I love the most now as an adult, you know—I like greens and I like turnips and I love butter beans, baby lima beans, corn, succotash-style dishes, field beans in any shape or form, magnificent sliced tomatoes, and long cooked whole beans with vinegar, onions, or cucumbers. My grandmother taught me how to fry chicken when I was a young man—a grown young man—because I asked her to and wanted to know how to do it. And she went through the process with such a profound ritualistic approach to it that I knew that—and she was famous for that, and that’s what she would bring to reunions was fried chicken.
When did you first cultivate an interest in food and what would you say or who was the catalyst?
You know, my father was really the person who stimulated that more than anything. Like I think some professional individuals, he was an educator—Assistant Dean at the Dental School at the University of North Carolina and ultimately the Dean there but—but he was very food interested. He and my mom both were and they were interested in travel. I think that he recognized that exposure to other cultures and different parts of the world were enlightening and broadening your experiences made you a more complete human being. So they took us occasionally on trips with them. They traveled a lot on their own but he was really the—and remains a diligent cook, someone who will tackle a complex recipe with aplomb. He’s a little tough to be in the kitchen with when he’s doing it because he’s sort of crabby about it all the time when he’s doing it. You’ve got to get out of his way and—and things have to perform exactly as the recipe indicates for him to feel like, you know, he’s achieved the success; but he really stimulated that interest. He was cooking in the ’60s and early ‘70s and, you know, from Gourmet and things of that—tackling more complex—while my mother, the more accomplished cook probably would, you know, deliver the more straightforward things. But my father was really the person who stimulated our interest in exposure in food and sometimes reluctantly, you know, because he would do things that we thought gross as children.
-----
How did you get your first job working around food?
My very first job was at the Carolina Inn when I was 13 at Chapel Hill, and it was being a bus boy and that was—the Inn was predominantly food service for the university community and the village itself and it was still a village at that point…So you know I—as a—as a bus boy, you know, you’re really not exposed to food so much as—as the environment and it’s the—the environment that I appreciated. My first cooking job was when I was 16 at a place called Mom and Pop’s Ham House. That was in Chapel Hill…I have very little memory of what I cooked, if any, other than I knew that I liked being in the action. I liked the hours being working at night and I liked that you did a repetitive job but there was a sense of accomplishment, and you were able to repeat the same action with some skill, you know. And they’d, you know, be back a night where they really worked you hard. And you’d come out of there feeling good about it. It was stimulating.
I kept ending up in—in restaurants either, you know, waiting tables or—you know, I cooked in a couple places that were not particularly good. As a matter of fact, I don’t—I had no experience that would lead one to expect or believe that I might ever amount to anything in this field. And there’s still some question about that…But ultimately it—I think that trip to [the Culinary Institute of America at] Hyde Park gave me direction and then sitting next to [my future wife] Karen [Barker] the first day of class gave me someone to pursue it with an unbridled fashion.
-----
Well in terms of Southern food, how have you seen it evolve in the last what, couple of decades?
Yeah, it’s—and that’s really what we’re looking at because, you know, we’re into 23 years as professionals now, so we’ve certainly seen some considerable evolution at least in our perspective of this immediate region as well as the—the broader region as a whole. I think that I am proud to be a cook in the South because I think what we do is—it is—it is filled with a sense of—of history, a sense of pronounced regionalism in the way we cook that even though we might do a bunch of different things or we might with ethnic inflection the broad and diverse approach to it is still—it’s very much—is farm driven and ingredient driven. It is very much a—a farm driven type of experience. I like that part of it; I am proud of what we—our ingredients and how much they’ve changed and how dramatically they’ve improved and—and disappointed in areas where they haven’t improved maybe as much as they should have in this period and disappointed maybe with myself for not having driven it to go farther.
You’re speaking in terms of locally raised products?
In general, yes…You know, vegetables and herbs have really grown dramatically…Meat and poultry have improved but not at the same expansive rate that—that the produce growers, the—the food growers have improved their elements. And you know it’s—I was talking to Louis Osteen a couple weeks ago and we agreed—and we both agreed that we were the most challenged finding quality seafood than we ever have been in our professional lives—now at time when you would hope people have—because they have a greater understanding of sustainability and—and fish-handling that you should be able to get tremendous product now, and it’s really difficult. There’s so much competition.
Yeah, and the demand is so huge now.
The demand is huge, and the competition is so great that we have a difficult time getting the caliber of seafood, really. And when we do get it, it’s extraordinary. And I’m blessed to be on, you know, a coastal state where I have, you know, a 20-year association with someone that I can buy from and get something that—. You know, most of the time, that’s pretty damn good; but you know when you know the difference between pretty good and extraordinary, then it’s tough to look at pretty good.
But in terms of the evolution of Southern food… those of us who were raised and born in the South, you know, we have this background of food and Southern food as we knew it. Today, you know, we still love it, but it seems to have evolved a little bit.
Well I think, you know as has been often discussed, we didn’t really grow up with a profound history of restaurants as part of our legacy, particularly if you lived in the rural South. So there’s two different kinds of cooking and two different kinds of Southern food: there’s restaurant Southern food, and then there’s home food. And so, you know, to differentiate, specifically restaurant-style cooking, I think what’s happened is more than anything has been a profound advance in technique, finesse, the skills of the individuals who are cooking in the South these days. And I think that’s—it’s the individuals who have brought their exposure to great technique and other regions back to this region and employed our ingredients and our social and—and culinary history to the technique that they have developed elsewhere. So that’s where I see the—the greatest leaps and bounds and most intelligent cooking is—is this international and national exposure to wonderful stylistic approach to running restaurants, to preparing food, to execution that’s employed in the context of what we know and love. That’s about Southern cooking ingredient-wise, and there’s great cooks down here and—who do it as a profession.
A lot of the talk about Southern food is talk of continuity and tradition. In this age is such talk really romantic or accurate or—? How do you see that?
Well I think there’s considerable value to that—the preservation of technique of traditional food combinations of approach to the season; I think all of those things are important to teach people. I like the fact that the—the best people in our kitchen have come to understand that rhythmic, you know—well, “It’s the first of March and so, you know, what I guarantee you, Ben, is going to put shad roe on the menu here in another week or so because they’re running,” and we know that we’ll see it. I may not do it the same way, but we’ll have shad roe—that Daniel’s watercress is coming up in that spring out by his house, and so we’ll start having watercress around the restaurant. It’s—that part of it, I think, is really valuable. It’s even if you don’t necessarily want to fix your mustard and turnip greens this way, this is the way he fixes them and it’s a good way to do it; and it’s true to the way that he grew up eating them, and so there is a flavor profile there. But you know it’s legitimate and—and it is a tradition, whether it’s my tradition or someone else’s. And, you know, it may not be how Deb Council [meaning Debutante Council] cooks their greens, but it doesn’t make it any less good or—or less true. I like taking—the best students have been the ones who aren't—haven’t been natives, interestingly enough…The ones who have adapted our culinary technique and our approach to ingredients, the consolidation of several components within a plate that makes it whole, the way that we use pickles and try and achieve that yin yang of sweet and spicy and acid all in the same place that—that makes a plate interesting and—and complex from start to finish—.
Which Southerners did.
Yeah. It was never something that was intellectualized; it’s just it was the way that we ate. And so I’ve had some incredible people work with us who—who understand that almost more so than—than the ones who grew up here, maybe because I’m familiar to them and they’re able to look at it from an outsider’s point and recognize that it is, in fact, a fairly intricate approach to stimulating their palate.
It’s kind of like when we cook for—for our son; some—there are things that he—he really loves and things that he doesn’t. I can set a bowl of—of purple hull peas in front of that child, and he’ll be as happy as if you’d given him, you know, the best hamburger on the planet because he loves peas, you know. Is that because he’s Southern? No, I don’t know that it is or not, but the fact that they taste like the same way that my grandmother made them is good for him to have that in his mouth for me to know that—that that’s something that’s as real and genuine as—as what I had when I was four or five.
Could you describe a meal that to you is totemically Southern?
Brunswick stew is what it is to me, probably. And the reason is because on my mother’s side of the family they—she—her mother had eight brothers and sisters, all of whom lived within about five miles of each other outside of Lexington, North Carolina, and they had a ball Brunswick stew-making ritual that they did as a family. And a big old cast iron stew kettle that hung over a hardwood fire and my great-grandmother raised rabbits—they had rabbits and, you know, somebody would bring the butterbeans, and somebody else would bring the corn; and they’d bring the tomatoes and they’d cut the potatoes up, and it was a big party. And then canning and processing of that was a festive—. And to me, sitting down to that done just right represents where I’m from—what I—what I come from, you know, who I am—that sort of polyglot mishmash of somewhat African American—these guys were all mostly German settlers from—that used to come down from Pennsylvania to settle in that western Piedmont. How did that dish define them? It was as much because of the ritual of putting it together or was it just because—? I don’t—there’s no German influence in that dish that I could see, and my great-grandmother was part Cherokee so, you know, did that come from her side? You know, was it something that she stimulated amongst all those children, because it’s more Native American than anything as far as ingredients. That is an interesting element. The other side of it is my grandfather used to make me bring him eggs for breakfast—scrambled eggs and pork brains. And then that also makes—to me, makes me know that I’m from here and not anyplace else. That—and it may be that that’s a dish that’s someplace else and—and I don’t know about it, but I was almost 18 before I realized those pink things were—really were pork brains. You know, I didn’t know what the hell he was putting in there. [Laughs] But they tasted good, and that was his Sunday ritual for us.
-----
Well let’s switch gears just a little bit and talk about your involvement with the SFA. How did you come to be involved in Southern Foodways [Alliance]?
You know something, I’m not sure that—even though I think, you know, we’re charter members of SFA, we weren't really involved at the outset and the reason primarily is because I think a lot of the organizational stuff that happened in Oxford occurred in the season of year that wouldn’t let us leave the restaurant, and we’ve remained unable to—I, at least, remain unable to organize my life to the extent that enables me to get away from here. You know, it’s a deficit of character or work ethic or something; I’m not sure what it—or all of the above, but so we weren't really intrinsically involved in SFA and its founding, other than its principles and its concept fulfilled our own ideology about—about what we should be as a restaurant—as restaurateurs. And as I don’t say this in a pompous way, so I don’t mean it to sound that way, but as stewards for what the Southern cook means. It all—and it wasn’t high and mighty; there had been some efforts earlier and prior to that on the part of Miss Edna Lewis to try and associate a league of Southern cooks and writers and folks into an organization but the leadership wasn’t strong enough.
Were you ever a member of—of any of [the Southern food organizations that predated the SFA – the Society for the Preservation and Revitalization of Southern Food or the American Southern Food Institute]?
Yes. I mean we were involved with that and with her [Edna Lewis] only because we had met her when she was still at Fearrington House, when we subsequently went to work out there. And she’s such a dynamic and yet quiet and powerful influence on us. I mean so it’s—that I think was a function of timing; we were, you know, in the mid-‘80s and there’s a strong sense of regionalism creeping into most Americans, and Edna, being an icon of that, was able to inspire a lot of people to want to seek to preserve what we thought we were about but it wasn’t—it wasn’t about, you know, how you promote yourself or anything like that. But because we were associated with Fearrington and the owners there were—it was a business and promotion was part of what they were trying to do that I think the association was important for them that we have that relationship with them—developing the organization. But we didn’t do anything that—that strong to—to be really leaders in the group.
I think what really made us—the most prominent effect was really when Marlene and Louis Osteen started hosting that Salute—Annual Salute to Southern Chefs in Charleston because it brought together a group of individuals who were each making an impact on cooking—as restaurateurs within their states, and to a significant degree, gave some definition to our region that there was a strong contention of adept cooks who were doing something on a level that was comparable to the urban restaurants of the Northeast and the Midwest and the West Coast. That group remains pretty strong even to this day, if you think about it because I mean it was Emeril [Lagasse] and Mark Militello and Elizabeth Terry and Frank Stitt.
-----
Did you have a vision for the SFA when it—when you heard about it and when it began and how has that evolved?
I think that—I think what was the most powerful influence, again that regard was there, was the association that we had with several people who were intent on bringing SFA to fruition including the Osteens, Marlene and Louis. We were friends and had been strong supporters of SFA at its outset and were also intent on preserving some of the relationships that they had developed through that Salute to Southern Chefs. You know they said, “Here’s a fraternal group of people who are leaders in defining a public or a national image of what constitutes Southern cooking.” The historical aspect of it was intriguing to me that SFA would work to promote and preserve Southern foodways, its culture, its diverse orientations and origins, so you know it was—there was a romantic aspect of it that felt particularly right to be associated with that I could—that we could feel as a restaurant proud of that relationship that we [inaudible]. I had never felt as proud to be cooking in the South as when we went to Oxford to the symposium. It was—to be amongst that group of people was very moving in that there was a clear acknowledgement that, you know, what we do is good and significant and may have some lasting impact. And I hope that’s the way it comes across, but that was what it felt like for me to be in there.
Do you—do you have any ideas for the future, or is there anything that you’d like to see happen within it or projects that you think they might take up?
You know, I think that it’s been interesting, the pursuit of understanding that’s gone on in the organization. What I find most intriguing about it is—is the academic, mainly because I’m deficient in that particular arena, my academic background being so limited that it’s most powerful to me that the understandings of the economics of—of Southern development vis-à-vis food that the place—that race has played in our understanding about Southern culture and Southern food—each year there seems to be a very clear and almost cleverly designed simple focus.
-----
Well but is there any topic or area that you’d like to see them focus on any time in the future?
I have not stopped to evaluate something that feels, you know, singularly in need of examination or is broad enough to warrant an in-depth evaluation and—and symposium on things that might interest me, which may not have the breadth of interest to everybody. You know, where is—where is the organization going to take itself? You know, you’re at—we’re at five years now, almost six and, you know, it seems to be evolving and it seems to be, you know, pull from outside of the region because of its strength of character and the very strong contingent leaders within the group have pulled a lot of people to it. Why is it that Southern food attracts more people than any other type of regional food? That’s really the question that—that comes to mind more than anything because, I mean if you think about it I mean I love life and I love—the New England cooking has got its own precise and wonderful character, but yet I don’t think that—that to see a New England restaurant in Tempe, Arizona—but I bet you can find a place, you know, that does some sort of grits or something like that out in Tempe, you know. I mean it’s—our food gets carried to other regions. Maybe it’s easier to replicate than some other things.
To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.