Sean Brock and the flavours of the South

It was in Charleston, South Carolina, that the American Civil War first began in 1861. It is the same town that the famous and lively dance from the Twenties was named after. Over time, it was destroyed by an earthquake, a fire and a hurricane but the love for life of its inhabitants has always won and its story has had no end. The city is twinned with Spoleto and every year, in June, they host the American edition of the Umbrian festival. For me this is also the city where, in May 1999, Giovanni Soldini successfully concluded the Around Alone, the solo circumnavigation of the globe.

I remember it was night-time, it was pitch black, there was almost no wind and no tide. There was a small fleet moving towards him, with jury, friends, press and sponsors, while he aimed for the finishing line that certainly was not in front of the French neighbourhood but in one last invisible portion of Ocean. Then a dot appeared, less and less small: it was Soldini, the first non-Frenchman to assert himself in these extreme boat races. I still get emotional just thinking about it.

Here I stop and move to some other emotions which are all the same lively and true, those that I have just lived, again in Charleston. I took a break from the preparations for Identità New York to visit this romantic, soothing city that has nothing to share with American metropolises. First of all, it is not huge, with 110thousand inhabitants - six times as many if you count the suburbs. Green dominates and houses are low. The structure that one can always find elsewhere, with the Downtown area scattered with skyscrapers and blocks of flats all around as residential areas is not to be found here. I make this clear, so you know you’re going to visit and discover a different version of the United States.

This weekend in Charleston was the chance to discover the cuisine of Sean Brock, a 35-year-old chef (he’ll turn 36 in March) who impressed me also because he wasn’t there. I was impressed in the sense that on Saturday night at McCrady’s, and on Sunday at lunch time at Husk Restaurant (in fact this was a brunch, though quite different from the Italian buffet style which unfortunately are more popular in Italy), he was was working in the other Husk, the one in Nashville, Tennessee. The greatness of a chef can be measured even by the capacity of his assistant chefs. In this sense, I have nothing to say about Daniel Heinz and, the following day, Travis Grimes, if not to compliment myself with them.

For Brock, seeing his job, the fact he was born in the most rural part of Virginia, in a coal mining city where there were no restaurants and no traffic lights was a fortune. With this premise, it might sound peculiar, but he does stress an important aspect: “In my family, we cultivated and cooked what we were capable of growing, so I had the chance to see food in each of its forms. We used to prepare meals daily, and when we weren’t cooking, we were preparing preserves. It was a precise choice of life”. Of course this was also an obligation but I’m sure that not everyone over there behaved like the Brock family.

Today Sean has several medals on his chest, mostly received from the James Beard Foundation, he’s mapping the cuisine of the South territories and lives in Charleston with his wife Tonya and two dogs. Interesting fact: he asked her to marry him while he was cooking for the James Beard Foundation in New York. I discovered him mostly thanks to the Japanese edition of Cook it Raw, now behind us, while the next edition will be at his place in less than a month’s time, on Saturday October 26th, when the theme will be that of BBQ. That day Italy will shine for its complete absence. A pity, though it confirms that teamwork is easier said than done.

1. To be continued