CRESCENT Things: James Beard Award Winner Ted Lee (Part 4)
WHY CAN’T GREENVILLE GET CHARLESTON OYSTERS?
We just keep ‘em all. I keep thinking, Matt and I are experimenting with FedEx because We’ll do oyster roasts up here and you can’t find clusters, they don’t sell them out at the Hunts Point Fish Market. We’ve done experiments where the guy who does our packing for us in Charleston, he packed up a bushel of oysters in dry ice and sent it 2-day FedEx. It’s really expensive and it worked really well. There is something weird, though, about getting that cluster oyster and attacking it in a New York apartment. Something is lost in translation.
HAVING YOUR OWN OYSTER KNIFE IS IMPORTANT
It’s another one of those “life things.” When you’re growing up, and I always ask this, why do you keep the oyster knife in the glove compartment? Fast forward 20 years. You’re hosting an oyster roast. There’re 12 people coming over, and you have 4 knives and you say, “Damn, I hope one of my guests brings their own oyster knife.” You keep your own oyster knife in your glove compartment. It’s just what we do.
EDUCATING THE NEW YORK TIMES ON SOUTHERN FOOD CULTURE
There’s a great tradition of Southern food writers for the New York Times. Craig Claiborne, who is from Mississippi, wrote for them for 30 years or so. He left in the 70s, and they didn’t have anyone filling in. They didn’t have anyone covering the “Man in the South” or the “Woman in the South.” Now, everyone is writing about the South. It’s great because I do feel like there are so many stories to be told and there will always be. Whether you’re going back to heirloom varieties of stuff or whether you’re writing about the newest, greatest mixologist in Charleston.
AND SPEAKING OF CHARLESTON, THERE’S SEAN BROCK.
He’s right between our office and where we live. We’re psyched about the arrival of Husk. It’s really good. A great brunch. It’s a great bar, too, a great bar scene. It’s just a really, something that Charleston didn’t have, I don’t think.
He has this sort of two directions that he goes into. Like he goes deep into the past to find a way forward. It confused a lot of people in town, but it’s just part of … he’s very much into experimentation. He’s enthusiastic. He’s into history. I think Charleston and South Carolina in general worked their magic on him. Basically, he’s from Virginia and he grew up in a rural Virginia farm-like community, but it’s different from the Lowcountry. I think if you talk to him, I don’t know, I haven’t interviewed him enough to know, he was expecting he was going to bring all this new molecular gastronomy to town. He did. He did it brilliantly. I’m not sure he even realized how much South Carolina re-focused him — you know, broadened his horizon.
FOOD AND WINE FESTIVALS ARE MORE POPULAR THAN EVER
I mean the whole festival culture has blown up. It’s fun. It’s where a lot of the cross-pollination happens. It’s where chefs discover other ingredients. I’ve seen it happen. I’ve seen a lot of chefs, when they come from New York or Chicago to the Charleston Food and Wine Festival, just get blown away. They’re just seeing a tiny part of it, you know.
The winter weather in New York or DC or wherever they’re coming from stinks. They come down for this weekend, and they’re like, “My God. I’m moving here. I’m getting a place here.” They all say that. “I’m looking at a place here.” What I try to do is say, “You’ve just discovered one micro-region. Go to the Upstate. Go to the mountains.” I try to explain the connections from mountains to the sea.
BOILED PEANUTS TAKING OVER THE BIG APPLE IN 2000?
We started out thinking we were going to sell them wholesale. Like we were going to bring boiled peanuts to New York just like any other food. We’re eating Anson Mills grits right here (at Egg during the interview). Ten years ago, unimaginable, completely unimaginable that we would be eating South Carolina products at the restaurant in Williamsburg.
So we were going to wholesale them to bars and restaurants as a snack, not just to Southern places. We thought they were going to take off everywhere because we were so in our South Carolina mentality that we couldn’t genuinely understand there was an education curve. We’d just show up with boiled peanuts at a restaurant, walk in the door and say, “We’ve got this product, a classic regional South Carolina Product. I see you’ve got a bar. They’re salty, really delicious. You just crack open the shell.” People were just like, “Are you kidding me? Where is your Candid Camera? Because you are taking that turd-looking thing and getting the hell out of my restaurant.” It was an interesting education because part of it was we started with the Southern restaurants because we thought that was where it was going to happen.
The Southern restaurants were all run by guys from Long Island who had taken a trip to Daytona and seen a barbecue place and they came back to New York and, all about themes like “Chat n’ Chew.” It was hokey. You’d walk in and there would be a wagon wheel. That’s western. You know, like, wagon wheels, things like bullet-holed Coca-Cola signs. We deal with that now. TV producers come to Charleston and ask, “Do you know if there is a Coca-Cola sign with some bullet holes?” Like, why are you still using that that? That was a joke in the Depression. We’re beyond that.
THE LEE BROTHERS BEGIN THEIR RISE
So there was that and there was one restaurateur named Alexander Smalls who opened a beautiful place so far ahead of its time. If he opened it now, it would kill because people who are not from the South, who live here, are so much more educated now about Southern food. At that time, it was torqued up, you know, simple but an upscale restaurant serving Southern food. It was backed by… Alexander was the chef-owner. Wynton Marsalis was one of the investors, the jazz artist. The writer Toni Morrison was one of his investors. It was a beautiful place in the Flatiron District. It was amazing. He was like “Yes, I’m from Orangeburg. Come on in. He also had been an opera singer. We’d seen him perform before at the Spoleto Festival although we’d only realized that after. Because I’d seen Porgy and Bess during Spoleto in 1982, and he was one of the characters in it.
It’s so funny. He runs a music school now. But he said, “I’ll put them on my bar, I’ll sell them, I’ll educate people,” and he was the only person who let us in the front door. He carried them on the bar for about a month and he said, “You know what guys, I love boiled peanuts. I have talked myself hoarse trying to sell these boiled peanuts, but they’re just not moving.” That’s when we realized the job of educating people is not something we can do singlehandedly, so let’s sell to people who already know what they are. We had enough Southern friends around who thought it was a good idea. They said they’d buy them. I don’t know where to get raw peanuts around here myself but at a party, so why don’t you. So that’s when we started the catalog.
After a great Southern breakfast, the two boys from South Carolina left the Charleston chef’s restaurant in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg. We hopped in Ted’s Honda, and he dropped me off to catch a cab back in to Manhattan so I could get to the baseball game on time. The story won’t end here. We’ll be with both Ted and Matt soon — talking about how they got started and about their new book “Lee Brothers Charleston Kitchen.”
