<strong>Changed the game by:</strong> For championing the local food movement in the South.
"If it doesn't come from the south, it's not coming through the door," is <strong>Sean Brock</strong>'s mantra at <a href="http://www.huskrestaurant.com/about/" target="_hplink">Husk</a>, his new restaurant in Charleston. The South Carolina restaurant, which touts cuisine that celebrates authentic Southern ingredients, was named "Best New Restaurant in America" in the September issue of <em>Bon Appetit.</em> When Brock opened Husk last November, he declared that no ingredient on the menu would come from above the Mason-Dixon line. And he means <em>everything</em>: Husk imports olive oil from Texas, and makes sea salt from ocean water 80 miles offshore. Before opening Husk, the Virginia native -- who has trained under Chef Robert Carter at Peninsula Grill in Charleston as well as Chef Walter Bundy of Lemaire Restaurant in Richmond, VA -- was the chef behind Charleston's other hit restaurant, McCrady's. Brock maintains a 1.5-acre parcel of land on Thornhill Farm in McClellanville, SC, where he plants heirloom seeds, cultivates new crops, and researches old recipes and farm journals dating from the late 1700s and the Civil War. Brock's own <a href=" www.seanbrock.wordpress.com " target="_hplink">blog</a> showcases his green thumb, boasting shots of the rutabagas and cardoons he harvests as well as the finished dishes, like smoked steelhead roe and pumpernickel dumplings on a leek-mascarpone puree. His efforts have helped reinvent the notion of Southern cooking -- from fried and butter-soaked to fresh and daring, but still with that southern hospitality.
Accolades for Husk: <a href="http://www.bonappetit.com/blogsandforums/blogs/bafoodist/2011/08/best-new-restaurants.html" target="_hplink"><em>Bon Appetit</em>'s feature on Brock's restaurant</a>.
Must-click: <a href="www.seanbrock.wordpress.com " target="_hplink">Sean's blog</a>
(Photo Credit: Courtesy photo)
