A Responsibility To Represent Southern Cuisine

Talk with John Currence and you get the feeling the chef behind City Grocery in Oxford, Miss., is a straight-shooter who is passionate about cooking and Southern cuisine. So it's no surprise Dominique Love and Elizabeth Feichter, the co-founders of the Atlanta Food & Wine Festival, asked him to work with them as a member of their Founders Council to create seminars, demonstrations, tastings, and events to support the festival's Southern focus.

Chef Currence's tell-it-as-it-is style makes for good conversation. In this interview he discusses why Southern cuisine isn't just the flavor of the month, Holeman & Finch's David Chang-esque approach to the burger, and why cooking competitions aren't 'crap.'

What does it mean to participate in the Atlanta Food & Wine Festival?

Well, you know, I can't say how excited I am about putting together what could ultimately be the real highwater food event in the South. Largely because the organizers are trying to focus on the intellectual part of the food that's going on in the South rather than the simple sells.

What's your event all about?

We're doing a dinner on Friday. Me, Besh, Donald Link, and Scott Serpas, at his eponymously named restaurant Serpas True Food. We're all from Louisiana, so it's a Louisiana boys' dinner. Saturday morning there will be a biscuits and gravy demo. And on Sunday afternoon there will be Mississippi Delta tamales.

So what will all these demos and events entail?

You know I can't remember what the rest of the guys will be doing. I know it's going to be outstanding. I have nothing but tons of respect for them. I'll be doing a "temporary version" of pickled duck, the meat is pulled from the bone, then you compress it in a Cryovac, press it, and cut into cakes. I'm serving it with, well, I can't remember what the sides are. But we're going to do that and then I'm doing sort of a Louisiana citrus gastrique.

Any spots you're looking to hit in Atlanta while you're in town?

Always. I love what Hugh Acheson is doing at Empire State South. I think the burger at Holeman & Finch may well be the best burger I've had anywhere in my entire life. I anticipated tasting that burger for the first time for a year and a half to two years. And usually, anticipation can ruin anything. And let me tell you, it was everything I'd dreamed it would be and more. Taqueria del Sol — I always stop in there. I've got to go check out what Annie is doing at Abattoir — just for charcuterie, whiskey, and innards — that's my favorite stop on the planet.

I've heard about Holeman & Finch's burger for a year, what's it about?

You know, I don't typically dig that David Chang-esque approach to food — that potentially adversarial relationship with food that you have before even putting the fork in your hand. But it's a cool scene, like the craziest food auction ever. There's a frenetic energy in the room.

What's one thing you hope people will learn from the festival?

What I really hope is that, and this is the reason I'm as invested as I am, there's a great intellectual capital that comes with the food in the South. And until the last few years, folks kind of looked at it through the lens of Paula Deen's cookbook. But during the last four to five years, there's been a real, true, genuine interest in what the culture of Southern food is all about. People are really beginning to learn that we deserve a chair at the table. And that means that it's incumbent on us to make sure as chefs that people really continue to know that. After all, we have the only true American cuisine. And we have an example to set, a responsibility as the chefs working in the South right now who have been given a platform, because part of why we have this platform is because of the chefs who have come before us who have not gotten the credit they deserved. So we have to put our best foot forward to make sure people realize the South deserves this attention — that we're not just the flavor of the month.

What's a question you wish you were asked more often?

How did I get so smart and good-looking? [laughs] I don't know. I think I'm getting asked a lot of good questions. I really enjoy talking about Southern food and answering poignant questions because I look at our food as being a very clear roadmap of the history of our country. And you know, to have the opportunity to be part of a nationwide discussion about what makes our food important, where it comes from — it's incredibly satisfying. It means there's something great to what we do. So it's not just that we're slinging burgers to impress these faceless critics that come through and lob criticism or praise at us. Not to hyper-intellectualize what it is that we're doing, but what we're doing is deeper than just being a fuel stop for people. It really does have meaning and import.

I read that you contribute to Garden & Gun magazine?

Yeah, but I haven't written anything very recently.

But you're and an avid outdoorsman and hunter?

I grew up in south Louisiana, and hunting and fishing is a de facto activity because the fruits of the land and the sea are so readily available and prevalent. It's a magnificent father-and-son activity and so we — my Dad and I and my brothers — went fishing in the summer, ducking hunting in the winter, and dove hunting in the fall. I always enjoyed because like growing vegetables and harvesting something for sustenance. I like hunting and fishing because there's actually sport to it. To shoot a duck you have to have some skill, dexterity, and hand-eye co-ordination. You've got to know how to fish, to catch redfish. How to cast, where to cast, and then there's pulling the fish in the boat. I enjoy the sporting aspect, but all of those things have very social implications too. There's camaraderie to it. You don't have a phone, you can't be bothered, and you're uninterrupted with friends. There's no outside interference from work. It's just you in the duck blind, or on a quail hunt, just you and your friends out there.

Do you have a go-to in the field preparation?

There is nothing in the world much better than redfish. You just take a filet off one side and grill it with lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, and salt. And you put it on a charcoal grill with that skin-side down — where the skin becomes the 'pan' that the fish cooks in. And when you take the fish off the skin, I mean one of the most magical preparations on the planet. I don't know anything better than that. You pair that with some stewed okra and tomatoes and it's just like the most amazing thing that you can put on a plate.

What did you come away with from your Top Chef Masters experience?

I really didn't know much of anything about TV at all beforehand. I went out to California with a really terrible attitude and so was horribly unprepared. I didn't put a lot of stock in TV. I didn't aspire to a career in television, and you know, it turned out that it was an absolutely wonderful experience. I couldn't have been any more wrong. I used to think, "Well, competition cooking is just crap. And it's all made for TV." But those challenges they put you through are real and incredibly hard. And it taxes your physical and mental abilities completely.

Anything you learned during the competition that might've helped to know beforehand?

Yeah, I mean, I think I probably would have given it much greater consideration. I tried to prep myself a little in terms of thinking about dishes I could do in a hurry and represent our cuisine as well, and I started this list of dishes, and all of a sudden it was five pages long and it kind of freaked me out. So I changed my mind and decided I'd kind of just go and react. I wish that I had maybe studied a little more — given it greater consideration.