Hi! Happy weekend.
It’s been a while since a Field Guide—I did a backpacking trip with my dad, which did not feel especially like a vacation (I overpacked my backpacked by about 5 pounds) but was very special—so we’ve got plenty to get into. Thanks for your patience!
On Wednesday, our special food issue hit stands. I’m proud of the wide-ranging array of stories and will link to all of them below, but want to start with one of my favorite pastimes: Exploring other people’s refrigerators. What kinds of condiments line the side panels? What’s the latest expiration date to cross a “toss” threshold? And perhaps most important: Where do people fall on the mayonnaise wars? To open a refrigerator is an intimate act, not so different from reading someone’s diary, and in this issue, five chefs, farmers, and small food purveyors graciously let us look into theirs.
Take Bill Smith, the retired chef/owner of Crook’s Corner. Smith is a champion of buttermilk and the low-brow beer, so we were not surprised to find those items in the fridge, in this interview conducted by Lena Geller, but other things were surprising—the small scale of his fridge, for instance, and his diplomatic response on mayonnaise. Read the full interview, with beautiful photos by staff photographer Angelica Edwards, at the link.
There’s more: Find out which chef says they drink a gallon of milk every two days, where this chef stands on storing bread in the fridge, who belongs to the Produce Pete fan club, and why you should save your peach pits.
Thanks for reading. More food and culture stories below!
Bill Smith’s home refrigerator. Photo by Angelica Edwards.
elsewhere in the culture section
First off: It’s a big weekend in Durham: It’s the 20th iteration of the Beaver Queen Pageant, held 4 p.m. tomorrow at Duke Park, and then there’s Good Moon, Sylvan Esso’s two-day music festival that had a soft launch in 2022 and now finds its footing tomorrow and Saturday at the Durham Bull’s Athletic Park. Justin Laidlaw took a stroll with duo Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn (and their chihuahua, Gherkin) to learn about their collaborative ethos and how they’re trying to maintain a community feel with the festival. It’s a good interview—read it all here.
Hopsotch has announced its September festival lineup. Raleigh rapper Nance has a new single, “For You.” And a bit of a reality check: An interview with the director of Bad Faith: An Unholy War on Democracy, a documentary on the rise of Christian nationalism, that features several local figures. Very much worth your time, especially as we round the corner into election season.
Now, back to our food issue.
Halfway through reporting the reporting of our profile on Preeti Waas, the twice James Beard Award-nominated chef learned that things had changed with the Raleigh Cheeni and she would need to close that original location. Undaunted, she chose to continue the story as she shared her plans with the Durham location of Cheeni what it’s meant to “come into her own,” with this unexpected new chapter.
Writer Nation Hahn put in two bylines to the food issue with a profile catching up with the prolific Scott Crawford and another with Jeff Seizer, whose journey from fine-dining to pizza kitchen at the Raleigh location of Ponysaurus Brewing Co. marks a long dream:
“They were like the coolest dudes in the world,” Seizer recounts of the pizza shop in his Brooklyn childhood neighborhood. “The shop had this old-school Italian vibe. Everyone knew the pizza guys. They drove cool cars, and I looked up to those guys growing up.”
I’d encourage you to read Gabi Mendick’s profile of Raleigh food truck Que Chula Es Puebla—run by Luis Miguel, his wife Angeles, and their children Luis Vazquez, Edwin Vazquez, and Jouse—for a close look at a rare local business to serve Pueblan food. But if its images that will persuade you, click to look at the overflowing Torta poblana, Tacos Arabes, and more, that the truck has on offer.
Finally, it’s easy to wax poetic about refrigerators and the delicious foods they contain, but it’s not easy to get a business off the ground in 2024: Overhead costs like rent are high, inflation has spiked, and customers are cranky, post-pandemic. Justin Laidlaw reports on the ins and outs of navigating today’s culinary landscape.
Oh, and how could I forget? A look at local naked yoga classes.
out and about in the triangle
We’ll catch up in full next week—stay tuned for a whole lot of links!
— Sarah Edwards —
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