From scratch cooking… one would think the practice would be commonplace these days at all of our most popular local restaurants. However, one only needs to recall the not far removed meteoric rise of Jeff Brown and Cotton Southern Bistro–led in part by the praise of two Hampton Roads leading food journalists, Patrick Evans-Hylton at Coastal Virginia Magazine/ Pilot.com and Lorraine Eaton at Distinction Magazine–to realize this isn’t always the case. Be it due to advertising budget motives or simply naive reporting, Brown was heralded by Evans-Hylton as a culinary genius with food that had, “[…] down home, from scratch appeal,” while Eaton wove a tale of scratch made biscuits available at Cotton Southern Bistro that Brown had learned to make from his Nanny as a child. Later, substantial numbers of Cotton employees would reveal that those biscuits were, in fact, Pillsbury biscuits and that Brown’s culinary practices were often far from being from scratch. So with that and other culinary shenanigans, unfortunately, present in our local food scene, the contributors and I decided to dedicate this edition of Southern Grit to some of the finest examples and practices of legitimate scratch cooking available locally.
-Fitz southerngritmag@gmail.com
Scratching To The Top: Edition 006 of Southern Grit Magazine available in advance this Sunday 8PM at Wasserhund during the release party. Link to the event HERE
Eaton’s exact words on Brown and Cotton Southern Bistro in Distinction Magazine HERE
Evans-Hylton’s words on Brown and Cotton Southern Bistro HERE & HERE
Thoughts on scratch cooking at Cotton from the employees HERE
2 Comments
I would be more inclined to read your reviews if your introductory editorial relied more on indications of your own expertise and less on berating other food critics.
Agreed with the above — implying that other critics were lying (rather than being sucked into the same lies as other patrons), seems rather immature. And it’s not unheard of for restaurants to cook special meals for known critics. It’s unfortunate because I like the idea of reading about legitimate scratch cooking in our area… I’m just not sure I’ll be reading it from you.