The Ocracoke Fig Festival

Vivian Howard is the star of the PBS shows, “A Chef’s Life” and “Somewhere South,” a James Beard Foundation Award winner, and an Emmy Award winner. 

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She has two cookbooks - Deep Run Roots: Stories & Recipes from My Corner of the South (2016) and This Will.Make It Taste Good: A New Path to Simple Cooking (2020). Deep Run Roots is a New York Times bestseller and was named “Cookbook of the Year” by the International Association of Culinary Professionals. 

 

Vivian runs the restaurants Chef & the Farmer in Kinston, NC; Benny’s Big Time in Wilmington, NC; Handy & Hot and Lenoir in Charleston, SC.

Chef Ricky Moore is the owner of the Saltbox Seafood Joint restaurant in Durham, NC. He won the James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef: Southeast in 2022.   

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Ricky was a cook in the U.S. Army and eventually graduated from the The Culinary Institute of America. He is the author of the Saltbox Seafood Joint Cookbook and filmed the documentary miniseries, The Hook, for PBS NC.

Bill Smith is the author of two cookbooks, the New York Times Notable and Food & Wine Best-of-the-Best cookbook Seasoned in the South and the bestselling Savor the South title, Crabs & Oysters, and many articles and essays in various magazines and journals. In 2019 he retired, after twenty-five years, as head chef at Crook’s Corner Restaurant in Chapel Hill, NC. Crook’s Corner gained national renown as one of the South’s liveliest and most innovative kitchens. The New York Times called it “sacred ground for Southern foodies.” 

 

Bill received several nominations from the James Beard Foundation for Best Chef: Southeast and served for six years on the board of the Southern Foodways Alliance. In 2021, he received the Craig Claiborne Lifetime Achievement Award from that organization.