Rick Bragg once wrote, “If you cannot eat what you want in the South, life is not worth living here.”

Any culinary fare with the forename, “fried”, is considered atop the southern food pyramid. Our bloodlines course with Dixie Crystal, Duke’s mayonnaise, and Old Bay. Sweet tea is our beverage of choice, pork BBQ is the other white meat, and good chicken salad is worth the hunt.

I like my chefs to be full-bodied and sturdy. Ones who create broad flavors with brawny undertones of sausage, bacon, and catfish.

– Steve Wade

Those who trod across the kitchen as if dragging a pig cooker, not flit, like the hostess of the evening, are those I choose to dine with. The best southern chefs should look as if they enjoy their fare as much as bubba does sitting over in the corner booth eating it.

To me, a skinny chef is suspicious. Someone not to be trusted. Unlike a robust robe of pork rib royalty, which hangs best on a fattened whole hog, the cloak of uncertainty I see through the kitchen saloon doors draped over the rawboned gentleman preparing my biscuits and gravy, makes me wonder if he truly believes in the goodness that simmers before him.

Not to baste the Thanksgiving turducken with a broad brine of pejorative rhetoric about skinny people, in particular skinny chefs, but my proclivities beg me to at least ask. I am certain if those who stir the culinary delights which typically befall my plastic plate, they too would carry a little extra ballast. But hey! We all need a little grounding so our ships don’t list.

I’ve met one or two bakers, chicken breaders, and holy hog handlers who live the “one for you and two for me” lifestyle while frying hushpuppies. Though somehow they maintain their girlish figure, trust me, it’s genetic, cause ain’t no southern comfort food chef worth their weight in buttermilk, bacon grease, cornmeal, and pecan pie if they buy skinny jeans from J.Crew and have accrued any reward points from Happy and Hale.

So, in this world of kale salads, avocado smoothies, and beyond beef, whatever that is, pull up a chair at the next checkerboard table cloth you can find and sit a spell. If the waitress comes over and calls you “honey”, “darlin’” or “dear”, you’ve found the honey pot of good southern cookin’.

Bon appétit, y’all!