Vivian Howard holds up a bitter melon while shopping at an Indian grocery store in Cary, NC.
Courtesy of Josh Woll
Somewhere South
Explore savory dishes uniting people and creating new traditions across the American South
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Fred Vigeant
Courtesy of Josh Woll
Vivian Howard holds up a bitter melon while shopping at an Indian grocery store in Cary, NC.
Celebrity chef, author and restaurateur Vivian Howard, who previously hosted the award-winning series A Chef’s Life, returns to WITF with Somewhere South. The new six-part series is a culinary tour, exploring dishes that are uniting cultures and creating new traditions across the American South.
In Somewhere South, Vivian travels the changing South in search of the dishes that connect us all — dumplings, hand pies, porridge and more — but which are expressed in delightfully different ways across cultures. Along the way, she meets new friends and teachers, and as she says, discovers “how breaking bread and sharing a meal can create a comfortable place to have meaningful, memorable conversations.”
With each episode, Vivian finds that although we’re different, our appetites are very much the same. For example, in North Carolina, Vivian samples the collard sandwich, a staple of Lumbee Indian cuisine, with native Lumbee home cooks for whom Southern hospitality is a fundamental way of life. She also travels to West Virginia to sample the pepperoni roll, a regional convenience food made popular by coal miners. In Charleston, S.C., where rice is king, Vivian enjoys grits and rice middlins with respected Gullah chefs whose cuisine is the backbone of the city’s bustling food scene.
Watch Somewhere South Fridays at 9pm on WITF beginning March 27. All six episodes are also available to stream on-demand through the PBS Video app.
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