When chefs talk about what inspires their cooking and who steered them into working in a kitchen for a living, they almost all have stories about their families and cooking with their mothers and grandmothers. That influence is evident for three North Carolina chefs who share their stories — and recipes — for dishes that are homages to their families’ matriarchs.
At Prime Barbecue, Prieto “fills the hungry soul with goodness” with hearty dishes like his barbecued rice (left). photograph by Stacey Van Berkel
Christopher Prieto’s barbecue restaurant seems as down-home as it gets — ribs, pulled pork, chicken-fried steak, brisket, house-made sausage. As an award-winning pitmaster, he’s gained a following for his “real-deal” barbecue.
His cooking roots, however, are straight from Puerto Rico, via his mother, Esther Prieto, 67.
“We are a very traditional Puerto Rican family,” he says. “We’re first-generation, my brothers and I.” Prieto grew up in Texas, where his parents had moved so his father could get a Ph.D. in chemistry.
Food was confusing when he was a kid, he says. He grew up in a community that was very Mexican, but his family’s cooking was pure Puerto Rican. His mother made breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day, using recipes passed down from his abuela — grandmother — and “mama abuela” — great-grandmother. The first time he ate at an American friend’s house as a kid was the first time he ever ate processed food — Totino’s Pizza Rolls.
“I thought it was terrible,” he remembers. “I thought his mother made it — I thought everyone’s mother made everything. I felt really bad for him!”
Christopher Prieto’s father introduced him to the intricacies of smoke and flame but it’s his mother, Esther (pictured with Prieto), who inspires the flavors in his dishes. photograph by Cynthia Viola Photography
Prieto’s love of barbecue started with his chemist father, Nelson, who schooled him in thermal dynamics: “I was obsessed with fire.” But his most popular side dish at the restaurant is his mother’s Spanish-style rice.
“Rice is a dish we eat every single day,” Prieto says. “Puerto Ricans are different from Mexicans, from Cubans. They all have different ratios of water and rice. But my mother says her way is the only way. My mother’s always right when it comes to cooking Spanish food.”
When he opened Prime Barbecue, he needed a stand-out side dish. “In Texas, it’s frijoles [beans], potato salad, coleslaw. Really redundant.” That’s when he thought of his mother’s rice, flavored with beef stock, bacon fat, and “an offensive amount of onion.”
Prieto quickly discovered that the rice had one drawback: It can’t sit too long. So he had to train his staff to make a fresh batch every hour, on the hour.
Visitors gather at Prime Barbecue for down-home smoked meats and creative side dishes. photograph by Stacey Van Berkel
“I didn’t know it would become explosively popular,” he says. “Even if I’m in my office, I can smell it as soon as they take the lid off the caldero.”
Prieto’s parents now live in Louisiana, but they’re planning to move to the Triangle area. Esther already comes for long visits, waking her son every morning by bringing him coffee and kissing him on the head: “A Puerto Rican mother is the biggest doter you ever met,” Prieto says.
Every time she’s in town, she’ll arrive at the restaurant unannounced, take a seat, and ask for the rice to be brought to her so she can make sure it’s being prepared correctly.
It scares her son every time.
“It’s our name in the rice,” he says. “All my children know the rice.”
Prime Barbecue
403 Knightdale Station Run
Knightdale, NC 27545
(919) 373-8067
prime-bbq.com
Louie and Honey’s focaccia sandwiches (left) are tasty, … Oreo ice cream pudding photograph by Stacey Van Berkel
Natalie Gingerich didn’t travel far from her mother’s kitchen: She and her mother, Naomi, run a bakery together, focused on recipes handed down in Ohio’s Amish country. Naomi was raised as a Mennonite, although she left the church in her 20s and the family now attends a nondenominational church.
Natalie remembers being in the kitchen with her mother and grandmother back in Ohio when she was 6 or 7 years old, particularly when they were canning. In Ohio, her mother’s farm family canned everything.
“I grew up with memories of doing all things ‘kitchen.’ Baking bread with my grandma, and baking cookies,” Natalie says.
The Gingeriches always vacationed on the Outer Banks and at Topsail Beach, and they had friends in Winston-Salem. They moved south in 2007, when Natalie, her sister Rosemary, and her brother Ethan were teenagers.
Louis Gingerich, 6 — with his “HoneyMa,” Naomi, and mom, Natalie. photograph by Stacey Van Berkel
Baking was always Naomi’s passion. She had already started a baking blog and had gotten a following when she began casting around, looking for something she and Natalie could do together.
“We were both ready for a change,” Naomi recalls. “Natalie said, ‘You already bake every day. Let’s try to make a business out of that.’ ”
The Gingeriches started selling their baked goods at a farmers market in 2017 and were ready to open their own bakery by 2020. They originally called their business Lavender and Honey, but someone already had the name, so they changed it to Louie and Honey’s Kitchen — after Natalie’s son, Louis, and his nickname for his grandmother.
The timing, so bad for many in the food business, worked in their favor. “The pandemic was good for us,” Natalie says. “We were still a pop-up bakery. We could keep selling at the farmers market.” As other bakeries shuttered, they tripled their sales.
Louie & Honey fans know that no trip to the bakery is complete without one of their pillowy Amish cinnamon rolls. photograph by Stacey Van Berkel
At Louie and Honey’s, the signature confection is a lavishly frosted Amish cinnamon roll. But using handed-down Mennonite recipes hasn’t always been simple, Naomi says. While her mother baked from scratch, a lot of Mennonites started using convenience products in their recipes, like the simple Oreo ice cream pudding that’s been a family favorite with the Gingerich kids for years. “It’s been an interesting journey between authenticity and ‘How can we make this truly from scratch?’ ” she says.
Now, Naomi’s compiled her recipes in her Amish Baking Cookbook, due out this summer. And Louis is already helping his grandmother in the kitchen. His mother tells him he’s lucky: “He knows what ‘from scratch’ means. He doesn’t know it’s special yet.”
Louie and Honey’s Kitchen
401 West End Boulevard
Winston-Salem, NC 27101
(336) 422-7500
louieandhoneyskitchen.com
Guests at The Goodyear House find elevated presentations of simple, regional ingredients, like hearty fennel-rubbed spare ribs glazed with sticky sorghum butter. photograph by Stacey Van Berkel
Chris Coleman’s career as a chef started when he was 19. He was in his first year of culinary school when he stepped into the kitchen as a line cook at Charlotte’s legendary McNinch House Restaurant, with its nightly set menu of elegant dishes. By 21, he was the executive chef.
Luckily, his kitchen training had started a long time before that, when he was a boy. Born and raised in Charlotte, Coleman and his brother made yearly summer pilgrimages to their grandparents’ farm in Purvis, Mississippi. Coleman’s grandfather worked for the Norfolk Southern railroad, so every summer, his mother would put him and his brother on the train, and his grandmother Marlene McDonald would be waiting in Hattiesburg to drive them to the family farm. They’d stay anywhere from a couple of weeks to a couple of months.
Chef Chris Coleman’s late grandmother Marlene McDonald instilled in him an appreciation for the simple — and delicious — flavors that have found their way onto the menu at The Goodyear House. photograph by Stacey Van Berkel
“They raised cows and horses. They had a pecan orchard, blueberries, a giant fig tree. The walls of the laundry room in the carport were lined with preserves,” Coleman says. “I’m trying to remember the first time I went to a grocery store with my grandmother. I had to be at least 13 or 14.”
When he became a chef, though, he put a lot of that down-home simplicity behind him.
“At the time, I was rebelling against that,” he says. “At 21, I was trying to be Thomas Keller. I was reading The French Laundry Cookbook.”
photograph by Stacey Van Berkel
Gradually, Coleman returned to his roots and his grandmother’s kitchen. At The Asbury at Charlotte’s Dunhill Hotel, he put his “Maw Maw’s” biscuits on the menu, including a version called Sticky Biscuits, with Benton’s country ham and a goat cheese icing. Spruced-up deviled eggs and fried chicken started to pepper his menus as he moved around to different restaurants, finally opening The Goodyear House in 2020.
What changed? He met a farmer, Jamie Swofford of Old North Farm in Cleveland County. “And the idea of sourcing local while keeping food elevated was cool. And it got me thinking about where it came from. And that brought me back to my grandmother’s carport and a laundry room full of preserves,” he says. “It was simplicity, just trying to do the best you can with what you have.”
Guests dining on the patio adjacent to Chief’s Modern Cocktail Parlor can enjoy “adult Lunchables” from The Goodyear House like pickled shrimp on saltines photograph by Stacey Van Berkel
Today, Coleman serves up pickled shrimp with mignonette butter on saltine crackers, grilled trout with summer vegetables and dashi butter, ribs with sorghum butter, and a take on shrimp and grits that includes a tomato sauce flavored with ’nduja, a spreadable Italian pork sausage.
Coleman’s grandmother died in 2013, at the age of 84. While he isn’t featuring biscuits regularly on his menus at the moment, he honors her memory by making biscuits and preserves for his kids, Luke, 13, and Ellie, 9.
“At home, I’ve started cooking more like my mother and grandmother,” he says. “You can push boundaries but also honor the people around you who are growing good food.”
The Goodyear House
3032 North Davidson Street
Charlotte, NC 28205
(980) 478-9622
thegoodyearhouse.com
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