By: Joan Behrend
You may have seen Vivian Howard’s award-winning restau-rant the Chef and the Farmer on the PBS TV station. Vivian and her husband, Ben Knight, trained at New York restaurants and opened one in Kinston, NC, where Vivian grew up. If you have seen the show, “A Chef’s Life,” you know they source their ingredients and recipes from local farms and residents.
Cam Rivard orchestrated a trip to Kinston and the Chef and the Farmer for lunch. 41 APWC ladies and guests boarded a bus at 8:30 a.m. for the 2 ½-hour trip to Kinston. We arrived with two hours to tour Kinston before our lunch reservation. With guidance from Terri Chapin, Co-Chair of the APWC Program Committee, and Cam, we found the Kinston Community Council for the Arts, some historic Civil War sites, and an interesting public art project of Kinston’s Tobacco Barns.
We managed to buy some local art pieces at a gallery next door to the Council for the Arts, found some local pecans at the hardware store, some local brews at the Mother Earth Brewing Company as well as some kitchen items and antiques at local shops.
Lunch was fabulous, with the Chef and the Farmer’s signature Blueberry BBQ chicken and Beef Brisket as the main courses of our buffet, with seasonal appetizers, sides, and a fabulous chocolate (of course) dessert. The staff was warm and accommodating, and Cam announced that one of our waitresses had family in Hertford.
At 3:00, we ran to the restaurant gift shop to pick up a bottle of Blueberry BBQ sauce and autographed copies of Vivian’s cookbook, Deep Run Roots. We then boarded the bus for home. A good time was had by all!
Kinston and the Chef and the Farmer are definitely worth a visit.