Innholdsfortegnelse for August/September 2021 i Garden & Gun

EDITOR’S LETTER A Toast to an Old Friend MEMORIES OF GOOD TIMES AND GREAT BLOODY MARYS DAVID DIBENEDETTO Senior Vice President & Editor in Chief When my extended family gathers for a tailgate (Go Dawgs!) or a winter oyster roast, it goes without saying that I’ll be making the Bloody Marys. Over the years, I’ve dabbled with most of the premade mixes, from good old Zing Zang to the lighter Natural Blonde to my typical go-to, Charleston Bloody Mary Mix. I like lots of chunky ice, a vigorous squeeze of lemon, a celery stalk, and a few toppers on a toothpick (olive, cocktail onion, and a small pickle), plus a shake of black pepper. And, if it’s my own glass, a very healthy pour of vodka. The late writer and…

LETTERS “It’s just not a road trip without Will Patton reading some James Lee Burke” DOG DAYS I have subscribed to G&Gsince I first pilfered a copy from a doctor’s office. The June/July 2021 Good Dog column is one of the most beautiful pieces you have ever included. If Brandon Chonko wants to stop farming, I think he has a promising career in writing. Mary Loiselle Gretna, Virginia FINE TUNING What a great piece about Jon Batiste’s love of the melodica (Collections, June/ July 2021). As a child, I saw an advertisement for the new Hohner Melodica, and I knew that I had to have one. I was crushed when my mother said no. Fifty years later, I spied the vintage Hohner Melodica Piano 26 locked in a display case…

BOOKS New Orleans Unfiltered A NATIVE SON’S STORY COLLECTION CONJURES THE REAL CRESCENT CITY By Jonathan Miles The city of New Orleans would seem, on a surface level, to be an ideal setting for literary fiction. It’s got an excess of texture, atmosphere, and native intrigue. It’s got ghosts, funk, and grit. It’s got sin and sweat and sauce piquante. Setting a story in New Orleans, one might think, should be something like running a photo through an Instagram filter: ready-made ambience, quick-cooking gravitas. Hardly ever, though, does it play out this way. New Orleans is a complicated, fluid, and unruly entity, a racial and cultural kaleidoscope that never pauses spinning and can confound visitors and residents alike. With some notable exceptions (native John Kennedy Toole topping the list), writers…

JUBILEE Mobile Mainstay AROUND SINCE THE 1920S, THE DEW DROP INN STILL SLINGS GREAT DOGS, GUMBO, AND FRIED OYSTERS—WITH A SIDE OF HISTORY BY JOHN T. EDGE Illustration by Michael Spitz PHOTOGRAPHS BY SARA ESSEX BRADLEY Text messages ping. Tips flood Instagram. As I drive across Mobile Bay in Alabama, friends ask: Are you headed to Bayley’s down in Theodore for fried crab claws? How about a strawberry cupcake at Poll-man’s Bake Shop in Mobile? Have you stopped at K&S convenience store, where they cook turkey necks until they give up a silken brown gravy? My cell keeps buzzing: How about those smoked pork ribs topped with toasted peanuts at Southern National? Did you eat a flounder-and-grits breakfast at Cozy Brown’s Kitchen up in Whistler? Or the chicken-and-oyster gumbo at…

IN THE GARDEN Harvesting History AN 1860S DEMONSTRATION GARDEN IN ATLANTA NOURISHES THE COMMUNITY By Latria Graham PHOTOGRAPHS BY DIWANG VALDEZ “It’s a little patch,” Michael Twitty says. “But it tells a lot of stories, and they use every inch of the grounds to give you as much of the picture as possible” Tucked into the northernmost reaches of the elegant tree-lined streets of Buck-head, in Atlanta, lies a little-known and often-overlooked gem of great historical significance: the enslaved people’s garden at Smith Farm, a spread on the campus of the Atlanta History Center meant to illustrate what a working slaveholding farm would have been like. Standing there, it’s easy to forget that the farm sits in one of the most populous cities in the South. Birdsong and a variety…

GOOD HUNTING Drinks on the Go Clever ways to take your picnic to the next level COCKTAIL CADDY Make every outdoor concert or beach trip a little lighter with a convertible wooden caddy by Weston Table. On the way to a fete, it functions as a repository for food, drinks, and utensils. But on-site it quickly unfolds into a tabletop for two ($295; westontable.com). GLASSWARE Tumblers and champagne flutes in lively hues from OKAoffer a twist on tradition and the perfect avenues for elevating your outdoor spread ($60–$90 for four; oka.com).…

The SURE THING CUBA LIBRE HOW ONE WRITER LEARNED to STOP WORRYING and LOVE the RUM and COKE By Jonathan Miles I’M NOT TERRIBLY INTERESTED IN WHO INVENTED THE rum and Coke. Many years ago, a man with the glorious name of Fausto Rodriguez used to go around claiming he was present at its birth—he even shelled out for a full-page ad saying so in Life magazine—but alas, poor Fausto, no one ever believed him. Maybe it’s because the invention was so… obvious. Any one of us, needing to slake a tropical thirst, might have bumbled those two bottles together. No, the person I’m keen to identify and salute is the brilliant, sensitive soul who thought to add a big squeeze of lime juice to the drink, thereby transforming…

OUR KIND OF PLACE Bar None BRING CASH, CONVERSATION, AND A SENSE OF ADVENTURE TO THE ORIGINAL PINKIE MASTERS By Beth Ann Fennelly PHOTOGRAPHS BY JACQUELINE STOFSICK Let me tell you what you won’t find at the Original Pinkie Masters in Savannah: trendy cocktails. A credit card machine. (Apple Pay? Don’t make me snort into my gin. It’s cash only, baby.) People scrolling through their phones (I foolishly checked mine early on, and a ruddy, seafaring type roared, “Hey, Red! Put down your gadget and meet your neighbors! Pretend it’s the nineties!”). You won’t find a marketing campaign or a social media strategy. You won’t find a TV playing, unless the World Series is on; during the 2016 election campaign, the bar banned the TV altogether. In other words, Pinkie’s…

Kindred Souls The rejuvenating powers of a scraggly mountain dog Rick Bragg writing about a stray that changed his life for the better? I’m in. The G&G contributor’s new book, The Speckled Beauty: A Dog and His People, Lost and Found, dives into his relationship with Speck, who appeared when the world was throwing haymakers at the Alabama author. Speck is no wonder dog: He taunts the FedEx man, loves to roll in a good pile of manure, and howls like a fool. But like many pets, Speck gives Bragg something he wasn’t expecting, a helping paw in a time of need. Good dog.…

Social Chatter GARDENANDGUN.COM AND BEYOND WE ASKED... Nothing goes better with a cocktail than… On Facebook and Twitter, readers told us their ideal happy-hour pairings. Sweet tunes and great friends. Peanuts don’t hurt either. @ToddAnderson2 Some classic Allman Brothers playing. Beth Heyduck Warren An old dog by your side. Amy Tahl Jester A fire. Could be a campfire or a fireplace. Judy Diesslin Gift A football game. @bigreddaniell Ice. It’s hot out there! Tricia Leyte-Vidal A starry night. Paula Ussery A sunset on Lake Travis. @raybeve The coo of a rain crow and the aroma of honeysuckle. Fanon Popp A designated driver. Diane Elizabeth Hershberger Another cocktail. Camille Chaffin Whitehead…

MUSIC Music City Marvel FOLLOWING UP ONE OF THE MOST STRIKING DEBUTS IN YEARS, YOLA LETS IT ALL FLY ON HER SOPHOMORE ALBUM By Matt Hendrickson Joseph Ross Smith Hiiiiiiiiiiii, it’s me!” cackles Yola, her boisterous greeting practically exploding through the phone when I reach her at her home in Nashville earlier this summer. “Now, how are you?” (Not bad, thanks for asking!) Chatting with Yola feels like catching up with an old friend, even if we’ve just met. She has a disarmingly positive demeanor, a bawdy sense of humor, and an infectious laugh that slices through cynicism like a chef speed-chopping onions. That personality—along with a gorgeous and booming singing voice—endeared her to fans and critics upon the release of her 2019 debut, Walk through Fire, which garnered the…

Woman of Her Word A poet’s mighty memoir When Joy Harjo was a girl growing up in the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, she hid under the kitchen table to hear her mother share secrets with friends. “My ears were bent for stories, for the forbidden, the mystery pieces,” Harjo writes in her remarkable new memoir, Poet Warrior (W. W. Norton). Now a three-term U.S. poet laureate who lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Harjo describes how words became her weapon, her muse, and her connection to her ancestors. “A family is essentially a field of stories, each intricately connected,” she writes. “History lives within us.” —CJ Lotz…

Pork to Go A Saturday stop at Saigon Each Saturday morning at Saigon Supermarketin Mobile, Don Nguyen smears a butterflied pig with hoisin sauce and garlic and roasts it until the skin crackles. His wife, Elizabeth, works the counter, selling fried sweet potatoes and egg rolls. In a state obsessed with barbecue, their roasted pork, cleavered to order, is among the very best. Look in the refrigerator case for house-made tubs of carrot pickle. It’s the perfect slaw for barbecue. And it goes great on hot dogs. —JTE…

SOUTHERN STYLE Take It Outside FESTIVE SERVING SETUPS FOR ENTERTAINING ALFRESCO Better by the Batch Pretty vessels for hosting a crowd DISPENSER Stock this sturdy glass and ceramic number from the pottery experts at Casafina, in Portugal, with a specialty cocktail, and let your guests serve themselves ($130; casafinagifts.com). PUNCH BOWL SET A lovely engraved wisteria motif weaves around each piece of this stunning set by William Yeoward, ready and waiting for your favorite punch recipe, spiked or not ($895; william yeowardcrystal.com). PITCHER & GLASSES The Bahamian designer Amanda Lindroth’s eponymous collection of home goods exalts all things tropical, including this seagrasswrapped pitcher ($75), ideal for from-scratch lemonade, and matching glasses ($64 for four; amandalindroth.com). Set design by Linden Elstran/Art Department; food styling by Victoria Granof/Pat Bates…

The CROWD PLEASER 24 HOUR PUNCH A BOWL, a DIPPER, and a BOTTLE of BOURBON: A SPIRITED MISSISSIPPI SPIN on the CHURCH-LADY FAVORITE LIVES UP to ITS NAME By Helen Ellis have I ever said the words, “Honey, did you see where I put the coconut cream?”? Never. Not while making a drink, anyway. ¶ It’s a delicious tradition Cary and I have created, and the drinks themselves are beautiful just to look at. But it’s harder than I thought it would be to make them. Squeezing a dozen fresh limes by hand becomes wearying, and capturing fennel pollen—even with my tiny pollen net—is a real challenge. And muddling. Muddling! Until Cary gave me a muddler, I was crushing green tomatoes with a spoon. Not advisable. But it is…

The EVENING RITUAL SMOKED BOURBON CINNAMON GINGER TEA COCKTAIL A CHEF and COOKBOOK AUTHOR JOINS HIS TWO FAVORITE DRINKS for THIS SOOTHING SIPPER By Alexander Smalls ALL THE SWEET TEA I CONSUMED AS A CHILD IN SOUTH Carolina seeded what has become a passion for life. From humble beginnings, I emerged as a young opera singer, and then as a chef, writer, and restaurateur—professions that have included frequent travels to Europe, Asia, and Africa, places with engaging tea traditions of their own that caused my youthful love of the beverage to blossom. I now take great delight in my daily ritual of drinking tea. It’s only natural that it would eventually make its way into my evening cocktail. Beyond teatime, it’s bourbon time. All my friends and family know bourbon as…

LONE STAR IN A STATE THAT PRODUCES THE NATION’S MOST ELITE HIGH SCHOOL QUARTERBACKS, ALLEYESINTEXAS THIS SEASON WILL BE ON QUINNEWERS. BUT THE SENIOR WITH THE TRADEMARK BLOND MULLET AND THE ROCKET-LAUNCHER ARM SEEMS TO BE ONE OF THE FEW NOT BUYING INTO THE HYPE BY MONTE BURKE PHOTOGRAPHS BY FREDRIK BRODEN When Quinn Ewers was a young boy, he and his father, Curtis, would sometimes head up to the high school field in Pleasanton, Texas, to play football. “We had a lot of fun,” Curtis says. “I’d get down on my knees and we’d play tackle, and then we’d just throw the ball back and forth.” ¶ One day, another father-son duo showed up to play catch. “My son wanted to be a quarterback, and I was going to…

CONTRIBUTORS Alexander Smalls WRITER “I’ve been all over, but where I come from is at the core of who I am” —Alexander Smalls, on his affinity for bourbon and tea (see p. 83) “The first alcohol we drink as Southerners is cheap whiskey,” Alexander Smalls says. “And we spend the rest of our lives figuring out what we can put in it.” These days, Smalls enjoys infusing tea in his top-shelf bourbon, as he shares in “In Good Spirits” (p. 83). “I’ve been all over the place, but where I come from is at the core of who I am,” says the South Carolina–born and New York–based author, chef, restaurateur, and opera singer. During the pandemic, Smalls took on perhaps his most exciting project yet: designing and curating the…

INTERVIEW Free Spirit IAN SOMERHALDER’S WINDING JOURNEY FROM CAJUN COWBOY TO HOLLYWOOD STAR TO BOURBON BOSS By John Meroney Grooming: Fabiola Arancibia for TOMLINSON MANAGEMENT GROUP; production/photo editor: Natalie Gialluca PHOTOGRAPHS BY ERIC RAY DAVIDSON It helps curb the cravings. But…makes for a lot of lushy vamps.” That’s a line from an early episode of The Vampire Diaries—the TV series that became a worldwide phenomenon over eight seasons—describing vampires’ love of spirits. In the show, the two vampire brothers, Damon and Stefan Salvatore, played by Ian Somerhalder and Paul Wesley, raise this to an art form with their consumption of bourbon. It’s also a story element that inspired Somerhalder and Wesley to start a distillery and release their bourbon, Brother’s Bond, earlier this year. ¶ The venture fits with Somerhalder’s…

Swampy Grooves Maggie Rose gets down in the Shoals Maggie Rose HAVE A SEAT Versatile enough to have shared the bill with pop superstar Kelly Clarkson and performed at the Grand Ole Opry more than eighty times, Maggie Rose is one of Nashville’s most dynamic artists, blending rock, country, and soul. On her remarkable third album, Have a Seat—recorded at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama—she revels in the Shoals groove with simmering cuts such as “Saint” and “Are We There Yet,” gently prods the listener with thought-provoking lyrics, and gets all the funk out with “What Makes You Tick,” featuring pal Marcus King on guitar. Rose also possesses a powerhouse voice, and on Have a Seat, she uses it with stunning results. —MH…

CROSSROADS A Perfect Mash-Up A SOUTH CAROLINA DISTILLERY TEAMS UP WITH ALLAN BENTON’S ICONIC TENNESSEE SMOKEHOUSE TO CREATE A BOURBON UNLIKE ANY OTHER By Wayne Curtis PHOTOGRAPHS BY HEATHER ANNE THOMAS Smoke and spirits are well-known co-conspirators. Think of whiskeys from Scotland, or mezcals from Mexico. For years, Ann Marshall and Scott Blackwell, the owners of High Wire Distilling Co. in Charleston, South Carolina, have been mulling how to create a smoky spirit of their own. After all, “we’re both Southern,” Blackwell says, “and there’s barbecue and smoked ham and bacon here.” The duo first considered making an experimental smoked sorghum spirit (unexciting), and then gave more thought as to how to add smoke after a trip to Grenada, where they discovered Rivers Royale Grenadian Rum, a local product boldly…

DRINKS Juicy Secrets THREE DELICIOUS SPINS ON WATERMELON, THE ESSENTIAL HOME BAR INGREDIENT OF THE SEASON By Wayne Curtis Food and prop styling by Charlotte Autry PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOHNNY AUTRY “When a real southern epicure wants a particularly enticing drink he takes the heart of the luscious melon, puts it in a tall glass, pours rum over it, adds a dash of lemon juice and a quantity of ice, and there you are!” There you are, indeed. These straightforward directions for making a watermelon cocktail date to a 1909 newspaper column. Perfect? Perhaps. It’s simple and sublimely refreshing. Too simple? Maybe. Drinkers today want layers—cocktails able to converse in a half dozen languages. Yet the uncanny efficiency of watermelon to quench persists, as the following trio of recipes assure us.…

THE BEST OF SOUTHERN HOMES, GARDENS, STYLE, AND MORE GOOD HUNTING MADE IN THE SOUTH A Case for Butterflies THE EPHEMERAL BECOMES ETERNAL IN THE HANDS OF DESIGNER DAWN NAKAMURA By Caroline Sanders PHOTOGRAPHS BY JACQUELINE STOFSICK After tucking her daughters into bed and watching the windows darken along her quiet, palmetto-lined street on Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina, Dawn Nakamura sits at her dining room table, front door open to the night. Humming cicadas and the occasional foghorn from the nearby harbor drift in and out of her consciousness, but Nakamura’s focus lies on the meticulous task at hand: configuring preserved butterflies and moths into three-dimensional, soul-stirring still-life displays beneath glass domes. “I think of them like flower arrangements,” Nakamura says. But instead of oleander and jasmine plucked from her…

The MEMORY MAKER MARTINI FIXED with GIN or VODKA, THIS CLASSIC COCKTAIL TETHERS a NASHVILLE NATIVE to HER LOVED ONES I NEVER HAD A FAKE ID. THERE WAS NEVER REALLY ANYONE who looked enough like me to be able to source such a collegiate luxury, though knowing the rule abider I once was, I probably wouldn’t have been slick enough to use it anyway. My drinking life began, therefore, not in bars like a civilized human, but in dorm rooms where we drank from waxy paper cups made for dining hall coffee, not the inevitable bottom-shelf vodka that must be drunk quick, or the liquor will eat right through. And really, who wants to take their time with Aristocrat or—God help me—Popov, anyway? It’s almost, almost, funny that the…

The CONVERSATION STARTER La PIÑA A PINEAPPLE RUM INSPIRES an EXQUISITE DAIQUIRI— and REFLECTIONS on HISTORY By Von Diaz WHAT WE FIND DELICIOUS MARKS WHERE WE’RE from—geography, history, what grows locally, our economic status, what our parents cooked. But I’ve come to believe that some of the foods we love are in our blood. I was raised in the South but born in Puerto Rico, and one of my most rooted flavors is pineapple. Sour sweet, deeply tropical, bitingly enzymatic, and nourishing, pineapple tastes better than almost anything on earth. My favorite cake: pineapple upside-down. My favorite Haribo gummy bear: clear. I add pineapple to my morning smoothies, I grill and serve it alongside adobo-marinated steak, its aroma forms the top note of my dryer sheets. And so when I…

Pass The Love Nothing says you’re thinking of someone quite like a Hand-Delivered home-cooked meal. As the pandemic shuttered restaurants, many chefs stepped up to feed people in need, and these five C omforting Dishes from some of the South’s most generous KitchenPros are just the thing to show you care—should you be visiting a family member, new parents, a neighbor, or anyone who could Use a Boost By Jenny Everett Photographs by Johnny Autry Wardrobe styling by Morgan Purdy Illustrations by Laura Shallcrass Food and Prop Styling by Charlotte Autry 1 Freezer Pleaser TOAST A FRIEND WITH A COCKTAIL›INSPIRED ICEBOX TREAT Last Thanksgiving, chef Ashley Christensen; her wife, Kaitlyn Goalen; and several of Raleigh’s most talented and charitable chefs served a beautiful restaurant-level meal for 250 people at Shepherd’s…

WEEKENDS Winston-Salem’s Green Heart IN THIS LEAFY PIEDMONT CITY, MORAVIANS, TOBACCO MAGNATES, AND MODERN GARDENERS HAVE ALL FOUND FERTILE SOIL FOR THEIR VISIONS By CJ Lotz PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOEY SEAWELL The cool, curved metal sides of the greenhouse at Reynolda Gardens rise from the ground just as Google Maps coos, “You’ve arrived.” Ferns sprout around the rock base of the conservatory, and frills of tropical greenery flash behind glass walls. Storybook elegant, it’s a living reminder of the innovative construction, curiosity for travel, and immense wealth that sprang from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, soil in the early twentieth century. Reynolda, an oasis that Katharine Reynolds, the wife of tobacco magnate R. J. Reynolds, dreamed up and built at the beginning of the 1900s, makes a worthy first stop on a tour…