Even before the PBS series , our restaurant in Kinston, North Carolina, had become a destination. Over the course of those first five years, word of mouth decreed Chef & the Farmer a “worth the drive” special-occasion spot serving hyper-regional Southern food in an unlikely, out-of-the-way, some-say-dying-others-say-dead town. Anybody attached to the experience we provided at Chef should have been patting themselves on the back a million miles a minute at such praise. But nothing made me feel more like a cat whose fur has been stroked the wrong way than when people greeted our restaurant’s host, one foot in the door, with “We drove the way from Raleigh, more than!” Or “Can you believe we left the beach to drive ? We must be crazy.” They didn’t say this, but you could see it on their faces: .
