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Certainly in my house growing up, it didn't matter how great the rest of the meal was.

decided to be a. vegan.Born and raised in the lush Pacific Northwest, he says that he chose a life of veganism at a young age.

“That’s when I really started learning how to cook” he says, “because no one would cook for me.”.That same scrappiness and mindfulness informs every aspect of the operations at Hogstone’s Wood Oven and the forthcoming Ælder in Orcas Island, WA, where Blackinton is the chef-owner, butcher and resident farmer.But Blackinton isn’t a vegan anymore—far from it.. “One day, I decided I was done with this vegan thing,” says the chef, laughing.

“I really wanted to start eating meat again, but to feel good about it, I needed to know how to do the deed myself.” Before opening Hogstone’s in 2013, Blackinton learned how to hunt and raise animals for food, mastering best practices for slaughtering and butchering that he now relies on almost daily.. Jordana Rothman,.Restaurant Editor, admits that “a lot of people talk about this notion of farm to table.” But this isn’t a gimmick—for her, “Jay Blackinton is taking it to its most ambitious extreme.”.

Blackinton sources most of his food from the island, and most of that from the restaurant’s proprietary farm.

To describe his food philosophy, he cites “this idea that right here, right now, what’s happening—we can build a meal from this.” Nilou Motamed,.(featuring Michael Twitty, author of the new F&W favorite,.

Rice: A Savor the South Cookbook. )celebrated rice in its many splendored forms.

But there's a voice that's been left out of the recent conversation.. Valerie Erwin closed her Philadelphia restaurant, Geechee Girl Rice Cafe, in January 2015, capping off a 12-year run as a neighborhood restaurant-turned-destination for lovers of Lowcountry cuisine, as well as foods from the Southern diaspora.Rice was right there in the name, front and center in the dishes that Erwin and her sisters had learned to love growing up.