Innholdsfortegnelse for June/July 2024 i Garden & Gun

.01 PODCAST Listen Up If you’re a fan of the outdoors, you’ll love The Wild South, G&G’s new podcast. Cohosted by editor in chief David DiBenedetto and contributing editor T. Edward Nickens, the show features interviews with legends of the sporting world as well as those next in line to pick up the torch, all while digging into the conservation issues that impact the land we love. You’ll also hear about raising kids in the outdoors, along with plenty of stories of successes—and failures—in the field. Go to gardenandgun.com/podcast or search for “Garden & Gun” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. Season One guests: OUTDOORS ICON FLIP PALLOT CHEF ANDREW ZIMMERN FLY-FISHING GUIDE HILARY HUTCHESON AND MORE LISTEN AT: gardenandgun.com/podcast .02 RECIPES Eat Your Bourbon In his…

Find us on Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), and TikTok @gardenandgun THREE CHEERS I enjoyed reading “Art’s Rising Vanguard” (April/May 2024), and now I’m ready to create! Andrew “Honey” Hopkins has a love for the beauty of life and captures it through his paintings, antique hunts, Champagne moments, and reimagined aristocratic lifestyle. Sepia BakerNashville, Tennessee I was so very happy to see Andrew LaMar Hopkins on the cover of the April/May 2024 issue. I whooped when I pulled it out of my mailbox. Nancy GilbertsonNew Orleans, Louisiana I keep the most recent issue of G&G on my bedside table and read a bit at a time. It’s like having a constant conversation with old and new friends. Shannon KellyAugusta, Georgia NO THANK U As a properly raised Southern lady, I…

It took a full decade after Amy Parker Anderson and Huntley Rodes first met in the New York City fashion world for the pair to realize, over a chance dinner, that they shared a love of golf. The next time the two got together, they did so with Rodes’s friend Jenna Walter, a former Division 1 player, for a round on the links of Gaylord Springs in Nashville, the city all three now call home. As they made their way across the greens that day in 2021, in outfits Rodes describes with a laugh as “barely cobbled together,” the conversation kept returning to the lack of stylish clothing options for female golfers. Over beers and pizza after the game, the trio wasted no time mapping out what a line of…

Looking for Andy Griffith: A Father’s Journey, The University of North Carolina Press, $28 Halfway through Looking for Andy Griffith: A Father’s Journey, Evan Dalton Smith’s deep, knotty dive into his adulation for the late actor and North Carolina icon, I found myself reminded, weirdly, of another book: Prague, Arthur Phillips’s 2002 novel about twentysomething expats in Budapest in the heady wake of the Berlin Wall’s collapse. Phillips’s nostalgia-plagued characters find real life to be somewhere out of reach, “trapped in the amber of some heirloom era,” as Phillips wrote about the book, or dwarfed by the “glories of the future and the fairytale splendor of the past.” They go about the novel plagued with suspicions that real life is happening in Prague—that’s the joke of the title—while they’re stuck…

A CELEBRATION OF SOUTHERN FOOD AND DRINKDRINKS You recall, of course, what triggered the mutiny on the H.M.S. Bounty. You don’t? Well, it was a theft from the captain’s private provision of coconuts, a transgression that set in motion the infamous uprising. “There’s nothing more refreshing than coconut water,” the accused thief notes in the novelization of the event. “Such a tempting sight, a great heap of them.” If pineapples symbolize hospitality, let us consider coconuts rather than apples the symbol of temptation. After all, beyond being a tasty, nutritious fruit, the coconut is perhaps the most useful product of the tropics—the Swiss Army knife of the plant kingdom, as some have called it. It quenches thirst and supplies oil. You can weave the shell’s fiber wrapping into rope, turn…

While touring a farm outside Baltimore a few years ago, chef Kat Petonito and her team spotted gemlike orange fruits, wrapped in thin papery husks, sprawling across the soil. The farmer lifted the bug net so they could take a closer look—and enjoy a taste. “He plucked a couple off the ground and handed them to us to snack on,” says Petonito, the executive chef at Washington, D.C.’s the Duck & the Peach, La Collina, and the Wells. “I was expecting a sour, gooseberry-esque taste but was met with a completely different flavor and fell instantly in love.” The mystery fruit, she learned, was a ground-cherry (also called a husk cherry), and it has since become a seasonal staple on her menus. “Most caped fruits are tart, but that’s not…

STEP NO. 1 DOOR JAM KNOCKER Arrange flowers and greenery in the basket of Michael Healy’s solid cast-brass door knocker for a greeting that delights the senses ($140; michaelhealy.com). PAINT Now that the United Kingdom–based Little Greene Paint & Paper’s rich hues have crossed the pond, those aiming for a striking first impression can try such offerings as Adventurer, the plum tone seen here ($52 per quart, $108–$155 per gallon; littlegreene.us). STEP NO. 2 WARM RECEPTION WALLPAPER What better way to feather the entrance of a nest than with this new wallpaper from the British fashion designer and illustrator Giles Deacon’s collection for Sanderson, a bird-egg motif that pays homage to Victorian studies of the natural world ($362 per roll; williamssonoma.com)? LAMP AND SHADE Return home to a golden glow…

1 Ponza Catch the ferry at Terracina in Lazio, and soon you’re on an enchanting island with a picturesque village stacked along the Tyrrhenian coast. Blue, red, yellow, and white boats bob in the harbor, and you can hire one to take you to hidden coves. Or ride a Vespa into the hills covered with wildflowers and find your own hidden beaches. The vibe is relaxed, even retro. Lively seafood restaurants, cobbled lanes, tumbling bougainvillea and jasmine—this is the island paradiso one dreams of. At the Grand Hotel Santa Domitilla, you swim in grottoes, one cool, one warm. Odysseus is said to have spent a year on the island. Easy to see why. 2 Sansepolcro This handsome market town in the valley of the Tiber is home to “the greatest…

TASTE AND SEE IS THERE A POPULAR RESTAURANT DISH that hasn’t been endlessly photographed, filtered, and fine-tuned on social media? Probably not. But be thankful that no one has yet found a way to send taste through your gadget. For the adventurous eater, travel brings new horizons. ¶ Taking a trip with an accomplished chef is among the most fulfilling ways to bring context to cuisine. Chefs put words to flavors and aromas that can be elusive, and encourage travelers to understand food through their own experiences and stories, building a bridge between near and far. ¶ Here are three tours to expand your gustatory horizons. 1 Mezcal Memories SOUTHERN MEXICO The cooking legend Bill Smith ran the kitchen at Crook’s Corner in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, for a quarter…

AS A BOY, HOWARD CONYERS TAGGED ALONG WITH HIS FATHER, HARRISON, to auctions and estate sales all across their native South Carolina. A longtime professional welder and farmer, Harrison might pick up a vintage washing machine at one stop, perhaps a pea sheller at the next. He’d often let his young son make the bids, directing Howard when to raise the paddle and when to let it fall. In the early 1990s, Harrison, who is now seventy-two, joined a group standing around a machine at an auction. “I didn’t know what it was,” he recalls. “But the other fellows didn’t know either.” Harrison forked over ten dollars and took it home. A bootlegger friend then helpfully explained what the contraption could do: crush corn into meal. And with a heap…

DANGER: ALLIGATORS AND SNAKES IN AREA. STAY AWAY FROM THE WATER, read the signs tacked to the rails of the creaky wooden platform behind Ray’s Millpond restaurant. But we were a horde of children on summer vacation, and reading, for those of us who could, was the last thing on our to-do list. Hyped up on fried fish and sweet tea, my cousins and I were bound headlong for the swamp. I was normally a cautious child. But here in Ray City, in South Georgia, along the overgrown berm of a pond long abandoned by its namesake gristmill, the sunlight waning through the pines and moss-drenched cypresses only added romance to the peril. GATOR! A little voice yelled and someone pointed to a floating log. You could barely hear the…

EDITOR’S LETTER Follow me on Instagram and X (formerly Twitter) @davedibenedetto As this issue was going to press, a pitched battle was taking place on gardenandgun.com that reverberated across our social media channels. For our annual Southern bracket, this year we asked readers to vote on the best takeout biscuit in the South. Just narrowing down the initial field to thirty-two entrants was a thorny task, with national and regional chains, convenience stores, and local favorites all in the mix. Then we unleashed the bracket. Immediately, things got heated. And hearts got broken. In the locals section, my own favorite, the sausage biscuit from Sewee Outpost in Awendaw, South Carolina, went down early. Among the gas stations, Golden Pantry’s sausage, egg, and cheese biscuit, straight from my Georgia youth, fell…

Tyler Florence has spotted a tom turkey, one of two dozen meandering in the driveway of the home he shares with his wife, Tolan, and three children in her Marin County hometown, just north of San Francisco. “I’ve been outside twice today to get the mail,” he says with a laugh. “This turkey has been eyeballing me!” The bowhunter plans to head to Sonoma the next week to bag one, and if he succeeds, “I’ll smoke it, shred it, and make a big gumbo out of it.” ¶ As the fifty-three-year-old native of Greenville, South Carolina, bounces with enthusiasm between topics—the spring turkey season, his cast-iron collection, the secret to the multistep sous vide fried chicken he serves at his Wayfare Tavern (a dollop of buttermilk brine in the breading…

Most chefs will tell you their best recipes start with a memory. For Silver Iocovozzi, one in particular stands out: his grilled eggplant smothered in a bright mix of seasoned tomatoes, a dish he first tasted on a beach in the Philippines. Iocovozzi, who grew up in North Carolina, runs Neng Jr.’s in Asheville with his husband, Cherry. Iocovozzi’s father was an American serviceman. His mother, Neneng, is from the Philippines. (Her nickname is Neng, and he was so much like her when he was growing up, people called him Neng Jr.) The tiny restaurant has become a national darling for a menu that marries Filipino food with Appalachian ingredients and technique. The eggplant, a favorite with diners, began on a visit to his mother’s homeland in 2018, during a…

Over his more-than-fifty-year quest to make world-class cured hams and bacon, Allan Benton has remained a perpetual student, always open to the secrets that salt, smoke, and time have yet to divulge. “Even after five decades, I’m still learning, and there are surprises,” says the famed owner of Benton’s Smoky Mountain Country Hams, in Madisonville, Tennessee. A big one came last summer, when his son Darrell left a successful career as a radiologist and returned to Madisonville to work with his father producing what might be the country’s most praised pork. “I was not expecting that,” Allan says. “I thought he had it made as a doctor. But he’s the happiest I’ve seen him since his childhood.” As Darrell walks through the Benton’s facility—housing a shop up front, curing and…

MY HUSBAND, A BORN-AND-RAISED New Yorker, tells me, a Southern lady who has lived in Manhattan for more than thirty years: “You go to book readings, museums, the opera. You’re more of a New Yorker than I am. I don’t like to do any of those things.” This is true. When my husband “takes me to the theater,” he walks me from our Upper East Side apartment to Times Square, treats me to lunch, and then deposits me at the theater door. This works out well for us because he doesn’t have to sit through “a bunch of people talking or moving around” (a.k.a. dancing), and I don’t have to sit beside him as he stews about the money we spent on his ticket. All my husband needs is Central…

THIS YEAR MARKS THE THIRTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE RELEASE OF FORREST GUMP, A FILM SOUTHERN IN ITS SETTING AND SENSIBILITY, AND GLOBAL IN ITS RESONANCE. The movie sprang, of course, from the eponymous 1986 novel by the late Winston Groom, who was a Garden & Gun contributing editor. When asked how the film version affected his life, his favorite response became “I upgraded to a better brand of toilet paper.” ¶ That’s because upon its release on July 6, 1994, Forrest Gump—directed by Robert Zemeckis, and starring Tom Hanks, Gary Sinise, Robin Wright, Mykelti Williamson, and Sally Field, among others—took the world by storm, earning nearly $700 million at the box office and six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor, for Hanks. ¶ Three decades later,…

“Weeding is one of the best ways to overcome writer’s block for me”—Cynthia R. Greenlee, who wrote about South Carolina moonshine makers (p. 140) Cynthia R. Greenlee WRITER The journalist and scholar Cynthia R. Greenlee’s creativity comes through in her stories: her James Beard Award-winning essay on grits for VICE, for instance, or the article for this issue on a family of moonshine makers in South Carolina (p. 140). “But as much as I love writing, I need to do other things to open up the other parts of my brain—like gardening,” she says. “Weeding is one of the best ways to overcome writer’s block for me.” Recently, she’s been “rewilding” her Durham, North Carolina, front yard and tending to her side garden, which she planted with swaths of purple…

Don’t call it a revival, or a celebration of history, or even a renaissance. That’s not what the BambooBash is about. The annual get-together does bring a passel of bamboo fly rod makers and restorers and vintage tackle collectors to the banks of the Little River near Great Smoky Mountains National Park. There are piles of classic Pflueger Medalist reels, and you might find, and be able to cast, a fly line nearly a hundred years old. But this gathering of folks who are simply bonkers over bamboo rods is as much about the now and the next as it is the past. Each spring, for more than twenty years, enthusiasts have converged like a hatch of mayflies on the property of Dock’s on the River Motel, just outside Townsend,…

Morning rain streaks two plate-glass windows tucked into a redbrick facade. Three coffee drinkers, one with her nose in a book, perch on bentwood stools beneath a pressed tin ceiling, elbows on the white countertop. Stocked with cinnamon-dusted morning buns and ready-made sandwiches, a pastry case hugs the front door. Bags of artisanal masa and bottles of small-batch fish sauce line trim blue shelves. The vibe is Borough Market, London. The music, in this music-obsessed college town, is low and inconsequential. At Birdies, a new market café in Athens, Georgia, the soundtrack that matters is the hum of neighbors talking to neighbors. Once beloved for Saturday football and cheap beer, college towns like Athens have evolved into hives for creative entrepreneurs who want to live culturally rich and neighborhood-focused lives.…

In Ted Flato’s youth, summer days often meant snorkeling in the Nueces River, cooking outside over an open fire, or ambling through persimmons, prickly pear, sotol, and sedge grasses at Kickapoo Ranch, his family’s estate on the western edge of Texas’s Hill Country. Nestled along four miles of the river’s banks, the land had been in his family since the 1930s, but Flato’s parents made it their own, constructing for their visits a one-room rock shelter void of running water and electricity. “It was like Little House on the Prairie,” Flato says, “and a lovely way to grow up.” In time, the family outgrew those rustic accommodations, and in the 1970s, his parents commissioned the revered modernist architect O’Neil Ford to design a house more in keeping with their vision…

Her frame looks like four Popsicle sticks jammed into a marshmallow. She commands attention due to her great height and awkward body composition. She is fluffy and top-heavy, gangly and unsteady. “What type of dog is she?!” they ask. They all ask. June Bug is a mutt, but I decided to make up a breed for her, something illustrative. Her face resembles that of a golden retriever, but her lineage is actually a mix of, in descending predominance, Siberian husky, Great Pyrenees, and rottweiler. She is stubborn like the first, independent like the middle, and aloof like the last. For her, it’s a nearly feral combination. She’s an Appalachian Golden Wolf, I say. While Appalachian Golden Wolves—as I have observed and classified them—are gruff, outdoor creatures, they are also sweet,…

Should we have stayed at home, / wherever that may be? —Elizabeth Bishop, “Questions of Travel” COMING AND GOING, PACKING AND unpacking. Where’s the green sweater? Oh, in Italy. Don’t we have a wok? Yes, in North Carolina. They’ve canceled the flight. We’re missing Tori’s birthday. We missed Carnevale. Really, the windows need washing. I forgot to plant the bulbs before we left. Who will house-sit the cats? Water is leaking out of the fridge? Yes, the cousins are coming to stay for two weeks. We live in two countries. When we’re in one house, the other sends subliminal messages: Come back. Surely one home in the place you love most is best, with vacations in other magnetic locations. Is that true? But where is the place you love best?…

1 Shinola Hotel DETROIT, MICHIGAN Detroit borders Canada, dips below zero degrees in winter, and long epitomized the American Rust Belt. And yet the Motor City, making a cultural comeback, shares a kinship with the South, thanks to the twentieth-century influx of Southerners, mostly Black, who moved here looking for opportunity. The Great Migration gave the world the soulful sounds of Motown—Berry Gordy’s family relocated from Georgia—and much more. The Shinola Hotel, a recent extension of the Shinola brand dreamed up by Texan Tom Kartsotis, expands the company’s celebration of American craftsmanship. It marries a pair of rehabilitated historic structures—a former department store and a sewing machine factory—with three new buildings, all filled with contemporary art. The compound straddles Parker’s Alley, lined with shops and eateries curated by Shinola creative…

YOU COULD BE FORGIVEN FOR ORGA-nizing a junket to the British Virgin Islands around three simple steps: (1) plop yourself in a lounge chair near the shimmering turquoise shallows; (2) order a round of Painkillers; (3) repeat as needed. But should ambition strike, there are ample reasons to venture out and get your feet wet (most often literally): The Baths, for one, the spectacular and photogenic playground of massive granite boulders that form grottoes and crystalline tide pools on the southwestern tip of Virgin Gorda. The timeless beach bars (the Soggy Dollar, Ivan’s Stress Free Bar, Foxy’s, et al.) along the southern coast of Jost Van Dyke. Pilgrimage-worthy restaurants like the Sugar Mill, in a candlelit four-century-old building on Tortola, the largest of the archipelago’s fifty-plus islands. Storied blue marlin…

ESSAY I WOULD HAZARD TO SAY THERE AREN’T MANY world-class writers who spent their last days hanging off the back of a garbage truck, smelling of “piss and green mayonnaise.” Harry Middleton did. And Middleton, who wrote principally about his life among mountain streams, was a world-class writer. Because he has been nearly forgotten, I want to say that right up front. I first heard of Harry Middleton from my cousin Tye. Our fathers were brothers, but only my uncle Jerry was a fisherman. He and Tye actually named one of their cats after a famous fly, the Rat Faced McDougall. Uncle Jerry tried to teach me and Tye fly fishing on a Rocky Mountain stream when we were eight. When one of my backcasts set its hook in my…

My visits to Hot Springs, Arkansas, begin and end with filling a water bottle at the public jug fountain on Central Avenue. A carousel of spigots pour out the bounty: odorless, pristine mineral water that fell as rain four thousand years ago—when the pyramids were under construction in Egypt—and percolated deep into the earth, only to be forced up a fault line and out of the Ouachita Mountains to the tune of 700,000 piping hot (143°F) gallons a day. My childhood self, an annual visitor to Hot Springs National Park from my hometown of Little Rock, did not appreciate this miracle of geology. But if the science was lost on me, the fact that the fountains mysteriously emitted swirling vapor, and that I could dip my hand into a trickle…