why do something as unwanted, meaning nobody was particularly crying out, you know what we need? we need rice that used to taste like it did in 1837. we need grits, better grits. what called to you that you felt compelled to answer? glenn: i m a cuisine whore, you know? i think that culture is interactive with cuisine, as soon as you look at cuisine, you re looking at politics. you re looking at medicine. you re looking at the advanced thinking. anthony: i ll agree with you that there is nothing more political than food. glenn: you got it. anthony: chef mike lata s restaurant fig was one of the first and most important on the charleston scene. determined to source the kind of local products that you used to find everywhere in the low country. as much as i d like to illustrate that solid grounding and traditional ingredients and preparations with my order, i could not resist the soft shell crabs, which are just in season. with a pasta and shaved bottarga, which frankly, i d sl
off shore to go and pick those fish up. we have to look for them. we have to go and sort of find the ones we re allowed to harvest. we are the last of the final frontier of hunters, you know, to go and to feed the world, and that s what we do. anthony: mark marhefka has been a fisherman since the 70s. he takes an unusual and much needed approach to catching fish. instead of raking the sea of the same overfished, mindlessly popular species, he passionately promotes the just as good and usually better, less known, and underutilized stuff. sean: one of the great things about the low country is the flavor of our waterways, and that wasn t being represented properly in all of the restaurants. then all of a sudden, i hear about this guy who has the most beautiful fish you ve ever seen, but you got to go to the dock and get it. [ laughter ] anthony: frustrated by the conventional wisdom, by the mishandling of fish by other distributors, and the narrow
glenn: that s got the entire history of southern agriculture in it. anthony: right here? glenn: right there in that little bowl. this whole idea of having a century in a dish, none of this stuff was here 20 years ago. anthony: near the end of the civil war during general sherman s scorched earth campaign, seed stores were a favored target. it was largely african slaves who were able to save the seeds that glenn is now able to locate and reintroduce. glenn: it is those people who kept the corn. it is those people who kept the cowpeas. it s those people who kept the vegetables because they couldn t buy their way out of not doing it. anthony: when you talk about chitterlings, pig foot, hog maws, african-americans in the north do not embrace those poor people, uh, classics of the south. there s an overlay of pain and oppression that goes with it. how do we combat that? glenn: what you re speaking about is walking away from your
complete meat processing. glenn: i think it s a combination of two massive cultural influences that came together at the same time. the idea of industrialization came late to the south. when it hit we got pellagra. the first nutrition laws in america were written in south carolina because everybody moved into mill villages and immediately started eating processed food because they weren t growing their food anymore. the second thing that happened is there was a massive amount of expertise that was lost during the civil war. anthony: a lot of the southern revival, the whole turnaround started with this guy, glenn roberts. a man who asked a simple question how come grits aren t as good as they used to be? and by starting the heirloom grain company anson mills, decided to do something about it. so why do this?