Vivian Howard Biography

Vivian Howard is a television personality and chef from the United States. She is most known for being the head chef and co-owner of the Kinston, North Carolina-based restaurant Chef & the Farmer, as well as appearing in the award-winning PBS television series A Chef's Life. In 2004, Howard graduated from the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City. She interned at Wylie Dufresne's wd50 and worked as the Chef de Partie at Jean-Georges Vongerichten's Spice Market. Howard married one of her Voyage employees, Ben Knight, and the two launched a soup delivery service out of their Harlem apartment, which entailed chilling soup in the bathtub. Despite proposals from investors to create a physical presence in New York, the couple accepted Howard's parents' offer to purchase a restaurant in Kinston. Howard and Knight relocated to North Carolina in 2005 and founded Chef & the Farmer in 2006 in a former mule barn. More than 60% of the restaurant's ingredients are sourced within a 90-mile radius. The restaurant attempts to provide modern adaptations of traditional regional recipes gathered from members of the tiny community in Eastern North Carolina. Howard claims, "Our community's elders tell me how to construct something extremely basic. One of the things I appreciate about A Chef's Life and despise about current media in general is that [our society] is extremely young-person-new-ideas oriented, and I don't think people rely much on the wisdom of older people. It's been a pleasure to learn from and share with them." The Chef & the Farmer building was destroyed by fire in 2012 and had to be rebuilt. Howard and Knight opened the Boiler Room across the street from Chef & the Farmer in 2013, serving oysters and burgers. Deep Run Roots - Stories and Recipes from my Corner of the South, Howard's first cookbook, was released in October 2016. The book spent three weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List after its debut. Deep Run Roots: Stories and Recipes from My Corner of the South" won four IACP Cookbook Awards in 2017, including Cookbook of the Year, Julia Child First Book Award, Outstanding Restaurant Cookbook, and Outstanding Cookbook in the General Category. Howard intends to create another cookbook, which will be published in 2019.

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