Heralded by The New York Times as “the most conspicuously gifted American chef of his generation,” Sean Brock has been leading a revival of the cuisine of the Southern US for over 20 years. Raised in rural Virginia, Brock graduated from culinary school in 2000. Just three years later, aged 24, he was appointed Executive Chef at the Hermitage Hotel and Capitol Grille restaurant in Nashville, Tennessee, where he rapidly achieved acclaim for his contemporary interpretation of Southern cuisine.
In 2010, he founded the first Husk restaurant in Charleston, South Carolina—further outposts have since opened in Nashville, Savannah, and Greenville—and became chef and partner of McCrady’s and McCrady’s Tavern in the same city. Husk was credited with revamping local cuisine and reviving long-forgotten recipes and ingredients, with The New York Times calling it “the most important restaurant in the history of Southern cooking.”
In 2019, Brock returned to Nashville, where he now runs three different restaurants: Joyland, Audrey, and June.
Brock won the James Beard Award for Best Chef, Southeast in 2010. He is a four-time nominee and one-time semifinalist for Outstanding Chef and a two-time nominee for Rising Star Chef.
Restaurants
At the heart of Brock’s restaurant portfolio is Audrey, an homage to his Appalachian roots, the foodways of the rural South, his love of Japanese culture and, above all, the cooking and hospitality of his grandmother. Audrey Morgan, from whom the restaurant takes its name, spotted her grandson’s interest in food and nurtured it from an early age, passing on her considerable know-how in growing, preserving, and preparing delicious food.
Opened in East Nashville in 2021, Audrey aims to honor that legacy, serving beautifully finessed southern fare, from red grits and johnnycakes to rosy-centered ribeye with charred okra.
In 2022, it was included in both Esquire's 40 Best New Restaurants in America and the Robb Report’s 10 Best New Restaurants in America.
In the same building as Audrey, Brock simultaneously opened the 37-seat avant-garde restaurant June, where he and his team take advantage of a cutting-edge R&D laboratory to showcase the most experimental side of his cooking, serving an extended tasting menu.
A year earlier, he had launched his Nashville empire with the playful Joyland, where he indulges his love of cheeseburgers and Southern fried chicken, serving comfort food with the aim of “bringing joy to East Nashville.”
Recipes and dishes
The cuisine at Audrey is richly inspired by the traditions of Brock’s upbringing in Virginia, and the ingredients found in Appalachia. The restaurant’s seasonal menus feature foods with evocative names like greasy beans, killed lettuces, and sour corn, combined in mouthwatering dishes prepared with Brock’s unique talent and served with his personal artistry. He claims that after maturing as a person and a chef, he has finally understood the value of “complexity within simplicity.” He puts this philosophy into practice in dishes such as rosin potatoes served in a basket made from kudzu vine, Jimmy Red grits with hamachi and bay laurel, and beet and black-walnut tart.
Brock’s first cookbook, Heritage, made the New York Times’ bestseller list and won the 2015 James Beard Award for American Cooking. It was followed in 2019 by South, which also became a New York Times bestseller and was nominated for a James Beard Award.
Among his many TV appearances, Brock hosted season two of the Anthony Bourdain-produced show Mind of a Chef, for which he received a Daytime Emmy Award nod for Outstanding Culinary Host. He also won the Next Great Chef episode of the Food Network Challenge, was featured on the Netflix show Chef’s Table, and appeared on Iron Chef America.
