Putting Charleston on a Plate

Meet Matt and Ted Lee, Otherwise known as The Lee Brothers
by Connie Allen

Matt and Ted Lee

Charleston has a way of inspiring – of drawing a person into its beauty and its charm.  It is a rare mix of old and new that lights inspiration and passion in the hearts of those who love this city. Among cobblestones and ironclad fences and in the crispness of winter passing met with that hint of humidity, I recently walked the streets where Matt and Ted Lee, James Beard award-winning authors and hometown heroes, described their childhood. Relocating from New York to Charleston at the tender ages of 11 and 8, Matt and Ted, respectively, enjoyed their childhoods living in one of the most iconic Rainbow Row homes, described as “a warbler-yellow house.”

I wanted to imagine what life for them must have been like — the unique opportunity to grow up on Rainbow Row in the heart of Charleston and how the smells, tastes, sights and sounds of the Lowcountry captured their hearts. It was surely a journey that was filled with many coincidences and chance encounters. Matt shared how they had “encountered numerous firsts” in their early years living here.

“We discovered boiled peanuts at the Charleston Royals baseball game, back when the team played College Park, and home runs hit beyond the outfield fence often smashed the windows of cars and houses along Rutledge Avenue. There was new lingo to learn — benne for sesame — and tastes to try: the melt-in-your-mouth, salty-sweet benne wafers at the Colony Bakery on King Street became a flavor as distinct to our new lives in Charleston, as the taste of an H&H bagel had been to our former home in Manhattan. We found, with the guidance of friends, the loquat trees on Chalmers Street and the mulberry tree that straddled the property line between the Hazel V. Parker Playground and the Carolina Yacht Club. Soon enough, we’d shucked our first oysters, learned how to throw a cast-net to reel in fresh shrimp and chomped on our first syrupy scuppernongs —as fun to say as they are to eat!”

When asked if growing up in the heart of Charleston impacted their journey in the culinary field, Ted shared, “Of course, we were oblivious then that our acclimation to Charleston would add up to any cultural understanding of Lowcountry food and food-traditions. In many cases, these new experiences didn’t seem related to food at all. We can’t remember who cooked those crabs we caught, but somebody must have; to us, crabbing was sport, pure and simple. And while those loquats and mulberries tasted good enough, we were far more enthralled by their projectile potential — the better to bean your friends and siblings with ….. and, truth be told, the occasional horse-carriage tour.”

The peach sunset over the city can catch you by surprise, just as moments that shape the direction of lives can never be planned. For the Lees, a Jaguar named Belle and a restaurateur named Uncle John were the adventures that prompted their journey into the culinary world. Ted shared how “Uncle John endeared himself to us forever by driving the old Jag to Charleston. But his gift to us in the realm of food—making us recognize that every weeknight pork chop or roasted potato can be treated as an indulgence and a delight to prepare—was an insight we’ve been dining out on ever since.”

With childhood memories of Charleston at heart, each Lee soon went a separate way to obtain their college educations in Massachusetts: Harvard for Matt and Amherst for Ted. Their new experiences began awakening their understanding of the regionality of food and the contrast of Northern to Southern foods. On that note, Matt and Ted decided to peddle boiled peanuts.  While their paths may have taken them North for education, their hearts were definitely still South as they established a fresh venture: The Lee Bros. Boiled Peanuts Catalogue. So, for them, heading home made sense. They soon opened a mail-order business on Broad Street for these as well as other Lowcountry pantry items. With demand for rare treasures to offer in their catalogue, they were determined to provide supply. And, like a modern-day Mark Twain novel, they traveled the roads of the South in search of the very finest. 

“At just the time we were delving deeper into Charleston’s classic culinary traditions—sourcing the correct red field peas and the perfect home-style fig preserves to carry in the mail-order catalogue—the city’s restaurant culture was maturing in new ways,” Matt noted.

In 1999, another piece of their incredible journey came together – a longtime customer who happened to be an editor of Travel & Leisure offered them a travel piece to write about their road trips. Soon after, an offer to write more travel stories emerged for Food & Wine. And, before they knew it, Matt and Ted had collected and enjoyed a successful 10-year career as food journalists, writing for Travel + Leisure, Food & Wine and the food and travel sections of the New York Times.

As the 1990s ended and the millennium New Year ball dropped, little did Matt & Ted realize what was on the horizon. Happenstance favored them again as they were speaking on a panel about regional Southern food in New York and a surprising proposition arrived.  According to Ted, “the late (and legendary) Maria Guarnaschelli, asked if we wanted to write a cookbook.” 

And so, their first cookbook, The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook, was published in 2006. It was a montage of sorts, of their 10-year career as food journalists. Described as “Southern tradition with inclusions of longer, more challenging recipes,” the book inspired its readers to appreciate what Ted explained as “the regionality of Southern cooking—which came as news to a lot of people. “

“We wanted to get across the message that people eat differently from place to place in the South, so you can't just talk about "Southern food” as a monolith — you need to talk about the food of the Appalachians, the food of New Orleans, the food of Texas, and of the Lowcountry,” he explained.

The book won two James Beard Awards – Best American and Cookbook of the Year.  It also won two IACPs – Best American and The Julia Child for Best First Book. As noted in the introduction to this cookbook, “the more we learned about the Lowcountry’s food traditions, the more we became keenly aware of what food existed here and not there—produce like scuppernong grapes and crowder peas and cymling squash; dishes like shrimp and grits and she-crab soup; even sugary grocery-store treats like Cheerwine soda and MoonPies.”

Following soon after, another book, The Lee Bros. Simple Fresh Southern, was published in 2009.  It included less tradition and more what Ted termed “quick knockouts to show home cooks that easy, weeknight cooking could have all the Southernism of the slow-smoked, long-simmered and the deep-fried.” Matt described it as “a collection of recipes and stories that shows not only what it’s like to grow up here and learn to cook here, but also how we come to be continually inspired by this place. Because whether we’re at the stove, out on the water, chatting with an historian or dining in a newly-opened restaurant, it seems we’re always learning, or seeing something from the past in a new light.” 

In 2013, The Lee Brothers – Charleston Kitchen was published. The newer book reflects how inspirational their experiences were. Ted further explained how “we deliver the city’s most iconic dishes done right—She-Crab Soup, Hoppin’ John, Huguenot Torte—but we also reacquaint home cooks with Lowcountry preparations that have been lost to time, like Groundnut Cakes, Syllabub and Peach Leather. Ever tasted Salsify “Oysters,” that 19th-century knockout? You will. Although we knew a good bit about Lowcountry cooking when we set out to write the book, we took nothing for granted in our research and in developing the recipes. We interviewed home cooks, chefs, farmers, fishermen, caterers and funeral directors to get the most accurate—and at the same time very intimate—perspective on Charleston foodways.”

The Lee Bros. have many more accomplishments to include, serving as on-air commentators for all 7 seasons of Unique Eats from 2010-13, which continues to air on the Cooking Channel.  In 2012, they took their knowledge and began a Cookbook Bootcamp – a two-day intensive workshop to inspire authors and chefs with a dream to write cookbooks. In 2015, two seasons of Southern Uncovered with the Lee Bros. were recorded, which then were aired on Ovation in 2016-17.  Their latest work, Hotbox: Inside Catering, the Food World’s Riskiest Business, takes its readers into the world of catering as the two roll up their sleeves as assistants to the caterer.

I encourage each one that reads this to dream big and to never allow anything to stop you from embracing your unique, personal journey. For these two, they followed their hearts, and Charleston is all the richer for it. And, like the fine recipes that withstands the test of time, their journey — an accumulation of experiences and amazing Lowcountry stories that inspire so many — will live forever. 

"These guys can cook! Just reading the recipes makes me ravenous for scintillating Southern dishes. Sign me up for Tuesday Fried Chicken and Sweet Potato Buttermilk Pie!" Bobby Flay