Conversations on Childhood Flavors, Embracing Cultures, and the Beauty of a Simple Meal
By Megan Williams | Photos by Ashlee Glen
When it’s ready, your roux should look like peanut butter,” Candace Vinson said, standing in front of her stove in her 100-year-old home.
Vinson swirled the roux around the pan with a rubber spatula in a way that was effortless and seasoned, giving the sense that it’s a movement she has done time and time again in her 39 years. The scent wafting through the kitchen is nutty from the toasted roux and slightly sweet from the biscuits proofing on the sunlit countertop. She moves through the kitchen, rinsing mustard greens one moment and dropping celery ends in broth the next—it’s a beautiful balance of improv and choreographed movements that are the hallmark of a practiced chef.
As the Culinary Director for Hen and Hound Management Group, the managers behind The Water Dog, The Glass House, Fratelli’s, and 7 Rooftop Bar, Vinson gets her fair share of time in front of a stove—but it’s her childhood that inspires the meal she’s preparing in this moment.
“After the roux is done, I toss in the trinity of vegetables,” she said of the celery, onion, and green pepper she rustically chopped. “These vegetables are the ones I’m so familiar with because it’s what my mom always cooked with.”
Vinson grew up in Portsmouth, Virginia, an area that forms part of the U.S. military complex in Hampton Roads. Her childhood is earmarked by a transience that’s common in military towns—people from every branch of the military, representing a melting pot of cultures, moving in and moving on.
“There were a lot of people who brought in a lot of different cultural influences,” she said, recalling eating Filipino foods like lumpia from local restaurants and Ya Ka Mein from church fundraisers.
“Yock (referring to Ya Ka Mein) is a staple dish from where I’m from,” she said. “Black churches always had fundraisers and sold yock. Essentially you boil yock noodles in soy, oyster sauce, vinegar and onions. It almost tastes like adobo chicken but in a broth. You go back home—anyone born and raised in the 757 knows about yock.”
As Vinson strains a homemade broth of shrimp shells, smoked turkey leg, and odds and ends from the vegetables she’s working with (“I never waste anything”), you begin to see her childhood reflected in the saltiness of the broth, the pepperiness of the mustard greens, and the warmth of the biscuits rising in the sun.
“My dad used to always make soup,” she said, dipping a small spoon in the broth for a quick taste test before adding in chopped chicken thighs. “We would get home from church on Sundays and my dad would cook. Everyone would come to our house and just eat. That’s what made me become a chef—everyone is happy when they are eating together. On Sundays, it was peaceful. The rule for us kids was, ‘get out of your church clothes, put your play clothes on, eat, and go play.’ We’d eat whatever my dad had cooked and be outside playing double dutch or hopscotch.”
Vinson describes her family as “improv cooks,” using up whatever you had in the refrigerator or pantry and making something out of it. Oftentimes, those meals involved seafood that was
freshly caught by a family member off a nearby pier.
“A lot of people think of soul food as collard greens, mac and cheese, fried chicken,” she said. “Soul food is what imparts your memories. Everyone’s soul food is different. For me, that’s seafood.”
Vinson remembers crabbing for blue crabs with her father or celebrating a fresh catch of croaker and spot—two fish native to the East Coast—from her Uncle Curtis. Tossing in the freshly washed and chopped mustard greens, Vinson points to her refrigerator, decorated with magnetic letters and family photographs, where head- and tail-on croaker is wrapped in the freezer.
“Anytime I go back home, I bring a cooler with me just so I can bring back croakers and spots,” she laughed.
It’s this appreciation for local food and ingredients that informs Vinson’s cooking, both at home and at the restaurants. A graduate of Johnson & Wales University’s North Miami Campus, Vinson got a firsthand look at another cultural junction in Miami, and grew to love discovering the food that meant “home” to so many. After graduating, Vinson moved back to Virginia where she took a job at Colonial Williamsburg.
“One of the most significant milestones in my career was working at Colonial Williamsburg. I had the opportunity to receive more intricate training from chefs from around the world,” she explained.
“It was there that I learned about Virginia foodways and developed a deep appreciation for food history.”
Vinson treats her job as Culinary Director for Hen and Hound as a personal charge to educate customers on the Lynchburg region’s unique ingredients.
“I can’t wait to get my hands on a pawpaw,” she said, referring to the mango-banana-citrus fruit that grows wild along banks and waterways and is only ripe for a week or two out of the entire year.
Vinson uses her childhood, Virginia’s food history, and her own unique culinary point-of-view to inform the menus she creates under Hen and Hounds purview. Whether it’s a caramel-coated chicken wing as an ode to her husband who always requests an old-fashioned caramel cake; or she-crab croquettes, where the star of the show is Chesapeake blue crab, Vinson’s restaurant menus are equal parts nostalgic and inventive.
“Blue crab is home to me,” she said, pulling out a small tray of day-old rice to make crab fried rice, a creamy, salty accompaniment to the stew simmering on her stove. “I can’t live without rice, seafood, or my cast iron at home.”
Vinson whirls oil around a wok before dropping in a few roughly chopped green onions. Blue crab goes in next, followed by the rice—dry and firm, ready to take on the flavors of the crab and stew. With a gentle squeeze of one of the biscuits to make sure they have proofed enough, she brushes them with buttermilk and pops them in the oven, a sign that the meal is almost ready.
Watching Vinson in her home kitchen, which looks and functions like any other home cook’s kitchen, it’s almost difficult to make the connection between the young, apronless woman stirring stew on her glasstop and the meticulous, styled chef we know from Jefferson Street’s beloved restaurants. But as she puts two cornbread biscuits brushed with honey into a small bowl, each slightly askew and perched onto one another, and gives a deft swipe with a kitchen towel to the steaming bowl of stew, you see it. And as you expectantly dip your spoon into the stew, assembling the perfect bite of crab, rice, greens, smoked turkey, shrimp, and broth, you taste it, too.
HAVE A TASTE
Cook the recipes Chef Candace makes in this story! Find the recipes for her sweet cornbread biscuits and black eyed pea, chicken, and shrimp stew over crab fried rice on page 35 of the printed magazine.
Read digital version here >>
