Growing up in Pulaski, Virginia, Jason Alley learned to make biscuits, fried chicken, and more. But when it came to pimento cheese, he preferred the processed, store-bought kind. “We’d get it from Wade’s in Dublin, where it’s pretty weird stuff. American cheese, Miracle Whip, and canned pimentos,” says the chef. “That’s what I grew up with, and I still love ...

Some plants enter softly into spring, like a quiet crocus emerging from warmed soil. But others positively explode on the scene in all their bright glory, especially when they’re planted en masse. From acres of bluebonnets to cherry blossoms by the hundreds of thousands, these jaw-dropping floral views will yank you right out of winter hibernation. (Photograph courtesy Gibbs Gardens) ...

Bahamians, like Southerners, are a hospitable bunch. Wherever there’s food, fellowship naturally follows—and there’s always room for friendly new faces at the supper table. That’s exactly the ethos the folks at Kamalame Cay, a private island resort that runs parallel to Andros Island (the largest but least populated island in the Bahamas), are channeling with their new Progressive Dinner Series. ...

With all of Austin abuzz during South by Southwest, the capitol city’s music, film, and interactive festival (March 11-20), leave it to Willie Nelson to find a way to host a more intimate (and arguably cooler) party. The Luck Reunion festival is going down forty miles west of Austin, at Nelson’s private ranch Friday, March 18, from noon till whenever ...

With the annual Charleston Wine + Food Festival upon us, chefs, writers, and other food figures from all over the country have swarmed our sunny hometown with flasks and notebooks in hand. Southern food is still a powerful draw. But where is it going next? We asked fifteen attending culinarians for their visions of the future. From left: Chris Shepherd’s chicken-fried short ...

John Lewis, from El Paso, Texas, is a long way from home. After a celebrated stint cooking brisket at La Barbecue in Austin, he’s getting ready to open Lewis Barbecue in Charleston, South Carolina, where he’ll be an ambassador for smoked beef in the heart of whole-hog country. That isn’t all he’s bringing to town. “Tuesday will be Tex-Mex night,” ...

When writer Jack Staub set out to chronicle Florida’s stunning hidden retreats, he worried he wouldn’t find much diversity—a tropical garden is a tropical garden, right? But a handful of Floridians had a surprise in store for him—the lush and varied greenery of their secret Sunshine State gardens. “As I made my way around South Florida, from east coast to ...

For the third year, we’re profiling five of the most exciting new restaurants below the Mason-Dixon line—one per day, in the order that they opened. Sam Jones BBQ, Winterville, North CarolinaOpened November 2015 Why can’t you find good barbecue just anywhere? There isn’t a lot of money in it. It takes all night to cook a hog, and diners still ...

Alison Krauss has won 27 Grammys and collaborated with laundry list of heavyweights including Robert Plant, Sam Bush, and Crosby Stills & Nash. And let’s not forget that outfit known as Union Station. But, according to Krauss, one act rises above them all in terms of a connection, an unspoken link of comfort and natural kinship: the Cox Family, consisting ...

Al Hodges heard the voice in Reidsville, Georgia, in January of 1984. What this town needs is a sandwich shop, it said. It was the sort of thing the recently reborn entrepreneur took seriously. “I didn’t have the funds, but I said, ‘God, if this is you, then you will provide it for me.’” Eight months later, he had secured ...

There’s always more to know about every Garden & Gun story. In our August/September issue, we visited a conservation-minded Chesapeake estate garden. Here, the owners take us behind the scenes. (Photo by Paul C. Haden) The stumpery. It sounds like Monty Python and looks straight out of the Hobbit, but is in fact simply a garden of tree stumps. Perhaps ...

To raise money and awareness for endangered battlefields in his native Tennessee, author, bourbon aficionado, and devoted preservationist Robert Hicks has created a whiskey of truly historic proportions. On August 30, the first of his two 2015 releases of eight-year-aged Battlefield Bourbon will hit liquor stores across Tennessee. The batch is small—micro, even—with just 1864 bottles available, a number that ...