Southern Season, Chef Vivian Howard Collaborate on Holiday Promotion

Southern Season has entered into an exclusive partnership with Chef Vivian Howard of the PBS series “A Chef’s Life,” who is also a Peabody Award-winner and James Beard Award finalist in 2014. The collaboration, a first for both the North Carolina-born chef and the North Carolina-based gourmet marketplace, launches just in time for the holidays.

As part of her collaboration with Southern Season, Howard selected the components for a range of gift baskets that will appear in a special Vivian Howard section of Southern Season’s famed holiday catalog and online. 

She carefully chose items that mean something special to her and reflect her dedication to Southern traditions. In addition, each of Southern Season’s three retail locations will showcase a Vivian Howard Shop featuring her favorite artisan products, gadgets, kitchen staples and more.

In early 2015, Southern Season will debut an exclusive line of Vivian Howard for Southern Season products, based on some of her favorite recipes. 

Born in the North Carolina community of Deep Run, Howard always dreamed of leaving the tobacco and hog farm on which she was raised. The big city was calling and, after college, she answered; she relocated to New York for a job in advertising. Soon, Howard discovered that wasn’t the career for her and she turned to the restaurant world. 

There, she honed her cooking skills in several prestigious Manhattan restaurants and trained under top chefs, including Wylie Dufresne (wd~50) and Jean-Georges Vongerichten (Spice Market). Pondering plans for her own place in New York, Howard received an offer from her parents she couldn’t refuse: They would fund her restaurant if she would open it back home.

So in 2005, Howard, and her now husband, Ben Knight, decided to return to a place where she had vowed never to live again and open a restaurant in the town of Kinston, N.C. With a goal of serving innovative regional Southern cuisine and an emphasis on local suppliers, Howard and Knight opened the 70-seat Chef & the Farmer in the summer of 2006.

The thriving Chef & the Farmer has won numerous accolades and is at the center of the PBS series “A Chef’s Life.” A Peabody Award-winner and James Beard Award finalist in 2014, the show explores the ups and downs of running a small-town restaurant, and paints an honest and intimate portrait of a life dedicated to food. 

Howard’s latest restaurant venture, The Boiler Room Oyster Bar, is helping make Kinston a true culinary destination.