Dining

You’d be hard-pressed to find a chef having a better year than Andrea Reusing of Lantern. We asked the Best Chef of the Southeast (Yes, the official title was bestowed upon her by the James Beard Foundation in May.) about the award and her new cookbook, Cooking in the Moment.

Your rise seems fast, but that’s usually not the way these things work. How long have you been in the food business?

I’ve been cooking since I was in college, but it only became my job when I moved to Chapel Hill from New York City and started a catering company. I was the opening chef at Enoteca Vin in Raleigh in 1999 and opened Lantern in 2002.

You’re one of three North Carolina chefs to ever win a James Beard. What was the experience like?

It was a totally fun night. I was lucky to have a lot of friends there. Gene Hamer and Bill Smith of Crook’s Corner were being honored that night [with an America’s Classics award] and so it was great to be with them.

Where do you keep your James Beard Award?

It’s a medallion on a ribbon, and so it’s hard to know exactly where to put it. At the moment I think that it’s around a teddy bear’s neck – thanks to my two young kids.

There aren’t too many female fine-dining executive chefs in Chapel Hill. In fact, you may be it. To what do you attribute that?

I’m not sure why that’s true in Chapel Hill. But there are quite a number of women chefs in North Carolina – Amy Tornquist of Watt’s Grocery in Durham, Ashley Christensen of Poole’s Diner in Raleigh, Angela Salamanca of Dos Taquitos, Vivian Howard of the Chef and The Farmer in Kinston, to name a few.

What is your favorite ingredient to cook with?

Right now (late July), it’s all about tomatoes: roasted whole with marrow and sea salt alongside a porterhouse, in a chilled beefsteak tomato soup with fresh wasabi, in an heirloom tomato salad with shiso, in yellow tomato-chili jam with blue crab cakes. By mid-October, we will be heavily into pumpkin, duck and sweet potatoes.

What young chefs in should we watch? Who will next dominate the food scene?

Ashley, Aaron Vandemark of Panciuto in Hillsborough, Billy Cotter of Toast and Matt Kelly of Vin Rouge in Durham are all making really delicious, exciting food.