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Cook's Close Up

Cook's Close Up

Simple portraits of American cooks doing what they love best. Are you ready for your close-up?

By Cook's Country

Published on August 28, 2024

America's cooks have powerful voices. In addition to inspiring us with their kitchen wisdom, they help us explore culture and our shared humanity.

Cook's Country's editors and photographers travel the nation to bring you the stories of American cooks in our On the Road series. These "Cook's Close-Up" portraits are outtakes from that series and show another side of the people who help feed our country. A new portrait will be added with each new issue.

In the small town of Seguin, Texas, 30 miles east of San Antonio, Adrian Davila is barbecue royalty. His family has been cooking in this community since 1959: handmade sausage smoked over mesquite, glistening slices of brisket, heaping paper trays of Frito pie. But for Davila, nothing is as important to his family’s barbecue history as their Mexican American culinary traditions, like lamb barbacoa. Just next to the pasture where Davila’s cattle roam the lonely scrub, you’ll find a 6-foot-deep hole in the yard lined with an old oil pipe. In it, over the course of three early morning hours, he burns down mesquite logs into a smoldering bed of coals, using a Mason jar of brisket grease from his family’s restaurant as fuel. He rubs large cuts of lamb with chile paste, transfers them to a pot lined with grilled succulent maguey leaves, and lowers it into the pit before covering the assembly with a metal plate and a mountain of dirt. By early evening, the lamb is meltingly tender, ready to be crisped on a plancha and nestled into handmade blue corn tortillas. Piquant with ancho and guajillo, lightly perfumed by the citrusy maguey,' tinged with mesquite, and enjoyed under a wide Seguin sunset, Davila’s barbacoa is a nod to Texas’s traditions old and new.

Skip Bennett, Island Creek Oysters, Duxbury, Massachusetts — Skip Bennett, founder and owner of Island Creek Oysters, removes a lobster from a trap he pulled from Duxbury Bay, about 30 miles southeast of Boston. On days Bennett gets out on the water, he motors out before sunrise, racing the morning light to make it to his oyster beds, always aiming for the sweet spot of low tide. His shellfish are staples of restaurants and raw bars all up and down the East Coast, but you wouldn’t know it from his demeanor: Humble, even-keeled, and unflappable, he pilots his boat between the shallow shoals, greeting fellow farmers and fishermen with a familiar wave. Once he’s made his rounds of the inner bay, where the mix of salty ocean and fresh water from inland tributaries forms a brackish blend just right for rearing sweet, briny oysters, Bennett makes his way farther out to pull up his lobster traps. There’s a clambake on the beach tonight, and these crustaceans will be the perfect capstone to a beautiful evening in the Bay State.

Emily Meggett, the late “matriarch of Edisto Island,” at her South Carolina home.

Chef Francis Ang — Chef Francis Ang adding garnish to plates in the kitchen of Abacá, a Filipino fine-dining restaurant in San Francisco.

Santa Roman makes tortillas on a griddle at El Hidalguense, a restaurant in Houston, Texas specializing in barbacoa.

Yohana Gonzalez trims aloe vera leaves for use in a batch of jarave, a medicinal juice, at La Plaza del Mercado de Santurce, an open-air produce market in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Quashon Campbell tends to a grill loaded with ribs at Hot Sauce Williams Barbecue in Cleveland, Ohio (this establishment is now permanently closed.)

Wally Wroblewski prepares brandy old-fashioneds at the Five O’Clock Steakhouse, a supper club in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Carmella Fragassi fries eggplant slices at La Campagna in Westlake, Ohio.

Matthew Raiford pulls carrots from an elevated bed at Gilliard Farms in Brunswick, Georgia.

Clarissa Llenza demonstrates how to remove the stem from a banana leaf while making pastelón in her kitchen in Santurce, San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Alex Burrola tends to black angus chuck roll steaks on an outdoor grill at Los Mezquites, a Mexican restaurant on the San Xavier Indian Reservation that specializes in carne asada.

Alice Matthews making cheese biscuits at Mom’s Grill in Washington, North Carolina in 2017. Featured in our April/May 2023 issue.

Wallace Johnson wrapping links of boudin at Johnson’s Boucanière in Lafayette, Louisiana — Wallace Johnson wrapping links of boudin at Johnson’s Boucanière in Lafayette, Louisiana. Featured in our February/March 2023 issue.

A cook in a restaurant — Alfonso Torrez of El Camino Real in Kansas City, Kansas. Featured in our December/January 2023 issue.

a fisherman removing a whole tuna from a pile — Tristan Hayman, fisherman at the Tuna Harbor Dockside Market (Bigfoot stall) in San Diego, Cali. Featured in our October/November 2022 issue.

Owner Richard Funk carries a sheet tray of racks of smoked beef ribs out of a smoker trailer behind Desert Oak Barbecue

woman holding crab

chef cooking in restaurant kitchen

Locha Lomidze smiling in his kitchen

Patricio Arguello smiling in his kitchen

Soto Guadelupe holding bushel of chili peppers — Soto Guadelipe, Three Brothers Chile, Hatch, New Mexico. Featured in October/November 2021 issue.

Bryant Valdez rolling dough — Bryant Valdez, Baker, La Segunda Central Bakery, Ybor City, Florida. Featured in August/September 2021 issue.

portrait of William Chaney sitting behind line up of barbecue sauces — William Chaney, Pit builder, photographed at the Tenderloin Grill, Kansas City, Missouri. Featured in June/July 2021 issue.

Alexander Bodnar — Alexander Bodnar, Józsa Corner restaurant, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Featured in April/May 2021 issue.

This is a members' feature.