Emmy-Winning Chef and TV Host Vivian Howard Is Back On PBS — and Rep'ing Southern Food with Style
To celebrate 50 years of ICE, we’re honoring 50 distinguished ICE alumni. One of these is Vivian Howard — award-winning chef, restaurateur, media personality, and writer — who just returned to TV.
Howard is from Kinston, North Carolina, a small town of less than 20,000 residents. Like a lot of ICE alumni, she didn’t expect to become a chef. But as Howard put it in a 2023 article in Garden & Gun magazine, she “found a home in front of cutting boards and behind stoves.”
From Passion to Profession...and Awards
Howard graduated from the Institute of Culinary Education in 2004. She went on to work at some of New York City’s top restaurants, among them Wylie Dufresne’s wd~50 and Spice Market by Jean-Georges Vongerichten, before returning home to North Carolina.
In 2006, Howard opened her first restaurant, Chef & The Farmer. It was a love letter to the dishes and ingredients she grew up with. The restaurant’s success catapulted her onto a national stage. “Our restaurant in the middle of nowhere became a destination, a check on a lot of bucket lists,” Howard wrote on the restaurant’s website.
Chef & The Farmer earned Howard five consecutive James Beard Award nominations for Best Chef: Southeast. It also led to her PBS TV show "A Chef’s Life," which documented the ins and outs of running a restaurant and shed much-needed light on the foodways of her small, rural town in eastern North Carolina.
“Our food exalted my region’s little-known cuisine,” she later wrote in an opinion editorial for The New York Times. The show also received critical acclaim, winning Howard a prestigious Peabody award and a Daytime Emmy.
Making the Most of the Least
Over time, Howard’s culinary footprint grew to a total of five restaurants, cafés, and bakeries across the South. She also has her own blend of coffee beans. “I really just like new challenges; I like fixing problems,” she said in an interview with KLCS public news.
In 2017, she published her first cookbook "Deep Run Roots," which won four IACP Cookbook Awards.
The years surrounding the pandemic were, counterintuitively, a productive time for Howard. She published her second book, "This Will Make It Taste Good: A New Path to Simple Cooking;" she debuted a new TV show, "Somewhere South;" and she repurposed Chef & The Farmer into a more casual counter service experience while also introducing the innovative grab-n-go fridge concept, Viv’s Fridge.
“Make the most out of the least,” was her advice to New York Times readers.
Kitchen Curious
Years later, Howard isn’t done making things. Her new PBS show, "Kitchen Curious," debuted October 6. In it, she addresses cooking’s fundamental questions.
“There are millions of cooks, food fans, and general ‘experts’ with a platform these days, and they all have different opinions about what’s good or bad for you, as well as what you should eat and why. "Kitchen Curious" covers all those bases. I visit, shop, and spend time with certified experts. I go to ground zero of the questions we all have when we cook,” she explained in an interview with Eater.
"Kitchen Curious" is a continuation of the story Howard has been telling since the day marking her graduation from ICE. As she explains on her website, “food is the language I use to talk about my life.”
That sentiment echoes throughout her career, reflecting both Howard’s interest in representing her roots and her talent for highlighting its breadth and beauty.
On behalf of her alma mater, we can’t wait to see what she does next.
* Experience varies by student, with outcomes contingent on factors including graduate aptitude, job market, place of residence and work history, among others.
