The New Southern Table

Brys Stephens is a food writer and consultant based in Charleston, SC. He has written for the Charleston City Paper, Charleston Magazine, Garden and Gun and The Washington Post, and is the founder of the food and cooking website Cookthink. He has consulted on cookbooks for publishers like Rodale and Fair Winds Press, and for local Charleston publishers. Brys's love of food takes form at the intersection of his deep roots in the South and his lifelong love of travel. From picking blueberries at his grandfather's farm in south Alabama, to a surprisingly savory peanut soup as a teenager on safari in Africa; from the Chilton County peaches of his youth, to a street smoothie in Cairo; from steamed baby limas alongside North Carolina barbecue at his family's home near the Cape Fear River, to a spring fava bean feast on a vineyard in Tuscany; from the pecan trees at his home on Sullivan's Island, to summers in Provence at a house on an herb-covered hillside, Brys has long been enamored with the world's culinary connections, and the influence of place and climate on our food. After graduating from Washington and Lee University, Brys worked in marketing at an English-language city magazine in Paris. He continued his education at the Cornell photography program in Rome, where he lived near the campo dei fiori market. There he undertook a four-month project photographing and cooking from markets throughout Italy and Sicily. He then apprenticed in his hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, with celebrated southern chef Chris Hastings in the kitchen of his restaurant Hot and Hot Fish Club. After earning his JD / MBA from Wake Forest University, Brys spent two years in the wine business, working in PR for American Premium Beverage and in PR and viticulture for Napa's Joseph Phelps Vineyards.