72 NOVEMBER 2018
TASTEMAKER
of the Blue Ridge Mountains. He’s spent a lot of time unknotting
the distortions and myths about the people of Appalachia—even,
as it turns out, the heartwarming ones. here’s not a lot of
folklore on the menu at Milton’s; instead he serves us faithful
renditions of the food he grew up with: “greasy beans” with
black garlic; bacon-fat cornbread; fat slices of tomato with
dollops of Duke’s mayo; chicken and dumplings; even a funky
Appalachian take on kimchi, in honor of Mrs. Lee. “I like this.
his is sigol food,” she says, which Ed translates to mean rural,
countryside cooking. She gets it.
We take off early the next morning and
beeline for the Dip Dog Stand in Marion,
Virginia, a roadside staple since 1957. We eat
what is essentially a corn dog for breakfast, just
three displaced New Yorkers in the outlands of
Virginia, in a wood-paneled room with banjo
music noodling out of a speaker somewhere,
yellow mustard on our chins. Mrs. Lee is
nonplussed, but she likes the onion rings. Later
in the car, she falls asleep, and Ed tells me about
the very distinct first-generation struggle of
extracting a sense of pride from immigrant
parents. “I’d show her my face in Food & Wine, and she wouldn’t
understand,” he says. “I’d show her my season of Top C he f, and
she’d say, ‘Who watches that?’ But then I was on the cover of
e Korea Times, and she photocopied it and dispensed it all
over the tristate area.”
Rain clouds are gathering as we approach Staunton, Virginia,
and the meadows give way to churches and a Harley dealership.
Chef Ian Boden has lunch waiting for us at he Shack: grilled
duck hearts with shiso and fermented sour cherries; peacheswith Urfa biber; “lamb ham” and gochujang (Korean chile paste),
in deference to Mrs. Lee. She comes alive around the table,
telling stories of a time when Ed had a 27-inch waist, wore
mascara and combat boots, and had a hot restaurant in
Manhattan where Caroline Kennedy and Joe Strummer came
to eat ojingeo sundae and bibimbap.
We could go on like this, but right now, we have soy sauce
burning a hole through the back seat and three more hours
through the Shenandoah Valley to D.C. We get in just before
sunset. Everyone has to pee, the barrels are
heavier than Ed remembers, and the alarm on
the back door at Succotash is wailing, wailing,
wailing while he hauls the barrels into the
kitchen. Mrs. Lee says she isn’t hungry, but Ed
orders for her anyway: He wants her to try his
fried chicken with pickled okra—some chicken
pieces dripping with sorghum syrup, others
with honey and gochujang.
We leave her at the table to watch the dining
room fill up from the mezzanine above.
Succotash is gleaming white, with elegant
tufted leather banquettes and a long marble
bar, crowded now with beautiful people sipping bourbon milk
punches and juleps. It feels a world away from the roadside
corn dogs and sorghum fields of the past few days. Ed may be
working with the same elements and pulling from the same
larder, but he is telling a new story here: his own. “I want my
mom to see that I’m a different person than she saw me as in
my 20s and 30s,” Ed says. “All expressive cuisine comes from
personal experience.”
We come back to the table. he plates are clean.“ e world is split
between preser-
vationists and
innovators. One
needs the other
to continue the
dialogue.” —Ed Leee grand
interior of
Succotash, Ed’s
Washington,
D.C., jewelPHOTOGRAPHY: COURTESY REY LOPEZ