Food. Comfort.: Chef Vivian Howard is Somewhere South

Way more than a chef talking to a camera, showing how to make baked this or roasted that (not to say that format doesn’t drip with positive aspects), PBS’ “Somewhere South” takes the traditional cooking show out of the kitchen, and out on the road. The chef, Vivian Howard, from the Emmy-, Peabody- and James-Beard-award-winning PBS documentary series, “A Chef’s Life” is the culinary tour guide. With each episode, Howard highlights a staple ingredient or item found in traditional Southern cooking, and travels to different places, whether it’s near her home in Kinston, North Carolina or to a neighboring Southern state, to see how that featured item or a similar variation is used by other chefs and home cooks.

The series is at its most fascinating when the ingredient transcends cultural background, for example, in Episode Four’s “What a Pickle,” Howard goes from learning how to make Puerto Rican escabeche in Lexington, Kentucky, to meeting the Durham, North Carolina chef, Michael Lee (and his Korean family) to get a lesson in how to make kimchi; Episode Five’s “It’s a Greens Thing” has her heading to Cary, North Carolina to make saag paneer with an Indian family that has Kenyan ties. (Turns out, Cary has one of the biggest Indian Asian communities in the Southeast.)

“Somewhere South” exudes quiet (southern) comfort, and the delightful Howard is a hug personified. With her refined drawl, luminous smile and charming spirit, Howard shines in her genuine gratitude for being invited into people’s homes to cook with them, to hear their stories, to raise a glass as to how beautiful it is that food not just connects but unifies.

Here’s a taste of “Somewhere South”:

Thirty-Minute Heals: PBS Chronicles “A Chef’s Life”

PBS’ “A Chef’s Life” features the chef, Vivian Howard as she, her husband Ben Knight, and young twins plant roots (back) in Howard’s home state of North Carolina, an area to where Howard said she’d never return.

Howard and Knight met in New York, where they embraced city life and metropolitan kitchens. Yellow tractors have now replaced yellow cabs; strolling along rows of earth-covered potatoes the new concrete sidewalks. Their professional passion still exists regardless of zip code, in the form of the popular restaurant, “Chef & the Farmer.”

On this Emmy- and Peabody- and James-Beard-award-winning documentary series, Howard at times reveals an insightful vulnerability, as the camera captures the complexity of transition, not in the moving from city A to small town B, but in her quest to remain an active chef, amid growing public recognition and all the responsibilities that come with. At the heart of “A Chef’s Life” is not just a woman’s return home, but a rediscovery of that home with (even more) respectful pride.