Southern Ground Grub

 

Woooooooo!

A lot has happened since I last wrote in February. I am officially done with all of my classes and I am just about finished with my internship. For those who don’t know it, I have been working as a tour/personal chef for the Zac Brown Band and his record label Southern Ground Artists, Inc. Only 3 months on the job I am kind of still the new guy because everyone has known each other for years but working for this family, because that is how everyone treats everyone – like family, has been a tremendous blessing. The guy I work for is the Executive Chef – Rusty Hamlin (chefrusty.com). Working under Rusty has been so beneficial to the development of my craft and I look forward to many more experiences with this industry slugger.

To give you a better look at what I actually do for the band, copy and paste the link below and check out “Behind The Shell” with Carson daily. Their camera crew followed us around for the day in Oklahoma City to take a closer look at the “Eat and Greet.”

http://behindtheshell.msn.com/videos/Zac-Brown-Band/111

We have been all over the US:

So when I’m on the road the whole fleet travels as one. There are now a total of 6 tour buses, 7 semi-trucks, and about 75 people including band/crew/support/catering. Each bus sleeps 12 people and surprisingly it’s not that bad. The buses are like moving houses, they have everything you need. I sleep here…

Its pretty snug in my bunk, especially with the TV down. I pretty much have to roll in and roll out and the first night I hardly got any sleep because we are moving and the bus is so big and noisy, everything is abrupt. After a few days on the road, by bed time, its been such a long day that sometimes you cant wait to get to your bunk and you have no problem falling sleep. 

For the first couple of runs we were cooking out of a 14 foot cook trailer that was appropriately named “Miss-Treated.” She has definitely got some miles on her tires and its very evident by the way she looks, but she never missed a meal when it came to feeding 200+ people for the Eat N Greet. She was small, ugly and run down, but she got the job done.

Those days are over!

Zac and Rusty are so passionate about food. Zac and the band really feel like its important that they spend that intimate time with people at the Eat N Greet, so much so that they were willing to invest in it by designing and building a custom-made semi-truck kitchen.  Their vision is that one day they will be able to host their own festival and feed people the foods they love to eat on a daily basis. This is step one…

The moment I saw it, I forgot all about Miss Treated.  This bad-boy is a fully loaded 54 foot tractor-trailer converted kitchen. On its worst day it will store, prep, cook, and feed around 1000 people per meal. It has a 3 foot slide out extension, 2 level cabin bay, rear lift gate that could raise and lower a small car, upper deck observatory, and a pop out canopy tent that can house 200 people (AIR CONDITIONED!) If there is anything you’ve ever needed in a commercial kitchen, this thing has it. I cant wait to take it out for the first time on our November tour.

So when I’m not on the road cooking, I am in Atlanta either cooking for the bands families and thier private parties or I am the warehouse cooking in the new test Kitchen where we will be working on new recipes for Volume 2 of their cookbook.

I have joined this whole operation at a time when things are really starting to take-off.  The band just finished their home-base warehouse in Atlanta (I won’t even get started on how awesome it is) and they just released their new album “You Get What You Give” a few weeks ago.  So you don’t even have to ask me how I feel – really blessed… Thank you God!  I have been so blessed to have family and friends that believe in me and my passion and I am so thankful to Johnson and Wales for laying a solid foundation of knowledge and skills for this industry. I think I am going to be Southern Ground for a while.

Stay Tuned – Southern Ground Grub recipes coming soon…