Legendary chef Bill Smith wins lifetime achievement honor. Here’s what he’s up to next
The moment called for champagne, but the honoree prefers PBR.
Bill Smith, the legendary Chapel Hill chef and activist, is this year’s recipient of the lifetime achievement honor from the Southern Foodways Alliance, a group that documents, celebrates and organizes the traditions, culture and evolution of Southern food.
During the SFA’s Fall Symposium in mid-October in Oxford, Mississippi, Smith was awarded the group’s Craig Claiborne Lifetime Achievement Award, named for the famed New York Times food writer. The award’s namesake shares a connection to Smith, as a 1985 piece by Claiborne helped introduce Crook’s Corner and its founding chef and co-owner Bill Neal to a national audience.
Following Neal’s death in 1991, Smith took over the Crook’s kitchen and steered it for the next 25 years, until his retirement in early 2019.
‘No one is more deserving’
The SFA has been handing out the award annually since the group’s inception in 1999. Previous award winners include Edna Lews, Leah Chase, Marcie Cohen Ferris and Ben and Karen Barker. Ben Barker introduced Smith during Saturday’s award ceremony.
“In the Southern canon, no one is more deserving of the Craig Claiborne Lifetime Achievement Award than my friend Bill Smith,” said Barker, who, with his late wife, Karen Barker, ran Durham’s beloved Magnolia Grill for 25 years until its closing in 2012.
Smith was more than a steward of a famous kitchen in his time at Crook’s, continuing the restaurant’s celebration of Southern food and seasonality, but adding his own recipes along the way, including the iconic Atlantic Beach Pie, a citrus custard pie with a saltine cracker crust.
Of the award, Smith said the company it keeps means the most to him.
“It adds me to a list of very distinguished people,” Smith said. “Many of whom are my very best friends in the restaurant world.”
Beyond the kitchen, Smith has been a vocal activist for the rights of immigrants, inspired by the friendships he made in the Crook’s kitchen. Behind the scenes, he’s worked to raise funds for restaurant workers during the pandemic.
Each year, the SFA honoree receives a painting celebrating their life, created by artist Blair Hobbs. Smith’s features a prominent PBR can, the chef’s preferred post-shift beer, two slices of Atlantic Beach Pie and sunflowers, which adorn Smith’s kitchen tablecloth.
In a brief speech Smith marked this moment to consider what forgiveness might look like in a divided society. He questioned what the forces of the pandemic and politics have done to society and hoped for a way forward.
“It catches in my craw to say this, but we have to move forward, and we have to do it together,” Smith said during his speech. “When we begin to discuss and move forward, we’re going to have to add forgiveness into the discussion, I think. Some people and some things are unforgivable, but many things are not. We’re all so mad at each other, a lot of times, that we can’t get anything done. But it’s time to start thinking, at least, thinking about forgiveness and optimism for the future.”
Food tours in Oaxaca
Lifetime achievement awards go hand in hand with retirement. But while Smith isn’t jumping back into a professional kitchen, he still has plans.
Smith said that he’ll continue cooking in charity dinners, but next year he’s launching a new project. He’ll start leading food tours in the Mexican city of Oaxaca. When there’s not a global pandemic, the retired chef visits friends and former co-workers often in Mexico.
“I love Mexico and have a lot of friends down there,” Smith said. “Oaxaca is a sophisticated town, full of art. It’s not a huge city, and art is a piece of everyday life.”
The tours will focus on food, both traditional and avant garde restaurants, Smith said, mezcal, art and architecture. Dates and travel plans will be announced in the future.
This story was originally published October 20, 2021 at 5:12 PM with the headline "Legendary chef Bill Smith wins lifetime achievement honor. Here’s what he’s up to next."
