204: Travis Milton, Taste Wood-Fired Kitchen, Nicewonder Farm & Vineyards (Bristol, VA)

Travis Milton is a familiar figure in Southern food, having been featured in press from Tasting Table to Atlas Obsura, talking up the goodness of heirloom vegetables, whiskey, and the power of a piece of streaky pig meat in a pot of beans. But he's more than a stereotype of the Appalachian region that raised him. This chef, born in Castlewood, Virginia, honed his modernist cooking skills at WD-50 in New York City, has staged in kitchens from San Fran to D.C., and garnered much success cooking in Richmond, Va. But to him, he couldn't capitalize on his culinary traditions in a region outside of the one that taught him. So he's come back to Southwest Virginia and had some stops and starts with projects and partnerships, but now seems to have settled at the growing Nicewonder Farm & Vineyards in Bristol, VA. He's opened Taste Wood-Fired Kitchen -- an open-air restaurant in a barn close to the property's greenhouses -- and his hearth-based restaurant, Hickory, is currently under construction.