Episode 131: Matt and Ted Lee dish catering secrets and discuss their new book Hotbox (Charleston, SC)

Siblings Matt and Ted Lee grew up in Charleston, SC, and when they left to attend colleges, they so missed the foods of their hometown, that they founded The Lee Bros. Boiled Peanuts Catalogue, a mail-order catalogue for Southern pantry staples. When an editor of a travel magazine asked them to write a story about food and their home state, they embarked on a second career as journalists, and that's where I got to know them, through their written words in Food & Wine, The New York Times, and of course their cookbooks. At this point, I've gotten to know them personally as well, and despite their fame in the writing world, they have revealed themselves to me as the people I'd imagined them to be: gracious, inclusive, eternally curious, and each of them with a distinctly individual wit. They lift up others in the profession in many ways, including an intensive annual cookbook camp, so I'd want no better guides into the private world of high-end catering, which we can all get in their first non-fiction book called Hotbox, just out. I sat down with them to chat the stories behind the making of this book, which entailed them working in catering, and that's just the beginning.