The thing about Southern Smoke Festival is you’re chatting with acclaimed Austin pitmaster Aaron Franklin and tucking into a slice of his heavenly brisket, and not even a minute later you’re snapping a selfie with Christina Tosi of Milk Bar, MasterChef and a host of other ventures and television shows. One minuter after that, you’re eating food from a 2024 James Beard Foundation award nominee.
The volume of chefs—around 70, along with whomever they bring to the party—bartenders and wine pros—another dozen-plus—that served food and beverages Saturday at Houston’s Discovery Green was staggering. Enough to fill you up in just an hour. But the reason all of the food-and-beverage industry pros are there is the same.
“Southern Smoke does more for our industry than any other organization. They understand the very unique issues within the industry and a lot of the shortcomings in terms of the support that we get as hospitality workers,” said acclaimed New York pastry chef Caroline Schiff. “We come here and we get to have a little fun, we get to share some stories and support each other. It’s really wonderful.”
By the end of the night the festival had raised $1.5 million for Southern Smoke Foundation, the nonprofit created in 2015 to assist food-and-beverage workers in crisis with emergency relief funding. The nationwide nonprofit, co-founded by Beard award-winning chef Chris Shepherd and wife, and current Southern Smoke executive director, Lindsey Brown, started putting on a true-blue festival for food-and-beverage workers in crisis in 2017. Since, it has expanded from a parking lot in Montrose to a labyrinth of streets in East Downtown, and now to its most recent setting at Discovery Green…