Alabama born and raised Chef Kelsey Barnard Clark got her start in food when she was just a teenager, catering events for a catering company. Chef Clark made history by being the fifth woman and first southerner to win the title of Top Chef and a subsequent 2024 James Beard Award nominee for Best Chef: South. Kelsey can be found appearing on a few different Food Network shows including Tournament of Champions, Chopped and more.
After graduating from culinary school, she worked in several Michelin-star restaurants in New York City. In 2012, she moved back home to start-up her own catering company. Today, she runs her catering company and restaurant, KBC, in her hometown of Dothan, AL. She also spends her time sharing her expertise by teaching virtual classes and appearing and cooking at events around the world. In August 2021, her debut cookbook “Southern Grit” hit shelves and this year Chef Clark signed a two-book deal with Chronicle, of which the first cookbook was released earlier this year.
We met up with Chef Kelsey Barnard Clark before Bourbon & Beyond and talked about tips for entertaining at home, how travel has influenced her cooking, and what items she always keeps in her bag when traveling.
Tell me about “Southern Get-Togethers: A Guide to Hosting Unforgettable Gatherings,” your new book.
It’s all about just hosting at home and entertaining. It’s set up and designed to be all about carefree, stress free entertaining. The tagline I say is it’s like the anti-perfection book. The whole point of it is to encourage people to want to have people over because it’s less stressful. Take it from someone who thinks about everything and who is a chronic perfectionist that this is the stuff that matters.
Also, as someone who’s done this professionally for literally my whole life, my first job was for a caterer, and that’s what we did. I have a lot of experience in terms of what to do, what not to do, what matters, what doesn’t matter. It’s basically filled with a lot of shortcuts and where to take the shortcuts. I’d like to say it’s sort of a self-help book for people that don’t know where to start or people that get incredibly overwhelmed with hostessing.
Can you remember your favorite bite of food?
I think for me, this is going to sound funny coming from a chef, but it’s usually never about the food, ever. It’s about the whole experience. For me, it’s either being around a table of people that I know and just really enjoying talking to them, or it’s like the total opposite, where I think some of my most memorable meals I had were actually when I was in Vietnam. I just kind of hopped around everywhere and would just stop at these little stands and sit on a picnic table and eat ridiculous food. Those are some of the best bites I’ve had, just things I’ve never had before in places I’ve never been.
What is your perfect food pairing with bourbon?
I actually love bourbon with dessert. I would say a biscuit, a biscuit with jam and butter. I don’t think there’s anything to go better with bourbon, because it kind of pulls out the butter notes of bourbon and the spices. To me, bourbon is very much like this cozy, warm inside type of drink, which is exactly sort of what a biscuit is.
Has travel influenced your approach to cooking? Is there a specific place that you’ve traveled that maybe has inspired a dish?
Everywhere I travel inspires everything I do all the time. I think when people hear that and they think about traveling, they’re like, ‘Oh, she’s going to Europe all the time,’ I’m like, ‘No, I mean anywhere.’ I’m talking to you right now in Louisville, right? It doesn’t matter where I go. I travel a lot and it’s primarily all across the US.
My favorite thing about cooking is that you’re never going to know everything and you’re never going to be done learning. I am just absolutely obsessed with that. I’m someone who wants to always be learning how to be better. For me, it’s always just taking little notes from everywhere I go and incorporating that into what I do.
There’s not a single dish I cook that’s not influenced by a different culture at this point. I don’t think I could even separate it from what is the food I cook versus what I have learned from everyone else. There isn’t anything I cook that doesn’t have an influence from somewhere I’ve been.
You’re from the South and you do southern cuisine. It’s a big part of your identity and what you do. How do you stay true to the traditions of the South while keeping dishes innovative?
For me, it always goes back to ingredients to keep it rooted at home. I tell my cooks in my kitchen all the time when we’re coming up with specials, I’m like, ‘You can do whatever you want,’ within reason, of course. I never want to hold anyone back on cooking styles or being inspired by flavors. At the end of the day, southern food is not lobster and caviar. It is humble beginnings, a humble culture.
That is what southern food is to me more than anything. It was never really pricey items or hard to find things, It was things that were robust throughout the South. So, you see okra and corn and shrimp even, because it was everywhere. That’s why we cook with it. That’s also why we should honor staying true to the ingredients and then going, ‘Okay, so I’m going to do shrimp again for the 70,000 time. What’s another culture that I know a really wonderful shrimp dish that I could incorporate something familiar from the South into?’
What’s your perfect family vacation?
I would say I like traveling with my kids. First and foremost, one where we have things to do. I’ll start with my least favorite type of family vacation, which is going anywhere where we’re just sitting on the beach all day. I’m not a very good sitter in general, and neither are my children.
For me, travel is all about getting in there and going somewhere where you get to learn about a different place and see different things. It’s a trip with very loose plans in the sense that the whole point of the trip is for us to be curious and a little bit sporadic. Just to be completely engulfed in the culture and learning and being around people that love where they are and want to tell us about it. That’s ideal for me.
Have you ever considered another run on Top Chef? I know you’ve made appearances, but have you ever thought about going back?
I absolutely would now. I mean, it was hard to answer that question a year or two years after, but also to know what I know now, yeah, sure. I would go into it totally differently. At the same time, I’m like, ‘I wonder if I would still win if I did it differently.’ I think part of the reason I did well on that one was that I didn’t know what I was doing, so I had to trust my gut at all times. I have a hard time trusting my gut a lot. On that show, the only thing you can do is go back to your instincts and what you want to do. I missed that a lot. It was kind of fun just to be free in that way. But yes, I would. I would for sure.
Do you have any advice for future candidates for the show?
Please don’t go into it with a plan. I think to get the full experience as a person on Top Chef, you need to go into it honestly, with the heart of like, ‘I am clueless. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m here to learn, and I’m here to listen to these people that are going to critique me.’
As a chef, go into it the way you would go into any new kitchen. You would never walk into a new kitchen and pretend like you knew more than everyone in there because it’s disrespectful. The first sign of respect is to listen to people who know more than you.
Be prepared more than anything, prepare your heart and prepare yourself to try to get incredibly passionate about all these challenges because that’s what the show is all about, cooking really great food from the heart. You have to be able to tell your story. I know it always sounds cheesy to people, but I’m like, your favorite restaurant you go to where people tell their stories, that’s why you go back. The most important part is go in ready to change and learn more about yourself and learn from others.
What are your must pack travel items?
I keep a little pill box with me at all times of prescription medicine. When do you always get your worst cold? When do you always get car sick or nauseous? It’s always when you’re traveling because you’re out of your routine, doing something abnormal. You’re around a ton of people. You’re on a plane. So, I keep a little container with prescriptions in it, and it’s got a severe cold and sinus medicine, prednisone, which is like an anti-inflammatory. I have bad knees so if I’m on the plane for a long time, my knees are going to hurt. I bring that with me, Zofran for nausea. It’s like an emergency medicine kit essentially.
I was in Peru and I got a kidney infection. It was quite possibly the worst experience of my life in the sense of a medical situation. They didn’t have a hospital where I was, so I just ended up laying on a stretcher in the middle of the street. I have a video of it because it’s insane. I didn’t know this, but now I do. The only option was to get a penicillin shot. It was literally a quilting needle. That’s how big it was. I’m not kidding. They had to put it in my hip every day. I was like, ‘This is horrific.’ If I had had this medicine, for example, I would have literally just taken one of the pills every day and it would have gone away in a few days. So, I learned my lesson with that to have a travel medicine kit. That’s a big one for me.
I also like to keep a toiletry kit packed at all times. I never check my bag unless I’m forced to. So, I have a travel bag that stays stocked with chargers, my book that I’m reading, snacks, backup ID, that’s a big one. Have a copy of your ID or a copy of your passport in your carry on at all times. I always keep a separate credit card in there, too, so that if you lose your purse, or your wallet gets stolen you’re not stuck.
In my actual suitcase, I don’t ever unpack my toiletry kit, and it’s labeled like a psycho, because that’s how I am. It has to be when you’re traveling all the time because you just get so tired. If it’s not incredibly easy to maintain, then it just makes traveling a lot harder.
So basically, all I ever have to do when I’m leaving is put my clothes in there and that’s it. That’s the only thing I have to think about is the clothes, so it just becomes a lot less stressful.
Have you participated in Bourbon & Beyond before? Do you have any favorite moments?
I did it a few years ago. I mean, honestly, the whole festival is just pretty amazing. I think it’s really one of the best. The whole vibe is just really cool. It feels very small and laid back, but it’s not. I’m excited to be back because it’s way bigger than it was when I was here.