The Tastemakers by David Sax

personality and the fruits of his carefully wrought labor, which I came down to Charleston to experience firsthand.
    Digging around the trunk, Roberts eventually found what he was looking for: a large Ziploc bag filled with four pounds of ink-black rice. In fact, the rice in Roberts’s hand was IAC600, also known as China Black, a variety he had worked for close to a decade to bring to the culinary market in the United States and was on the brink of releasing for the first time to a select few tastemakers. Ten pounds of this year’s test crop had been set aside to give to the chefs in Robert’s orbit, regular customers of his heritage grains company, Anson Mills. The four pounds in his hand, two-fifths of his entire available yield, were destined to enter the hands of Sean Brock, one of America’s hottest chefs and a leader of South Carolina’s modern low-country cuisine. The China Black rice was so scarce that Roberts valued its worth at $500 a pound, almost half the price of France’s coveted black Périgord truffles, the so-called black diamond of the food world.
    â€œOkay,” Roberts said, slamming the trunk with a big grin. “Let’s go bribe a chef.”
    We walked around the corner and down a cobblestone alleyway to the entrance of McCrady’s, the city’s most renowned restaurant. Originally a tavern where George Washington used to drink (and steal across the alley to an adjacent bordello, according to Roberts), the stately dining room, nestled under brick arches, had become the center of a southern food revival ever since Sean Brock took over the kitchen in 2006. A native of rural Virginia, Brock was raised growing and cooking almost all of his family’s food. He built his kitchens around a dedicated commitment to farm-to-table cuisine, with an emphasis on traditional southern ingredients (many of which he raises on his nearby farm, including grains, vegetables, and pigs) and a mixture of time-honored cooking techniques (at McCrady’s, he has cooked by a wood-fired hearth, and he pickles, cans, and preserves extensively) as well as modern (he’ll employ moleculartools like emulsifying agents and dehydrators). In 2010 Brock won a James Beard Award as the best chef in the Southeast, the same year he opened Husk, a more casual, increasingly southern-focused restaurant in Charleston that many publications, including
Food & Wine
, have since named the best restaurant in America.
    When we came in Brock was standing behind the bar, talking to a couple of Swedish journalists. He was dressed in a Black Sabbath T-shirt and “Virginia is for Lovers” trucker’s hat and had an impressive full-color arm tattoo depicting a multitude of southern vegetables.
    â€œHey Glenn,” the soft-spoken Brock said, sticking out his hand. “What have you brought me today?”
    â€œThis is China Black,” Roberts said, ceremoniously holding up the baggie, like a drug dealer would, before dropping it onto the counter in front of Brock. “In China there are tons of entries about how it used to be a tribute rice for emperors. White rice was something anyone could eat, but black rice was so coveted that it was used to pay tax.”
    â€œMan, it’s gorgeous,” Brock said, dipping his fingers in and pulling out a few dozen grains, which he examined in his open palm. “I can’t wait to cook it.”
    â€œMe, too,” Roberts said, “but this is almost half of all that exists in the world right now, and it’s worth a lot of money.” He paused a second, for dramatic effect. “Tell you what. I’m going to give this to you, but only if you promise to cook some of it for David and me tonight.” Roberts smiled knowingly, and Brock just smiled back.
    â€œI don’t think that will be a problem,” Brock said, grabbing the rice. The two had played this game before.
    Roberts and Brock had been collaborating for a number