Dishing With Kelsey Barnard Clark

How Top Chef alum Kelsey Barnard Clark is becoming a Southern star.

Growing up in Dothan, Alabama, Kelsey Barnard Clark knew that food was her future from the get-go. Cooking and baking came naturally to her as a young child while growing up in the Deep South and were pastimes everyone around her could tell she was deeply passionate about. She left the South briefly to attend culinary school but later returned when an opportunity to continue her work at home presented itself. Now, she’s taken the culinary world by storm with her namesake restaurant in Dothan and her win on Bravo’s Top Chef in 2019. She’s become a respected representative of the Southern food scene, and this is a glimpse at her journey.

When did you get your start in the kitchen? I’ve been cooking for as long as I can remember, so I don’t have that one signature memory because I was just always doing it. That’s what I was always passionate about, but I started really getting serious about cooking and tinkering when I was like 14. The more I did it, the more I loved it. My parents even turned their pool house into a kitchen for me. I could be out there tinkering and out of their way.

What brought you back home to the South? After graduating from culinary school and starting my professional career in New York, I got really burned-out. Thankfully, there was something of a void in my hometown of Dothan, Alabama, for someone catering good, home-cooked meals and real elevated dinners. Maybe it’s the Southerner in me, but I’m good at feeding large groups of people and organizing it from A to Z. I figured I could come home and cater for a bit, and I was able to eventually open my restaurant, KBC.

Did you always want to open a space of your own? No, I never really thought about a restaurant. It just never occurred to me, but there was a demand. People wanted it, and the businesswoman in me decided it was a good move. And it’s like this: If she thinks something is going to be successful, then she goes after it. But I knew it couldn’t be another typical fine-dining restaurant. Whatever I did, it needed to be more sustainable and wholesome, serving food like what our grandmas used to make but only more elevated. Our menu features classic Southern food, but there’s a lot of technique you wouldn’t find in grandma’s kitchen.

 

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