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" YOU CAN BUY A T-SHIRT IN NEW Orleans that shouts, &amp;quot;The South starts north of here.&amp;quot; Calling a Texan a southerner is risky, and, frankly, I don&amp;#039;t know what Floridians consider themselves. But in the rest of the South, they take pride in the appellation, and the best chefs in the South are those working within the revered and beloved culinary traditions of the Carolinas, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, upper Louisiana, and the lower latitudes of Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky.  You can still find great barbecue joints, crab shacks, fish camps, and luncheonettes where the grits and gravy leave you weepy, but a bit farther up the dining scale, young southern chefs are incorporating everything from bourbon and country ham to Vidalia onions and heirloom tomatoes into their cooking, and the results are a lot more impressive than what passes in other states as &amp;quot;fusion&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;Pacific Rim&amp;quot; cuisine. Take big Louis Osteen of Louis&amp;#039;s (843-853-2550), in Charleston, South Carolina, whose drawl is as rich as praline candy and whose recipes have evolved from low-country family dinners. At Louis&amp;#039;s, he might prepare a ragout of sweet peas, fiddlehead ferns, Vidalia onions, and fresh morels and serve them with the fattest soft-shell crabs of springtime. In summer, he&amp;#039;ll panfry plump quail and do them proud with a huckleberry-sage sauce. And he likes to spike his chocolate ice cream with Jack Daniel&amp;#039;s. Jim Gerhardt of The Oakroom (502-585-3200) at the beautifully restored Seelbach Hilton Hotel in Louisville--the setting of Daisy Buchanan&amp;#039;s wedding in The Great Gatsby--has made a crusade out of using Kentucky products in his cooking: smoked spoonfish with its own caviar and crisp bourbon bread, and a souffl\u00E9 made from papaw, a fruit that grows in creek beds and hollers in eastern Kentucky.  In a wood-frame house in the woods of Abita Springs, Louisiana, John Besh of Artesia (504-892-1662) shows exceptional French finesse with his local ingredients, as when he sears snapper crisp and caresses it with a saut\u00E9 of silver-queen corn and lobster, or with his roulade of &amp;quot;Mr. Rudee&amp;#039;s rabbit&amp;quot; tenderloin stuffed with minced sweetbreads and served with noodle dumplings, named for the farmer who raises the hares.  Then there&amp;#039;s the very weird Jimmy Sneed, chef and owner of The Frog and the Redneck, in Richmond (804-648-3764), who goes ballistic if he receives anything but the very best ingredients and uses as few of them on a plate as possible, as with his impeccably simple sweet-red-pepper soup with velvety crabmeat, and his silky Summerfield lamb with rosemary sauce. These guys are all over the South (see right). And once you&amp;#039;ve eaten this well this often, the very idea of swallowing Patagonian toothfish with ponzu sauce and adzuki beans may put you off your feed. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/food-drink/a1206/esq0501-may-mahb-dining/>