The Flavor Savers are hitting the road. One day, they’ll be riding on the seats of funky antique cars, but for now, they’re riding on hopes and dreams.
The titular Flavor Savers are culinary superheros embodied by food scholar David Shields of the University of South Carolina and Charleston’s chef Kevin Mitchell. The flavors they’re saving are the heirloom foods even older than the cars they’ll drive, and they’re hoping you’ll be able to watch them on television soon.
The idea for a television show came about when Ginger Cassell, a producer at South Carolina Educational Television, heard Shields speak in Columbia. She was later introduced to Kevin Mitchell when Shields and the chef paired to write Taste the State: South Carolina’s Signature Foods, Recipes, and Their Stories.
“I thought these two were a winning combination, and they’ve dedicated their careers to discovering the stories of food,” Cassell said. “I wanted to join their mission.”
Cassell was no casual fan; she had worked on a number of food shows, including as editor for Alton Brown’s Good Eats on the Food Network.
“We had an initial meeting,” Mitchell said. “She explained her thoughts and asked if we were interested, and we said, ‘Of course! Yeah, this would be great!’”
Shields said that the show will consist of the two hunting down a fruit, vegetable or grain.
“We will traverse the countryside going in stages from hither and yon, and at various points we will stop and interact with people, growers, plant geneticists,” Shields said. “I know we’re doing one on heirloom butter beans, and I know we’re heading over to Kentucky in search of the South’s one great cherry, the Dyehouse cherry. Usually, cherries require a good deal of chill time, but this variety had a greater heat resistance, so it was planted throughout the South.
“After World War II, the entire cherry industry moved to the Pacific Northwest, and the local production of cherries withered,” he added. “But one surviving tree was located, and then a second one, and now the Appalachian people are delighted to have a sour cherry they can call their own.”
Shields said the visit to the cherry trees will be timed for when the cherries are ripe, and Mitchell is likely to cook up a cherry pie with the tree’s owner. Shields added that all the road-tripping is from the seat of an antique car.
“We’re sort of making the analogy between the ingredients and the car, saying that what’s old is good, and we can find a lot of merit in history,” Cassell said, adding that the show will film throughout the South. “The old cars are just a good way to see the countryside, and if we’re doing an interview, we can do it in the car.”
Flavor Savers has already gotten through the initial approval process at the local SCETV and the national Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) has expressed interest as well.
“PBS really loved the idea, and they keep checking in with us asking when it’s going to be ready,” Cassell said.
And, that’s the hitch.
New shows require money. Cassell said she is putting together a pilot, which can be shown as a standalone special and can also be used as a sample to tempt funders. And those who want the show to bear fruit sooner can contribute online.
For now, the team is keeping hopes high for the future.
“I hope [the show] allows people to know what these heirloom ingredients are and were and that it encourages people to go out and ask their producers and farmers to get the seeds to grow these ingredients and bring them back into the culinary landscape,” Mitchell said. “I think that when we talk about saving flavors, it is really saving the flavor of what Southern food was many years ago, and as a chef, it is giving chefs more ingredients to work with and being part of a legacy.”
Cassell agreed, adding that she hopes “people will learn a lot about the fact that industrial cultivation left out flavor.” And Shields said he wants the show to get people thinking about what heirloom foods mean to them on a deeper level than just taste.
“Flavor is an index of nutrition,” he said. “Heirloom foods are not just a hobby or nostalgia, they actually represent a kind of pinnacle of nutritional thinking that an entire culture has developed using seed selection as their way of shaping hundreds or thousands of plant generations. This isn’t a classroom, it’s an adventure that invites people to come along and encounter some of the most spectacular fruit or vegetable creations the South ever gave rise to.”
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