“Nobody talks about Virginia barbecue, it’s not in the lineup at all,” says Hall, who admits she knew “absolutely none,” of the state’s rich history with whole hog cooking before the show. “Watching the pitmasters making their own coals and really leaning into wood being its own ingredient, it was amazing,” says chef, author and TV personality Carla Hall.
Hall’s new Max show “Chasing Flavor” drops all six, 30-minute episodes to stream on Thursday, Feb. 1. Each episode unravels the thread of a beloved American dish, including hot chicken, chicken pot pie, shrimp and grits, ice cream, and, of course, barbecue.
“Pulling the meat off the back of the pig and dunking it in that vinegar-hot, sauce-salty solution—I’ve never experienced such a thing,” enthuses Hall. “The entire process is so elegant, from the pit being dug to the cinderblocks and the corrugated metal, it was such a beautiful experience.”
Over the course of two 12-hour days, pitmasters Alex Bazemore and William Moore, who boast a combined 40 years of barbecue experience between them, along with ‘cue aficionado and “Southern Grit” founder Joshua Fitzwater, cooked up four hogs on Big House Farm in Chesapeake, Virginia as Hall and her production crew captured every detail.
In between close-ups of the pit and the pig, Hall chatted with “Setting the Table” podcast host and Style’s own food editor, Deb Freeman, who happens to be a bit of an expert on Virginia barbecue history. “This is the first national show to recognize that Virginia is the home of American barbecue,” says Freeman, who discusses the topic at length on “Setting the Table” episode seven.
“This is something Deb and I and Joe Haynes [Virginia barbecue author and guru] have been trying to get out there for many years,” says Fitzwater.
Hall and her team filmed “Chasing Flavor” way back in 2021—Freeman and Fitzwater feared the gospel would continue to go unsung for years, waiting to hear if the show was going to air as buyouts and mergers happened behind the scenes.
“When Deb told me this January that ‘Hey, we have an air date,’ I was like ‘Wow, that’s unbelievable, I have to watch the trailer!” says pitmaster Bazemore. “And then I saw myself at the one minute and 19 seconds mark.”
The United States Marine Corps vet and North Carolina native grew up cooking hogs, learning from his grandparents who would do cooks for the community, says Bazemore. “Once I turned 13, I became my dad’s assistant, and then finally when I was ’bout 20, 21 years old that was the first time I cooked one by myself.”
Bazemore, who had previously worked with Freeman and Fitzwater for “Southern Grit” Barbecue Wars, says that when Fitzwater approached him about doing “Chasing Flavor,” he didn’t hesitate. “I said ‘I’ll be there, just let me know the date and time,’” laughs Bazemore.
Freeman, Fitzwater and Bazemore’s clear passion for low and slow-cooked hogs mirrors Hall’s own insatiable curiosity about the “Why?” of American food.
Before “Chasing Flavor,” Hall had been a judge, host and contestant on a number of food shows, but this was her first foray into executive producing. She played a key role in choosing which foods they would explore—”I worked at Baskin Robbins in high school so we had to do ice cream”—and which paths they would traverse.
“It can be really polarizing, what people like and don’t like,” says Hall. For instance, the “Chasing Flavor” team decided to travel to Italy versus France to track down the origins of ice cream. “We could have gone to France,” says Hall. “I’m hoping people will realize this is like a tree, we’re going down branches, down leaves.”
Hall says that filming all over the country and around the world over the course of 84 days was a bit like the game Tetris.
She and her team traveled as far as Ghana—her first trip to the country and a “beautiful journey,” she says—and as close as her hometown of Nashville, where she finally dug into the history of hot chicken, “Admittedly being from Nashville I took it for granted, I learned so much more, it was really special to look at my specific culture.”
Hall says there are some twists over the course of the six episodes, and certainly viewers will walk away having learned details about a favorite dish they’d never considered before. “When culture leaves one place and goes to another it’s like the butterfly effect for food,” says Hall.
And nothing “distills that very fact” like the origins of American barbecue, says Hall. If not for the whole hogs brought over from Europe, cooked in pits modeled after indigenous methods and expertly prepared by enslaved Africans, where would American barbecue be today?
“We needed all of these cultures to come together,” says Hall. “You wouldn’t have barbecue without this trifecta.”
Dinner and a show: Grab a taste of Virginia ‘cue before streaming “Chasing Flavor” from Max on Feb. 1.
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