Big Bad BreakfastTHE MOST IMPORTANT BOOK OF THE DAY

JOHN CURRENCE was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, and had his first cooking job while working offshore as a deckhand on a tugboat in the Gulf of Mexico. His love for the kitchen was ignited during his first restaurant job at Bill Neal’s Crook’s Corner while at the University of North Carolina. That job along with several others he curated during those years (baking bread at an Italian restaurant, working at a butcher shop, cutting salmon and bluefish at a local smokehouse, and working a short-order line at a bookstore/cafe) cemented his love for the industry. Currence returned to New Orleans to help his childhood friend Larkin Selman open Gautreau’s, where he worked as sous chef. After several years, Currence moved on to the Brennan family of restaurants to help open Bacco, before finally settling in Oxford in 1992 and opening City Grocery. Since then, the City Grocery Restaurant Group has opened a number of restaurants, including Ajax Diner, Nacho Mama’s, Kalo’s Tavern, Big Bad Breakfast, Bouré, Lamar Lounge, The Main Event, and Snackbar.

Currence is the recipient of the 2009 James Beard Award for Best Chef South and the Southern Foodways Alliance Guardian of the Tradition Award. He has appeared on television programs such as Parts Unknown, Mind of a Chef, Bizarre Foods, Treme, and Top Chef Masters and his writing has appeared in Food & Wine and Bon Appétit, among many others. He is a contributing editor for Garden & Gun magazine, a board member of No Kid Hungry (a project dedicated to eradicating childhood hunger in the United States), and an organizer and past board member of the prestigious annual Southern Foodways Symposium.

During his tenure as president/chairman of the Mississippi Restaurant Association, the Association was one of the first in the country to establish a statewide culinary educational program in Mississippi public schools. He worked for years as organizer of a local farmers’ cooperative and market which established a bi-weekly venue for local farmers to sell their goods in the Oxford community. A deep interest in the arts led to five years as president of the local arts council and a nine year project assembling funds and overseeing the construction of a community performing arts center. The eighteen months following hurricane Katrina found Currence mostly in New Orleans leading the rebuilding of Willie Mae’s Scotch House in the Treme neighborhood of the city, which was the subject of a feature-length documentary called Above the Line: Saving Willie Mae’s Scotch House. An avid hunter and fisherman, Currence lives in Oxford with his wife, Bess, and extremely strong-headed but amazing daughter, Mamie. If you need him, he’s the chubby guy at the end of the bar, sipping whiskey and bitching about the current state of American politics, entitlement, and/or commercial air travel. Just keep your hands and feet away from his mouth and cover your children’s ears . . .