Chef Blair Machado’s journey as a traveling chef
“This is my version of caviar service,” says Chef Blair Machado of Hamfish BBQ with a wide grin. The plate presented at the recent Charleston pop-up dinner he references is a perfect example of all that is Hamfish. Inside a blue-checked cardboard boat, The Mighty “H” Dog, an all-beef hotdog with Duke’s spicy mayo, potato chip crumble, and furikake, is a vehicle for generous dollops of caviar.
Formerly the chef in some of Charleston’s most celebrated restaurants, including James Beard Award-winning FIG, Machado has the credentials and experience to cook just about anything, anywhere. Yet after more than 20 years of working in restaurants, he’s now chosen an unconventional route as a nomadic chef, traveling from farms to restaurants to event spaces around the country, introducing diners to his whole animal and hyper-local approach to cooking. His concentration of events in the Southeast includes stops in Greenville’s 2022 euphoria culinary festival and the upcoming Southern Roots Reunion in Travelers Rest.
His personal evolution from running high-pressure kitchens, with high overheads and even loftier expectations, to offering dinners and events quite literally anywhere was a process marked by the loss of friends, family, and a restaurant deal in 2019. “Any beacon of my identity was gone,” he says, referencing the death of his grandmother in March 2020 that was yet another blow after the loss of other family members and close friends.
A precursor to what was coming, a brick-and-mortar deal in Charleston fell through in late 2019. Machado began toying with a change of operation, but that was accelerated by the sudden loss of work for the six weeks restaurants were shuttered at the beginning of the pandemic. For the first time in 21 years, he was suddenly without work and alone in a West Ashley apartment. “I was without a kitchen, and my brain turned on me,” Machado says. Through intense counseling, he learned about his unaddressed mental health needs and reshaped his identity as a chef. “I was not in a place I could lead people.”
Because of his close personal connections to several military veterans, Machado became the first civilian to work as a farmer at Comfort Farms in Milledgeville, Georgia. The farm exists to assist displaced veterans by providing opportunities for growth, learning, and reintegration into society. Through farming agri-therapy, both in Georgia and at a family-run medical marijuana farm in Maine, his mind began to heal.
The name Hamfish was conceived in 2020 after he found himself brining fish and seafood, as if it were pork, for his pescatarian cousin in Maine. The seed for nomadic dinners had already been planted, and with a name, the idea blossomed. Various stints as a barbecue pitmaster in Georgia and North Carolina rounded out his experience and prepared him for the open-fire cooking he loves to bring to his guests.
What’s most important to him is supporting and bringing attention to the small fisheries and farms through which he sources all of his ingredients, no matter where he is hosting an event. Part entertainment and part education, Machado’s events include time for him to teach his dinner guests about his process and their food sources. He remembers witnessing his first pig slaughter and how it changed him, and he’s passionate about spreading that awareness.
Between a full schedule of Hamfish events this spring and a summer project restoring his family’s camp in Northern Canada, Machado is still managing to dream up other events and eventually a brick and mortar, with an eye on coastal regions.
For a list of upcoming Hamfish events, including Southern Roots BBQ reunion in Travelers Rest, go to hamfishevents.com.
Machado’s Bread & Butter Pickles Recipe
Blair Machado incorporated his grandmother’s pickle recipe into his arsenal of signature menu items, with the heat amped up from the original. As a child, he often awoke on Saturday mornings with the whole house reeking of vinegar. “I hated it when I was growing up, and now I pickle every item from my menu,” he says.
- 5 lb cucumbers
- 2 onions, thinly sliced
- ¾ cup white wine vinegar
- ¾ cup apple cider vinegar
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 Tbsp mustard seed
- ½ tsp celery seed
- ½ tsp turmeric
- ½ Tbsp red pepper
- 5 garlic cloves
- 3 bay leaves
Cut cucumbers into a bowl. Add salt and onions. Cover with water and ice and let sit at room temperature for two hours. Drain water. Boil all other ingredients together and pour over cucumbers. Soak for 24 hours.
Photography courtesy of Blair Machado.
