Virginia-born Sean Brock won the James Beard Award 2010 at Husk Charleston and became the public face of heirloom-grain Southern cooking. After Joyland and the twin Nashville projects Audrey/June, he prepares to open Darling in West Hollywood (summer 2025), pursuing a restless study of the American South.
Raised in Pound, Virginia, Brock graduated from Johnson & Wales University in 2000 and soon anchored his craft to the foods of the Appalachian mountains. Early posts in Charleston led him to Husk, where his revival of Carolina Gold rice and other heritage crops earned the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Southeast (2010) and a “Best New Restaurant in America” nod from Bon Appétit in 2011.
Between 2013 and 2018 he multiplied Husk locations across Nashville, Greenville and Savannah before striking out solo with Joyland (2020), a craft fast-food shop, and a Nashville campus that pairs the à-la-carte Audrey (2021) with the tasting-menu lab June.
Ever evolving, Brock closed June in September 2024 to “re-imagine” the concept, and in May 2025 entrusted day-to-day operations of Audrey to Southall Farm & Inn while retaining creative oversight.
His next step is Darling, slated for West Hollywood in August 2025—an open-fire restaurant translating his Southern cuisine vocabulary through California produce, to be joined by sibling Bar Darling.
Brock’s personal journey informs his work: a 2016 diagnosis of myasthenia gravis forced him to rethink kitchen ergonomics and self-care, while a highly publicised return to sobriety in 2017 reshaped his philosophy of “food as wellness.”
Author of the James-Beard-winning cookbook “Heritage” (2015) and “South” (2019) and a star of “Chef’s Table” and “The Mind of a Chef”, he now channels his energy into in-house mentoring sessions and research on fermentation, seeds and soil health, asserting that “every plate should protect the past while feeding the future.”
