For California native and chef extraordinaire Whitney Otawka, the road toward a professional cooking career in the South took several fascinating twists and turns. While she attended the University of California, Berkeley, the then anthropology student and admitted Francophile took a kitchen job at a local, traditional crêperie. What started as a way for Whitney to enjoy and further explore notable French cuisine lit a match of curiosity for all things culinary. As one of just two people in the tiny kitchen—the other being the owner, a native Frenchman—Whitney found herself under his wing as his apprentice, learning anything and everything.
“We’d cook dinner and eat together at the end of each day,” she says. “He showed real kindness to me and took the time to have real conversations about the restaurant business and life lessons over meals and glasses of wine. There’s this cliché about the French being hard like coconuts on the outside and soft on the inside, but he was one of the best mentors I could’ve asked for at that time.”
More than a year of those daily lessons and conversations flew past before Whitney graduated and returned to San Diego to pursue work with her anthropology degree, leaving the kitchen behind for good—or so she thought.
“I was doing historic preservation but started moonlighting in restaurants because I missed it so much. … It brought me to a crossroads in my life, but I buckled down and decided that food was my future.”
That decision came around the same time Whitney moved to Georgia and what she calls “one of the strongest culinary regions in the country.” The standout agriculture and rich history of the South piqued her curiosity—so much so that she quickly enrolled in culinary school at Atlanta’s Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts while simultaneously working with several of the city’s top chefs.
“There’s a hyper-focus on seasonality and produce and also an interesting connection to the community that I didn’t see in California,” she says. “As someone with an anthropology background who likes to experience different cultures, all of this became the focal point of my studies.”
Whitney’s time, effort, and dedication to this career path paid off. She manifested a unique cooking style with aims to honor and preserve the identity of Southern foodways. It’s a mission that’s become deeply personal to her and is plain to see in her meals.
“I realized I saw Southern food through a unique lens,” Whitney says. “I have my own perception of it, and I need to find a way to share it. One of the things that helped me to do that was finding a place to create outside of stressful, high-stakes restaurant kitchens.”
Whitney found such a haven on Cumberland Island, Georgia’s largest and southernmost island. It’s sparsely inhabited with no storied culinary reputation, but that’s precisely what drew her and her husband to the area.
“It’s this remote barrier island,” she says. “It’s a tiny, beautiful garden of an island that had hardly been utilized. I saw that it could tell a story, but I didn’t know what that story was. I just immediately knew that it was an opportunity to create something beautiful.”
Thus, Whitney’s first cookbook, The Saltwater Table: Recipes from the Coastal South, soon came to fruition. The project achieved what she set out to do: completely embody her interpretation of Southern food. With each recipe, she presents readers with a blend of the South they’ll recognize and the South she’s created.
One example is the mouthwatering recipe she shared with us—Woodfire Clams in Fennel, Lemon, and Cream (see below). The light but satisfying dish was inspired by the island’s access to fresh, quality shellfish as well as Whitney’s love for live-fire cooking with cast iron.
“Beachside cooking is my favorite,” she says. “I love the romance of taking a cast-iron pan out there, building a little fire, throwing your clams in, and having a great meal. At certain points during coastal Georgia’s winter and early spring, it’s so wonderful to cozy up with some crusty bread, the clams, a bottle of wine, and a fire on the beach.”
Although Whitney prefers the outdoor method for this dish, it also adapts easily to the stovetop. When she does venture inside to cook it, the priceless heirloom skillet passed down to her husband through his side of the family is never far from reach.
“It’s a treasure in our beautiful collection,” Whitney says. “The old cornbread pan made its way to us, and we love cooking with it because cast iron is such an important part of Southern cooking. It’s just not always the easiest to lug out to the beach.”
The Georgia coast still plays a significant part in Whitney’s life, but she’s since traded the serenity of island life for the charm of Savannah, Georgia, where she’s currently working on several exciting ventures, including a second cookbook. An update on that should come in the next year or so, but you can take a peek into her life and menus on her social media sites. She even taps into her inner anthropologist (and foodie) from time to time with guides to popular international destinations like Japan, Mexico, and more.
“My want to be an anthropologist completely shifted to my want to travel and see the world through food,” she says. “That’s what I’ve tried to [do] and am still trying to do with my new home in the South. It’s been a beautiful experience, but I don’t want to stop there. I’m still exploring.”
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
- ½ fennel bulb, diced
- 3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
- 3 pounds littleneck clams, scrubbed well
- ½ lemon, thinly sliced into half-moons
- ½ cup dry white wine
- 3 tablespoons minced fresh chervil
- ½ cup cold heavy whipping cream
- Crusty bread, to serve
- In a deep cast-iron skillet or Dutch oven, melt butter over medium-heat high. When butter is bubbling, stir in fennel and garlic; cook, stirring frequently, until fennel is lightly browned, 4 to 5 minutes.
- Stir in clams, lemon, and wine. Cover and cook until clams open, 10 to 12 minutes. Stir in chervil and cream; serve immediately with bread.
When cooking this dish outdoors, choose a deep cast-iron skillet or Dutch oven, and have thick towels or oven mitts for the hot handles. Plan on eating straight from the pot. Pack the ingredients already measured out for easy cooking. When cooking over live fire, I find that everything goes a little faster, so watch your cook time. Keep a little water nearby in case your liquids are evaporating too quickly. If cooking indoors, I recommend using a cast-iron Dutch oven. It’s the best way to seal the pot and keep those clams a steamin’. Choose a wine for cooking that you’d want to drink with the clams; it’s worth it. Vouvray is my favorite wine for this. Before cooking, gently tap the shells of any clams that are open; if they do not close, discard them. Once cooked, discard any clams that are not open.
For this recipe and more, pick up your copy of Whitney Otawka’s The Saltwater Table: Recipes from the Coastal South today! Or look for the recipe in our March/April 2023 issue at southerncastiron.com.
