Forget Eat, Pray, Love. We've Got an Appetite for Meat, Salt, Time.

By Amy Flurry
June 6, 2011

Tony Seichrist

Chef and charcuterie cookbook author Tony Seichrist; Seichrist's new book: Meat, Salt, Time

By his mid-twenties, Tony Seichrist had garnered the experience chefs twice his age would envy. Schooled in kitchens of James Beard Award finalists Hugh Acheson and Linton Hopkins, part of a new vanguard that have been credited with reigniting a sophisticated Southern fare centered on the farm, Seichrist then commandeered the menu at The Farmhouse at Serembe, a restaurant on a sustainable farm community outside of Atlanta, before taking his talents to the illustrious Greyfield Inn on Cumberland Island. Top chef trackers speculated that a return to Atlanta would be in a kitchen of his own. But Seichrist, who had also been educated in Italy under a "salume scholar" before helping to institute a whole animal charcuterie program at Atlanta's Holeman & Finch restaurant, surprised everyone, trading his knives for the pen and allowing a different story to unfold.

Tony Seichrist

His return to the southern capital coincided with "the pig" blowing up all over the food world, enough of an intoxicant for Seichrist to seek out one of the most revered names in whole pork processing who was at the forefront of the meat curing movement, Cristiano Creminelli. "Everyone wanted to start curing meat," says Seichrist, 28, whose favorite part of working on his new charcuterie book, Meat, Salt, Time was visiting Creminelli's family and salumificio in Italy.

Tony Seichrist

"We are talking about processes that were honed over generations and were fundamental to survival. There is just no way that chefs could learn as fast as the trend arrived. There needed to be a final word in technique, or at least the importance of it" says Seichrist, of the impetus for publishing his tome.

Meat, Salt, Time, while not a traditional charcuterie recipe cookbook (there are only five recipes), is at home in the kitchen as well as on the coffee table. Seichrist's storytelling, coupled with presentation by photographer Artem Nazarov, is a seductive vision and reads as nothing less than a passion for food and preservation without pretense.

Tony Seichrist

"This book was meant to help people learn what they don't know," says Seichrist. " I spend my time searching out those people whose abilities seem almost superhuman even to experienced chefs. It's about uncovering and celebrating unmatched ability beyond anything else that, hopefully, will help to raise the bar of what we expect from our artisans and chefs."

What's next for this rising food personality? "Another book based on Atlanta sushi chef Tomohiro Naito is already in the works," the charcuterie professional says. "Tomo is one of the most talented sushi chefs in the southeast and I want to help the reader truly appreciate the art and the effort he puts into every slice of fish."

Tony Seichrist, cover, and interior images of Meat, Salt, Time by Tony Seichrist (images by Artem Nazarov)