Meet PCG Member – Kathleen Purvis – Storyteller, “Puzzle Nut”
“At heart, I am a storyteller. Food is a lens, a way to talk about the world, and everyone can relate to it,” says Charlotte Observer Food Editor and PCG Member Kathleen Purvis, as she carefully inspects the crust of her margarita pizza.
After a few pokes and prods, she lifts a slice up to examine the crust on the bottom, takes a bite and then jots some notes in a small reporter’s notebook. She’s doing research for a pizza story. She’ll end up eating pizza for dinner tonight, lunch twice tomorrow, and dinner again tomorrow night.
“There’s a certain element that I’ve always loved about the chase,”; Purvis explains. “I’m a puzzle nut and the chase is kind of like a puzzle trying to figure out how I can do this better.”
Growing up, she knew she wanted to be a writer, but she didn’t know there was a paying job for that skill. At the age of 10, she learned newspapers would pay you to write.
That’s all she needed to know. By the time she was in high school, she was already working as a newspaper “copy boy”.
She worked her way up the ladder in a laundry list of jobs, including hard news journalist. In 1985, she transferred to Charlotte to be the Observer’s night layout editor, where she would work on six editions every night.
“I oddly got my job in food writing when no one wanted to be a food writer. No one knew I was a writer and I was longing to go into writing; [it’s] where my heart was pulling me.”
At the time, The Charlotte Observer didn’t have much of a food section. Purvis believed there was a great beat in food that no one at the paper was exploring. “The food editor job [at The Observer] was empty and I went to them and said, ‘I want it,’ and they said, ‘take care of it.’”
She started working on The Observer’s food section six hours per week. In a few years, it became a full-time job. Her focus was on recipes and cooking stories, rather than restaurant reviews. “I wrote about what to cook, where to cook, why to cook, and how to cook,” says Purvis.
To tell a good story, she says, you have to find the context; you need to ask questions like “why?” and “how?” rather than just absorb the information that’s given to you.
“I write about anything and everything in the world of food, but always with an eye of ‘is that news?’ I try to get people stuff they can take away and use immediately.”
A few years ago, The Observer transitioned to the digital space and Purvis had to adapt to an online audience. What she misses most with the transition is the storytelling. It has become who has the story first, not necessarily, who can tell it best. “If I don’t have it first, there’s no audience. It’s become hyper-competitive.”
However, even in the digital age, chefs in the Charlotte community see Purvis’ value and talents when it comes to storytelling through the lens of food.
“Kathleen has watched the scene grow for 30 years. Her perspective is one of breadth and depth, which lends understanding and knowledge to what good food is.” says Chef Greg Collier, fellow Piedmont Culinary Guild member and owner of The Yolk Cafe in Rock Hill. “Her integrity when writing articles has shown in every piece I’ve read or been a part of. In an era of social media where everything is about first not best, Kathleen takes time to understand stories behind the people and vice versa.”
Purvis has been able to fill her storytelling void via her three (so far) books.
“[My] cookbooks came to fruition as a total accident.” A planned project focusing on funeral food of different ethnic cultures was interrupted with the shocking events of September 11, 2001, and in the aftermath, the concept was met with disappointment and rejection so she tabled the idea of cookbooks. “Why would I give myself to something that is so heartbreaking?”
Several years later, she attended an event with Elaine Maisner, the editor of UNC Press. They were sitting next to each other, “both being introverted” in the back of the event space, and “Elaine leaned over and told me she had an idea about cookbooks featuring one southern ingredient,” and asked Purvis if she wanted to participate. “I’m from Georgia, so Pecans was a no-brainer.”
Her second book in the Savor the South series was Bourbon. Not just making cocktails and drinks, but “cooking with bourbon and using it as an ingredient.”
Purvis’ third book, Distilling the South, was released in May.
“Elaine told me she loved how much [I] love bourbon and how [I] communicate, so what if we did something else with alcohol.”
Distilling the South is a travel food book, featuring five different liquor trails covering eleven southern states.
Purvis researched the book for thirteen months. She visited 54 distilleries, talking to the people who own them and work in them. “It’s a visceral story about people,” she says.
Distilling the South includes not only the stories behind the distilleries, but ways to use the spirit, recipes, plus other information about the towns and cities she visited. The book gives the reader a way “to go experience the south and learn something.”
When asked about the Charlotte food scene now compared to thirty years ago, Purvis says the local food movement has made it look like night and day.
When she first started as a food writer, she couldn’t publish certain recipes that came off the national wire because they featured ingredients “we couldn’t get here in Charlotte.” Now, with Charlotte’s growth and more and more people moving to the city every day, “chefs feel like they can be more experimental” with both ingredients and techniques.
“The chef-owned restaurant is really coming into its own now,” and the story of Charlotte food is “becoming chef owned restaurants that are really expressions of this place,” paying homage to Charlotte’s history, location, and local farmers and purveyors with “sophistication and a personal spin.”
Purvis says she sees this in several local restaurants where everything from the food, to the theme, to the décor, to what is written on the menu reflects an expression of who they are. While she won’t disclose her favorite Charlotte restaurant “it’s like asking me to pick my favorite child,” she gives two examples.
She often takes out-of-town visitors to Haberdish in NoDa, because it tells a story through the menu and food inspired by the city’s history.
When eating breakfast at Collier’s restaurant, The Yolk Cafe, you sit at community tables made out of wooden doors featuring family photos under the glass, reflecting the gathering and community aspects of food. Both literally and figuratively. “You have to sit there with other people … creating a community,” she says.
Purvis values the relationship she has with chefs as a member of Piedmont Culinary Guild. “There’s a network of chefs, [and other food professionals] to talk to behind the scenes. They know me well enough that they will talk to me honestly. I can call up a fellow PCG member and ask, ‘is there a story here?’”
At the same time, Purvis has to balance her relationships with chefs and her role as a reporter.
While I cover this world and understand the complications in their world, [I have to tell chefs], ‘I’m not your friend. I’m the reporter covering you.’ I’m always representing my readers and their customers.”
What once was pizza is now just a few lone crumbs, and you can’t leave lunch with arguably Charlotte’s biggest culinary expert without asking, “Is Charlotte a food city?” Purvis chuckles and retorts, “What is a food city?”
“Do we need to be a place where people come to, to eat? We need things that are good for the people living here.” Purvis thinks. “We have a vibrant and viable food scene.”
“Put your head down and cook. Then the rest of the world will think we’re so fun they can’t resist us.”
Profile written by Chrissie Nelson Rotko
Photos by Tonya Russ Price / Poprock Photography
i ate pizza with kathleen purvis | off the eaten path
June 27, 2018 @ 6:51 am
[…] I had the honor of interviewing Charlotte food royalty, Kathleen Purvis, as part of a series of memb…! We talked about everything from her professional history and how she became a food writer, to Instagram, the growth of the Charlotte culinary scene and her favorite Charlotte restaurant (spoiler, she wouldn’t tell me). All photos by Tonya Russ Price, courtesy of Kathleen Purvis. […]