Vivian Howard's New Restaurant Connects History and Food
There's also a surprising connection to Hamilton
For Vivian Howard, North Carolina is more than a place to cook. It’s her birthplace and home. The chef and author has made a career out of sharing her love of the land and its people through food.
Her newest restaurant at the Sanderling Resort in the town of Duck, is a love letter to the Outer Banks and the sea. It also has a curious connection to the Historical musical, Hamilton.
The restaurant, Theodosia, is named for Aaron Burr’s daughter, who mysteriously disappeared in 1813 after her ship, the Patriot, sank in a storm off North Carolina’s Outer Banks. “One of the legends of the Outer Banks is about Theodosia still walking the shores of the Outer Banks looking for her ship,” says Howard, who then learned that the restless spirit was Theodosia Burr. “I hadn’t connected it until Hamilton, but it’s a beautiful name and it sounds mysterious. I couldn’t be more thrilled with it.”
Howard adds that the name is also a topic of conversation among diners, who sometimes go walking in search of the mysterious woman on the beach. In addition to Theodosia’s legend, Howard says the Outer Banks are filled with stories of pirates and rum. Howard taps into those tales through Theodosia’s cocktail menu, with drinks such as the Three Circles, a rum Old Fashioned inspired by the English pirate, Blackbeard; and the Hush Harbor, named for the secret coves where smugglers hid their barrels of rum.
More importantly, the Outer Banks is the inspiration for Howard’s culinary menu at Theodosia. “My entryway into my restaurant menus is through the history of the place,” says Howard, who sourced out old community cookbooks to prepare for the endeavor of writing recipes. Howard explains that Outer Banks cuisine is different than the low country cuisine of Wilmington and the South Carolina and Georgia coastlines. “The Outer Banks has a little bit of a cooler climate,” she explains, adding that because of this, fishermen harvested cooler-climate fish from the local waters. “What I try to do is to present something that’s familiar but different,” says the chef, who also offers frogmore stew (a regional stew of potatoes, corn, sausage, and shrimp) on the menu.
Howard has also made friends with the local fishermen and enjoys going to the docks to choose her fresh catch. “We pick the fish we want directly from the boat. It’s been the most exciting thing for me,” she says, adding, “I think being a chef is such a tangible job. We touch our ingredients in such a tactile way. I think that’s why we’re looking for something to get us a little excited.”
Howard says that Thodosia’s combination of cuisine and history has been especially satisfying to her. “I actually like stories and history as much — maybe even more than cooking. This gives me a chance to do both.”