Photograph by Martha Williams
Joshua Fryer grew up in a family of food-loving Tennesseans. Sometimes, they’d drive 45 minutes to try a new fried-catfish place. “From real, real young,” he craved his grandmothers’ field peas, okra, and cornbread. And to this day, his parents serve country ham and chocolate gravy—a standard of the mountain breakfast table—on Christmas mornings.
Now, the chef keeps a photograph of that sweet-savory biscuit accompaniment at the top of the website for Long Snake, his roaming restaurant best known for its long residence at Pure Quill Superette on Memorial Drive. Since its arrival in March 2023, Long Snake—named for the PJ Harvey song “Long Snake Moan”—has electrified the city’s pop-up scene with an assortment of highly original dishes inspired by Fryer’s Southern heritage; his passion for procuring local ingredients (hyperlocal, if you count his home garden in Westview); and his work alongside some of the city’s most accomplished young chefs, including Molli Voraotsady of So So Fed.
Photograph by Martha Williams
And yet, until recently, the studious 43-year-old was better known for his fluency in Loire Valley whites and Italian reds than his exceptional ways with muscadines and melons. For the record, though, Fryer—who worked at chain restaurants as a suburban-Nashville teenager—has been interested in cooking all the while. Not long after high school, he studied at Le Cordon Bleu in Orlando, then took a detour into academia. After moving to Atlanta in 2010 to pursue a PhD in political science at Georgia State, he worked briefly at Restaurant Eugene. That was followed by gigs at Serpas, Ration and Dram, and 8Arm—though never in the kitchen. “I think I stayed more in the front of the house because I made more money doing it,” Fryer says. “Every time I would try to go to the back of the house, the money was just not enough for me to live off of.”
When Pure Quill’s Hudson Rouse opened Whoopsie’s early last year, Fryer smelled opportunity. His vision: a pop-up wine bar that served snacks. In a deal typical of hosting establishments, Whoopsie’s kept the profits from alcohol sales, so to make money, Fryer had to push larger plates. That’s when things got interesting: liver mush and grits,
collard-steamed catfish, chicken heart salads, and Fryer’s pièce de résistance: hoecakes, sometimes salty, sometimes sweet.
Photograph by Martha Williams
A voracious reader, Fryer likes to sift through historical recipes, and keeps the books of Gabrielle Hamilton, Sean Brock, and Ronni Lundy on his shelf. At Long Snake, you might find bread made with cornmeal he ground himself at the Hambidge Center in Rabun Gap, trout he caught in North Carolina, and herbs and flowers plucked from home.
It’s possible his talent was born of necessity. His mom was a middle-school cafeteria worker who served her own kids Hamburger Helper and Swanson’s TV dinners, along with “leftover square pizza” and spiceless chili she brought home from her job. “I love my mother, but I think that was part of the reason I got into cooking,” Fryer says. She always told him, “‘If you are hungry, go make yourself something.’ I don’t regret that at all. It probably made me a better cook. It made me adventurous.”
Ultimately, Fryer wants to situate Long Snake in its own brick-and-mortar, but that will take time and money. Meanwhile, the pop-up won’t disappear, but it probably won’t stay put either. Nomadic by nature, Fryer is eyeing spots other than Pure Quill. (You can follow his journey on Instagram @longsnakeatl.) On the upside, he plans to cook more than two nights a week. That means more hoecakes and pork sliders for everybody.
This article appears in our November 2024 issue.
