Photography by Emily Dorio
Brian Griffith grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee, where he says Chinese food in the 1990s meant sweet and sour pork or shrimp fried rice that came in waxy takeout boxes. Now, after years of cooking in cities from Copenhagen to San Francisco, the chef has returned to his home state to open Choy, a chic Chinese-American eatery in Nashville designed to evoke mid-20th century Shanghai. Griffith trained at the esteemed Mister Jiu’s in San Francisco, where learning the cuisine’s nuances was “an eye-opening experience.” At Choy, he incorporates regional ingredients for a Southern twist. For the Gulf shrimp fried rice, he cooks scrambled eggs and scallions in a wok with Carolina Gold rice sourced from Anson Mills in Columbia, South Carolina. Next he adds Tennessee sweet corn. The golden fried shrimp are cooked with XO sauce, a buttery base that incorporates Old Bay, a bit of Szechuan pepper, ginger, dehydrated scallops, and Benton’s bacon from nearby Madisonville. Finished with a sprinkle of Meyer lemon zest, it’s an amalgamation of salty, sweet, smoky, and zesty—and a far cry from ubiquitous takeout boxes.
This article appears in the Winter 2025 issue of Southbound.
