I have come to find that you can’t judge a restaurant by its exterior. A plain unassuming brick building will many times have a delicious meal inside that might be easy to miss. With Scott’s that is just the case. Inside this plain looking exterior is a barbeque place that you must make a stop at. You will have to time your stop correctly, though. Scott’s is only open on Thursday and Fridays from 10:30-2:30pm.

Inside, you can order your barbeque several different ways. I decided to go with the chopped platter with coleslaw and potato salad as the sides. In addition to that, I went with a side of brunswick stew. Like any great barbeque place, hushpuppies were a part of the meal!

This was a case of my eyes being bigger than my stomach and I gladly packed up half the box to eat later on. Brunswick Stew and barbeque! It is hard to have a better lunch than that. Like all barbeque found in the eastern part of NC, the thin sauce has a delightful tang to it. Every place will vary in what they put into their secret sauces, but the common denominator is it will be vinegar-based and taste amazing on pulled, chunked, or chopped pork!

If you can’t make it to Goldsboro to try Scott’s for yourself, then this secret recipe sauce can be shipped directly to your door! Click here to find out more.  If you find yourself in Goldsboro and are looking for lunch on Thursday or Friday I suggest giving Scott’s a try.

Thanks to Sara and her lovely parents for introducing me to Scott’s!

Allow me to introduce you to something that has been three years in the making: The Southern Tailgating Cookbook! The book won’t hit store shelves until August, but you can now pre-order your copy from UNC Press!

If you follow me on Instagram, you have seen some of the behind the scenes recipe development, writing, and shooting that has gone into this project.

When I started my first tailgate tour back in 2010, I could never have imagined that three years later it would turn into this book! I have learned a lot in the book writing process and couldn’t be happier with what this project has turned into! If you have enjoyed the food on Taylor Takes A Taste, you are going to fall in love with the delicious tailgating inspired recipes that I worked with Sally to developed for The Southern Tailgating Cookbook!  Inside the 240 pages of this book you will find 110 recipes that are designed to wow your tailgating guests, 75 images of food and tailgating (shot by yours truly), and 15 side bars that give an in-depth look into aspects of southern tailgating culture. All together this is A Game-Day Guide for Lovers of Food, Football, and the South. Pre-order your copy today!

When most people think of food trucks, the first places they think of are probably Austin, Los Angeles, or New York City, but that might be changing soon! Charlotte’s food truck scene has steadily been on the rise for the past few years. As the weather heats up, so do the food trucks, with their weeknight rallies throughout the spring and summer. The first in a series of Chow Down Uptowns this season was Thursday and there was no way I was going to miss it! Let me walk you through what happens when I show up at a food truck event.

My first stop was the Wingzza Truck (wings and pizza, how could you go wrong?). After talking with the owner, Larry, I decided to go with five Carolina Buffalo wings. Carolina Buffalo is a cross between your mild buffalo sauce (because I’m kind of a wuss), and the golden mustard-based barbecue sauce found in South Carolina. As you can see, these wings didn’t last long!

The next stop was The Homegrown Crepe Inc. When dealing with crepes, I always run into a huge dilemma: savory or sweet?!?! After reading the Ninja Monkey’s description (Nutella, Banana, Espresso Liquer, Toasted Coconut, and Powdered Sugar, I knew it was going to be a sweet night. Also, Ninja Monkey is an awesome name for anything, especially a crepe. Below is what happened when I crossed paths with the Ninja Monkey.

After my dessert crepe, I realized that it was time for dessert. On a previous trip to Charleston with Sara, I had tried King of Pops. They may have been the smallest cart at the rally, but don’t let their size fool you. They are full of flavor! After agonizing over what pop to select, and consulting my friends, Ben and JJ, who have tried 20 or so of them in the last two weeks, I decided to go with the pomegranate lemonade. This sweet and tart pop was the perfect end to the evening (I might have accidentally also taken home two cupcakes. Oops!).

For those of you who live in Charlotte, I hope to see you at the next rally, May 16 at 5PM in the parking lot across from the 7th Street Station Parking deck uptown.

What are you doing January 26th ,2013? How about making a trip to Birmingham, AL for Food Blog South!

Do you have goals that you would like to achieve with your blog in 2013? Have you thought about starting a blog ? Are there bloggers that you want to finally meet in person? All these things can be done at FBS 2013. I have been to the last two FBS conferences and had a blast at each! Here is my recap from 2011 and 2012.

This year, I will be speaking with Lisa Ekus on the topic of Writing a Cookbook. If you have been following me on instagram and twitter over the last year you have probably seen many pictures of recipe testing and shooting. This has all been a part of the tailgating cook book that I have written with UNC Press. I am incredibly excited about how it has turned out and will give you many more details in the coming months. At Food Blog South I will  be speaking about the book and the journey it has been from a concept to a reality. I hope you can make it ! A full agenda of the amazing speakers can be seen here,

If you haven’t bought your ticket yet or are still on the fence about attending this year’s conference I say go for it! Here is a discount code that you can use to receive 10% off your ticket. At checkout just type in TaylorM to receive 10% off you conference registration !Looking forward to seeing you in Birmingham.

- Taylor

Here is a link to Food Bog South’s Main web page http://foodblogsouth.com/

A trip to Ireland wouldn’t be complete without an investigation into what may be their most popular export. Booze. From St Patrick’s Day celebrations, to the term “I’ll take my coffee Irish”. The Emerald Isle is known for its alcohol production and consumption. During my trip, I was able to visit a distillery, brewery, and more than a few pubs.

The trip started with whiskey and ended with beer. On the first day, Sara, her parents, and I visited the Kilbeggan Distillery. The distillery began producing whiskey back in 1757 and continued manufacturing until 1959. In 2007, the distillery was reopened for production.

When visiting Kilbeggan, you are able to experience their 250 years of history first hand. The front half of the distillery is filled with artifacts, stills, and displays showing the companies origins and first 200 hundred years of production.

In the back half of the distillery, you can see the modern production facilities and how the whiskey is made today. Don’t worry. There is a tasting at the end of the tour where you can have a sample of the product.

The distillery was fascinating, but it paled in comparison to what we visited in Dublin. Ireland’s most popular export is Guinness. This stout is known worldwide for its dark rich body and thick creamy head on top. With millions of visitors visiting Dublin every year, a large percentage of them want to take a trip and see where the most famous stout in the world is made. This has lead Guinness to create the Guinness Storehouse. This museum is 7 floors filled with everything Guinness.

To begin the tour, you step into a glass opening that is shaped like a pint glass. This glass extends all the way up to the ceiling. If filled, it would hold enough pints for every person in Ireland to have 3 glasses. The tour is self guided and takes you up level by leverl where you can learn about Arthur Guinness and the history behind his beer. I will spare you the details of everything that the tour covers, but it is filled with fascinating facts about the production (did you know that Guinness buys 2/3 of the entire Barley crop in Ireland every year?), and the history. After learning more about Arthur Guinness, I was impressed. He was a man of vision and had a belief in what he was doing. When starting Guinness he signed a 9,000 year lease on the brewery at St. James Gate and after a few years of production decided that Guinness would only produce one beer and do that one beer better than anyone.

The tour is worth your time to walk through, but many decide to take the elevator directly to the Gravity Bar. The 7th floor of the storehouse is a circular room with panoramic views of the city.

It was cloudy and rainy when I visited, so you can only imagine what the view would be like on a clear day. To top off the whole experience, you are given a freshly poured pint of Guinness.

Keep in mind that you will have to wait a few minutes. A properly poured Guinness is poured, rests, and then topped with more beer. The people in Ireland not only know how to make some of the finest beverages in the world, they know how to enjoy them as well. After driving around the country; I learned one thing. Every town has a pub. No matter what the size, every town will have a pub. There may not be a gas station or grocery store, but if it is a town, it will have a pub. The pub is a place to grab a Guinness or Kilbeggan and socialize with your friends. Most of the pubs will serve food (that is another post) and almost all will have Irish music at night. My favorite grouping of pubs were found in Dublin. In the Temple Bar section of the city, you will find a dozen or so in very close proximity to one another. Sara and I enjoyed quite a few with our favorite being The Temple Bar. Great music, an outdoor beer garden, and plenty to drink. You can’t go wrong. To think of it, I don’t think there was a pub that I didn’t enjoy.

You may notice that the pub pictures aren’t the same as the rest of the pictures. They were shot in my i phone. I have a rule when it comes to taking pictures, when the beer comes out, the camera is put up. In a later post, I will go into more detail about the food that you will find in the pubs.

If you follow me on Instagram (taylormathis) or on twitter (@taylor_mathis) you may have noticed that I have spent the last week and a half in Ireland. I was there on vacation while touring the country with Sara and her parents. Over the next few weeks, I will share with you in more detail about what I did and saw during my time on “The Emerald Isle”. This includes a trip to the Waterford and Guinness factories, walking with a hawk, and an exploration into the Irish Pub scene. They say A picture is worth a thousand words, so here are a few thousand expressing the scenery of the country . Enjoy.

For those of you interested in the Photography side of things, I will also share with you my review of the 35mm f1.4 and my experience with renting a lens.

Every time that my brother comes home from college, we always go out to eat at one of our favorite Charlotte restaurants. Guess who was home this past weekend?

Mac’s Speed Shop is one of our favorite places to go. Their slogan is Beer, Bikes, BBQ. Enough said. With plenty of outdoor seating and a wide range of beers on tap and in a can it is my go to restaurant for whenever I have out of town visitors.

BBQ is something that my brother and I both enjoy immensely. When I say BBQ, I mean pulled pork. Sure there are other meats you can BBQ, but we both grew up in NC;Pork is king. All pork BBQ isn’t created equally. How you sauce it will vary from place to place. I prefer a tangy vinegar style that you will find in Eastern, NC. My brother, Harrison, on the other hand usually prefers a tomato based sauce like you will find in the western part of NC. Harrison goes to the University of South Carolina where their BBQ is topped with a golden mustard based sauce. If you are from SC, you may be used to a mustard based BBQ sauce. Harrison will disagree with you. He thinks that mustard should be saved for hot dogs and has no place on pulled pork. O the debates one can have about BBQ.

Mac’s has several locations throughout Charlotte. My favorite one is the  on South Blvd. With Charlotte being only a few miles from South Carolina, and drawing residents from all over the state, the BBQ tastes vary greatly. To solve this problem, they offer sauces to suit any taste. They even have a 4th sauce that is a combination of the other three.

You can order your pulled pork by the platter, Harrison went with a platter loaded with pulled pork mac and cheese and green bean casserole…

I went for the “Big Pig” sandwich and collard greens. To top I used a little bit of Eastern and a Little bit of Western sauce. There are several places to get BBQ around Charlotte, but what keeps me coming back to Mac’s are the hush puppies.

Fried balls of dough that are slightly sweet. The perfect vehicle to scoop up additional BBQ sauce or…

Dip in butter.

If you are in Charlotte and looking for BBQ and a wide selection of beers, Mac’s is your place.

Every industry has its conferences. You know, events where hundreds of like minded people get together to network, learn and interact with one another.  The “Food Blogging” industry is no different. Earlier this year I attended Food Blog South in Birmingham and had a blast! This past weekend, I attended and spoke at Blogher Food in Seattle, Washington. Here is a little recap of the weekend.

The conference took place at the beautiful Fairmont Olympic Hotel in Downtown Seattle. For two days, this hotel was taken over by hundreds of bloggers from all over the country. Throughout the conference, I had the pleasure to see old friends, meet “twitter” friends in person, and connect with an amazing talented array of individuals for the first time. With this being a blogging conference centered around food, there was of course no shortage of great food. On the second day of the conference, I gave a presentation about “taking your food photography outdoors and on location” If you missed my presentation, I will be doing a post specifically about what I covered in the presentation at a later date so don’t worry.

I could go on and on with stories about the presentations and give you a play by play of everything I did, but I will restrain. In summary, It was an amazing conference! I thoroughly enjoyed meeting a wide variety of talented people and left with new idea and inspired to create a wide variety of new content. If you do have the chance to ever attend a food blogging conference, I would recommend it. I have been to 3, and have enjoyed them all!

What I do want to share with you is a trip to Pike Place. After my session, I lead a group on a photo walk down to the market to show in real life situations, what I had been talking about.

You can spend hours exploring the produce, watching the fish mongers throw the days catch to one another, and of course eating. For lunch, a group of fellow bloggers and I ate at Pike Place Chowder, located next to the market in Post Alley.

There was a long line. Long lines usually mean good food, so the group and I were willing to wait.

There are quite a few chowders to choose from. With this being Seattle, I couldn’t turn down the chance to try a Salmon chowder. Upon my first spoon full, I was quite glad that I waited. If I ever eat salmon chowder again, Pike Place Chowder has set the bar pretty high of what I should expect.  Warm, rich, creamy, and no overwhelming fishy taste. In a bread bowl it was a perfect lunch. The table we chose also gave a perfect opportunity to show diffusing and reflecting concepts.

On the left is not ideal lighting. On the right the subject is under diffused and reflected light.

Whether you use a spoon or the bowl itself, a bread bowl is the perfect vehicle for chowder consumption.

After the conference I went to visit one of my college roommates, Dan, and enjoyed the beautiful Seattle weather! I know that Seattle has the reputation for always being cloudy and grey, but every time that I visit there is always beautiful weather! Dan and I did some grilling. Well Dan did some grilling, and I did what I usually do when delicious food is around.

After a healthy dinner there was a trip to Peaks for frozen custard!

Seattle. You were great! I look forward to my next trip and my next food blogging conference!

There is always a gamble when taking an editorial assignment, but when Garden and Gun asked me to shoot for their story on BBQ sandwiches last year, I was willing to roll the dice.

The feature was on the Best BBQ sandwiches in the South. If you don’t live in the South, you may be surprised at how BBQ sandwiches can vary so drastically from state to state. Within NC alone, there is a wide range. In the eastern part of the state you will find a vinegar base. As you travel west, more ketchup is added. In the far western part of the state, they are known to be a little crazy. Hog crazy that is. My assignment was to drive to Asheville to shoot a sandwich known as “The Hogzilla”. As I drove along I-40, I couldn’t help but have an internal monologue that you would see on Animal Planet. You know, the one where the guide is in the bush talking in a very low voice, ” And now we approach the Hogzilla in its native habitat.” For your viewing pleasure, here is a Hogzilla in the wild.

You are looking at an adult fully grown Hogzilla. Notice the layers of pulled pork, sausage, sugar bacon, melted pepper jack cheese all between a hoagie shell.

I realize that the Hogzilla might not be for everyone. Three different pork products on one sandwich might be a bit overwhelming. For those of you who like to eat your pork one type at a time, you might want a pulled pork plate or ribs. To complement your pork, you could add chicken or brisket, or a variety of other sides.

and sauces..

The sides and sauces you will find at 12 Bones Smokehouse are very much like the city of Asheville- they just march to the beat of their own drum. They take the principles of NC BBQ and express them in their own ways. Purists, don’t worry.

You can still find this behind the restaurant.

Charleston, SC, is one of my favorite cities in the country. It is a short 3 hour or so drive from Charlotte and is filled with fascinating history, great food, and beautiful scenery. It was the perfect place for a vacation.

The first half of this year has flown by. You may  have noticed that posts over the last few months have been a little bit shorter than normal and have mainly been about flowers or recipes involving butter. The frequency of posts has suffered over the last few months due to a few other projects that have been taking up my time. On top of my editorial and commercial shooting schedule, I have been working on my first book. For those of you who have written a book, you know what that does to you. For those of you who haven’t ventured down that road yet, a book takes all of your creative energy, and a huge portion of your time. I will release more details about the book and when it will be available at a later date, but for now it is in the hands of my publisher. On top of handing in the book, I also got engaged to my amazing fiancee Sara! The last few months have been both incredibly hectic and exciting! Both are combinations which take away from blogging. The good news is that things have settled down, summer is approaching, and I have a wide variety of stories that I am looking forward to sharing!

After the past several months, I was ready for a vacation. So last weekend, Sara and I took a trip down to Charleston,SC, to relax and visit with our friends Helene and Bill.

There is a problem with being a photographer and being on vacation. What photo gear do I bring? If you are a camera enthusiast, I am sure that you have the same irrational fear perfectly normal feeling that if you don’t bring all of your camera gear with you then you may miss an amazing opportunity to capture something that you don’t see every day. Because of this,  I ended up bringing my camera bag with lenses, flashes, tripod, and of course the light stands, diffusers, and fill cards that are always in my car. Upon arriving in Charleston though, I decided to limit myself to one camera and one lens, and just see what I could do with that. For you photo enthusiasts I will talk about gear at the end of the post.

With beaches, history, shopping, and great food, it is an ideal vacation spot. It is impossible to try and talk about all the food Charleston has to offer in one post. It is a city with world class dining and amazing hidden hole in the wall joints. Charleston has it all.

For years, I have been wanting to give The Glass Onion a try. I have passed by it on my way in or out of town on numerous occasions, but for whatever reason I never made it in. I have now been, and I can say that it was worth the wait.

To give you an idea about what the Glass Onion serves and is about, this is a statement form their website

“We offer a moderately priced menu that changes regularly. The mid-scale comfort food draws heavily from the rural South, New Orleans and the Lowcountry. We all grew up with food as a focal point in our lives and want to remind customers of the simple joy brought about by perfectly fried chicken and hearty gumbo. We support local farmers and fishermen by using as many local, all natural ingredients as possible.”

Menu that changes. Check Mid scale comfort food Check. Supporting local farmers and fishermen, Triple check. Ok, I am sold. When a restaurant strives to do these three things, you really can’t go wrong. The whole menu looked delicious, but Sara, her friend Emily, and I all decided to go with the grilled pimento cheese sandwich.

With macaroni salad and cornbread as a side.

When it was all said and done, the meal lived up to my expectations and I will definitely be returning to the Glass Onion again.

That is all for the food part of the Post, now on to the camera part.

When on vacation you want to travel light. For me, this means one camera and one lens. While there are many great lenses to choose from, my favorite to travel with is the 50mm f1.4. It is perfect for what I like to shoot most, people, food, and scenery.

Sure a fixed length of 50mm will not get you the widest of landscapes like a 16 0r 24 mm lens would. It is also true that it won’t zoom to 200mm and get a close up of wildlife you may see. No, it will not remove the expression from your fiancee’s face of “Please stop taking my picture”.  You may be wondering then, why I enjoy it for travel? It is perfect for what I like to shoot.  Food and people.

I have also found that if I step back a little bit, I can still get a great landscape shot. I don’t shoot wildlife, so I have never found the need or urge to be able to zoom into 200mm. I also enjoy the 50mm for its great low light shooting ability, nice depth of field, and its compact and light weight size.

When deciding what lens is ideal for your vacation, thing about what you will be shooting. It may the 50mm or it may be something else. Use whatever works best for you.

If you are going to be at BlogHer Food in Seattle in June, I will be speaking about taking your food photography outdoors where I will talk in more detail about taking food picture while on vacation.