Published: August 01. 2010 2:00AM

By Stephanie Trotter
CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Take a pound of fresh food, add a cup of Southern charm and a dash of sibling rivalry. It's a recipe for perfection producing the Lee Brothers! Matt and Ted Lee have filled their menu full of award-winning cookbooks, television appearances and articles in high-end “foodie” magazines. We're talking standard-bearing publications that would self-destruct before hitting the counter of a kitchen stocking Fluffernutter and rice cakes: Martha Stewart Living, The New York Times , Travel + Leisure, Food & Wine.

But that's the beauty of the Lee brothers and what they've brought to the industry as food journalists. They have the pedigree (or lack thereof) to represent the rest of America in the kitchen. Admitting they're not “fancy-pants chefs,” the witty duo samples and cooks cuisine with the same curiosity, flair and elan as those of us who didn't attend Le Cordon Bleu. The Charleston raised, Ivy League grads, sons of an educator and surgeon, travel the U.S. promoting Southern cooking and critiquing everything else. This month, they'll bring their running commentary and cooking demonstrations to the Upstate Women's Show, Aug. 26-28 at the Carolina First Center.

Talk Greenville caught up with Matt Lee as he and his family were making their way to Martha's Vineyard for a summer getaway. (Ted was in the south of France.) Even on vacation, the brothers are hard at work. After all, they have to eat, don't they?

Talk Greenville: Thanks for taking us along!

Matt Lee : Sure. It's beautiful today. It's dry and cool and not a cloud in the sky. It's perfect.

TG: What's the difference between South Carolina and New England seafood?

ML: What we have in common are oysters. The differences are exciting. The white shrimp and plumper shrimp are such a Lowcountry favorite. And I love the little red winter shrimp they get up in Maine and northern New England. But the main differences are in the shellfish category. The lobsters up north and then the white shrimp we have down South.

TG: No matter where you travel and eat, are you working?

ML: We are constantly taking notes and taking stock of what's there and not here, and vice versa. We're always making note of variables that make one place different from another and worth visiting. The differences are what get us up and out of bed and traveling because they're fun to experience for everyone.

TG: After South Carolina, what region is your favorite?

ML: I haven't been to all regions, but I love north of San Francisco, that whole area, Napa Valley. They have a nice mix of different types of climate, and grow stuff almost year-round. Any place you can grow grapes is a great place to me. And Ted has been to the Leelanau Peninsula on the upper end of Michigan. Ted vacationed there and ran into Mario Batali and ended up cooking breakfast for him. It's north of Traverse City. They have a little culinary club going on there, a little bit of a winemaking. It's a real nice food community.

TG: In the simplest of terms, you play with food for a living, and yet you went to Harvard and your brother Amherst.

ML: We joke about it all the time, because it's really like just punishment to our kind, supportive, loving, academically inclined parents, who I'm sure would have loved it if we'd become doctors, lawyers or run-of-the-mill business people. It probably would have made them feel more comfortable, but it was not to be. (laughs )

TG: How did y’all get into food? After graduating, you started the Boiled Peanuts Catalogue, selling Southern delicacies to hungry, homesick expats.

ML: Throughout college I studied art history and Ted chose fiction writing. You could tell we weren't going to go the conventional route. In fact, when we cooked up our boiled peanuts performance art project, we never looked back. The ingredients include our uncle. He was in the restaurant business in Toronto, and we were under his spell growing up. He lived this really cool life — cool cars and he knew everything about food and wine. He introduced us in our teen years to our first bits of amazing beer and introduced us to a lot of life's pleasures. Combine that with our parents loving to cook and our uncle loving to eat out, (and) we got the full spectrum of food experiences fairly early before we went to college.

TG: Explain writing for high-end food magazines as self-taught foodies.

ML: From the start, we were bringing a messy, fun, uncomplicated perspective. Whether it was for The New York Times or Martha Stewart Living, everyone knows what they're getting with us. It's not fancy stuff. People say, “Oh, you're chefs.” But we're not chefs, we're avid home cooks and everything we do flows from that.

TG: Bobby Flay admits copying your recipes. Paula Deen calls you the “Lewis & Clark of Southern cuisine.” Your cookbooks have won top awards. Such success.

ML: We want as many people as possible to love Southern food as much as we do. If there's a way to remove a barrier to that, we'll remove that barrier. It's never about being elite, it's about making the kitchen accessible to as many people as possible.

TG: Is it hard working with your brother?

ML: It's great in our case. There have always been issues, but we're different enough. I think our paths diverged early on. Even though we shared a bedroom, Ted was into punk rock and skateboarding, and I was into computers and Journey. And then we came together through writing interests and food interests. We've different styles in the kitchen, but we share this body of experience that allows us to work well together. I think if we were identical twins there would be a problem.

TG: Ted's not here to vote, but who's the better cook?

ML: (laughing ) Our styles of cooking are really different. I'm more intuitive. You'd want to go to Matt if you're on a desert island and don't have a cookbook at your disposal. Ted is much more clinical. He loves to cook from a printed recipe. He'll plan out a whole menu meticulously. Ted's your go-to guy if you want to be entertained in high style.

TG: Are we lucky to live in South Carolina when it comes to food?

ML: Absolutely. Everything grows here. The fact we're on the ocean and have the mountains as well; it's a blessing. We have the widest spectrum of food opportunities.

TG: What do you crave when on the road?

ML : Shrimp and grits. It's the kind of dish you just don't get anywhere else. It's comfort food for me. You can get shrimp in other places, but they rarely compare to real fresh shrimp in South Carolina.

TG: Favorite junk food?

ML: Good question. If you consider popcorn junk food, which I don't, I eat the tar out of popcorn. I did have a sausage McMuffin moments ago. But I would say Moon Pie; I love a Moon Pie. It hits the spot on occasion.

TG: Favorite beer for around the pool?

ML: On a hot August day, I would love a good wheat beer. You know the kind you squirt some citrus into? Not Warsteiner. Hoegaarden beer.

TG: What's on the horizon for you two?

ML : We just debuted a new show on the new Cooking Channel. The show is called “Unique Eats.” They go to a few experts to comment on different types of restaurants. We've never gotten into TV really, but this maybe promises a way that we might be able to add TV to the print and radio and cookbooks.

TG: Do you want to open a restaurant?

ML: No! Definitely not. We worked in our uncle's restaurant and know that's way too hard. We're living the life these days playing around with food. It's really where we want to be. We model our careers on Julia Child's. Until the day you drop dead you can talk about food and eat it and meet new people and write. Between the food and the writing, as long as you can make a living out of it, you're doing pretty well.

TG: What can visitors expect at the Upstate Women's Show?

ML: We are looking forward to August. It's our first event of the fall schedule. So Ted and I will be well rested and raring to go. I don't have the exact recipes we'll use, but what you can expect is the brother act. We're excited to launch the fall season. I don't know if you've ever seen me and my brother in action, but we like to play off each other and it's always a fun time and lively.

TG: Can't wait to see you cook.

For more on The Lee Bros. and their Aug. 26-28 appearance in Greenville, go to MattLeeAndTedLee.com and UpstateWomensShow.com.