Sean Brock

Brock is originally from Pound in rural southwest Virginia. His father, who owned a trucking fleet that hauled coal, died when Brock was 11, resulting in the family becoming impoverished.[2] He started working on the line at age 16.[2] Brock graduated from culinary school at Johnson & Wales University in 2000.[3]

He has been the executive chef at Charleston, South Carolina's Husk since its opening in 2010, as well as a partner at McCrady's Restaurant.[4] The menu at Husk uses authentically Southern ingredients and also food grown in Brock's own garden.[3] He is noted for preserving Southern foodways and heirloom ingredients, and collaborates with David Shields, the McClintock Professor of Southern Letters at University of South Carolina.[5] A second Husk location opened in Nashville in 2013.

In 2015 Brock opened Minero at Ponce City Market, Atlanta, Georgia.[6] In November 2017, Brock opened the third Husk location in Greenville, South Carolina, in the city's West End district. In January 2018, Brock opened the fourth Husk location in Savannah, Georgia, in a restored building in the city’s landmark historic district.

He maintained the title of "founding chef and culinary advisor" at all four Husk locations until May 2019.[7] He planned to open a two-story, two-restaurant East Nashville, Tennessee eatery in spring of 2020, centered around Appalachian cuisine, but they did not open until October 2021.[8][9][10][11] The first restaurant, on the ground floor, is named Audrey, for his grandmother; upstairs the upstairs restaurant has gone through several incarnations, first as Red Bird, then "Upstairs at Audrey", and then "June", after Audrey's middle name.[12]

In 2010, he won the James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef Southeast. He has also been nominated for Outstanding Chef and Rising Star Chef.

Bon Appétit Magazine named Husk the “Best New Restaurant in America” in 2011.[13]

Brock's first cookbook, Heritage, was released in October 2014 and is a New York Times bestseller.[14] His Heritage cookbook also won the James Beard Foundation's award in the American Cooking category in April 2015.[15] His second cookbook, South: Essential Recipes and New Explorations, was released in 2019 and featured in The New Yorker's best cookbooks of 2019.[16]

Brock was one of the hosts of the second season of The Mind of a Chef. For his work on the show, Brock was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award in the Outstanding Culinary Host category. He was also a featured chef in the sixth season of Netflix's Chef's Table.

He was previously married to high school sweetheart, Tonya Combs, marrying in 2006.[17][18] In 2014 they divorced.[2]

In 2016, after undergoing testing and various surgeries for three years, he was diagnosed with myasthenia gravis[2] at Mayo Clinic. His friends became concerned about his drinking, and he spent his 39th birthday in rehab.[10]

In February 2019, he and his girlfriend, Adi Noe, eloped.[2] The couple have a son[10] and a daughter.[11]