One of Kentucky’s hottest chefs has never had a restaurant. How did that happen?
Somewhere along the way Samantha Fore didn’t open a restaurant. It’s not exactly that she forgot to but as her curries and rice bowls rocketed her to chef stardom, she just didn’t have time.
What started as at-home brunches to introduce friends to the food she grew up with morphed in 2016 into Tuk Tuk Sri Lankan Bites, a pop-up hosted at bars around town.
And that morphed into her curry tomato pie landing on the cover of “Food & Wine” magazine, a fellowship from the Southern Foodways Alliance, designation by Plate magazine as one of the 2018 chefs to watch, a feature in “Bon Appetit,” star spots on national food shows and restaurant takeovers from New York to Louisville to Boston to Atlanta.
“None of this makes sense,” Fore said. Gone are the days of developing web sites for other chefs, now “I’m traveling around the country making food and extolling the virtues of Central Kentucky.”
And bringing people here. When Vivian Howard, the PBS food personality, wanted to include her in the upcoming series “Somewhere South,” Fore chose Best Friend Bar — “one of the diviest bars on campus” — as the location for a show that will air this spring.
It was the atmosphere Fore relished: “You’re going to come drink cheap bourbon, you’re going to have really good food, you’re going to have a great time and make a couple of friends.”
It was “a blast,” she said, stretching the word to at least three syllables. “And that’s how my pop-ups have gone and it’s taken me further than I ever expected.”
Fore expected to go somewhere and to work hard getting there. “We’re the children of immigrants, we grew up watching our parents work their tails off, constantly.” Fore was born and lived the first five years of her life in Lexington where her father, Ranjit Weerakoon, practiced medicine before moving to North Carolina, where he’s still in practice.
“I was supposed to be a doctor,” she said, but as she dug into her medical studies she realized it wasn’t for her.
Without that goal, she had trouble finding her stride. She worked in the music industry for several years (which makes her oh-so-unimpressed by the “rock star mentality around some chefs right now”) and then found her way into web site design. Eventually she realized, “I like my restaurant clients and that’s about it.” And that made her think about the spread of Sri Lankan bites her mother, Indra, put out on the table every night, even after working in her father’s office during the day.
In 2012 Fore and husband, Chris (a native Kentuckian she met in Boston — “we just found out we were both Kentucky basketball fans and got married”), moved back to Lexington, where she’d always maintained ties.
She began inviting friends over for Sri Lankan food (“I call it the love child of Indian and Thai food”), dinners and brunches that grew to 30 people, friends, friends of friends and some no one seemed to know.
About the time she started feeling her private space was being compromised, she also got a compliment that made her think she was ready to move to another level. “One of the Sri Lankan kids said, ‘This is getting to be auntie level food.’” In Sri Lankan communities, Fore explained, every auntie has a specialty she is renowned for.
“I was getting to that point with my tomato curry and meatballs,” a dish she felt translated easily to American palates. “Everyone knows meatballs and gravy.”
That led to her first pop-up at Arcadium in April 2016. She invested $572 in cookers and coolers, food and other supplies, sold out and went home with $700.
“Fine, we’ll do it again,” she thought. “I have not stopped since.”
Tim Small, a partner in Best Friend Bar, where Fore regularly takes over the kitchen to the joy of bar regulars and her devoted followers, is a big admirer.
“I don’t know that there are many people who could do,” what Fore has done in launching a national reputation as a chef without a restaurant as a foundation, Small said. “She’s just such an exceptional person and is making such unique food,” he said, and “people love to talk with her.”
In the whirlwind years since her first pop-up Fore has shared her journey to develop and celebrate her unique blend of Sri Lankan and Southern cuisine. She’s learned to make her own pickles, rubs and spice mixes. Figured out how to “reverse engineer” flavor profiles into recipes. And created her own special niche.
“I’m quite comfortable in saying I’m the only person in the world who is marrying Southern and Sri Lankan food.”
Fore, and pretty much everyone who meets her, thinks what she does is more than a business.
“She builds community that emanates in concentric circles out from her and out from her food,” observed John T. Edge, founding director of the Southern Foodways Alliance, which recognized Fore as a Smith Fellow last year. “She does her work with such joy and such vigor and such inclusiveness and such smarts.”
The SFA, he said, “wants everyone to know about the dynamo that is Sam Fore.”
On a mild January morning Fore was at home in her Lexington kitchen sharing, as she does, the wealth and variety of Sri Lankan food. She passed around a jar of Sri Lankan cinnamon sticks so her visitors could inhale the fragrance, mused about the 40 varieties of rice and the several types of tamarind that grow on the island, and explained how to watch for the “bloom” when spices heated in oil reach their peak.
She’s relaxed, having had two weeks at home for the first time in a year. But she is not idle. She’s just finished a Kentucky Derby project, is working on recipes “for a national publication,” planning a major food event to bring chefs she’s met around the country to Lexington later this year, trying to take a minute to process what’s happened and sort out what comes next, and acting as a traffic cop for the three dogs and two cats who share their home.
Does she feel lucky, blessed?
“Yes, yes, shocked, surprised.”