Hugh Acheson

Events

"Cooking" Up a Wine List
Fri. Author Booksigning Session 2
Perfectly Paired Dinners (formerly Restaurant Dine-Arounds)
Sun. Author Booksigning Session 2
The New York Times Presents Celebrity Authors Reception
Whole Vegetable Cookery
Perfectly Paired Dinners
Book:A New Turn in the South: Southern Flavors Reinvented for Your Kitchen

Hugh Acheson is the chef/partner of Five & Ten, the National, Gosford Wine located in Athens, GA and Empire State South in Atlanta, GA. Born and raised in Ottawa, Canada, he started cooking at a young age and decided to make it his career after taking a very long time to realize that academics weren’t his thing. At age 15, he began working in restaurants after school and learning as much as possible. Today, Acheson’s experience includes working under Chef Rob MacDonald with whom he learned stylized French cuisine, mastering wine and etiquette at the renowned Henri Burger restaurant in Ottawa, serving as the chef de cuisine with Chef Mike Fennelly at Mecca in San Francisco, and working as opening sous chef with famed Chef Gary Danko at his namesake restaurant, which is where he found a love of the simple, pure and disciplined.

Taking these experiences, Hugh developed a style of his own—forging together the beauty of the South with the flavors of Europe and opening the critically acclaimed Athens, GA restaurant Five & Ten in March of 2000.

Since 2000, Hugh has gone on to open Gosford Wine in 2004 with sommelier Ben Giacchino and The National in 2007 with fellow chef Peter Dale. Adding to his list of dining establishments, Hugh opened Empire State South, the Atlanta-based restaurant, in the summer of 2010.

Hugh’s cookbook—A New Turn in the South: Southern Flavors Reinvented for Your Kitchen—will be published by Clarkson Potter in the fall of 2011. In A New Turn in the South, you’ll find libations, seasonal vegetables that take a prominent role, salads and soups, Hugh’s prized sides, and fish and meats, turning Southern food on its head every step of the way. With inviting and surprising photography, full of Hugh’s personality, and pages layered with his own quirky writing and sketches, he invites you into his community and his very creative world of food— to add new favorites to your repertoire.

Acheson’s fresh approach to Southern food has earned him a great deal of recognition, including Food & Wine’s Best New Chef (2002), The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Restaurant of the Year (2007), five nominations for the James Beard Foundation’s Best Chef: Southeast award (2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011) and a 2007 Rising Star from StarChefs.com. Chef Mario Batali chose Hugh as one of the 100 contemporary chefs featured in Coco: 10 World-Leading Masters Choose 100 Contemporary Chefs (Phaidon Press).

Hugh has also been in Bon Appétit, The New York Times, Garden & Gun, Fine Living, Food & Wine, Gourmet and competed in Bravo’s Top Chef Masters: Season 3.

But that is to everyone outside of Athens.  To Athens, he is the guy who owns those restaurants, has one eyebrow, a wife far better looking than he is and two young children who are the apple of his eye.