Tuesday, October 23, 7:00 P.M.
Members $85, guests $110

ELIZABETH TERRY REMEMBERS HER first visit to the Beard House some 15 years ago as though it were yesterday. "This was a monumental experience in my life. I was so honored to be asked and so excited to be going." Terry, of Elizabeth on 37th in Savannah, Georgia, arrived at the House with her sous-chef and coolers filled with trout her husband had caught the day before. As she was being shown around, she suddenly panicked. "I don’t think I can do this," she thought to herself. "It was a very intimidating experience to walk into this venerated hall of culinary tradition. But of course I did do it." And how.

Not that we were surprised. We expected nothing less from Terry, a Midwesterner and onetime indifferent cook who discovered when she married that she liked to cook and was good at it. She moved to Georgia with her husband, Michael, an attorney, first to Atlanta, where she opened a popular sandwich shop, and later to Savannah. "I tell people I learned to speak in Ohio, but I learned to cook in Georgia." In 1981, the couple opened Elizabeth on 37th Street in a Greek revival mansion. Over the years, Terry developed into an outstanding regional chef and an ambassador of authentic Southern cooking, winning praise in the pages of Food & Wine, The New York Times (which described her as "the queen of Savannah cuisine"), and Food Arts, among others. In 1996, Terry and her daughter wrote Savannah Seasons: Food & Stories from Elizabeth on 37th.

But everything has its season (as Terry knows well; she keeps an extensive kitchen garden and relies heavily on local foodstuffs), and after 20-plus years, Terry has passed her toque on to Kelly Yambor, a Michigan native who has worked at the restaurant since 1995. Yambor started cooking professionally during college. Before coming to Elizabeth on 37th, she worked as a chef at Indigo Coastal Grill & Partners in Atlanta. Like Terry, Yambor turns out deliciously updated versions of classic Southern dishes.

Back to that first Beard House experience: many of the female students at Peter Kump’s New York Cooking School were so excited that a woman was coming to the Beard House—Terry was the first woman chef ever to visit—that they volunteered to help. Terry recalls that at one point during service, she looked over with concern at her sous-chef as he tossed a "giant pan of black-eyed peas…ten feet in the air." Later, when the meal was over and the crew was drinking Champagne to celebrate, he ’fessed up. "I know, I know," he told Terry. "You are going to yell at me for those black-eyed peas. But there were all those beautiful women around to impress."