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Many chefs talk about learning to cook at their grandmother’s side. Matt Hill, co-owner and chef of the acclaimed Ruthie’s All-Day restaurant in Arlington, Virginia, is one of them. “My paternal grandmother, Ruthie, was a great cook,” says the Charlotte, North Carolina, native who was recently named a James Beard Award semifinalist. Sunday afternoons weren’t complete without a big dinner at Ruthie’s house with a table filled with her specialties—potato salad, pimento cheese, biscuits, chicken and dumplings, and herever-present pork cracklings. “My brother and I would race in the kitchen and try to grab those cracklings,” Hill recalls. But even when a feast wasn’t on the table, a visit to Grandma and Grandpa yielded sweet rewards. In the summer, Hill’s paternal grandfather grew tomatoes in his big backyard garden and sold them at a roadside stand. Some of Hill’s most cherished childhood memories are of those hot summer days by his grandpa’s side, slicing up sun-ripened tomatoes for sandwiches. “I’ve shucked a lot of corn in my day, but tomatoes, with the Sunbeam bread and the black pepper and Duke’s Mayonnaise—that’s like the purest form of summer,” Hill says.

by RACHEL HAHN video by MIKA ALTSKAN AND MATVEY FIKS

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Duke’s is the ingredient that binds a celebrated all-day meat-and-three

Homegrown Culinary Heritage

His introduction to homegrown food didn’t end there, however, nor did his appreciation for the creamy egg spread of his youth. When Hill wasn’t sneaking bites at Grandma Ruthie’s, he spent many weekends in Union County, North Carolina, at his maternal grandparents’ farm, where they grew soy beans, cotton, and corn and had a variety of livestock. By age eight, Hill had been deployed to help feed the cows and do odd jobs on the property, like canning. “Everything we ate was from the farm,” he says. “They didn’t go to the grocery store to buy vegetables.” It was a true farm-to-table diet, but Hill admits he didn’t realize how good he had it. “I was eating really, really great food,” he says, “but I wasn't aware of it.”

Subconsciously, though, Hill's culinary education had begun. Raised by a working mom, Hill says he took charge of his own meals from an early age. “Alot of times I was meant to fend for myself when I got home, so I started cooking,” he says. By fifteen, Hill was working in restaurants in Charlotte, making his way from dishwasher to pizza maker, before eventually landing a gig at Etienne Jaulin’s Townhouse, where he was exposed to classic French cuisine. It’s no wonder that he soon found himself enrolling in the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. There he focused on fine dining, and his natural aptitude was quickly rewarded. Hill began working the line in some of the best kitchens in New York City, including Craft, Theo, and Aureole, where he met the legendary chef Charlie Palmer. That led to a five-year stint as executive chef at Charlie Palmer Steak in Washington, D.C., before Hill joined his friend chef Bryan Voltaggio at his restaurant Range, where he worked as chef de cuisine. And he might still be cooking for other proprietors if it weren’t for the fact that Hill wanted to open his own place, a family-friendly spot that evoked all the memories of his childhood meals at Ruthie’s back in North Carolina. So that’s what Hill and his wife, Jeanne Choi, along with their business partner Todd Salvadore, did. In the midst of the pandemic, they did the unthinkable: They opened a restaurant. “It all kind of worked out, except for the Covid thing,” Hill says with a laugh.“Worked out” is putting it mildly. What would have been a disastrous error for many other new eateries was a strategic stroke of genius for Hill, who in addition to his recent James Beard nod, earned a glowing review from the Washington Post for Ruthie’s last year. Turns out, like Post food critic Tom Sietsema, people in the residential Arlington neighborhood where Ruthie’s opened were hungry for a full-service, all-day meat-and-three, too.

“There’s not a sandwich we serve at the restaurant that doesn’t have Duke’s on it”

—MATT HILL, RUTHIE'S ALL DAY

A healthy helping of Duke’s in every section of the menu hasn’t hurt either. For Hill, Duke’s Mayonnaise is not just any condiment. “That’s the only mayonnaise we had growing up,” he says. Ruthie loved it and used it in everything, from pimento cheese to potato salad. And like a good grandson—haute culinary training be damned—Hill has followed in her footsteps. “There’s not a sandwich we serve at the restaurant that doesn’t have Duke’s on it,” he says.But why stop at lunch? “We also do what I call a breakfast mayo. It’s a Dijon with a little Duke’s and honey and some spice to it.” You can get plenty at dinner too. Duke’s makes a cameo in Ruthie’s Wood Fired Citrus Marinate Chicken, the Nice Grilled Salmon Salad, his Fried Chicken Biscuit, and the restaurant’s Wood Grilled Octopus dish. For all his appreciation for tradition, however, Hill isn’t afraid to tinker with time-honored recipes (even Grandma’s) to create delicious new interpretations. But there’s one thing he says he’ll never give up, and that’s his commitment to using Eugenia Duke’s delectable spread. “It’s balanced. It tastes like it’s supposed to taste,” Hill says. “Maybe it’s because of the way I was raised, but it’s like they say, ‘It’s got twang.’” Surely Ruthie would agree.

“It’s balanced. It tastes like it’s supposed to taste,” Hill says. “Maybe it’s because of the way I was raised, but it’s like they say, ‘It’s got twang.’

—MATT HILL, RUTHIE'S ALL DAY

It’s no coincidence, then, that some of the restaurant’s most popular dishes feature Duke’s front and center. For instance, “We sell an aggressive amount of karaage each week,” Wang says of the best-selling item. “It’s this delicious Japanese fried chicken tossed in a lemon mayo that’s sweetened with condensed milk.” The O.G. Rice Bowl, too, has something of a cult following. “We like to say this is the house the O.G. Bowl built,” Wang jokes. A hallmark of the Short Grain days, the dish still stars on Jackrabbit’s lunch and brunch menus, and features local sashimi, masago (a smelt roe), pickles, ponzu sauce, furikake seasoning, and a drizzle of a spicy Duke’s mayo mixture. And during dinner service, the restaurant’s play on traditional Singapore fried rice is also one of the most frequently ordered plates. “It’s something I grew up eating as a kid,” Wang says. “So I wanted to recreate it and share it with people here. Our version features a Duke’s buttermilk ranch, seasoned with curry powder.” At the end of the day, Wang finds that Chinese and Southern cuisines are more similar than they are different: Both are deeply rooted in tradition. “Southern cooking has so much history behind it, with recipes being passed down from generation to generation, and I find that to be true in Chinese cooking, too,” he says. “Food is the great equalizer. It brings people together, and we just want to build more of that.”

Find more Duke’s stories—and recipes—at DukesMayo.com

Photo: Laura Chase de Formigny