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Amethyst Ganaway

@thizzg

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🏆 winning chef + writer + curator
N.Cha$, SC
📚represented by @sallyekus
@riseresidency x @dennistonhill Resident
2026 SC Governors Award Recipient

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Today, alongside 6 other incredible individuals and organizations, I was recognized as one of this year’s recipients of the South Carolina Governors Award in the Humanities.

As I sit in this moment right now and write this, I’m overwhelmed with gratitude and love and all sorts of emotions I’m having to work through. If you know me, you know i put North Charleston and South Carolina on my back and carry it with pride. If you know me, you know I do “the work” because I genuinely love it. I love learning. I love sharing. I love us. And now, I’m sitting in a space of numinous oblivion - where i have to almost sit outside of my Self to really honor this moment and what it *really* means. I ain’t quite found the right words yet, but I’m sure it’ll come soon.

To those who nominated me and to those in my community (@gullah_goddess 💜💜) and to @sc_humanities and my @scstatemuseum family, thank you. Yall see me in ways I didn’t know were possible and i receive it all and i send all that energy right back to you. Thank you for filling my cup until it overflows. Thank you for giving me the space to grow and just be. Thank you for being a part of the legacy WE are building. thank you 💜

Aye this crazy for real tho 😂😂😂 we 🆙 (now listen to Dolph - I’m everything you wanna be 😂)
——————

👏 🏆️ Congratulations to the 2026 South Carolina Awards in the Humanities recipients:
✨️ Chef Amethyst Ganaway @thizzg (dat me)
✨️ Brent Morris Clemson University
✨️ Historic Brattonsville
✨️ Richard Layman @laymanpublishing
✨️ David Pastre Clemson Design Center. Charleston
✨️ Preach Jacobs @preachjacobs
✨️ Timika Wilson @rhoyalt1

A tremendous thank you to Palmetto Citizens Federal Credit Union, our Palmetto Legacy Presenting Sponsor of the 35th Annual Humanities Awards.

Please join us for an evening of celebration at the 35th Annual SC Awards in the Humanities as we honor this year’s winners and enjoy heavy hors d’oeuvres, including a signature cocktail from local hospitality veteran Will Green!

📅 Thursday, October 15, 2026
⏰️ 6:00–8:00 p.m.
📍 South Carolina State Museum taken in North Charleston, South Carolina by @thizzg

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2 months ago

People always ask me where they should eat in Charleston.

As a born and raised beenya who beeeen beeeen ya, a chef, and as a cool person, I’m starting off with a few places on the peninsula (cept sullivans) and ill be dropping a few of my favorite places in the North area, my favorite coffee shops, places to grab a sammich, and more.

This one is for you-my number ones 💜 taken in Charleston, South Carolina by @thizzg

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7 months ago

Charleston has a long tradition of storytelling shaped by its streets, its people, and the rhythm of everyday life. For generations, artists and makers have captured those moments quietly, one scene at a time. We’re sharing a few of the local voices who continue to define the spirit of the Lowcountry.

Local Legends: Charleston Edition. Part 2.
Meet @thizzg—chef, food writer, and culinary historian. Based in Charleston, Amethyst’s work honors Southern, African American, and African Diaspora food ways. Through her cooking and writing, she highlights the traditions, ingredients, and hands that shaped the Lowcountry’s culinary identity. For Amethyst, food is more than nourishment — it’s history, culture, and connection passed from one generation to the next.

In honor of International Women’s Day, we’re celebrating the women featured in our Local Legends series—artists, writers, founders, and change makers whose work strengthens their communities and reminds us why craft and connection matter. by @thizzg

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7 months ago

𝘾𝙇𝘼𝙎𝙎 𝙄𝙎 𝙄𝙉 𝙎𝙀𝙎𝙎𝙄𝙊𝙉 // 𝙇𝙀𝙎𝙎𝙊𝙉 003

Today’s question: How far can one ingredient go?

Apparently…from cocktail hour all the way to dessert.

Chef @thizzg took one #10 can of California tomatoes and built an entire menu around it…drinks, appetizers, family-style mains, and yes…tomato-strawberry sorbet.

But what I loved most wasn’t just seeing tomatoes show up course after course. It was seeing how differently they could show up.

Sweet. Acidic. Rich. Bright. Braised. Glazed. Even frozen.

𝙎𝙖𝙢𝙚 𝙞𝙣𝙜𝙧𝙚𝙙𝙞𝙚𝙣𝙩. 𝘿𝙞𝙛𝙛𝙚𝙧𝙚𝙣𝙩 𝙟𝙤𝙗.

And maybe that’s the real lesson: creativity in the kitchen isn’t always about adding more. Sometimes it’s about seeing more possibilities in what you already have.

𝙔𝙊𝙐𝙍 𝙏𝙐𝙍𝙉: If you had to build an entire menu around ONE ingredient, what are you choosing?

𝙍𝙚𝙢𝙚𝙢𝙗𝙚𝙧…𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙚’𝙨 𝙖𝙡𝙬𝙖𝙮𝙨 𝙧𝙤𝙤𝙢 𝙖𝙩 𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙩𝙖𝙗𝙡𝙚.

#TheFlavorGuide #ClassIsInSession #ChefStories #FoodEducation taken in Charleston, South Carolina by @thizzg

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5 hours ago

Where did you get your love of cooking from?

I love eating. 😂

The kind of chef’s table you want to be at. 👀

Here’s the secret: off-season “fresh” tomatoes. 🍅💚

@thizzg cultivated an entire menu using ONLY ONE #10 can of California tomatoes and turned it into a multi-course girls’ dinner that we all LOVED.

Cocktail.
Two apps.
Three mains.
AND dessert.

PS. I’m still thinking about the whipped feta ✨🤌🏾 by @thizzg

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a day ago

Most folks don’t know a luffa starts out as an edible gourd hanging off a vine. Brian Wheat has been growing them on Johns Island with Common Joy since 2017, and they’re one of only two commercial luffa farms in the country. Most of the luffa sponges sold in the US come from overseas, so one grown in the Lowcountry is a rare find.

The plant is a climbing vine in the cucumber family, native to Southeast Asia, and the vines can run 30 to 50 feet long. It puts out yellow flowers first, then long green gourds. Pick em young, under about seven inches, and you can cook them like squash, which is how a lot of kitchens use them. Leave em on the vine through a long warm season and the inside turns into a stiff web of fibers holding hundreds of black seeds. Peel the dry skin off, shake the seeds out, and that’s your sponge. Brian picked luffa because it does well in our heat and humidity.

Use yours on cast iron, plate-ware, even in the shower (separate ones, don’t play wit me). When it wears out it can go in the compost. Go get yall some and support a Lowcountry farmer! taken in Charleston, South Carolina by @thizzg

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3 days ago

Happy birthday to @audiophilegirl! Wishing you many more, Deb, and I’m always excited to support the work you do.

Deb has been writing and talking about Black food history for years, through her podcast Setting the Table and her writing for outlets like Eater and Food52.

Finding Edna Lewis is one of her most incredible projects to date. It’s the PBS documentary she executive produced and hosts with VPM and Field Studio, and it won a Capital Emmy in 2025 and picked up a James Beard Media Award nomination this year.
The film follows Deb through the places that shaped Edna Lewis, starting in Freetown, Virginia, a community Lewis’s formerly enslaved ancestors helped build after Emancipation. Lewis left for New York at 16 and by 33 was head chef at Café Nicholson, and she went on to introduce a lot of Americans to seasonal Southern cooking, the cooking of the Black community in rural Virginia that raised her. Most people today still don’t know her name, and Deb has been working to change that, taking the film everywhere from the Smithsonian to London.

I was honored to be part of the film and to sit down with her at @chswineandfood to talk about what Miss Lewis means here in the Lowcountry.

You can watch Finding Edna Lewis on the PBS app or on VPM’s website. taken in Charleston, South Carolina by @thizzg

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7 days ago

Summer is forever.

@rondavidstudio please bring back them pants. Very sad i didn’t cop when i was there.

🫶🏽💜 taken in North Charleston, South Carolina by @thizzg

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12 days ago

Black Southern food covers several distinct regional traditions that rarely get called by their individual names.

Food historian @soulfoodscholar has written that soul food and Southern food were split apart from each other during the twentieth century, even though they came out of the same roots, and that split hid how much of what gets called “Southern”cooking today was built and cooked by Black people first.

The @southfoodways Alliance’s have also traced part of that split to language itself: soul food became associated with Black Americans and Southern food with white Southerners, especially as the dishes began to overlap.

That divide reshaped who got and still gets public credit. Miller has pointed out that after comfort food saw a resurgence in American culture in the early 2000s, food television and media expanded the audience for Southern cooking, and much of that new visibility went to white chefs while the dishes stayed rooted in Black traditions.

This video goes through a few of the specific traditions that usually get folded into that one label. The South is big and incredibly diverse-we’re very much overdue in recognizing it and its Black regional cuisines instead of as one and the same. Have terms like “soul food” and “southern food” helped or hurt us over time? As social media and AI continue to grow, how will our foodways be shaped as lines between cultures blur more and more?

If yall are liking these videos about Black Southern foodways and history, let me know in the comments below and feel free to ask me the questions you think about when it comes to food!

#BlackSouth #southernfood #blackhistory taken in North Charleston, South Carolina by @thizzg

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14 days ago

Winner Winner
Chicken Dinner

📸 @itspiperjones ✨ taken in Charleston, South Carolina by @thizzg

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18 days ago

Nose to tail is a term reserved for chefs and farmers who are not Black. Plenty of chefs get praised for serving pate and terrines while Black Southern food gets called “slave food” “scraps” “disgusting” “backward” “nasty” “we don’t need to eat like that anymore” “poor/country” and overall undesirable and something we as a people should be removed from.

Pig trotters go for $30+ a plate in some countries and restaurants, but if your cousin like to eat a lil stewed down pig foot, you gotta dragggggg them about it. Like, please! They are the same thing being served in a different environment with a different audience. People around the world have always eaten nose to tail. There’s a reason why we don’t anymore as much and also why specifically Black Southerners are ridiculed for eating chitlins, using smoked ham to season dishes, for liking liver and onions (the answer is racism, duuhhhhhh) but I’ll dig into that another time.

Our stories and cultures and foodways come from so much more than just the slave masters leftovers. We ate these things because we respected the land, water, and everything in it. We ate them because we were not wasteful. We ate them because they have nutritional value. We ate them because it was a part of our culture. We ate them and still eat them…because they taste good. We gotta stop giving so much credit to our oppressors for the way we eat and we also gotta understand that just because YOU don’t like something, we should still respect each other and the food we take in. Every dish and ingredient has a story that is important to who we are. You don’t have to eat it but you also don’t need to drag the commentary to hell.

Anyway this turned into a lowkey rant more than a caption 😂 my debut cookbook, Black South: Recipes From The Roota To The Toota goes super in depth to Black Southern nose to tail eating and comes out in April 2027. Preorders soon come but sign up for my newsletter on www.waterwhippin.com to have first access when they open up! taken in North Charleston, South Carolina by @thizzg

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21 days ago

One thing bout me: i love a pea. 😂 Black-eyed peas, crowders, cream peas, pinkeye, purple hull, lady peas, zipper creams, whippoorwills, clay peas, Sea Island red peas...and they’re all a part of the cowpea family.

Cowpeas have been grown and eaten across Africa for thousands of years, and came to the Americas during the transatlantic slave trade, along with the knowledge around growing them, preserving them, and cooking them.

And despite cowpeas being dismissed at different points in Southern history as something mainly meant to feed livestock, Black folks have long understood their value as a nutrient dense and delicious ingredient.

Now I wanna know what kinda peas yall eat where you from and how you eat em! Cuz all i need is a pot of rice and @texaspete hot sauce. Also, this video made me realize how much i love having my nails 😂💅🏽

Follow along for more Black Southern foodways, and share this wit yo people! 💜

#cowpeas #southernfood #blackfoodways #gullahgeechee #blacksouth taken in North Charleston, South Carolina by @thizzg

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a month ago