David Shields is known throughout the American South as the “Flavor Saver.” Chairman of the Board of the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation, he undertook the historical research that enabled the restoration of many of the region’s historic crops—the Bradford Watermelon, Carolina African Runner Peanut, Purple Straw Wheat, Seashore Black Seed Rye, Rice Peas, Benne, Purple Ribbon Sugar Cane, and Carolina Gold Rice. Author of Southern Provisions; the Creation and Revival of a Cuisine (2015) and The Culinarians; Lives and Careers from the First Age of American Fine Dining (2017), he won the Southern Foodways Alliance’s Keeper of the Flame award and was a finalist for this year’s James Beard Book Award in food scholarship. He currently holds the Carolina Distinguished Professorship at the University of South Carolina and chairs Slow Food’s Ark of Taste Committee for the American South.