Jason Stanhope’s culinary career was kick-started in Peru.

At the time, he was a student at the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco, and moved to Cuzco to complete his externship at the Hotel Monasterio. When the fish cook, Angel, fell sick, Stanhope had to step in. “I was this young white kid who spoke no Spanish,” he recalls. “But when you get pushed in, you sink or swim.” Stanhope swam.

The Kansas native returned to the States and took a job at the now-shuttered Forty Sardines in Kansas City, Kansas, where he worked for three years before heading east. There, he chose a job at Fig in Charleston, South Carolina, over a position at No. 9 Park in Boston. “I got to Charleston and the weather was beautiful and there were pretty girls everywhere,” he says. “Charleston has such character, such an identity. It’s a blue dot in a red state.”

For Sous Chef Series, Stanhope made his version of a Lowcountry boil, a coastal South Carolina classic loaded with local seafood and summer vegetables. “You can do any combination of ingredients,” says Stanhope. “It’s about getting people together, having beers, getting shellfish juice on your face.”

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