Matthew Raiford Books in Order

Matthew Raiford grew up in Brunswick, Georgia, where his family's connection to Gilliard Farms reached back generations. The farm has been in the family since 1874, when his great-great-great-grandfather, Jupiter Gilliard, bought the land after emancipation. That history would later shape both Raiford's work in the kitchen and the stories he chose to tell.

Food, family, and land were never separate subjects for him. They were parts of the same daily life, tied to the coastal Georgia landscape and to Gullah Geechee traditions that have endured across the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida.

Before becoming a chef and farmer, Raiford spent nine years in the U.S. Army, including time overseas. Cooking for fellow soldiers gave him a chance to share the Southern food he knew, while travel introduced him to new ingredients and ways of eating. After his service, he briefly attended Howard University before deciding to pursue cooking as a career.

The kitchen became his next classroom.

Raiford earned a culinary arts degree from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. He built experience in professional kitchens and catering, including work as executive chef at Little St. Simons Island and with Haute Catering in Washington, D.C., where he catered at the U.S. House of Representatives. He later taught culinary arts at the College of Coastal Georgia.

In 2010, Raiford's grandmother transferred the deed to Gilliard Farms to him and his sister, Althea. The siblings inherited a family legacy, but also the practical question of how to bring an inactive farm back into use. Raiford turned to training in ecological horticulture at the University of California, Santa Cruz, learning the hands-on work of soil, compost, crops, and sustainable farming.

He often uses the word “CheFarmer” for the overlap between his two jobs. The name fits because the farm informs his cooking, and cooking gives the farm's harvest a purpose beyond the field. Coastal ingredients, seasonal vegetables, rice, peas, seafood, and old family foodways all have a place in that conversation.

For Raiford, farming is also a way of keeping family knowledge in motion.

His first cookbook, Bress 'n' Nyam: Gullah Geechee Recipes from a Sixth-Generation Farmer, was published in 2021 with Amy Paige Condon. Its title means “bless and eat,” and the book brings together recipes, family stories, and the history of the food traditions that raised him. Readers will find dishes such as hot buttermilk biscuits, salmon cakes, fish stew, and sweet potato pie, but the book is not simply a recipe collection. It also shows how food carries memory, place, and the record of people who kept cooking and growing through hard circumstances.

Raiford was a James Beard Award semifinalist in 2018, and his work has brought attention to the long history of Black farming and Gullah Geechee cooking in coastal Georgia. He remains closely connected to Gilliard Farms in Brunswick, sharing what he has learned about growing food, cooking it well, and respecting the stories that came before him.