Nick Bumgarder
Your first bite of Gifford’s bacon will give you pause—thick, meaty, hickory-kissed, in a compelling dry cure of salt, brown sugar, and spices. It might be the best bacon you’ve ever eaten.
My first bite was a tomato-bacon-egg sandwich at Little Mosko’s a few years back, and my immediate thought was, “Whoa. Move over Benton’s.” Area chefs had similar thoughts, too, as this made-in-Nashville delicacy has found its place on plates around the city. It’s a key ingredient of the green chile cheeseburger at Redheaded Stranger as well as a carbonara pizza at Lockeland Table; you’ll find it laced through the fried cauliflower dish at Hathorne, and simmered into Deacon’s New South’s shrimp and grits.
Nathan Gifford, an Oklahoman who has been butchering and cooking meat most of his life, never planned to become an ace bacon maker, nor did he envision a huge following among chefs and diners alike. The business began more like a quest, embarked upon when chef Kristin Beringson (then at Holland House) approached him with a 10-pound slab of pork belly and a request to do something good with it. Gifford created his dry cure process and smoked the slab at home over hickory. Beringson’s assessment: “This is really, really good. You should do more of this.”
He did. His garage become “smoked bacon central” for several years as he and his wife, Nicole, grew the business, slowly and organically, from 10 to 20 to 40-plus pounds of pork belly at a time—all while both remained fully employed (as in more than 60 hours a week) at restaurants.
“And yet, we were barely breaking even,” recalls Nicole. “At times, we were losing money.”
Also: Everything at their home had become permeated with the scent of pork and hickory.
“At first, I thought it was kind of cool,” Nathan says. “But when our ice cubes started tasting like smoke, something had to give.”
Gifford’s bacon, which was winning the hearts and palates of chefs all over the city, was in danger of going away. And then, the folks at Nick’s Bar-B-Q, now a commissary space, graciously offered Nathan a sublet on an interim space to store, cure, and smoke his extraordinary pork. More than that, it gave him time to seek out space for a permanent operation.
Nick Bumgardner
Andy Fields and Nathan Gifford
He found it in an abandoned transmission garage in South Inglewood. And, in the process, he and Nicole found a partner, Andy Fields, a master butcher with a strong background in business. Together, they transformed the building, creating an office, prep rooms, storage, a walk-in cooler dedicated to dry-aging, and a specially designed smokehouse that can accommodate a veritable ton of pork bellies at a time. Prime South Meats has become a force.
In addition to making Gifford’s bacon, the team now custom cures, dry-ages, and smokes meats for chefs. Chef RJ Cooper of Saint Stephen relies on them for charcuterie. At any given moment, you might see coppa, soppresata, and lamb merguez hanging in the dry-age cooler. Both Nathan Duensing of Marsh House and Andy Little of Josephine order the smoked bologna for special dishes. Will Aghajanian and Liz Johnson of The Catbird Seat will get them to smoke whatever strikes their fancy, including that beguiling marlin belly, that, eyes closed, tastes like the most tender country ham.
Prime South Meats is poised to take their smoked bacon, smoked bologna, hot sauce, and barbecue sauce to the national stage. Products are also starting to show up in area stores. In the meantime, you can order online and pick up their goods at Green Door Gourmet, the Turnip Truck, or their own East Nashville shop. When you arrive at Prime South, you’ll be greeted by a colorful mural complete with flying pigs, and a cinderblock building painted up like a circus tent. Having come up working with meats in rather drab spaces, Nathan wanted to make this place bright and cheerful.
It’s for sure a reflection of how he feels—almost giddy. “Sometimes it hits me: I’m making bacon for a living! It’s the same as saying, ‘I’m going fishing!’” (Prime South Meats, 1109 Straightway Ave.; primesouthmeats.com)