Siblings Matt and Ted grew up in Charleston, South Carolina and attended colleges in the Northeast. They missed the foods of their hometown so much that they founded The Lee Bros. Boiled Peanuts Catalogue, a mail-order source for southern pantry staples, in 1994. When a magazine editor asked them to write a story about traveling around South Carolina, they embarked on their second career as food journalists and cookbook authors.
Since 2000, they have written hundreds of food, wine and travel features for magazines and newspapers. Their three cookbooks have, combined, won two James Beard Awards and four IACP Cookbook Awards. They were on-air commentators for seven seasons of The Cooking Channel’s hit series Unique Eats, and hosts of Southern Uncovered with The Lee Bros. on Ovation.
More recently, Matt and Ted created Cookbook Boot Camp, a two-day seminar that shows aspiring cookbook authors how to complete and sell their cookbook proposals to national publishers. They are editors of The Lee Bros. Classic Library, a series of vintage-cookbook reissues published by Rizzoli, and they consult to festivals and corporations on culinary programming. They are food columnists at The Daily Beast. Their most recent book, Hotbox: Inside Catering, the Food World’s Riskiest Business, was named one of 2019’s best books by Amazon. The New York Times Book Review called it “The Kitchen Confidential of big-ticket catering.”
Matt, his wife Gia, and their three sons live in Charleston, SC. Ted lives with his wife, the artist E.V. Day, in Brooklyn, NY.