His love and enjoyment of cooking began at an early age for Al DeWitt. “My grandmother used to put me in the kitchen when she was preparing food and I would play with the pots and pans. When I got a little older she would let me do things like beating eggs for her cake. My mother was working each day so my grandmother babysat me and my two brothers when we were little, and after our returning to Mathews from having lived in Williamsburg. My grandfather was a good cook, also. He would bake striped bass with potatoes, onions and bacon. I still cook it that way when I can get striped bass. I was raised on seafood and what was grown or raised on the land. Usually the only thing we had to go to the store for was salt, pepper and sugar.”

As Al and his brothers became a little older, because his mother’s job demanded an early departure from home, they would fix their own breakfasts. Then, and again because their mother’s work day was much longer than the usual, &ldquo...