Jamie Purviance would rather play outdoors any day. Sitting in his Foster City dining room, the barbecue expert enjoys easterly views of ducks traversing the inlet between Dolphin and Flying Mist isles, and of his flock of grills on the sundeck. He could cook the food out there and eat it in here, but that would be wrong.
"Outside just puts you in a different frame of mind. It's night and day for me," says Purviance (pronounced purr-VI-ence, originally a French name).
Two years ago, Jamie and wife Fran Ada Purviance, '84, and their three young children, adopted in South Korea, moved to the Peninsula from Napa. Fran, a family physician, had a job in San Mateo at the time, but also they wanted more Asian culture, less frou-frou food and a more temperate climate for year-round grilling. Jamie, a culinary consultant for Weber-Stephens Products who has appeared on the Food Network, PBS and The Oprah Winfrey Show, teaches around the country, judges barbecue contests (including the prestigious Jack Daniel's World Invitational Championship) and maintains a blog where charcoal grillers vent.
His latest book, Weber's Charcoal Grilling: The Art of Cooking with a Live Fire, published in March, immediately became a category killer. Among Amazon's grill books, Purviance wrote three of the top five sellers.
His childhood barbecue memories are drenched in lighter fluid, a horror he now shuns. He studied classics and economics at Stanford. At the time, Purviance says, "I thought the Fish Market was a fancy restaurant." When he worked in San Francisco, his appreciation for food widened, but it was in Jakarta, Indonesia, that he learned to grill. Teaching at an international school, Purviance and his roommate had a cook who wanted to learn English. They swapped English lessons for grilling instruction. Indonesians put everything on the grill, including pots and pans.
After Jakarta he landed in Philadelphia, worked for a caterer and went to cooking school—"not as a career move, but I got the fever." Soon he was pursuing his degree from the Culinary Institute of America, in Hyde Park, N.Y.
Purviance tests recipes on one smoker plus three gas and three charcoal grills and the portable grill he brings to Stanford football games. Fran Purviance rolls her eyes. With two more in the garage, she says, "My count is nine."
Why do people keep buying books about barbecue? The technology changes. Ten years ago everyone was agog about gas, but now charcoal is making a comeback. Jamie Purviance splits the difference: gas on busy weekdays, charcoal on weekends. With charcoal, he says, "You've not only cooked the food, you've mastered the fire. It's very primordial."
