Death and Taxes earns Southern Living honor

"Raleigh dynamo Ashley Christensen’s trip to Uruguay several years ago, where she cooked alongside asadors on their open fire pits, laid the foundation for her latest restaurant, Death & Taxes (so named because the historic building was once a funeral parlor and later a bank). There, she witnessed the simplest source of heat—fire—deployed on meat, seafood, and vegetables with impressively nuanced results. Even though a 2,000-pound custom grill occupies the heart of the open kitchen, Christensen insists that this is a restaurant about fire, not grilling. Instead, she intensifies the flavors of her ingredients with char and smoke: Oysters, topped with fermented chili butter and zesty gremolata, sit directly on the hot coals, their edges curling slightly as they roast. Even the requisite hunk of beef, aged 93 days, is amplified with a chimichurri made from grilled onions, herbs, and beef fat rendered over the flames. In the right hands, the simplest tool can deliver strikingly complex results," the magazine wrote.