Matthew McClure was the founding executive chef of The Hive at 21c, and he spent his nine years there — 2013 to 2022 — turning a plain Southern larder into a refined vocabulary: buttermilk cornbread under sorghum butter, cavatelli with porcini and soybeans, and a menu staple he named Arkansas Trail Mix, candied black walnuts and pecans with smoky black-eyed peas and cheese straws made in house. The vocabulary came to be called High South, and recognition followed the plates: seven James Beard Best Chef: South semifinalist nods and Proprietor of the Year in the 2021 class of the Arkansas Food Hall of Fame. He came to that fluency the long way — the New England Culinary Institute, Boston kitchens from Troquet and Harvest to Barbara Lynch's No. 9 Park, then a phone call from Lee Richardson that brought him home to Little Rock's Capital Hotel, where he built the farmer relationships he later carried to Bentonville. Before you go looking for a seat: since summer 2022 he has cooked in Vermont, running the Red Rooster and Richardson's Tavern at the Woodstock Inn, where half the late-summer produce comes in from the resort's own Kelly Way Gardens. What he refined stayed. Other Northwest Arkansas kitchens took the vocabulary up and speak it still.