Jesse Rice expands the Backwoods brand with his next farm-to-table restaurant in Panacea

Tallahassee’s premiere farm-to table restaurateur is covered in paint when he takes a seat next to me at Liberty Bar. It’s been a long day. They all are really, so he orders a Crown and water with lime. When you own a restaurant, you never have just one job, he said. You’re the plumber, electrician, human resources director, and about 12 more things.

Jesse Rice tells me he’s been out in Panacea all day putting a fresh coat on his new location, Backwoods Bayside. Ever since purchasing the city’s defunct Harbor House Restaurant back in July of 2021, he’s been splitting his time between renovations and running things over at Tallahassee’s booming “farm and table” joint, Backwoods Crossings.

GARDEN CROSSING

The Crossing, as he affectionately calls it, sits in the middle of a massive garden where every square inch of land serves as the source of inspiration for each carefully curated offering on the restaurant’s standing menu and revolving Garden Creations menu. Between an acre of raised beds, more than 80 fruit trees, chicken coops, and space for rabbits, quail, turkeys, guineas, ducks, and honeybees, The Crossing sources almost its entire menu directly from the grounds. What they can’t do themselves is locally sourced, with precious few exceptions.

“I got into food because I love the creative aspect of it, for sure,” Rice said. “I’ve always been kind of artsy…. The whole Garden Creation menu is just like six or seven of us sitting around brainstorming things and making beautiful dishes.”

Whether he’s making an eggplant shiitake lasagna, Scotch duck egg, or sous vide rabbit quarter, Rice is the patron saint of purity when it comes to ingredients. When you’re working with top-tier ingredients, he explained, you don’t bury those flavors, you make them shine. Every Tuesday, Rice and his chefs get together to experiment with whatever is fresh in the garden. The bites that make the cut hit the Garden Creations menu the following day.

“I don’t really use recipes,” Rice said. “I teach my chefs to cook by taste.”

Blasphemy? Perhaps to some. To Rice, the only real blasphemy in the kitchen is a canned black olive. Such mockeries of authentic flavor have no place in the Backwoods kitchens. In fact, Rice has made his name breaking all the rules laid out by the culinary elite.

“I have this shirt that says, ‘great chefs follow the rules but legends break them,’” Rice said. “I’ll abide by that ‘til I die. A French chef will say, ‘you cannot put cheese on fish,’ and I’m like, yeah you can. You can definitely put cheese on fish. I like it. Most people do.”

As it turns out, breaking the rules has served Rice well. The chef has been lauded among the culinary minded for his ingenuity, attention to detail, and elegant flavors. The upcoming grand opening of Backwoods Bayside is not just a sign that the Backwoods brand is expanding, it’s a return to Rice’s Forgotten Coast roots.

FROM SOPCHOPPY TO PANACEA

Rice grew up in the marshy backroads of Sopchoppy. A tiny town best known to outsiders as a pitstop on the way to St. George Island, Sopchoppy is no more than 10 minutes from Panacea. This tightknit coastal community carried Rice through the launch of his very first restaurant at just 20 years old. The first iteration of Backwoods Bistro was born out of the old pizza parlor where Rice spun pies in high school. It was there that he first discovered his passion for food.

“I fell in love with food in my late teens,” Rice said. “But it’s funny, going through life, my parents have always really appreciated food because they understood the value of nutrients. Hard work was instilled into me at a young age, helping my parents in the garden, maintaining property, and whatever else needed to be done. I wouldn’t change it for the world.”

LIVING OFF THE LAND

When Rice talks about his childhood, it sounds like something straight out of a coming- of-age novel. Rice spent his youth palling around with the seven other kids who lived on his dirt road. They would go fishing or ride dirt bikes for hours on end, then go cool off in the nearby creek. His parents, two Woodstock-certified hippies, bought a 14-acre homestead in small town, Sopchoppy, where they could raise their sons living off the land.

Outside of work, Rice’s parents spent their days fixing up their old plantation home, growing luscious gardens and tending shiitakes on some 2,000 logs to sell to local grocers. Needless to say, Rice’s childhood chores stretched far beyond picking up his room and mowing the lawn. He was expected to pull his weight around the Rice home. The pizza parlor job started out as a way to make a little extra money and to help put himself through college.

“I was good at math and science, so I was aiming to be a pilot or engineer,” Rice said. “Then I realized how much I loved food.”

College didn’t last long. At 19, Rice pulled a few strings and ended up in Nashville for a summer training under a cousin’s husband, Ray Whitlock, who was an executive chef with some of the area’s top restaurants.

“When I first got there, all I did was shuck oysters,” Rice laughed. “I was in the corner watching the chefs all starry eyed. I kept pushing Ray to let me progress forward. He put me in to shadow different people, and I learned so much in three months. I remember a phone conversation with my mom where I called and she was like, ‘Oh, what did you learn today, sweetie?’ I went off on some tangent, and she said, ‘You can cook now!?”

“I have this shirt that says, ‘great chefs follow the rules but legends break them,’” Rice said. “I’ll abide by that ‘til I die. A French chef will say, ‘you cannot put cheese on fish,’ and I’m like, yeah you can. You can definitely put cheese on fish. I like it. Most people do.”

No matter what time of year you stop at Backwoods Crossing, there will be plenty growing in the garden.

A $5,000 START

By the time Rice arrived back in Sopchoppy, the old pizza parlor had closed. He begged the owners to reopen and let him manage the place, but they just weren’t up for the risk. They would, however, give him a good deal on the lease. His mom loaned him five thousand dollars, and Rice signed the lease.

Two months later, Rice had paid her back. Backwoods Bistro was a raving success. The restaurant’s 70 seats were always packed with a standing two-hour wait every day from Thursday to Sunday. Nearly seven years later, Rice was ready to expand, opening the new Backwoods Bistro in Tallahassee in 2012 and later expanding with Backwoods Crossing. Even in Tallahassee, some 45 minutes from his hometown, Rice always has a piece of home close at hand thanks to lifelong friend Taylor Harrell. Harrell helps run things over at the Crossing, and if you ask Rice, the restaurant wouldn’t be where it is today without his support.

Now, he is onto his next adventure. Rice sold off the Bistro last year, using the funds to purchase the old Harbor House. I asked him what it meant to return home seasoned, refined, and with a reputation for success.

”My heart has always been with the ocean, so that was a big part of the draw,” Rice said. “Plus, we get to go back to our roots. I grew up right down the road, you know. We used to have soccer banquets at the harbor house. I’ll have my boat right out in front of the restaurant. All my friends and family, people I went to high school, with have opened businesses out there, so I’ll get to see the same faces I grew up around.”