Tobin Simpson’s unlikely journey from court-ordered volunteer to Project Host CEO
On Thanksgiving Day, Tobin Simpson will be at work. Not because he has to be, but because he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.
“I always work at Project Host on Thanksgiving,” Simpson says. “Thanksgiving means twenty to thirty volunteers who are new, so they come to Project Host with the right mentality. It’s always loud and positive.”
More than a soup kitchen for holidays, Project Host fights food insecurity year-round in the Greenville area through feeding the hungry of all ages, training, and educating the un- and underemployed for future restaurant job placement, and other social initiatives.
Simpson, now CEO, has been leading Project Host kitchen efforts in one capacity or another for over a decade. First a volunteer serving some court-ordered community service hours, he soon became a full-time part of the nonprofit that serves thousands of meals each month and trains dozens of cooks who will support Greenville’s growing restaurant scene.
Having worked in some of Greenville’s most celebrated fine-dining kitchens—The Lazy Goat, along with the now-closed Devereaux’s and American Grocery—Simpson had the technical skills to work anywhere. Understanding high volume also made him versatile for events or downtown Greenville’s busy Saturday nights. But after his first day at Project Host, he wasn’t prepared for what would come next.
Motivation through Project Host
“The first day I came home and cried for a little while,” he says. “And then I knew I had found where I was supposed to be.” While not a complete career change, his new motivation for cooking would take him back to his family roots. Simpson, an Upstate native, grew up in Southern kitchens.
“We had the grandmas that cooked,” he says. Family get-togethers were food-centric. Southern fried okra, hoe cakes, and crowder peas were staples. Simpson snapped pole beans in the garage and begrudgingly pulled weeds in the garden. “We had bread with every freaking meal, and there’d always be too many biscuits from breakfast.”
Simpson’s mom raised him and his brother and sister mostly on her own. “I could help prepare meals to help her,” he says about some of his first solo cooking. “It made me feel like I could contribute something. Cooking always resonated with me.”
After refining that passion in a high-pressure professional kitchen environment, he was ready to help again. He first began working with the CC Pearce Culinary School at Project Host that trains cooks on basic kitchen skills while making meals for food-insecure children and families. “That was a big departure from fine dining,” Simpson says.
Once he got in the kitchen and saw the size of it and the equipment capabilities, he told the director he wanted to feed more children. “I’ll tell you when it’s too many,” he said to her. He soon found that number. At one point he fed more than 800 children in a day. That was too much for him and his culinary students.
“We had to adjust,” he says. “There wasn’t enough time to teach the basics, but they watched me work really hard.” The sweet spot, he says, is having no more than eight culinary students in the kitchen to make meals for 500 children each day.
After moving into the CEO role in 2020, Simpson’s time in the kitchen at work is limited, with much of his time allocated to looking for more effective ways to help those within the organization and out in the community while overseeing the culinary school, soup kitchen, food truck, and bakery underneath the Project Host umbrella.
On nights and weekends, however, he takes the lessons he learned in those early days at Project Host and applies them to his home kitchen with his nine-year-old daughter, Ella, as sous chef. With his wife, Kate, working third shift, Simpson and Ella experiment with whatever ingredients they find in the fridge, often going the Mediterranean or Asian-cuisine routes.
“This job has made it so I’m a better cook when it comes to kids,” he says. “It taught me patience.”
Tobin Simpson’s Recipes
Tobin Simpson’s Greek Chicken Burger
1 lb ground chicken
6 oz feta cheese crumbles
12 oz frozen chopped spinach (thawed and squeezed dry)
1 medium yellow onion, diced
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 Tbsp dried oregano
1 tsp red pepper flakes
Salt and pepper to taste
On medium heat, sauté the onion and garlic until translucent. Add thawed and drained spinach and cook until excess moisture has evaporated. Spread spinach mixture out thinly on a plate and cool. Mix the remaining ingredients and form into 4 equal sized patties. Burgers can be grilled or seared in a nonstick pan over medium heat until the internal temperature reaches 165°F. Serve on a lightly toasted bun. I suggest lettuce, tomato, and onion with our house-made beet ketchup or tzatziki.
Roasted Beet Ketchup
2 lbs whole red beets
1 large sweet onion, chopped
1 stalk of celery, chopped
1-inch piece of peeled and rough-chopped fresh ginger
2 cloves garlic
1 Tbsp ground coriander
½ tsp ground cloves
¾ cup red wine vinegar
⅔ cup dark brown sugar
Salt and pepper to taste
Preheat oven to 375°F. Wrap beets individually in aluminum foil and place in the oven on a baking sheet. Roast beets for 1 hour. While beets are roasting, saute onion, celery, ginger, and garlic in a heavy-bottomed pot until translucent. After beets have cooled enough to handle, use a paper towel to remove skins and add beets and remaining ingredients to the pot. Use a hand blender to blend everything smooth and reduce the mixture over medium-low heat until thickened to a ketchup consistency. Strain for a smoother texture and adjust seasoning to taste. Beet ketchup can be kept in the refrigerator for up to one week or frozen in an airtight container for up to six months.
Smokey Sweet Potato Salad
1 lb. Sweet potatoes peeled and cut into ½” cubes
½ cup Duke’s mayo
2 Tb brown sugar
2 Tb smoked paprika (hot for spicy, sweet for mild)
1 Tb adobo sauce from can of chipotle in adobo sauce
1 Tb white vinegar
1 tsp liquid smoke (optional)
Salt and pepper to taste
Green onion for garnish
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Toss sweet potatoes in olive oil and roast until tender and slightly caramelized. While potatoes are roasting, mix remaining ingredients to make the sauce. Dress the potatoes in the dressing while still warm and top with thinly sliced green onions. For extra smokey flavor, you can add chopped crispy bacon as an additional garnish.
Photography by Jack Robert Photography.
