Jeffery: Most of the time, we always say you really good food, you got to go to your auntie house, your grandma house, but I wanted to be able that on a Sunday or Tuesday or Thursday or Friday any day that you can come in and you feel like coming out.

My name is Jeffrey Lampkin, I'm the owner and operator of Jeffrey Lamkins Country Boy Kitchen, one family, three locations.

I'm we're currently at the original location, which is 5642 Broad Street here in Sumter, South Carolina.

I'm from the country.

So country boys were not allowed in the kitchen.

I was actually outside cutting the grass.

So these are the things that when I tell people now I'm able to do it.

Nobody believes me, but I know how to cut grass, weed, eat mow the lawn, because those are the things that I actually grew up doing.

I would watch my mom, I would wait for things that wish she would bake a cake.

I probably like every other kid who wanted to lick the bowl, I always would lick the bowl of the cake.

Those are the things I would see her doing it.

But I never cooked growing up.

It wasn't until I went to college, that I actually started cooking.

And it was natural.

And so I tell people, there is no culinary experience, but the experience of the kitchen life and what God gave me.

God literally gave me this gift that has allowed me to be able to transcend and feed 1000s upon 1000s of people in this world I'm grateful for it because I know that it's a gift from God.

The restaurant is coin.

Jeffrey Lamkins Country Boy Kitchen, home of the honey fried chicken.

So everyone comes for the honey fried chicken.

But there's this competition for the sides.

It's like What side do you want.

And so the most popular sides that I see are the soul saving greens, the miracle Mac and Cheese because you know that Mac and Cheese.

See I tell people you want to really know if you can cook your Mac and cheese has to be right.

If your Mac and Cheese is right.

You can cook something about you.

So the miracle Mac and Cheese, the soul saving greens and the Yahweh Yams.

If I had one dish that I will say describes South Carolina it is the perlo rice, it's a low country perlo rice.

So in the south, oftentimes when people were growing up, they didn't have a lot of money.

So they literally needed to have feed houses of 12-15 children off a one pot.

So in South Carolina, we have this thing where you can bake meat, you can boil meat, you can smoke meat, but you take this meat and you bake it use whatever you need to do, you cook a pot of rice, and then you season it.

And the beautiful thing about perlo rice is you really can make it to your design and you can use chicken, you can use our neck bones, you can use sausage, you can use turkey, it doesn't matter.

But it's the perlo rice I think is just like it fits the southern South Carolina at its heart at its finest.

You're from the Upstate you're gonna say Chicken Bob, but if you're from Charleston and the Low Country Orangeburg, Manning, Sumter you're going to say perlo rice.

So my other claim to fame, I started on American Idol in 2008.

And I actually made it all the way to Hollywood made it to the top 72.

So Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul, Randy Jackson, all of them were on when I was on there, and they all gave me yeses, and I went on to Hollywood and everything.

And after that time, Fox News watch Fox in Colombia called me asked me to be do commentary.

So I was doing commentary for American Idol.

And then from that time, it just went on I started doing commentary.

Then I started, they called me back the next year comes with commentary again.

Then I had my own show.

The Jeffrey Lampkin Show for six seasons number one show and so from there, it's just built this fan base of people who are following me, and each and every assignment I tell people, I'm serving people.

So even with me being on TV, it was about serving people.

So it's like, well, who is Jeffrey Lampkin, the man from the radio, the man from American Idol, the choir director because I'm with Francis Marion I was on Good Morning America.

So God has given all these opportunities in the way I see it again.

It's not about Jeffrey, it's about serving people.

So what I love about everything that I do is that I'm serving people, I get to bless God's people, I get to put a smile on somebody's face.

I get to make somebody happy.

I can't tell you enough.

How when people are eating my food, and they're excited, oh that thrills my soul.

That makes me happy.

So I love that because I'm serving people.

And that's my ultimate mission.