Clark Barlowe played a vital role in the evolution of the Charlotte culinary scene. Along with Bruce Moffett, Paul Verica, Joe Kindred, Greg Collier, Ashley Boyd, and others, he helped put the Queen City on the national food radar.

With a resume that included stints at legendary restaurants The French Laundry and El Bulli, he opened Heirloom in Charlotte’s Bellhaven neighborhood in 2014. It immediately became the restaurant Charlotte’s food cognoscenti talked about. Focusing on products sourced in North Carolina (even the table salt came from the Outer Banks), he created an imaginative nightly tasting menu (a la carte dining wouldn’t come for several years).

He cooked at the James Beard House, was featured on The Food Network, became an advocate for local foodways, and was North Carolina’s first state-certified forager.

And then he left.

In September 2019, Barlowe announced he was selling Heirloom and moving to Oregon. “My partner in life/business/and everything else, Gracelyn, recently completed her PhD and was offered a dream opportunity to join the team at OSLC (Oregon Social Learning Center) in Eugene, Oregon … Gracelyn has supported myself and Heirloom in every way you could imagine the last six years and I am beyond looking forward to the opportunity to now offer her that same support,” Barlow said in an Instagram post at the time.

The couple left Charlotte in the summer of 2020 and took the long route to their new home. “We took our time and traveled,” Barlowe says. “It was nice.”

With Gracelyn, now his wife, settling into her new job, Barlowe took time to determine what was next for him “I mostly worked on the new house,” Barlowe says. “We bought eight acres in the middle of the woods. We cleared about a half-acre for a garden.”

But the next career move? “I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what the next phase was,” Barlowe says. He wasn’t ready to return to restaurant life. He explored getting his wine certification and worked in the wine department of a grocery store for a bit. “I even considered becoming a commercial refrigerator repair person,” he says.

It was Gracelyn who literally found the answer. “She discovered a book I’ve had since middle school about the law,” he says. “She told me, ‘You’ve obviously thought about this. Why not do it now?’ My biggest fear was do I still have what it takes to do this? By that time, I was working at a friend’s tea shop. I had plenty of time to study for the LSATs, so why not?”

With recommendations from former NC State Senator and current congressional candidate Jeff Jackson and from his longtime friend and mentor, Charlotte restaurateur Frank Scibelli, Barlowe sent in his law school application. Two weeks later, he received his acceptance letter.

On August 22, Barlowe starts life as a law student at the University of Oregon. His thoughts on what to do when he passes the bar mirror his life as an advocate in areas that remain important to him. “Maybe Native American rights, maybe environmental law,” he says. “I like to rattle cages.”

No matter what, Barlowe will maintain his connection to food and nature. “I have a couple of ideas for restaurants; I still do beekeeping and I still forage,” he says.. Recently, he began honing a new skill.

“I’ve started raising snails,” he says.

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