PHOTOS BY LOGIC 4 DESIGN
WRITTEN BY TERI R. WILLIAMS
The Good
Bread
Sometimes redemption comes in the form of hard work,
changing your focus, and feeding the soul with the bread of life.
“If you’re anywhere near Vidalia, make sure to go to Taste of Phillie.”
The review was one of many confirming what locals already know: A
Taste of Phillie is the real deal. But that’s what you know. This article
is about what you may not know. Twenty years ago, when Matthew
Bright first started making those delicious Philadelphia style hoagies
and sandwiches, he was on a mission. It was a mission to redeem time.
Since he was the baby of the family, Matthew’s mother told him, “You’ve got
to learn to fend for yourself,” and she taught him to cook. His father, on the other
78 Toombs County Magazine
hand, taught him the
importance of math. “He
told me, ‘I don’t have an
education, but I’ll teach you
what I know.’” Although
a mechanic by trade,
his father found a more
dependable income as a
moonshiner.
When he was six,
Matthew started riding with
his dad when he went out
on deliveries. “I learned
math by counting the
quarters I got for each baby
jar full of moonshine. And
my daddy knew exactly
how many baby jars any
amount of moonshine would fill.” Ironically, Matthew’s father “had very strict rules.”
He gave me a half-smile and said, “I guess we’ll call it that. He always knew how many
quarters I should have at the end of the day.”
As soon as Matthew was old enough, he and his adopted brother went to the big
city of Philadelphia to find work. Life wasn’t easy, but Matthew always worked. “If I had
to, I would shine shoes on the streets for a quarter a shoe just to pay for a sandwich,”
which was most often only a hoagie with “lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise and cheese,
no meat. “We ate that almost every day,” said Matthew. After a while, he had watched
the cooks make everything on the menu enough times that he not only knew all the
ingredients for each item by heart, he could cook it himself. But like most journeys,
there would be some twists and turns in his life before that knowledge would be of any