For four months and 16 days, Chef Anthony DiBernardo never came up for fresh air. 

That’s not a metaphor — it’s a fact.

Long before DiBernardo was a Certified Angus Beef (CAB) partner, he served as a cook on the USS Batfish submarine, where he and his fellow Navy crew would routinely go under for weeks at a time. The longest submersion meant more than a quarter of the year in the depths of the Persian Gulf.

DiBernardo’s job was part logistics, part psychology — both physically demanding and also extremely fulfilling. He was charged with feeding the crew of 130. 

“The thing about submarine duty, the only thing to look forward to is a meal,” he notes. “We were responsible for morale, and it took a very short time to understand that.”

DiBernardo embraced that role very quickly. 

“If you were grumpy all day long, it reflected in your food, and then everybody else is grumpy. So, you took it upon yourself to be the cheerleader, do the best you could with the food, make everybody happy, and you’d give them something to look forward to.”

All the dry goods such as coffee, flour and sugar came in metal tins and lined the floor to start. 

“We would walk on those for the first couple of weeks until we ate our way through them,” he says. 

For longer trips, they turned their refrigerators into freezers and kept fruits, vegetables and eggs cool in the torpedo tubes. 

“I’ll tell everybody to this day that those four years really solidified me as a cook,” DiBernardo says. “There’s nothing that comes into my wheelhouse today that I can’t handle, and there’s nothing in the day-to-day business that stresses me out because of that experience.” 

Cooking in the Low Country 

At 22 years old, DiBernardo got off his last submarine assignment in Charleston, S.C., and he stayed. First, he worked at up-and-coming restaurants, part of the newly revived culinary scene. 

“I really got in at the ground floor and I really learned,” DiBernardo says. “I used the dedication and the attention to detail that I picked up in the military and the hard work ethic, and I really applied it.”

Eventually, DiBernardo worked his way up to the executive chef position at Kiawah Island Resort. There, they’d cook whole pigs and oysters on the beach on Mondays, and wow diners with their upscale menu options the rest of the week. But checking on the dining room one evening, he overheard a conversation that shifted his perspective.

“It’s OK if we can’t afford to eat here,” a girl said to her dad. 

DiBernardo thought about those words all throughout the dinner rush, and they didn’t sit well with him.

“I went home that night and I thought to myself, ‘Who am I?’ I’m blue collar; I grew up blue collar. Who am I to be charging these prices for the gift that somebody gave me,” DiBernardo reflects. “I put my resignation in the next day and changed my whole course.” 

He teamed up with partners who shared his goal of providing value, and they developed and launched new concepts. After a handful of years, a buyout allowed DiBernardo to explore his own entrepreneurial side.  

“I absolutely love barbecue because it’s the ultimate food to bring people together,” he says. “Food in our family was always about the table and bringing everyone to the table.”

Making connections 

For DiBernardo, that’s what the CAB brand has done, too. What started out as just another product he sourced became something so much more after attending his first CAB Annual conference, where the chef met Angus breeders from across the country.

“I tell all the farmers and ranchers I meet that they make my job easy,” DiBernardo says. “You start with quality, you end with quality. You’ve just got to treat it right.” 

Learning about cattle production made the responsibility he shoulders even more real. 

“It really hit home and really made me realize CAB was more than just a label on a box,” he says. “I did some soul searching, and I soon realized myself as a restaurateur and a pitmaster, I was the last link in the chain in the CAB process. I was the final representation of a farmer’s life work.”

DiBernardo now knows the investment of time and effort that has gone into raising each piece of beef that makes it to his shop.

“I’ve never been a fan of taking the easy way out,” DiBernardo says. “We make eight proteins a day, taking each protein and treating it with respect individually, and then paying as much attention to the sides as we do the meats, and then adding in the full-service aspect of my dining background is what really made Swig & Swine what it is today.”

Two weeks after DiBernardo graduated high school, he left for basic training and told the Navy he wanted to be a cook. From mess specialist to sole proprietor, every job he’s done has been a connection to that calling of bringing people together with a meal.

“I’m a firm believer that everyone is given a gift, and it’s how you use that gift to benefit others and give back that is a big component of who you are and how you succeed,” he says. “To me, that gift has been food.”