COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Many of this country's most celebrated chefs have spent hours on the phone with a man in a derelict metal warehouse behind a carwash here. He teaches them how to cook grits.

Grits, particles of ground corn that cook into shiny, barely articulated little beads, holding forth in a stout pudding, have had legendary appeal in the South. But it is only in the last decade that they have been discovered by top chefs elsewhere. Grits cookery is not difficult, but these are not ordinary grits, and the chefs know it.

The man in the warehouse is Glenn Roberts, and his company, Anson Mills, has been the driving force in bringing old and nearly extinct species of heirloom corn back to health.

The effort is part of Mr. Roberts's grander mission: to restore the pedigree of antebellum low country cuisine.

Milled between wheels of native granite, the heirloom corn, grown at organic farms in six states, becomes the grits that beguile chefs like Charlie Trotter of Chicago, Thomas Keller of both Per Se in New York and the French Laundry in California and David Pasternack of Esca in New York.

The flavors swirling around a bowl of Anson Mills grits are heady, with sweet, roasted and cream corn flavors and a fine edge of something green and floral.

''Anson Mills grits are unparalleled,'' said Mr. Trotter, who pairs the humble grains and their resplendent ''complex nutty-corn flavor'' with all manner of fish, meat and game. They are on his menu every evening.

But how did those grits end up in Chicago in the first place? It has been, for Mr. Roberts, an odyssey of scholarship and sweat.

Mr. Roberts, 56, studied music and German literature at the University of North Carolina. But his overarching interests aligned themselves in the study of architectural history and the history of food.

''Food is central to the culture of the South,'' he said. Over the course of a 22-year career as a historic architecture restoration consultant, Mr. Roberts was often asked at the completion of projects to come up with authentic menus reflecting the architectural period. But only rarely could he find the ingredients he needed.

In the half-century since his mother grew up in Aiken, S.C., many ingredients that informed the character of regional cookery, known historically as the Carolina Rice Kitchen, were no longer available.

Mr. Roberts studied records of pre-Civil War agriculture and cooking literature, discovering accounts of corn varieties that had apparently passed into extinction.

''I vowed I would find or restore the quality ingredients of the Carolina Rice Kitchen and make them available,'' he said. So in 1998, he tossed out his business cards, donated his suits to charity, rented his 6,000-square-foot warehouse and bought four granite mills.

Among the missing heirlooms were dozens of varieties of antebellum sweet mill corn which was bred to ripen and dry in the field. These varieties possessed superior flavor and qualities suited for making grits or corn meal (ground corn products of different gauge).

Considered too labor-intensive for modern agriculture, once-honored varieties -- Carolina Gourdseed White, John Haulk Yellow, Burris White and Boone County White, among others -- had disappeared into the woods with families engaged in the bootleg whiskey trade.

Mr. Roberts went after them.

What he was looking for, specifically, was classic Southern dent corn, so-called because of the dent on top of each kernel. Naturally soft, dent corn is perfect for grinding into corn mash for whiskey -- and perfect for grits.

Mr. Roberts set out to find small mills in the woods that ground the bootleggers' seed. He found the seed, but his first crop, 30 acres, blew down in an August thunderstorm. His crop the following year, however, was magnificent.

''I started sharing grits from that corn with chefs in the Carolinas and Georgia,'' he said. ''Everyone was knocked out by the flavor.'' He set an additional eight heirloom varieties into the ground in 2000.