Lambert Givens runs Hunter's Kitchen & Bar in South Boston, a neighborhood that does not typically call itself a gumbo destination. Givens, who cooks under the Instagram handle cheflambo1891, has made it one — or at least a destination for his version of it, which is the kind of gumbo that teaches you something about what the dish can be when someone who respects the source material is doing the cooking.
His roux went to the peanut-butter stage — darker than blonde, lighter than chocolate, which is actually the most technically demanding zone because the line between peanut-butter and burnt is ninety seconds of inattention. He built the holy trinity — onion, celery, green bell pepper — directly into the hot roux and cooked it down until the vegetables were fully softened before adding any liquid, which prevents the raw vegetable flavor from persisting in the finished gumbo. File powder went in off-heat at the very end.
South Boston has Hunter's. Hunter's has Givens. Givens has a peanut-butter roux that Bobby Flay did not match.