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ASSOCIATE EDITOR & EDITOR SUMMER 2017 GUEST EDITOR Sara Camp Milam Osayi Endolyn [email protected] [email protected] 2 FIRST HELPINGS PUBLISHER ISSUEDESIGNER NO. 64 4 MaryDISTILLED Beth Lasseter IDENTITY RichieSUMMER Swann 2017 [email protected] Endolyn [email protected] 8 EDITOR-IN-CHIEFYOU ARE WELCOME HERE FEATURESFACT CHECKER JohnPaul T. Calvert Edge Katie King [email protected] 10 SONG OF EL SUR 26 Gustavo Arellano DESPERATELY 13 KOREAN MONTGOMERY SEEKING SEEGER Ann Taylor Pittman John Kessler 18 PENSACOLA PAY DIRT 36 Suzanne Cope HIGHWAY 220 22 CONFESSIONS OF A FORMER DADDY LESSONS FOOD SEGREGATIONIST Cynthia R. Greenlee Regina N. Bradley 60 ATLANTA’S MASA MAVEN THE MISSION45 of the Southern FoodwaysJennifer Alliance Zyman is to document, study, A andSHOT explore OF the TRUTH diverse food cultures of the changing American South. Wayne Curtis 64 BACK OF THE WHITE HOUSE Our work sets a welcome table whereAs alltold may to consider Gravy by our Adrian history Miller and our future in a spirit of respect and reconciliation. 52 71 DIRTY PAGES I NEVER COULDSFA membership is open toJennifer all. Not Justusa member? SIT STILL Join us at southernfoodways.org as told to the SFA [email protected] by Leah Chase 662-915-3368Cover photo by WHITNEY OTT Renée Comet southernfoodways.org 1 GRAVY #64 SUMMER 2017 JOHN KESSLER

cultural truths. If they’re delivered with a First Helpings gimlet eye and a sense of humor, all the better. In short, that’s John Kessler.

W AT THE PLEASURE OF THE SFA I may sound like a comp lit major n the twelve weeks of my After those twelve weeks, beginning who has just discovered Foucault, maternity leave this past winter, I a brand-new relationship with a but everything is a text. Restaurants Iwatched all 156 episodes of The brand-new person, I wasn’t sure if I’d are particularly rich texts, now more West Wing. I wrote freakishly prompt be ready to come back to work. More than ever as they’ve become such a thank-you notes. I did laundry like it accurately, I flat-out didn’t feel ready signifi cant part of life. was going out of style. Reader, I ironed— to come back. But I’d run through my more than once. Oh, and I spent hours maternity leave—and all seven seasons W at a time snuggling the cutest, most of The West Wing. Meanwhile, Osayi W perfect baby girl in the world (I say that had pushed ahead with this issue of with complete objectivity, of course). Gravy, serving as guest editor. And Diners look for so much in restaurants I could get used to this life, I thought. after a few more weeks, I realized, today, beyond the contact high of with equal parts surprise and delight, good food and alcohol. Likewise, that I was happy to be back. critics should move beyond thumbs I talked to SFA managing director, WHEN LONGTIME SFA MEMBER AND up/thumbs down and explore what mother of two, and fellow West Wing former Atlanta Journal-Constitution restaurants say about who we are, aficionado Melissa Hall about all of restaurant critic OHN KESSLER what we want, and where we live. this. At its core, I proposed, wasn’t conceived of a Gravy series, he led with The West Wing a show about team- this: “Traditional restaurant criticism H work? Did that explain its appeal? “It’s is mostly dead, with a few exceptions.” more than that,” Melissa said. “It’s the He had our attention. The way we talk best of what it feels like to work in a about dining has changed, Kessler For sure. Back to the comp lit (sorry!), highly functional office. And you’re argued. Today, some dining sections are but I think a chef’s authorship is always realizing you missed that sense of more likely to laud hot new restaurants a function of a larger discourse. I have common enterprise, whether it’s than to offer incisive commentary or defi nitely rethought the restaurant potting 300 olive-tree saplings for the reconsider stalwarts. Gravy readers space. While I used to use theater as a 2011 Symposium, or watching Richie know that we’re not in the business metaphor, now I fi nd it outdated. Diners work his design magic with a feature of restaurant reviews. We are in the today look for something both more layout.” Sam, Toby, CJ, and Josh can business of sharp, thoughtful analysis, profane and more sacred in a dining have the State of the Union. I’ll keep and of stories that examine specifi c experience—part bawdy cabaret and Sally at the office Gravy. —Sara Camp Milam places and people to reveal broader part Quaker meeting house. Photo courtesy of John Kessler 2 | southernfoodways.org S 2017 | 3 Missed Cues DISTILLED IDENTITY Can too much brand awareness defeat the point of a good drink? BY OSAYI ENDOLYN

his spring, a colleague brought to the Caribbean to harvest introduced me to Stiggins’ Fancy sugarcane. The sugar industry built T Plantation Pineapple Rum at a empires on the backs of trafficked social event. Immediately, I was suspi- human beings. Rum could not exist cious. I was born and raised in California, without that bloody history. Could a with African American maternal grand- successful French brand be so bold as parents who migrated, not without to play on the term? Had I lost some- urgency, from Mississippi and Louisiana thing in cultural translation? Have I read in the 1940s. The casual use of too much race theory? “plantation” has always jarred me. But party hour approached. And we Upon moving to Atlanta from Los contain multitudes, right? I own an Angeles, I’d marvel at a Buckhead condo iPhone. On road trips (only on road on Lenox Road branded as a plantation. trips!), I allow myself a drive-through In Gainesville, Florida, where I now live, meal from Chick-fil-A. I probably there’s a Haile Plantation community. watched 160 hours of football program- I’ve been told it’s cute and charming, but ming last fall—college, pro, and Inside I can’t say for sure because I don’t go the NFL combined—despite the racial- there. Revisionist narratives can be ized impact of Big Sports on public ed- dangerous, but in my life experience, ucation. The origin story of this rum they mostly bore me. In part, I suspect sounded interesting. It looked good. one aim of such marketing is to keep Worth a taste, I reasoned. brown people at bay, or at least feeling Plantation Pineapple rum is a collab- excluded. Like the Confederate statues oration between Maison Ferrand’s that mark our landscape, my reading of Alexandre Gabriel, the French producer plantation evokes a clear-eyed view of of Cognacs, gins, and rums, and cocktail history. Others think of hoop skirts, vast researcher (and SFA collaborator) David porticos, and porch life. To that, I add Wondrich. They had already worked on lethal manual labor, women and men a Cognac and a Curaçao together. Though forced to breed, and the strategic pineapple rum sounds trendy, it appears criminalization of blackness. as far back as the eighteenth century. The I rotated the Plantation Pineapple Plantation recipe emerged from Won- bottle in my hands. The name dug at me drich’s inspired take on a Charles Dickens for another reason. The birth of rum character who can’t get enough, and

came at the cost of enslaved Africans Gabriel’s meticulous study of craft. The Photo by Jen Causey

4 | southernfoodways.org Summer 2017 | 5 Missed Cues two developed it as a playful homage, but in Gainesville several weeks later, I told him. “But the name mystifi es across the board, but countries and the craftmanship was taken seriously. shared an unopened bottle with friends. me.” He was open and eager to listen, cultures throughout the African Before that evening, I had never tried The gathering consisted of mostly white and also wanted to be understood. Diaspora have managed their rum as a sipping spirit. By the end of the women, and they could not stop talking “I started this brand twenty years paths forward in ways that don’t night, I had become an evangelist, about the rum called Plantation. ago after traveling to Barbados and mimic the American aftermath. pouring rocks glasses for newcomers, “I just have to ask you about this label,” Haiti,” Gabriel said. He fell in love A plurality of narratives was pos- doling out refills the way a Thanksgiving my friend Sarah said to me. She is from with rum then. He shipped locally sible here, which was thrilling to host serves sweet potatoes. Kentucky. aged product to France where he me. I am often disappointed by To make the spirit, workers hand-peel “It’s troubling,” I offered, swirling ice aged it a second time in the the mainstream perception of Victorian pineapple and steep its flesh in my glass. The question marks lingered. empty Cognac barrels piling one-note blackness. One in Plantation Original Dark rum. Sepa- I wanted to talk with someone on the up on his property, a process could easily argue the root rately, the rinds are distilled with Plan- inside. I emailed Wondrich. Eh, let’s talk, that continues today. “In the of colonization is far from tation 3 Stars white rum. Later, a blend he essentially wrote back. Caribbean, they don’t say removed in the Caribbean. of both liquors rests in Cognac barrels. We hopped on the phone. “As far as I ‘farm,’” Gabriel told me. But if I understood Gabriel, The result is amber brown and robust, know, in France, la plantation in French “They say ‘plantation.’ and if he accurately captured with big hits of butterscotch and bursts is where you make rum, just like the Perhaps now, it sounds naïve.” the sentiments of his Barba- of citrus. The stuff glides down easy, but château is where you make Cognac,” he But in those days, his rum dian colleagues, plantation encourages a thoughtful sip, too. That said. “I don’t think it’s quite as loaded in business was a small project sugarcane offered career night, a lonely Blanton’s sat almost un- French as it is in English.” Back in the with distribution limited to opportunities to some, and touched, lightened by a few forgettable nineteenth century, he continued, the Europe. Rum’s recent explosion was perhaps not solely a dis- splashes. Toward the end of the soirée, descriptor "plantation rum" was a way in the US market wasn’t alto- tressing connection to a the group had almost finished a second to distinguish it from industrialized ver- gether expected, especially shared global history. We bottle. I’d set aside my worries for a time, sions. “Plantation meant that the rum since Maison Ferrand doesn't chewed on this thought, to- but I'd soon be confronted. came from where the sugarcane was feature pirates or sunsets on gether, in silence. their Plantation bottles. Gabriel spoke fi rst. “I’m still “If I was a huge company with wrestling with it, to tell you a marketing and survey department, the truth.” maybe we would have come up with So was I. If the brand was called Farm something else.” instead, wouldn’t it still carry the weight Gabriel recently bought a distillery in of the spirit’s heavy beginnings? Does it Had I lost something in Barbados, where he says the majority of matter that the average American con- CULTURAL TRANSLATION? his team is of African descent. “The sugar sumer will read “plantation” and not “la industry is a painful past for them, but plantation,” and thus miss the cultural my understanding, from my team, is that nuance? Does the label perpetuate ac- they do see it as the past,” Gabriel ex- ceptance of a period in US history that plained. “There was great suœ ering, but we still don’t all agree was wrong? I don’t Days later in Nashville, I asked my grown instead of being faked up from their take is like, ‘We built this island.’ know. Maybe. Probably. But something bartender which rum she used in a molasses and adulterants.” It was a sig- They are reclaiming it, and we are seeing sweetly human happened in my conver- cocktail where only “pineapple rum” was nifier of quality and authenticity. that in eœ orts to preserve farming land sation with Gabriel. He accepted my on the ingredient list. The young woman, The historical context helped, but I and not let it all go to tourism.” discomfort without challenge, and he who was white, seemed to blush when craved brand-specific insight. I got in I rather liked this narrative, or at least allowed me to share his optimism. It felt she told me the name was Plantation. touch with Gabriel, who phoned me from the potential of it. Slavery was appalling as good as any stand-up drink. She turned her attention to washing dirty his working farm in Ars, a small town in

glasses while I stared into my drink. Back the Cognac region. “I love your rum,” I noyn Endolyn Photo by say Osayi Osayi Endolyn is the SFA’s associate editor.

6 | southernfoodways.org S 2017 | 7 Call to Action

of something similar after seeing a handmade sign in the window of one of Atlanta’s modern YOU ARE WELCOME HERE lunch counters: Ria’s Blue- Atlanta restaurants stand up with a sticker bird, a diner in Grant Park. Their handmade sign list- BY PAUL CALVERT ed the many di„ erent types of people welcome at Ria’s and ended with the cheeky phrase “bless this mess.” Sarah, Greg, and I agreed that a sign reminiscent of the old AAA or Diner’s Club window decals seemed the way to go. We wanted it to be clear, direct, and democratic in its embrace of all people. We wanted the sign to state that you are welcome, not that all are. The sign had to speak to whomever stopped to read it. underwrite additional printings—our We looped in our two favorite Atlanta third run will be 2,000 stickers. While designers: Bart Sasso of Gentlemen and we went into this with no connection Alvin Diec of O‘ ce of Brothers. They to a wider movement, we realize that delivered a clear and classic-looking decal, other like-minded people are taking white letters on a bright green backing. similar action all over the country, and The green was to remind folks of a tra‘ c we are proud to be a small part of a light that says go —that they are welcome broader campaign. to enter. We handed out the stickers to At Ticonderoga Club, we are not just Ticonderoga Club in Atlanta; our friends in the Atlanta restaurant doing business. We are making a state- OPPOSITE: The sticker says it all. industry. The stickers are intentionally ment that the hospitality we o„ er is avail- free. The only trade is that when we give able for all people, no questions asked. someone a sticker, they promise to display To post a sticker in your window is a it prominently. The stickers are not for simple act. Folks in America and all over operate a restaurant called racist history, particularly in the South. refrigerators or laptops. This is a public the world endure and risk much more in Ticonderoga Club in Atlanta’s Krog After the November 2016 election, we announcement of service. order to pursue a life of joy and accom- I Street Market with my business began to see a version of that old preju- The response has been incredible. We plishment. However, we know how pow- partner Greg Best. My fiancée, Sarah dice and injustice raise its head as shame- gave away the fi rst run of 500 stickers in erful it can be to hang a sign, plainly state O’Brien, runs The Little Tart Bake Shop, lessly and as publicly as one might hang less than a week. The second run was your purpose, and set a traveler’s mind also in the market. As owners, we are a window sign. We wanted to counter 1,000. We shipped piles of stickers to busi- at ease. A hot cup of co„ ee. A warm plate acutely aware of the power of posting a the inflamed desire to separate people. nesses in Charleston, Nashville, Denver, of food. A cold beer. A place where you sign in your window. Hanging a sign that We decided to make a sign to tell the and Toronto. Friends have lined up to are welcome. proposes restrictions beyond whether public where we stand.

you are open or closed has a cruel and Initially, it was Sarah’s idea. I thought ald Valdez ian Diwang altCalvert otsyCourtesy o Pal of Paul Paul Calvert is a partner at Ticonderoga Club in Atlanta, Georgia.

8 | southernfoodways.org S 2017 | 9 Good Ol' Chico

Los Tigres del Norte perform in Inglewood, CA, in 2016. account of Mexicans in a place and era If “Canto del Bracero” paints the South barely documented by academics, let as misery, more positive is 1988’s “El alone depicted in popular culture. Mojado Acaudalado” (“The Wealthy True to the corrido form, the song tells Wetback”) by Los Tigres del Norte, the a short story. A group of Texans of Mexican mega-group that has toured the South heritage flees the cotton harvest of South since the 1980s. With a hard-charging Texas for better, unnamed opportunities bass and wistful accordion trills, the track in Louisiana. After changing trains in is both lament and celebration. The Houston, the friends ask an enganchista titular mojado is ready to return to (labor contractor) whether they’re still Mexico after tough-but-successful years going to Louisiana. Much to their disap- in the United States working multiple pointment, the enghanchista replies that jobs—agriculture among them. Los they’re passing right through the Bayou Tigres shout out Atlanta, boasting, “I State and “straight to Mississippi.” already traveled [there],” and fondly This reveal had a deeper meaning to recall a blonde girl in Florida who said, Mexican listeners on both sides of the “I love you Mexican men.” (They sing border during the Great Depression. “En- that line in heavily accented English.) ganche del Mississippi” is a riff on “El Los Tigres returned to the South as Contrabando del Paso,” a legendary subject a decade later with “La Tumba del corrido in which a man convicted of smug- Mojado” (“The Tomb of the Wetback”). to associate with Mexican anything. gling is sent to Leavenworth federal pen- They decry the “tortilla curtain” that keeps Historically, the feeling hasn’t gone itentiary in Kansas. The two corridos Mexicans from this country. Far worse is SONG OF both ways. For the past eighty years, share the same rhythm and reveal, swap- Louisiana (again!)—there, the protagonist corridos (ballads), rancheras (songs ping “Leavenworth” for “Mississippi”—in confesses that “I lived in a basement/ extolling the rural life), and other other words, the Magnolia State and the because I was a wetback/I had to bow my EL SUR Mexican folk-music genres have offered South in the 1930s are nothing less than head [in deference]/to get my week’s pay.” Mexican corridos bitter tales of backbreaking labor and a prison for Mexican agricultural workers. And that’s about it for Mexican songs tackle food and farm racism in a South that’s not home. Cor- A similar cautionary sentiment comes dealing with the South before 2000. labor in the South ridos are the Mexican blues, heavy on through in “Canto del Bracero,” a mid- Archives at UC-Santa Barbara’s Discog- the pathos and irresistible beats. Heard 1950s ranchera popularized by Pedro raphy of American Historical Recordings BY GUSTAVO ARELLANO on the radio and records, they are best Infante. It voices the struggles of the male mention a “Corrido de Tennessee” live, the better for their target seasonal farmworkers who toiled in the recorded by Martinez y Vidaure in 1931, audience—Mexican immigrants far from fields of el Norte under an agreement but I couldn’t locate a recording of the outherners have long home—to dance and drink away the pain. between the Mexican and American gov- song, nor a transcription of its lyrics. celebrated Mexican foodways in The oldest known Mexican song set in ernments. The song’s protagonist warns (Hey, vinyl heads: Find me a copy!) As S song. You may know the hot tamale the South is “Enganche del Mississippi,” Mexicans who think of becoming braceros Mexicans have made the South their hits: the Dixieland standard “Here Comes (roughly, “The Mississippi Job”) to stay home, offering his own experience permanent, instead of temporary, home, the Hot Tamale Man,” Robert Johnson’s recorded in the 1930s by Dúo San Antonio as example. He singles out Louisiana as more tunes incorporate it as a setting. “They’re Red Hot,” and “Molly Man” by and on file at the Strachwitz Frontera particularly cruel, singing “I always felt This new wave is still in its infancy. A Moses Mason. These classics, recorded Collection of Mexican and Mexican a lack of respect/They say it’s discrimi- handful of twenty-first-century corridos long before Mexicans settled in the American Recordings at UCLA. It’s a nation.” “Canto del Bracero” features a talk horses and “los derbies de Kentucky,” region en masse, are barn-stompers— simple effort—two high-pitched singers plaintive steel guitar borrowed from Hank a nod to Mexican-Americans who work their lyrics and beats each testaments to and two guitars. But “Enganche del Williams and concludes with Infante in Kentucky’s horse-racing industry.

the good times that norteamericanos tend Mississippi” stands as an extraordinary Images JC Olivera/Getty mimicking Jimmie Rodgers’ blue yodel. Food is also part of the conversation.

10 | southernfoodways.org Summer 2017 | 11 Good Ol' Chico

The most famous Southern corrido is written and performed by Chuy Quint- simply titled “Raleigh,” recorded by anilla, infamous for his narcocorridos conjunto norteño Rey Norteño in 2006. (songs celebrating drug cartels) and “Raleigh, North Carolina/I carry you in mysteriously murdered in Texas in 2013. my heart” croon the singers a cappella, “El Güero de Tennessee” isn’t as ominous. before a waltz-inflected accordion Backed by a hard-charging accordion, rushes in. The protagonist has “left my the raspy-voiced Quintanilla regales lis- sweat” in the state and is back in teners with a story about a Honduran Mexico—but “without a doubt, when I who ended up in Memphis “without a can/I know I’ll be back.” And, in a sly passport.” The immigrant “triumphed in flip on the fieldworker-as-victim trope, Tennessee,” and the song celebrates that Rey Norteño conveys pride in working the güero is the owner of El Rodeo Sports the soil: “I cut from your garden/The Bar, where he’s “surrounded by his most beautiful of your roses.” friends/and everyone is a partier.” The

AS MEXICANS HAVE MADE THE SOUTH THEIR PERMANENT, INSTEAD OF TEMPORARY, HOME, more songs incorporate it as a setting. KOREAN MONTGOMERY Farmworkers also play a key role in cantina has closed, but El Güero joins From bowling alleys to barbecue the music video for “El Corrido de la HB the pantheon of fun-loving Southerners 56,” recorded in 2012 by Agave Norteño. immortalized in music. BY ANN TAYLOR PITTMAN The band and the National Day Laborer These corridos and rancheras are just Organizing Network protested an one chapter in the Sur-Mex songbook. Alabama law that made life difficult for This immigrant generation will add to riving down eastern I visit Korea Garden with my husband undocumented people. Over scenes of the catalog, but the future is in their kids, Boulevard in Montgomery, and our twin sons, hoping to chat it up men and women harvesting tomatoes who’ll turn to hip-hop, punk, and country D Alabama, then over to the corner with our server. This does not happen, and potatoes, the singer sighs, “Some- to capture el Sur. Here’s hoping that out of Bell and Vaughn Roads, a roll call of as a profound language barrier presents times I cannot comprehend the heart of there in Appalachia or the Delta right signs hints at a sizable Korean population. itself. I whip out my business card and the gringos.” now, Mexican and American balladeers Hangul letters accompany English to iden- attempt to explain that I’d like to talk My favorite Southern food corrido is are trading licks and verses in their native tify a hair salon, a chiropractor, a pest-con- about the Korean community in town. “El Güero de Tennessee”—“The Light- tongues, united in a common pursuit of trol company—but more than anything, Our server shyly giggles and hands over Skinned Guy from Tennessee.” It was documenting their South. restaurants. A dozen or so Korean restau- some menus. As she scurries away, the rants dot the city, far outnumbering the kids declare that they are “dying of awk-

Gustavo Arellano is the editor of OC Weekly and Gravy’s columnist. Park by Haejin Illustrations two in my hometown of Birmingham. wardness.” I switch my focus to the food;

12 | southernfoodways.org Summer 2017 | 13 South Meets East

that, I can navigate. The boys share a Motors Manufacturing Georgia cauldron of tteokguk, a brothy soup filled (KMMG), another Seoul-based company with chewy rice cakes; Patrick eyes a and part of the Hyundai Motor Group. platter of japchae, slippery glass noodles Along this route, more than seventy tossed with beef and vegetables; and I Korean-owned suppliers turn out fly- dig into soondubu jjigae, a fiery tofu and wheels, radiators, and batteries, and seafood stew. employ thousands of Korean nationals. I’m in Montgomery to research immi- The official Korean population of grant communities and, I hope, nurture Montgomery is challenging to track— my own roots. I’m a half-Korean many of the jobs that call them here are Southerner, born and raised in Missis- temporary. Those who stay years bring sippi by a South Korean mom and a white families, but since they will return home Mississippian dad, and though I look to Korea, their aim is not to assimilate or more Korean, I am decidedly American. immigrate. Protestant churches have Definitively Southern. When my mom become gathering places for the estimat- immigrated to the States, her goal was ed 10,000 to 13,000 Koreans in the area; to become American. She did, officially, more than a dozen Korean churches have and set her own cultural heritage aside assembled in Montgomery since 2002. so she and Dad could raise their two To get a sense of the impact of this children as Americans. I don’t speak community, I visited a few grocery stores. Korean, and I’ve only been to Korea once, While Korean ingredients haven’t found five years ago. As I get older and try to their way into Winn-Dixie, a few items— raise my own children with knowledge Shin brand ramyun noodle soup, toasted of their broader heritage, I yearn for seaweed—are available in the local meaningful Korean connections. My little Costco. Seoul Market, a small but well- tiptoe trips to Montgomery opened up a stocked store, offers an astounding new world, revealing a cultural and per- assortment of Korean ingredients, from sonal awareness that brought me face- sesame oil to gochujang chili paste to to-face with one of my greatest fears: kimchi. Hmart, a major Korean-Ameri- being exposed as a phony. can supermarket with locations from I already knew what gave rise to this Southern California to New York and Korean community in Alabama’s capital New Jersey, plans to open a store in city. Maxwell Air Force Base has long Montgomery soon. attracted an international community, I happily ate at several Korean though Koreans never dominated it. restaurants, noting that they fall into two The real catalyst was Hyundai Motor camps. Places like Budnamu or Korea Manufacturing Alabama (HMMA), a Garden reach a predominately Korean Seoul-based company that announced clientele. Korean newspapers pile up in plans to open in 2002 and rolled out its the entryway, and the staff speaks little first cars in 2005. Many Koreans have English. Restaurants with touchstones since come to Alabama to work for of Japanese and Chinese offerings bridge Hyundai, but that’s not the only stimulus. the cultural gap for diners less familiar Interstate 85 connects Montgomery to with Korean food culture. West Point, Georgia, the site of Kia Korean eating customs can be

14 | southernfoodways.org Summer 2017 | 15 South Meets East intimidating. You might not know to push in. One was Jeanne Charbonneau, a the button on the wall when you need cultural liaison employed by the mayor’s service, or that spoons and chopsticks office. When she came out of retirement are in the wooden box at the end of the to take this job in 2002, it was supposed table. What are all the side dishes, and to be temporary. She still holds the position which food belongs to whom? Answer: today. It’s that important to the city. Korean food is meant to be shared, out Despite the broader rhetoric of outsiders of the same dish. This can be a cultural taking American jobs, that negativity is barrier. In Korean culture, you are sup- absent here, she explains, because posed to chopstick the food out of com- “whether it’s strictly HMMA and the munal dishes. That’s what I love—the suppliers or if you’re looking at all the instant intimacy. secondary and tertiary jobs that come with All these observations aside, I needed that, they probably impact forty to fifty banned, and Koreans were forced to adopt because I’m Korean, too—or at least I say to talk with Koreans. With such a sizeable thousand jobs in the region.” Charbonneau Japanese names. These wounds deeply I am. In reality, I’m Korean-American, population, multiple organizations exist helps Korean families get settled— impact the national story. emphasis on the second word. It was to foster better relationships between assisting with everything from housing to Meesoon Han instructed me on South obvious to everyone but me. the greater Montgomery population and immunization forms to music lessons. Korea’s swift economic rise and the I come back to the language of food the Korean community that drives so The other American was Christa cultural ramifications of that ascent. and family. Yang told me about taking an much economic growth. I phoned and Springs, assistant program coordinator After being split into the North and South American friend to the new Korean at Alabama-Korea Education and in 1945, South Korea grew from extreme restaurant near the bowling alley. When Economic Partnership (A-KEEP). I was poverty to economic prosperity by the the banchan came to the table, Yang ex- humbled by Springs, an African Ameri- mid-1980s; it’s known as the “economic plained each dish’s cultural and person- can student who took an interest in miracle.” Han said that this happened al significance. That’s what we all do, no Korean culture and has immersed herself because the country chose to focus matter our background: We share our- WHAT ARE ALL in the community, forming deep connec- exclusively on itself. In reaction to their selves through our food. I do this when THE SIDE DISHES, tions and learning the language. She is adversity, Koreans became intensely tied I eat Korean food with American friends. way more Korean than I. Springs intro- to their culture, more nationalistic, and Han taught me a word whose meaning and which food duced me to A-KEEP executive director incredibly protective. would soothe my cultural identity crisis. Meesoon Han, who first came to Mont- Then it clicked. I told Han that I sensed Sikgu is one of the Korean words for family. belongs to whom? gomery fourteen years ago with her suspicion from the Koreans with whom “Sik” means rice, and “gu” means mouth. husband, who was stationed at Maxwell. I tried to connect. “That’s right. Oh, yes. Sikgu means eating and sharing food. This I eventually made contact with local That’s Korean,” she responded. I floated is the way you eat a Korean meal: You share attorney Soo Seok Yang through the the same idea past Charbonneau. Her food out of the same dishes. And in doing emailed for weeks before I could get Korean-American Association of Mont- reply: “You come in as a half-Korean so, you become family. anyone to talk. One person passed me to gomery. I would come to know Yang; his person not speaking any Korean, and I have since made the drive back to another, to another, each time saying in wife, Doh Ah Kim, an attorney in the there is going to be a bias against you.” Montgomery with my Korean mom to perfect English, “Sorry, I can’t help you,” governor’s office of minority affairs; their I must stress that this was subtle; no have dinner with the Yang family. They or “my English isn’t very good.” I would four beautiful children, and Yang’s one was rude to me. Through what was opened their home to us, shared bulgogi gently protest. Each time, I would stress mother, visiting from Korea. Yang talked at best naïveté and at worst arrogance, I and japchae with us, and embraced us that I’m half-Korean, thinking that might of Korea’s history. For centuries, Korea thought I would enjoy instant familiar- warmly. Sikgu. I am a member of the give me an “in.” Didn’t work. I was turned suffered invasions, yet never invaded ity with the Koreans of Montgomery family—a large, Korean family. away so many times, I felt like folks were another country. The Japanese occupation wary of me. from 1910 to 1945 nearly wiped out Korean Ann Taylor Pittman is the executive editor at Cooking Light. She delivered a Two Americans would serve as my way culture. The language and currency were version of this story at the SFA’s Food Media South 2017 in Birmingham, Alabama.

16 | southernfoodways.org Summer 2017 | 17 Go Deep

n september 19, 1559, a devastating hurricane made land - fall at what is today Pensacola, Florida. Spanish explorer Tristán de Luna O y Arellano described the storm in a letter dated a few days afterward. “There came up from the north a fierce tempest, which, blowing for twenty-four Dr. John Worth at the Luna hours from all directions until the same hour as it began, without stopping, but excavation site increasing continuously, did irreparable damage to the ships of the fleet.” Luna sent it to his patron, Philip II, King of Spain, via one of the surviving ships. The storm scored a direct hit to the month-old settlement and decimated their food supply. Through letters, cargo lists, and other written accounts, much has been documented about this first European-led settlement in North America. But physical evidence had proved elusive until recently.

In late 2015, a local archaeology enthusiast named Tom Garner discovered pottery fragments on a residential con- struction site in Pensacola. Construction stopped, and archaeologists from nearby If the Luna settlement University of West Florida (UWF) exam- ined the findings. Based on the markings had succeeded, and materials, they dated the potsherds THE SOUTHEAST to the mid-1500s. The following summer, MIGHT HAVE BECOME the UWF Archaeology Institute orga- PART OF NEW SPAIN. nized a field school, where students and professors helped excavate the construc- tion site and created a working map of the area. During the second field school this summer, students will excavate land meter-deep holes in a single yard, and underwater sites, where they believe Worth explained, and then sifted one of the settlement ships rests. through the sandy soil for artifacts, re- As they analyze their findings, re- filling the holes when they were done searchers hope to learn how the diverse to erase the intrusion and discourage people of this settlement—Europeans, treasure hunters. That work promised Africans, and natives of present-day to help write a narrative of what the Mexico—interacted with each other and United States might have looked like with their new environment. Evidence had this settlement survived. of the settlement’s foodways could reveal Facing the bay where the ships had the workings of day-to-day life in the two first dropped anchor, Worth began a ENAOA AY RT years from founding to abandonment. history lesson: Luna, awarded the title Foodways fi ndings from the oldest John Worth is an associate professor of Governor of Florida, was the leader European-led US settlement of archaelogy at UWF and one of the of what the Spanish crown intended to leaders at the site, which overlooks Es- be the first of numerous settlements on BY SUZANNE COPE cambia Bay. On a recent spring day, he the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico. pointed out where his colleagues began The eleven-ship fleet left Veracruz, in

Photos courtesy of University of West Florida loria Photos courtesyPotos ourtesy of West o est of University o niersity square shovel tests. They dug a dozen what was then called New Spain, on June

18 | southernfoodways.org SUMMER 2017 | 19 Go Deep

11, 1559, with upwards of 2,000 settlers. year time window and so we get a snap- More than half were Spanish soldiers shot, a time capsule, of Aztec culture and their families who had been living and of Valley of Mexico Spanish culture,” in New Spain alongside native Mexicans, Worth said. “That’s a really cool oppor- sometimes intermarrying. The remain- tunity. I’m still enthralled with it.” ing settlers included about 200 Aztec Ships’ logs and correspondence reveal soldiers and artisans as well as free and much about the settlers’ foodways, Worth enslaved Africans. When they arrived in said, but “the archeology can tell us so Pensacola in August, they assembled on much more.” Last summer, the archae- a low bluff and stored their food on their ologists excavated a trash pit and uncov- ships. When the hurricane landed, it ered oyster and conch shells. They found sunk two-thirds of the fleet and much a deer antler at the bottom, an indicator of the colony’s food supply. Despite these that the settlers hunted local game. adversities, the settlement persevered These findings confirm and contradict for two years. It predates both the Span- what scholars thought they knew. Prior ish settlement at St. Augustine, founded research had suggested that there was in 1565, and the 1607 English settlement little interaction between the settlers and at Jamestown. natives. But the excavation has shown Court treasurers kept meticulous re- otherwise. In addition to Spanish-made cords of the voyages the Spanish crown ceramics, “we found a smashed pot in ABOVE and OPPOSITE: Students, faculty, and staff from the financed, explained Worth. According the trash pit —clearly an Indian pot that UWF Archaeology Institute at work during the 2016 summer field school to the ships’ logs, the Luna expedition had been intact and they were using it,” arrived with a million pounds of corn, Worth said. Findings from last summer the diverse foodways of the Luna set- Their display recalled what Worth said tens of thousands of liters of wine (their have catalyzed excavation goals for this tlement. Margo Stringfield and Cath- about how the Luna settlement might primary beverage), as well as olive oil, second field school. Worth and his team erine Parker, both of whom specialize have changed American history. The vinegar, hardtack, salted meat, beans, hope to use material evidence to make in foodways archeology at the univer- eventual goal of the colony was to send spices, and other provisions. They inferences about the Luna colonists’ in- sity, invited diners to reconsider what expeditions from Pensacola to the Atlan- brought horses, livestock, chicken coops, teractions with natives from the nearby they might think of as native and im- tic, near South Carolina, establishing a fishing nets, and grinding stones for corn. villages of Nanipacana and Coosa. migrant foods. Six local chefs brought Spanish colony south to Veracruz: “If Historians already knew that Spanish In April, the Pensacola Downtown Im- the menu to life through dishes like Luna succeeded, the bottom half of the settlers adopted Aztec and native Mex- provement Board and UWF hosted Repast, mole poblano chicken and paella made southeast might have become part of ican foodways in New Spain, beginning a celebratory dinner that highlighted with Gulf shrimp. New Spain.” This, he added, might have with the Hernán Cortés expedition. Stringfield said that their ongoing work discouraged the English from ever send- They substituted native corn and black could uncover pollen grains, carbonized ing settlers. Stringfield said these foods and pinto beans for wheat and garban- plant remains, and other “wonderful bo- “are the story of America.” Tortillas and zos. The Luna settlers ate chocolate, tanicals,” which will help tell the story chiles have long been American foods, chiles, preserved fruits like guava and of the Luna expedition’s original provi- she implied. Today, with the South’s vi- apricot, and, according to primary doc- sions and what they adopted from na- brant and growing Latino population, uments, a ration of nine tortillas per tives. For the Repast event, she and Park- that’s clear. Were it not for one devastat- person, per day. er created a display of the foods the ing storm, we might have realized that The Pensacola excavation can poten- settlers would have eaten. far earlier. tially tell researchers even more about how Spanish and native food cultures Suzanne Cope has been published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and NPR. integrated. “Here we have a precise two- Her upcoming book, Feeding the Revolution, is about the role of food in revolution.

20 | southernfoodways.org Summer 2017 | 21 Family Palates

Sauces, by Glennray Tutor. Oil on canvas, 2002, collection of Jim and CONFESSIONS OF Donna Barksdale A FORMER FOOD SEGREGATIONIST In search of culinary roots BY REGINA N. BRADLEY

ne of the things i miss most about my daddy is our O weekly Sunday argument about food. Daddy lived in a house which my grandfather, whom I called Paw Paw, built when I was a toddler. Daddy was a rever- end and car salesman, and ripped and ran as much as I did. Sundays were for church, family, football, and big dinners. After church, we’d come home and tear off itchy stockings, tailored suit jackets, skirts, and dresses. If the spirit moved me, I took a nap. Sunday naps are the best sleep. Nana Boo cooked the majority of Sunday dinner the night before while watching Precious Memories. She waited to make the cornbread until Sunday. We had a regular dinner rotation: cubed steak or streak o’ lean (we called it “skin meat”), cabbage or collard greens, fried squash or black-eyed peas, and cornbread. While the cornbread fried, Daddy and I assumed our positions to fuss at each other. I perched on the third barstool closest to the wall, and Daddy stood in the corner of the bar in front of the lower cabinet where Nana Boo kept the condiments. He crouched under the light and rested his elbows on the bar to look me in the face.

He sized up my plate and snickered. Gutter credit

22 | southernfoodways.org Summer 2017 | 23 Family Palates

“You know your mama messed up your spreading pool of collard green juice on Oakland. With each move, he kept the and branch out of the region and into the taste buds, right?” Daddy watched me as my plate. “At least you know how to sop,” South on his plate. Opa ate squirrel and world. Edouardo Jordan’s new restaurant, he expertly cut half an onion into slivers he chuckled. raccoon—“the one with the mask,” as my JuneBaby, in Seattle, Washington, pays for his collard greens. He didn’t look down Now, when I recall Daddy’s weekly Oma described it—and encouraged his tribute to his Florida upbringing and de- once. This was his opening argument. ribbing, I think about food as a sort of biracial children to do the same. I liberately reclaims Afrocentric foods in I wrinkled my nose and turned in my genealogy, an act that remembers loved consider my mom Southern by affiliation. the restaurant sphere. seat. The stool squeaked in protest. I made ones and keeps communities alive. My Though she has traveled the world two or In my own kitchen, I keep the legacy of sure to avoid hitting the corner of the grandmother told stories about her kitchen bar, where the broken tiles already family through how she made her corn- looked like a child missing her front teeth. bread, and my dad shared stories of his The sucking sound of the knife tearing childhood through how he ate it. I’ve I THINK ABOUT FOOD through onion hovered between us. I reframed my definition of family through sighed, loudly, to let him know I was ready the way we ate. Indeed, if I was a food AS A SORT OF GENEALOGY, for battle. “Daddy, leave me ’lone.” I puck- segregationist, perhaps it was genetic: I ered my lips and smacked my mouth. saw firsthand that my mom hated for any an act that remembers loved ones “Mommy didn’t mess up nothing,” I said. of her food to touch. But if my taste buds Daddy laughed and pointed to my plate. were as hijacked as Daddy said they were, and keeps communities alive. It was neatly compartmentalized into that was his fault as well as hers. sections: meat, greens, and room for fresh They met while stationed on a Naval cornbread. The sound of Nana’s iron base in Hawaii, where I was born. While three times over, her food choices call her Nana Boo’s jailhouse cornbread and skillet sizzled behind Daddy. Our stom- I don’t remember much about my earlier out as a country girl. She loves chitlins, pig Daddy’s expert onion-cutting skills alive. achs growled in unison. In one swoop, tastes, I do remember I was exposed to feet, and gizzards. On the rare occasions My husband, Roy, also a military brat from Daddy swept his fork across the plate and a variety of foods because I was taken my mom visited us in Albany, Georgia, Valdosta, Georgia, brings his culinary ge- shoveled a mash-up of collards, onions, care of by a little bit of everybody: Fili- Maryland Fried Chicken was her favorite nealogies rooted in Arkansas and south and fried cube steak. With a full mouth, pino, black, Latino, white, and “we don’t (and often first) stop. They have the best Florida to our table. His love of barrel he said, “What kind of Southern girl eats know where they from” folks. Lumpia. livers—fried hard, of course—and fried grills, fresh pork rinds and hot sauce, and her food one little piece at a time?” He Sweet milk and rice. Spam musubi. tomatoes. Mommy went straight for the spicy deer sausage blends well with my called me a food segregationist. Through food—and Sesame Street—I extra-crispy gizzards. She’d let out a squeal Georgia and Mississippi roots. Among our I winced and picked at my steak. Nana learned to appreciate diversity. of joy as the box wet itself from the steam many culinary debates, the one about what Boo pushed a hot plate of jailhouse corn- Even with my eclectic taste buds, there seeping from beneath the lid. to call scuppernong grapes is most legend- bread in front of us. The steam slapped was a common denominator: the South. In the black South, food is the founda- ary. My folks called them “scuplins,” and and licked my chin and cheeks. “Daddy, My daddy’s people are from Georgia. My tion for defining what is and what ain’t Roy’s family called them “bullets.” Nana reach ’round there and give me the pepper mommy’s people on her daddy’s side are Southern. Goodie Mob’s 1995 album Soul Boo squashed the argument with a laugh juice, please?” He fumbled in the lower from Mississippi. I never knew my Opa, Food employed cooking metaphors to and wave of her hand, declaring both cabinet filled with condiments and passed but he is grounded in my memory narrate the experience of being young, names acceptable. me the red-capped bottle of vinegar and because of the stories my uncles and poor, and black in post–civil rights Atlanta. As I continue to explore what food peppers. Daddy didn’t let up. mommy told me about what he used to Culinary interpreter Michael Twitty uses means as a preserver and amplifier of “Our food is supposed to touch!” He eat. Opa was a mysterious black man food to explore African American identi- Southern black identities, I think back shoveled another forkful of country mash from Yazoo City, Mississippi, who got ty. Additionally, culinary genealogies of fondly to my Daddy, my Opa, and what we into his mouth. the hell out of the Delta for reasons all Southern black folks continue to flourish shared across our plates. I pushed past my dad’s large hand to his own. He landed in Chicago, then pick the crustiest piece of cornbread. He Germany, where he met my white grand- Regina N. Bradley is an incoming assistant professor of English and African laughed and nodded in submission. I mother, and finally retired from the mil- Diaspora Studies at Kennesaw State University. She is the author of a short story pinched off a piece and swirled it in the itary in northern California outside of collection, Boondock Kollage: Stories from the Hip Hop South.

24 | southernfoodways.org Summer 2017 | 25 DESPERATELY SEEKING SEEGER What happens when critic turns unreliable narrator? by JOHN KESSLER

HE RESTAURANT WAS CALLED SEEGER’S, and for the first nine years I re- viewed restaurants for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, it was the best one in town. I knew this because the simplest dishes capti- vated me, time and again. I knew this because the restaurant’s chef-owner, a couple of dozen times more. I wrote Humbert Humbert, but maybe Nick Car- prepared meals for British and Canadian Günter Seeger, not only trained many of mash notes when he received a Relais & raway—when Seeger was the subject? supermarket chains. He and Leslie had the city’s top chefs, he built its first Chateaux designation, and when Esquire Seeger’s closed in 2006, limping at the a daughter, Alessandra, his fifth. After network of local farmers. I knew this named Seeger’s a best new restaurant in end. It hosted few diners during the week years of rumors, then a build-out beset because I often declared it the best with the country. I wrote about the lobster ice but enough on Friday and Saturday to by permitting woes, he resurfaced in New that obnoxious unilateralism a restaurant cream he made in a high-tech Pacojet. I tax the reduced floor staff. The chef went York’s West Village in mid-2016 at a critic can employ. I never minded that a re-reviewed the restaurant in its twilight, under the radar for nearly a decade. He redux restaurant called Günter Seeger chunk of my readership couldn’t disagree too, justifying its high prices when it was moved to New York with his wife, Leslie, NY. My wife and I planned a trip to New more. I had no problem arguing my case. charging $160 for lunch and all of Buck- his former hostess and then manager, York a few days after it opened, ostensi- Nobody in town cooked with the head was an abandoned construction whose long legs and graceful carriage bly to visit our daughter but really to eat stripped-down purity of Günter Seeger. site. My assessment of the restaurant had would make you guess correctly that she Seeger’s food again. No one in the country did. started to sound like a defense. Was I was a professional dancer. He worked On that June night, we endured some

Over those nine years, I visited Seeger’s drifting into unreliability—not quite Nelson Natalie as a consultant, developing high-end understandable opening glitches. The

26 | southernfoodways.org Summer 2017 | 27 spotlight poised above our table seemed a that a chemist would find the same phe- scant degree shy of tanning booth. And the nolic compounds repeated. Longtime ample floor staff, with few tables to serve, Atlanta dining critic Christiane Lauter- tended to move en masse through the room bach has a simpler explanation. “He’s like like a team of six-year-old soccer players. a Japanese chef,” she says. “He coaxes the But the food! I recognized Seeger’s clean essence of something.” touch as readily as Ella Fitzgerald’s voice, When Seeger talks about local produce, that nuance that could only belong to one he never sinks to farm-to-table plati- person. Some dishes were new and others tudes. “You have different climates, and so familiar. His foie gras with Vidalia onion you have different microorganisms in the jam and baked apple. His hot, tremulous soil,” he says. “They make most of the egg custard served in the shell, with cream flavors, but most people have no idea and maple. A loving tribute to a famous about soil. A strawberry in France tastes Alain Passard dish, Seeger served it with different from a strawberry in Germany.” a salty lashing of bottarga. The flavors “And in America...?” I prod. brought me back to his table in Atlanta and “In America you have two feet of to Atlanta itself. As much as this classical- topsoil,” he says with a quick, ironic ly trained German chef appeared, at times, German laugh. “It is what it is. I work hard to chafe at what seemed to him the pro- to make the best of what we have here.” vincial tastes of his adopted Southern city, That attitude infuriated some in he managed to change them. Atlanta and galvanized others. Seeger was thirty-five when the Ritz-Carlton brought him Stateside in EFORE COMING TO ATLANTA, SEEGER HAD the mid-’80s to make The Dining Room been chef at Hoheneck restaurant restaurant in the hotel’s flagship Atlanta near the Black Forest of his native property a destination. It was the heyday Germany, where he had earned a of gourmet hotel restaurants, when the Michelin star in 1978 for applying Ritz-Carltons and Four Seasons promot- the French techniques he had learned in ed name chefs. Washington’s Watergate hotel school to German dishes. The Hotel was famous for burglars in the restaurant wouldn’t have thrived without 1970s and for chef Jean-Louis Palladin its twice-weekly shipments of luxury in the 1980s. Seeger was in that cohort goods from Paris. Not everything was of young Europeans poised to make over imported, though. At Hoheneck, Seeger America’s notion of fine dining. began his lifelong work of cultivating “He introduced the philosophy of sea- growers and suppliers. He doesn’t remem- sonality as a linchpin of menu writing,” ber any specialties from the period, as says Shaun Doty, the chef-owner of The much as I press, cajole, or flatter him. I’ve Federal in Atlanta, who was one of the come to understand the recipes them- talented young trainees in Seeger’s Ritz selves don’t matter to him. The heart of kitchen. “He tried to cultivate this his cuisine is process—applying technique network of people locally who would precisely to the ingredients at hand while grow things for him. It wasn’t all about looking for serendipity. For instance, he luxury ingredients.” knows how an herb changes flavor when It was, instead, about finding everyday it flowers, and how blooming chamomile vegetables. Clay Calhoun had been can work with langoustine or lavender farming in northern California, where he

Brian Bloom with kiwi. I would bet dollars to dacquoise sold produce to Chez Panisse and Greens,

A | southernfoodways.org Summer 2017 | 29 Atlanta lawyer with whom he had two the way Chef chose, cooked, and plated small girls, put together the financing for seemed to harness a synergy. Seeger’s was I RECOGNIZED SEEGER’S CLEAN TOUCH AS READILY Seeger’s. This jewelbox occupied a pointy- the best restaurant that Atlanta had ever roofed house on the commercial edge of seen. That was not a point of contention, Buckhead, just beyond the mansions Tom it was an evident truth. AS ELLA FITZGERALD’S VOICE, THAT NUANCE THAT Wolfe lampooned in A Man in Full, with As least I thought so. Some readers who their lawns “rising up from the street like took me up on the recommendation let big green breasts.” me know that they had to stop off at the COULD ONLY BELONG TO ONE PERSON. I had arrived in Atlanta the year Seeger’s Johnny Rockets down West Paces Ferry opened. My opinion would count as my Road for a burger after dinner. Many were first major test as the local critic. The furious about a surcharge for the Evian the Bay Area restaurants at the heart of dog, they expected to find a stash of restaurant showed world-class ambition, water the waiters poured all night. the 1970s food revolution. Now he and cooking reference manuals, but there with tables clad in Frette linens and waiters This dance went on for years. Seeger’s his wife, Lucy, were trying to get their were none. (The only book Doty saw in in Armani suits. I went the first time with got some laudatory national press and family property, Ashland Farm, up and the house was Madonna’s Sex.) To him, newspaper colleagues who loved their few counted among the dozen or so restau- running with a ten-acre vegetable farm. Seeger seemed half creative genius, half bites of half-smoked salmon with horse- rants that earned five stars from the Mobil They asked their distributor to show the autodidact. He invented dishes when he radish cream and a dessert called “Seeger’s Travel Guide, a North American answer vegetables to Seeger, who found them saw the ingredients. Chocolate Dream” but found the portions to the Michelin Guide. I ate there once unremarkable. Time had robbed them of Seeger began incorporating Southern dainty and the stripped-down culinary or twice a year. You know that feeling of flavor. But he wanted to see the farm. vegetables while he was still at the style disarming. I did, too. Fine-dining pleasure mixed with anticipation that The distributor brought Seeger to Ritz-Carlton. Poke sallet showed up. restaurants were still fond of their herb makes you feel weightless? In summer, Ashland, about an hour east of Atlanta, Squab came plated with a hair-thin chif- garnishes and swoops of sauce, and these there might be fresh tomatoes with where he pulled a runaround. He said he’d fonade of barely cooked collard greens unadorned dishes just sat there. They did tomato gelée, tomato sorbet, and snow- use the Calhouns’ vegetables if they sold in bacon jus. (In his mind, Southern ag- not ask for love. white tomato mousse made from clarified directly to him. He told them to drop his riculture and Southern culinary tradition When I returned the following week juice. In the winter, a crêpe Suzette that name when looking for other chef-clients were…divorceable.) Critics and epicures with my wife, it didn’t take us long to made you stop to consider navel oranges and, says Lucy, “It was magic. The world cherished him. In 1996, he earned the surrender to the cool pleasures and syn- in season. Sometimes, things got weird. opened up when I said Günter Seeger.’” city’s first James Beard award for best copated rhythms of Seeger’s table. I re- Waiters would grate hazelnuts over Greens from Ashland Farm became the chef in the Southeast. For everyday At- member oysters, their salinity and tem- quenelles of avocado mousse and unwrap first locavore signifier on Atlanta menus, lantans, it was a different story. “They perature calibrated precisely to the steaming fig leaves to reveal a custardy a promise of lively salad, of mineral flavor, didn’t like it at all,” Seeger recalls, saying shimmery gelée flecked atop. I remember nugget of foie gras within. of respectful restraint from the kitchen. clients expressed disappointment at not a slice of warm brioche with soft butter, I became a familiar customer, known Seeger began bringing his kitchen crew having their familiar salads and steaks. and a course of rare squab that I cut with by my credit card name of Mr. Chapman. to the farm to prepare dinners for other To Lauterbach’s recollection, Seeger a bone-handled steak knife and swiped That is, until I maxxed out the card and farmers and patrons. They toured the never spoke ill of his clientele; it was a through date purée, as the dark sweet- had to pull out my debit card and tell the gardens, they cooked, they went skin- learning curve, after all. But he had choice ness of one taste pushed at the other. I manager, Claude Guillaume, that it had ny-dipping in the pond. Lauterbach, a words for some of his colleagues. “He used remember rolling over in bed after that a different name on it. “Not to worry, sometimes guest, remembers the naked the word ‘shoemaker’ to describe them meal and thinking that I hadn’t brushed Monsieur Kessler,” he said without swims fondly, as well as Seeger’s delight and their sense of luxury. To associate fresh my teeth and didn’t want to. Crest would looking at the card. at being in nature. “I saw Günter break with luxury wasn’t a thing before Günter.” have tasted like a violation. Atlanta restaurant-goers were either a small watermelon on his leg and the When I asked Seeger about this, he We returned for a third visit to try the on team Seeger or, increasingly, not. They juice run down his thigh.” laughed and demurred. “It can be a five-course menu. When beef with roasted tried it once, twice, then spent their At the Ritz-Carlton, Doty says, the highly regarded art to make shoes.” shallots and red wine sauce came to the blowout dining dollars elsewhere. My menu was a nightly experiment. Seeger By 1997, he was a local celebrity and an table, the sommelier poured a Châteauneuf annual best restaurants guide motivated never consulted cookbooks. When he important part of the city's civic life, ready du Pape, and this familiar combination of readers to send anti-Seeger’s screeds, and the other young chefs would go to to parlay it all into his own restaurant. His flavors tasted unlike any version I had from emails to multi-page, handwritten Seeger’s house after service to walk his then-wife, Laureen, a high-powered tried. I wasn’t sure why. Something about letters. The restaurant’s business

30 | southernfoodways.org Summer 2017 | 31 dropped off, particularly on weeknights. No, you have to be the kind of person who When the Mobil Travel Guide awarded gets blown away by green leaves. Seeger’s five stars, we rushed a photog- Tucker Taylor, who formerly ran rapher to the restaurant to show Seeger Woodland Gardens organic farm in and Guillaume celebrating. They toasted Georgia, recalls a dinner Seeger hosted with Champagne, then finished the bottle for local growers. “Out came these huge and went home. There were no guests white plates, and on each was one whole on the books that evening. leaf of Swiss chard, perfectly cooked.” Some rich, food-obsessed friends who Taylor, now the director of culinary never liked Seeger’s took my wife and gardens for Kendall-Jackson Wines in me there one evening to try and under- California, laughs at the memory. “It was stand my passion for it. We had the such a funny sight but, you know, that’s Heisenberg Uncertainty dinner. They how I like to eat.” were expecting a disappointment; I Beyond the food, Seeger’s detractors feared one. Sure enough, we had the complained endlessly of something South- worst table in the house, slow service, an erners abhor: “snooty service.” Unsmiling uneven menu, and a waiter who misiden- women in black skirts and white lace tified every cheese on the cart. I can still aprons brought cloche-topped dishes out tell you that the baby turbot fillet I ate on silver trays for unisex-suited waiters that night had a revelatory crisp-yielding to briefly identify and place before diners texture and came dotted with slivers of with a paucity of warm fuzzies. The lack picholine olive, plumped Zante currants, of chitchat left many Atlantans cold. That and teeny-tiny, Barbie-doll brunoise of attitude also played into a self-loathing crouton. But I kind of saw their point. narrative of post-Olympics Atlanta—that Others loved Seeger’s with fervor. C.J. the city was trying too hard at “cosmo- Bolster, an Atlanta management consul- politan” and failing. tant whose late wife, Barbara Petit, cru- For the first time, Seeger looked outside saded for good food and chaired the of Atlanta for marketing help, and he re- board of Georgia Organics, thought it the tained Simone Rathlé, a Washington, DC, best restaurant in America. For Petit’s publicist who burnished the image of fiftieth birthday, he took her on a coast- national clients. She softened the interior to-coast eating tour that included much and talked Seeger into pouring tap water of the rest of the Mobil five-star list. for diners who requested it. She persuad- Compared to The French Laundry, Chez ed him to add a Friday lunch service and Panisse, Charlie Trotter’s, Le Bernardin, addressed the biggest Atlanta bugaboo of and The Inn at Little Washington, “See- all: the lack of valet parking. No longer ger’s was by far the best,” Bolster recalls. would diners park their cars out back and “I don’t want to put down those other walk up a flight of stairs. Instead, they places, but it stood out for the intensity drove to what Rathlé called the Marquise of the flavors, the orchestration of the de la Porte (an elaborate tent) and let a different courses, the timing of the in- smiling hostess escort them to the front gredients in terms of the year.” door. I went for lunch and wrote a column That’s the thing. To love Seeger’s food, about the changes at Seeger’s. I said that you really have to love seasonal vegetables. the food was exquisite, joked that Mar- Not just say you love vegetables because quise de la Porte sounded like a French they’re pretty and good for you, when courtesan, and didn’t mention that I was

really you’d rather have a cheeseburger. one of three diners in the restaurant. Nelson Natalie

32 | southernfoodways.org Summer 2017 | 33 Readers responded with outrage. “How seemed to have breathed in the spirit of chef to say, “Look what we can grow here.” N MY LAST VISIT TO NEW YORK IN THE can you spend that kind of money on the old Seeger’s. When Chef stopped by Today, Atlanta goes nuts for micro-sea- early spring of this year, I stopped lunch?” “Why don’t you write about the table, he told me, “We have more sonality. When kale bolts, the flowers by the restaurant one afternoon to restaurants that real people can afford?” people coming from Atlanta than any- appear on menus around town. If you say hi, even though I didn’t have Determined to stop losing money, where else.” That didn’t surprise me: Once get me drunk, I will tell you that the best the time or budget to dine. Seeger Seeger announced his decision to close you know Seeger’s food, you crave it. kale flowers taste like lemon pepper and his team of five cooks were preparing in 2006. Suddenly, everyone in Atlanta My brother and I ordered the ten- wings. Seeger taught us to pay attention. a dinner for La Paulée de New York, an wanted a table for one last meal. He ex- course tasting menu, as did every diner He made possible the kind of stripped- annual festival of Burgundy wine. One tended the closing date by a month, and in the house that night. Seeger always clean, farm-forward style of Southern young chef whacked abalone shells with a then another. Guests grabbed 9 p.m. starts off with something in peak season. cooking practiced by Miller Union’s knife to relax the meat inside, while another Wednesday tables. In January that meant a coupe of citrus Steven Satterfield and others. prepared meticulous brunoise dice of cu- “I think Atlanta has been incredibly supremes in peppery olive oil. Then it On a visit to Atlanta this May, I had a cumber. Seeger’s wife, Leslie, filled mint unfair to him,” sniffs Lauterbach. meant whole leaves of purple Treviso meal at Poor Hendrix, a casual restaurant julep cups with white roses for the tables. lettuce in a mild anchovy dressing. Some and bar run by Seeger’s last (and best) “There’s the Pacojet!” I exclaimed, might see a fruit cup and a Caesar salad; pastry chef, Aaron Russell. In a See- remembering the lobster ice cream of a FTER MY EARLY VISIT TO GÜNTER SEEGER I tasted winter, bitter and sweet. ger-esque move, Russell serves separate decade ago. “It’s been sitting in my NY last year, the New York press I knew what was coming: something menus in the bar and dining room, and parents’ basement in Atlanta this whole began weighing in, not as favor- rich to stop you cold. That night, it was doesn’t allow crossover. (The customer time,” Leslie laughed. I remembered how ably as one would expect. Steve a bowl of black truffle–flecked, soft-scram- isn’t always right—if you have a vision, skilled she was as a maître d’, how she Cuozzo, writing in the New York bled egg, tiled with black truffle slices. you execute it.) After living in Chicago humanized the restaurant with her Post, called it “pricey, presumptuous, and Sauerkraut with scallop mousse followed. for nearly two years, where vegetables good-natured Southern manners. pretentious” in a review that came off as Then lobster with spaetzle. The squab tend to be used as vehicles for fat and I asked him how the produce in New incurious and slapdash. Daniel Wenger with date purée, a familiar thrill. A fan- sauce, I was craving a big-ass summer York compared to that in Atlanta. As with wrote a brief in The New Yorker that dis- tastic wedge of hard tomme. A lemon salad. Russell didn’t disappoint, serving his early days in Atlanta, he has given up missed the cooking approach as “club sorbet with the long finish of an aged a mound of frilly torn greens outfitted on getting it delivered because too much food” “for the low-key rich.” I bristled chenin blanc closed the meal, mirroring with peanuts, pickled green beans, and comes in past its peak. The only way he when I read that: Simple does not mean the citrus at the beginning. a few shavings of Manchego cheese. I can get the produce he wants is to person- safe. Pete Wells in The New York Times Was the meal uneven? I could find recognized the guy sitting next to me as ally shop at the Union Square Greenmarket showed insight into Seeger’s approach, faults. The scallop mousse didn’t offer the farmer who used to sell peaches at and hand-select the vegetables. writing, “When you’re surprised by his as much flavor as the sauerkraut asked the Decatur Farmers Market. It felt good “Everything is so different here,” he cooking, it’s because the voice of the for. A raspberry tartelette dessert had a to be back. said. “When I went to the Morningside ingredients is coming through more crust so firm it skittered off the plate Seeger alums fill the kitchens of greater Farmers Market [in Atlanta], there would clearly than you’re used to.” Yet he found when we tried to cut it with a fork. But Atlanta, from Dave Roberts at Commu- be five or six guys and everything was one of his three meals inconsistent and I don’t care about an uneven course here nity Q BBQ to Daniel Porubiansky of incredibly pristine. Union Square is only awarded the restaurant two stars and there. After twenty years of groking Century House Tavern. Maybe none are twenty times bigger, but you have to look out of four. Günter Seeger’s food, I’m here to tell you national stars, but all place a premium hard for the two or three guys you like.” I returned this past winter to Günter he’s the best cook I have ever known. on ingredients and technique. “He “You know what, though, John,” he said, Seeger NY. I tried to not succumb to nos- He finds the most expressive ingredi- doesn’t have an heir apparent, but he has lowering his voice and leaning in. “I will talgia and instead look at the restaurant ents of the growing moment and presents had an influence on a vast number of tell you something. It’s better in Atlanta.” and the chef with a fresh critical eye. The them without an iota of pretension. He people,” says Lauterbach. These chefs That doesn’t surprise me. The farms restaurant had recently received a Miche- cuts right to the essence of things. To me, prepare modest dishes with uncommon are closer, the growing season longer, lin star, and the house was full on a Tuesday he is Oracle in The Matrix: a plainspoken care, and in my nostalgia I taste a shadow and thirty-two years ago a newly arrived night. The lighting was easier, and the conduit to a deeper engagement with of Seeger in their food. German chef demanded the best. decor of the long, deep room had softened. reality. I think he was able to communi- The gorgeous kitchen in the back looked cate that to the chefs and farmers he John Kessler is the former longtime restaurant critic for The Atlanta Journal- more like a glowing workshop than an worked with. I suspect even his detractors Constitution. He is working on a book with The Giving Kitchen, Atlanta’s lifeline operating bay. This redux restaurant in Atlanta saw this gift. He was the first to hospitality workers in need.

34 | southernfoodways.org Summer 2017 | 35 SUMMER 2017

BOILED PEANUTS AND PEACHES BY THE CAROLINA ROADSIDE by Cynthia R. Greenlee

37 otos aPhotos by Gary la Clark

A | southernfoodways.org ALONG Highway 220, SMALL TOWNS The nursing assistant tells him, “Chew, A few times a year, my mother loaded SHARED chew, chew.” Then, she reminds him to the car with suitcases, children, and pets. swallow—a command that swells with We headed south from Greensboro, NAMES gentle forcefulness at each repetition. North Carolina, down old Highway 220 WITH He eats the “mechanical diet” for people toward my mother’s hometown of Lake who have difficulty swallowing, and City, South Carolina, to my grandparents’ PEACHES: today’s meal is a beige mishmash of farm, where there was still a barn of minced chicken and potatoes, served curing tobacco, fields of soybeans, and with a thickened soda. water pumps outside. My six-year-old Hamlet, Not for the first time, I think that there self prayed for a rare fast-food stop at is a difference between feeding and Hardee’s. More than a hot dog Caroli- eating, between eating for pleasure and na-style with chili, slaw and onions, I Biscoe, eating for maintenance. I watch the anticipated our roadside stops along the thrice-daily drama of mealtime on my less busy stretches of Highway 220, regular visits to the retirement facility where nearby small towns shared names Ellerbe. that is now his home. It usually involves with peaches: Hamlet, Biscoe, Ellerbe. his refusal to eat, the word “slop,” and Memory is a fickle, suggestible thing, demands for special dishes—as if the but I remember one trip in particular. I nursing home dining hall is run by was just into my elementary school short-order cooks or personal chefs. If career, probably summer 1980 or so. I it’s a “good/bad day,” meaning he’s lucid was old enough to recite the alphabet enough to speak, but agitated enough to without singing it, but young enough that demand without inhibition, he will com- I still clutched thick, foot-long pencils plain loudly about the lack of salt and to write. I wore lacy socks underneath pepper in his Salisbury steak. He’ll say, my sandals. A man at a roadside stand “No seasoning,” and then point to the outside Ellerbe, North Carolina, swatted kitchen. “No black people in there.” a mosquito with one hand and handed I secretly enjoy these uncomfortable my mother a small wooden basket of exchanges because my father has always just-weighed peaches with the other. been a “race man.” His outbursts remind Sweat beads on his brow, he laid the me that some things have not changed. change from her five-dollar bill on the Before dementia turned my father into counter. Young as I was, I knew that we a person whose basic bodily functions would not be coming back to this fruit need prompting, he was a doer. A master stand during next summer’s pilgrimage. gardener, an eater, and a patriarch, he With as much certainty as I knew that commanded respect and took the wheel Grandmother Daniels would have a of our family’s sky blue Caprice Classic. seven-layer chocolate cake waiting for

38 | southernfoodways.org Summer 2017 | B my arrival, I understood that not putting a black person’s change in their hand My father was an unsubtle insult. Daddy had has always been taught me that much. No matter what the law said about equality, this white a didactic sort, man with the permanent suntan and the who sees a lesson in every life event. He choice peaches probably thought that turned my allowance into an exercise in touching a black woman’s hand—even counting; I learned negative numbers the hand of the perfectly coiffed, brown- years before my classmates because my skinned Mary Tyler Moore lookalike father subtracted a quarter every time I who was my mother—was a breach of failed to take out the trash or whined white supremacist etiquette. Or maybe about picking scratchy squash in our it was an omission. After all, he was garden. On our road trips, he pointed out sweating. Maybe he was kind to not changes in the land. extend his moist, slippery hand. “Look at the soil. See that it’s lighter Daddy was away from the car, stretch- than in Greensboro? It’s not brown and ing his legs in the shade, drink-eating it’s got red clay in places. It’s sandy, peanuts and Pepsi from a bottle. Mom that’s why it called the Sandhills. And told him, “Let’s not stop there on the way there’s more bushes, lower to the back. I don’t like the feel of the place.” ground.” I looked out the window during He put the glass bottle down carefully the entire drive, not wanting to miss and hopped to his feet. anything. Highway 220 marked one “Did he say something to you?” She hemisphere of my childhood’s known shook her head, but he seethed in silence. universe. Bustling in the late spring and I sat in the luggage compartment of the summer, when farmers supplied road- wagon, played with our fussy Pekingese, side stands with sun-warm produce, it and strained to hear my parents’ hushed was a route of wonder and plenty. conversation over the furious whoosh A few miles outside Asheboro, North of the air conditioner. During legal Carolina, my South Carolina–raised segregation, guides like the Negro mother would sigh with anticipatory Motorist Green Book advised black pleasure. Without raising my head from travelers of places they could dine safely my pillow, I could tell that we had or lay their heads while on the road. My entered the boiled peanut zone. My parents had their own versions of these father would stop the car multiple times, guides in their heads, memorized after half-exasperated and half-amused that the formal end of Jim Crow. Mom needed to sample peanuts at dif- As we pulled away, Daddy squinted ferent stands. “Her South Carolina is and eyed the food stand in the rearview coming out,” he’d tease. My parents had mirror. My parents marked this location a decades-long banter over which Car- off their mental maps. There were racial olina was best: North Carolina, with its rules, and there were road rules. I history of poor dirt farmers, or the more learned them in our station wagon, on patrician (according to my mother) pleather seats that sucked at the back of South Carolina. My father came from sweaty thighs—just as I learned how to the mountains of western North Caroli- eat adventurously as our family rolled na—a place where there were few black through the Sandhills region of North people, less arable soil, and a different and South Carolina. food culture. My mother’s ancestors

40 | southernfoodways.org Summer 2017 | 41 crack open a watermelon, and they shed the suit he wore to his social worker reserved special mini-wedges for chil- job, put on a thin, white Hanes T-shirt dren. Or they’d give you a tomato slice and rough feed store jeans, and would and a tiny package of salt as preview of holler at neighbors tending their small WILL their wares. For me, happiness will city gardens on the other side of the always taste like a salted tomato. fence. Daddy would sit on the ground HappinessALWAYS TASTE LIKE A This was how Daddy connected with and look for whatever bug was sucking the land. Where he grew up, in the the moisture from his first cantaloupe Swannanoa Valley, everyone had a vines, take samples to his local extension garden. His family’s produce supple- agent and ask questions. He’d come back salted tomato mented the meager earnings of my grand- and report the findings to us. “You need father, a disabled man who worked as a to know this stuff for one day, when I’m handyman to support his brood of ten, gone,” he would say. And when I went hailed from the Pee Dee country of were run by black farmers. “Let’s stop and helped support my grandmother, away to college in August, he’d send me northeast South Carolina, where en- there,” my mother would urge, based on who labored on and off as a domestic. off with a plastic grocery bag of tomatoes. slaved people had once worked large a mysterious calculus that involved the Even after my father graduated from His love grew on vines: a little abrasive plantations. Boiled peanuts were remind- likelihood of boiled peanuts for sale, a college and moved to the city, he loved and scratchy, but natural and alive. ers of West African contributions to the clean bathroom (if there was one), and to tend a small batch of our backyard. He Our road trip excursions were part of regional diet. Mom bought the peanuts a warm welcome (generally evidenced filled it with tall stands of beans strapped our schooling, too, my father’s way of hot and steaming from the pot, or she by the presence of other black motorists). to wires and grapevines that produced “learning” his city-raised children to chose the “rested” boiled peanuts—cold, My parents had their observations about the smallest, sourest fruit known to man. appreciate the rural South and giving salted, and delightfully clammy. Either which stands had managers who talked This was his playground, the place where due to the people who worked the land. way, we’d wait for her judgment. down to their black helpers; which he could experiment with fake owls that I learned that same lesson when I went “Not enough salt,” she’d say of a batch vendors looked like good ole boys, but were supposed to scare away the rabbits with Daddy on Saturdays to Southern in a plastic bag. “Too hard,” she dismissed would put your money in your hand and that mowed down his spring lettuces. He States, the feed store that sold dried another. The gold-standard boiled peanut not on the counter; and the rare ones needed to be almost fleshy, firm but who were “safe” and remembered us giving, same as her parenting style. from the last summer, or at least pretend- We would soon cross the Herring and ed that they did. Peach Line around Richmond County, My father would exit the car first and North Carolina, a border as tangible as shoot the breeze while my mother would the state line. The swarm of gnats that do reconnaissance, looking for a basket often accompanied the briny, smoked of peaches that didn’t conceal the bruised herring announced that we had official- fruits at the bottom. Daddy would browse, ly left our suburban Piedmont. We’d keep an eye on us, and make small talk gorge on roadside treats like pastel-col- all the while. “How are the peaches today? ored taffy in the cooler months, straw- Was it a good year? It’s hot out there. And berries and voluptuous tomatoes in early where’s your daddy? I always liked talking summer. I clamored for milky local ice to him. Oh, he passed on? He made the cream stuffed with chunks of frozen best boiled peanuts.” peaches, but my father always steered To my sisters and me, Daddy’s roadside me from dessert to produce. chats and his insistence that we leave the My parents usually made a beeline to air-conditioned car on 100-degree days the roadside stands that were little more were evidence that the heat had caused than funeral-home tents stretched over him brain damage. But I never regretted a few chairs, a cooler, and crates of fruit. it once I exited the car’s frosty bubble. Startup affairs that, more often than not, At some roadside stands, the staff would

42 | southernfoodways.org and the producer, the people who could tell you the week and month by which variety of peach was ripe. We paid homage to the small farmers who strug- gled to stay afloat when the state built a bypass that diverted traffic from the small towns nourished by these food stands. Later, we became one of those New South families that took the road more traveled. The line of black asphalt got us to Grandma quicker. It was a matter of con- venience for my parents: less time spent in a stuffy car with three children. I haven’t traveled the old 220 for years. Now, it seems a rude violation to drive that road without my father taking lead. He sits in a wheelchair, unable to move on his own and occasionally unable to remember which hallway will lead to his room. Our journeys together now are short affairs. I push him in that wheel- beans, pickles in a barrel, and peppermint chair from dining hall to his room. When knots. “There’s no difference between a he’s feeling cantankerous, he doesn’t man in overalls and a man in the business want to return to his room and literally suit, except for their clothes, their money, puts his foot down to stop me from and what dumb people think about rolling him forward. He demands that I DOES A GOOD STORY them,” Daddy said in some iteration on roll him out the door and take him to the MAKE A DRINK every road trip. “Even if it looks like bank, the Walmart, somewhere other they’re just sitting out there doing than here. TASTE BETTER? nothing, it’s hard work sitting someplace Mom walks alongside us, and I can feel where it’s ninety degrees in the shade.” her worrying that he didn’t eat enough. As I grew older, he would give me a An hour after the dinner he didn’t finish, by WAYNE CURTIS few dollars so I could buy my own I watch him eat a Magic Cup, a frozen, produce to share. He’d make sure that I ice cream–like treat packed with protein. greeted black vendors before the It is the one thing he will consume with transaction, put my cash in their palms, gusto. My father—who demanded sturdy, Gravy and said thank you. And then—because home-cooked meals and would brook no SUMMER 2017 my father was nothing if not frugal—he’d leftovers—slowly spoons it to his mouth, ask for his change back. sometimes forgetting that his hand is in pg. 45 When we chatted with folks at stands, the air. I think, not for the first time, that we weren’t just standing under their happiness tastes like a summer tomato canopy, paying for fruit, and wishing for and loss tastes like that peach ice cream a cool wind. We appreciated the produce Daddy never let me eat.

Cynthia R. Greenlee is a journalist, a historian who researches African American legal history in the South, and a diehard fan of peach ice cream. She developed this piece at the SFA’s 2017 Rivendell Writers’ Colony Workshop.

44 | southernfoodways.org and a bartender at the Seelbach Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky, was mixing several drinks at once. He opened a bottle of Champagne and—as Champagne will do—it cascaded over the top. Some of that fizz spilled into a Manhattan he’d already made. So he remade it, and set that original drink aside.

Later he tasted the original. It was fine. appropriate for a drink that came from Good, even. It was bright and efferves- a hotel that was itself so classic it got a cent but still had the ballast of its era. passing mention in The Great Gatsby. The bartender added orange liqueur, and For the past twenty years, hotel visitors called it the Seelbach cocktail. He put it have walked through the ornate hotel into regular rotation at the hotel. But the lobby and ordered Seelbachs. It’s one of drink’s popularity was short-lived: the bar’s best sellers. Prohibition came along in 1920, and hotel Robert Simonson, a cocktail writer bars like the Seelbach ran dry. based in New York, tried one on a trip to In 1995, Seelbach bar manager Adam Louisville about a decade ago. He hadn’t Seger rediscovered the cocktail. He found heard of the drink until a fellow journal- it on an old bar menu in the hotel’s archives. ist recommended it. Simonson remem- The drink appeared on the Louisville bers thinking it was a pretty good cock- hotel’s cocktail menu once again—com- tail—not super-high on his list of plete with story. Guests ordered it. favorites, but good. His experience at the Guests loved it. The Seelbach cocktail Seelbach Hotel nearly ten years ago was made its way into the slew of new books typical. Go to the Seelbach. Order a Seel-

Photos by Andrew Thomas Lee Photos by Andrew Thomas about classic cocktails, which seemed bach. Drink it.

| A | southernfoodways.org Summer 2017 47 manuscript that had been hidden away, THE SECOND MOMENT took place and decided to produce it again. about a decade ago. I walked in to this During the tour, I asked my guide tiny, four-seat bar at the Ritz-Carlton at where that manuscript was located. the edge of the French Quarter in New “It’s in a safe in a secret location,” she Orleans with a couple of friends. A bar- said. tender the size of a fullback with a grav- I pressed her. Is it somewhere in this elly baritone voice loomed behind the area? bar. Among the drinks we ordered was “It’s somewhere in Europe,” she a mint julep. replied. “I don’t think it’s in the United The bartender’s name was Chris Mc- States.” Millian. As he assembled his tools—a Simonson was attending a small event had ever been uttered before inside a bar: In other words, she had no idea— silver julep cup, a bar spoon, a canvas bag to promote a new bar that Seger—now “What’s your source on that?” because there was no sixteenth-century and massive wooden mallet for pulver- a well-known bar consultant—was A new generation of cocktail and spirits manuscript. She was repeating a story izing the ice—he started reciting some- opening in New York. From the stage, writers—and I include myself among that had been made up of whole cloth. thing. He began slowly and then picked Seger mentioned that he’d recently con- them—had started sifting through the It dates back to 1863, when a wealthy up speed, like a stone rolling downhill. fessed to another bartender that he’d stories, trying to separate fact from fancy. industrialist named Alexandre Le Grand actually made up the whole story behind How did this whiskey really arise? Which started making an herbal liqueur. He Then comes the zenith of man’s plea- the Seelbach. bartender firstmade that drink? Did the knew that it needed a good story to go sure. Then comes the julep, the mint At the end of the night, Simonson cocktail truly originate in New Orleans? with it, and so in came the monks and julep. Who has not tasted one has darted out of his seat and up to the stage. We wanted answers, and we wanted the alchemy, followed by more than a lived in vain. The honey of Hymettus Seger agreed to go on the record about the truth. But I also wondered, what do century of fi ction that all but morphed brought no such solace to the soul; the the Seelbach fiction. we lose when we stop making up stories? into fact. nectar of the Gods is tame beside it. Simonson’s article about the fictitious Even that building I toured was some- It is the very dream of drinks, the Seelbach came out in The New York Times I’VE BEEN WRITING about liquor, thing of a fake—a nineteenth-century vision of sweet qua ng… Sip it and last October. The headline read, “That cocktails, and bars for more than a dozen reproduction of a fifteenth-century dream, you cannot dream amiss, sip Historic Cocktail? Turns Out It’s a Fake.” years. I got into this because I was inter- palace. It stood as a monument to how it and dream. It is a dream itself. No You might think that Seger was then ested in the history of drink: why people deeply and colorfully a good drinking other land gives such sweet solace for ostracized and embarrassed about lying, drank, what they drank, what they were story can embed itself in popular culture. your cares; no other liquor soothes for creating alternative cocktail facts. But doing while they drank. that didn’t happen—most cocktail writers Two moments helped shaped how I and bartenders I’ve talked to just laughed, think about stories and spirits—one took even those who included the fake story place in France, and the other in New in their books, as Simonson did. Many Orleans. complimented Seger on coming up with In 2011, I toured a sprawling palace full an utterly plausible and enduring story. of stained-glass windows near the Nor- Seger, it turns out, found himself with mandy coast in France where Bénédictine a foot in each of two eras. One was in an liqueur is manufactured. Its makers have era now gone, when good stories told at long claimed that it was concocted from bars, about bars, and about drinks were a rediscovered sixteenth-century recipe the currency of the time. Everybody made originally developed by Benedictine things up. Nobody really cared—as long monks. In the mid-nineteenth century, as the story was well told and entertaining. someone supposedly found this recipe Then, a little over ten years ago, I that called for distilling spirits and herbs started hearing a phrase that I don’t think and various other whatnot in an alchemy

48 | southernfoodways.org you so in melancholy days. Sip it and the case here. Information seems to be say there is no solace for the soul, no more a vehicle to get you to the digres- tonic for the body like old bourbon sion, which is the whole point of talking whiskey. Cheers. to someone. Today, we don’t so much tell stories as I was completely surprised. And con- traffic in snippets—140 characters here, fused. Was he talking to us? To himself? an Instagram caption there. We hit send, To an invisible friend? But within a and then we sit and wait for someone to minute or so, we were sucked in and ping back. pulled along on this journey of the mind. Bars have been more or less resistant Upon finishing the ode, which was the to these trends. Even though televisions length of a short book, McMillian slid mounted among the liquor bottles might mood, music, appearance, texture, pack- fastidious. Maybe letting a little fiction the julep across to us. To this day, it was offer an excuse not to talk, striking up a aging, and the ambiance of where you back into the bars isn’t a bad thing. Maybe the single best drink I’ve ever had, any- conversation with a complete stranger drink can affect how you perceive the we should let bars do what they do best, where. Not because of the bourbon he in a bar is still an accepted, even expect- taste of whatever it is you’re eating or which is to serve as petri dishes where used, nor his technique in pulverizing ed, part of going out for a drink. drinking. But I’ve found no studies on stories propagate and grow. the ice to a fine powder—although those Chris McMillian left the Ritz-Carlton how a good story can affect taste. I was in Louisville a couple of months didn’t hurt—but because the drink came years ago. He stopped reciting the ode I’m worried that we’re losing that part ago and stopped by the bar at the Seel- surrounded by this nimbus of soothing to the julep when word got around, and of taste. The modern cocktail revival has bach Hotel, after Robert Simonson’s story words. It turns out he was reciting an tourists started coming in with expecta- seen the rise of the elegant and often about the big lie came out in The New ode to the julep written in the 1890s by tions. He felt like a human jukebox— pricey craft cocktail, which you can order York Times. The hotel is now a Hilton, a Kentucky judge named Joshua Soule strangers would plop in a coin and wait in all the new cool-kid bars. It has also and the bar has too many TV sets blaring Smith, and which McMillian had long for something to come out. The verse no seen the return of a class of professional for my taste. But I walked in and grabbed ago memorized and unspooled to guests longer surprised. McMillian and his wife, bartender—folks who see this as their a stool and ordered a Seelbach. The bar- when the mood struck him. Laura, now have their own bar, called livelihood, not as a gig during grad school tender told me that the truth hadn’t While that was the best julep I’ve ever Revel, a couple of miles from the French or between auditions. They have the time gotten in the way of sales—it was still the had, the story has somehow infected my Quarter just off Canal Street. Revel has and motivation to get bartending right, bar’s top-selling cocktail. tastebuds, improving every julep I’ve had no televisions—the McMillians want with many of them worrying the details I sipped it, and it tasted like a mistake since. The same is true for Bénédictine. their customers to interact. down to the last milliliter. made right. Later, back in New Orleans, Even though I know the whole story of But deftness in behind-the-bar story- I asked Chris McMillian if he thought monks and alchemy is an elaborate bit A 2004 SCIENTIFIC STUDY published telling is lagging. The new crop of bar- the truth might diminish the taste of the of fakery, as is the fancy palace—I re- in the Journal of Sensory Studies exam- tenders has by and large focused on Seelbach. member the echo of the creaky stairs, ined how sound can influence taste. The eyedroppers of tinctures rather than on “No, it only enriches the story,” he said. and I swear I can taste the monks’ hand- title was “The Role of Auditory Cues in their customers. One bar consultant I “I’ve told the Seelbach story a bunch of iwork every time I sip it. Modulating the Perceived Crispness and know told me that he used to teach bar times and now it has an addendum to it, Staleness of Potato Chips,” which was staff how to make drinks. Now, bar that brings it up to contemporary times WHEN I LIVED in New England, my a ten-dollar way of saying that if the owners ask him to instruct the staff on and relates it to an individual person and neighbors and I talked to convey infor- chip sounded crisper, it tasted better. how to tell a story, how to make eye their personal experience.” mation—rarely more. Those who spoke This might seem obvious—and a lot of contact, how to connect with the patrons. The truth makes a nice frame for a most efficiently were the most respected. people made fun of the study—but more As a journalist, I’m all for getting the drink. But I’m thinking the story is always It was as if you were given an allotment revealing was the researcher’s look at facts right. But maybe we needn’t be so what will set it apart. of so many words to use during your time how humans tend to involuntarily on Earth, and people were afraid they combine various sensory cues into one Wayne Curtis is a New Orleans-based writer and the author of And a Bottle of might run out. Living in New Orleans for multisensory perception. Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails. A version of this story aired the past decade, I’ve learned that’s not I’ve also turned up studies on how on Gravy podcast episode 63, Booze Legends.

50 | southernfoodways.org Summer 2017 | 51 Leah Chase; OPPOSITE PAGE: Chase greets diners at Dooky Chase’s restaurant.

ORAL HISTORY I Never Could SIT STILL

Leah Chase talks of seven decades at Dooky Chase’s Restaurant in New Orleans

as told to SARA ROAHEN and JOHN POPE by LEAH CHASE

53 JUNE 6, 2014 housework, so we did that. I worked for around and have a little drink here. And a lady who had a boarding house, Koep’s sometimes go out until four o’clock in Boarding House. I cleaned, washed some the morning. And when you hit that clock clothes, maybe cooked some food. at seven, I never missed a day’s work and My name is Leah Chase. I was so different than all of my sisters. never was late for a day’s work. I always looked for bigger things, and my I used to come here after I’d get off of I run this kitchen at Dooky mother used to always fuss at me. She work and come to eat. But I didn’t even said, “Your high mind is going to get you know Dooky then. Dooky was a musician, Chase’s Restaurant. Been here in trouble someday.” so I met him when he was playing music. I was at a dance, and I was popular for what? Sixty-eight years. because I was good-looking and had a that’s another story, how i got here fairly good shape. I had everything going. to Dooky’s. Okay, you know I liked to go So I’m in the hall dancing, and he said, out. I was one who couldn’t—I never “Take over this, man, I’m going to dance i like to give trained chefs their bring it to the table. And in the country, could sit still, and I think that’s what with this girl.” credit, and that’s why I say I’m a cook, you learn all of that. pains me about aging. I don’t like staying And so Dooky got off the band and we really. But I run the kitchen. I do the Then, when you get to the city, you say, still. I like moving. I like doing things. So started dancing, and I still, “I ain’t paying buying. I do the menu and all of that. I’ve “Oh, I can take these same greens I have I like to go out with different people. Just him no mind. I still got all these other had people say, “Well, what is a chef? and I can do this with it. I can stuff this go out. And then I was out and about boyfriends.” And at that time, I didn’t Nothing.” What do you mean, ‘nothing?’ chicken with that. I didn’t know I could town, and then everybody would go—I like musicians. I thought they were all But in their eyes, a chef is just somebody do that with it coming up in the country. never was a one-man person. I never had, weird and crazy. I liked people in sports. who cooks, so they don’t look at that I thought I could just eat greens and like young girls have a boyfriend. No, I Boxing was the big thing with me. sometimes as a respected form of art or greens, or greens and rice, or whatever. had plenty of friends, and we’re going to So he kept on, so then we started going respected degree. But it is. In my case, I Now I know you can put it under differ- go out. We’re going to go out and look out. And that was it. I knew Dooky maybe had a lot of people that didn’t give me ent things and make it a beautiful dish.” any credit for anything. I was just a cook. So you learn, and you build on what Chase in the kitchen of Dooky Chase’s We did it in our kitchens every day. you learn. Coming up in the country, you Every black woman coming along cooked learn the basics. You learn what it takes in the kitchen, and they just didn’t un- to grow a hog. You know what it takes derstand what the professional cook to do everything. I think that was an would do. And if you’re cooking in the advantage for me. restaurant, what difference that makes. My mother wasn’t a great cook, poor They just—it’s nothing to them. And I darling. Well, who wants to cook for the guess there’s still some cases in which army every day? She had eleven of us that they feel that way. “What is a chef? she raised, and my daddy who loved to Nothing.” But it is important. It is as im- eat. She’d rather sew. She liked to sew. And portant as a doctor. It is as important as you know what? Strangely enough, when a lawyer. I came up, that was me. I’d rather sew. I grew up in a small town. I grew up There were no Catholic schools for in Madisonville. And the older I get, the blacks at all in Madisonville. So I had to more appreciative I am of growing up in come here. And where was St. Mary’s a small town, in what you call a “country Academy when I came? On Orleans and town.” You learn so much. People who Royal, of all the spaces. I don’t think you grew up in urban towns and big cities could run a good school in the French don’t understand. They don’t know food, Quarter today. Kids are too curious. for one thing. They don’t know how it When I came out of school, I went back

grows. They don’t know what it takes to home. There was no work at home but Photos by Denny Culbert

54 | southernfoodways.org Summer 2017 | 55 four or five months when we were making money in here in ’45. Everybody married. Dooky was only eighteen years was making money by ’45. Things were old. I was twenty-three. I didn’t feel like booming and people had jobs then. And he was any younger. He had been with my mother-in-law was making money. the band since he was sixteen years old. She loved money, and she always had her He would come to work here because roll in her bosom like everybody did. My his daddy made him. His daddy more mother-in-law walked around with about than his mother made him work. So he $500 in her bosom. would come here, and he would work And she would sit down there, I re- the bar at that time. He was good on the member, with a cigar box. And in those bar, too. Didn’t drink a thing, but could days, people were working—if they make you the best drink you ever drank. worked on the river, or they worked any- He didn’t smoke, didn’t do anything. I where, they came to cash their check. think that’s what caused him to leave And she had her money—$6,000, $7,000— the music world. He couldn’t cope with in her cigar box. And she’d cash those that element. checks sitting right out there on the table The restaurant was across the street with the cigar box. at first, but they didn’t stay there long. They started there in ’39, but by ’41—my mother-in-law was a mover and shaker. i’ll never forget this boo-boo i made: She was a great money manager. And my I said, “Now, nothing is different. The father-in-law was always sick. He had only difference in people is the color of ulcers. He quit going out selling the their skin.” Now, that was stupid. There lottery because he couldn’t do it anymore. are different cultures. So here, I’m going So she opened up that little shop and to put—the first thing I put on the menu they sold the lottery out of the shop, as to change: lobster Thermidor. well as sandwiches. Then she moved— The people said, “Is she crazy? Emily, she bought this over here, and she lived she is going to ruin your business, every- in this side here and the restaurant was thing you worked for.” But my mother- next door. in-law, she supported me 100 percent. When I came in here, I thought I was It didn’t go over because black people going to be a waitress. Where I came were not introduced to cream sauces at from, I was a waitress, and a good one. that time. Where would they have cream And I was coming up with ideas, and sauces unless they worked in a restau- they didn’t know where I was coming rant? They would have stews, they would from. Like even the shrimp cocktail. have plenty of meat, they would have Black people did not know what a shrimp stuffing, oyster dressing, they would have cocktail was when I came here in 1946. mirlitons. They would have things like Where were they going to eat it? They that, but they would never have lobster didn’t have no place else to eat it. Thermidor. They would never have The people used to tell my mother-in- shrimp Newburg. They never had a law, “Oh, she’s going to ruin your shrimp cocktail. business. You see that girl? She’s going So okay, that didn’t work. So I backed to ruin it.” But my mother-in-law was up. When I came here, my mother-in-law had a piece of paper like this, and this ABOVE AND BELOW: Chase is a prolific collector of African American art. Pieces from was her menu: fried chicken, fried fish. her collection hang in the dining room. We used to get those little trout,

A | southernfoodways.org Summer 2017 | 57 three-quarters or a pound, and split them that restaurants were not clean. That’s because I’m ninety-one, almost nine- open, and you’d fry it whole and you how they kept us safe from segregation. ty-two, now. Don’t tell me I can’t, because would serve it whole like that. Just split “You don’t want to eat there.” They didn’t I’m going to go out there and show you and fry it whole with the head on and all. tell you you couldn’t eat there because I can. “No white people are going to come Where I was leading, I got folks to you were black. “You don’t want to eat in here, Leah. You can’t do that.” They follow me by backing up. So then when there because they’re not clean. All of thought it was impossible. They thought I made a real menu that people could those people drink out of the same glass.” no white person would appreciate any- understand rather than what my As late as ’46. And so I said, “I am thing that we had. mother-in-law was writing, I start setting up this table.” And then I said, It’s good food, but nobody thought making lunch once a day—meatballs and “Oh no, we can’t use this paper. I can’t that. Okay, I’d get in here and I’d do what spaghetti or something. I said, “We got have this paper in here. We have to use I have to do in here, and then I’d work to have dinner,” and I made a dinner cloth.” That’s what I saw on the other the total community. That was unbeliev- menu, and I’d give them what they had: side of the town. Well, they thought I able. See, for one thing, blacks would not grillades, jambalaya, gumbo, veal was crazy. even think about giving something to a panée, stuffed chicken breast with oyster My mother-in-law and father-in-law white organization. They wouldn’t think dressing. See, they knew that. That was were popular, so the people would come about that. Like if I did something for something they could relate to. So I had out, but it was like a Saturday-night the museum, “Oh Leah, that’s white to back up and do that. space. Black folks ate dinner at home. people.” No, they didn’t understand that. I had to introduce them to even setting They didn’t eat out. They came out to drink at the table, you put your lemon Giving to white things, they didn’t un- a table up here. When you came in, you drink. If you were three people and you and your cherry in your drink. derstand that. So I did those things, so found this restaurant just like it is now— drank maybe bourbon, you’d say, “Give Creoles ate at home. They did every- thereby I’m bringing the people in. this room, and you had plastic tablecloths me a setup.” You know what a setup was? thing at home. So the Creoles could on the table. You had ketchup bottles. A half a pint of bourbon, whatever understand this place. This was some- You had hot sauce bottles on the table. bourbon you ordered, and black folks body they knew, somebody they could i like what i do. i love what i do. And you had your waitress that sat in didn’t order cheap bourbon. They liked relate to, and if Emily was cooking for And when people come to visit me, that’s that corner. When you came in, she gave good stuff. They had to drink I.W. Harper them—like frying her fish or frying her like getting your gas tank filled. You have oysters—they trusted in Emily. energy to keep going. If I sat down in my I started in the kitchen when I came house all the time, I would cry all day here. I didn’t know anything, so I started long. I would cry and I would pray all “ doing just whatever they did in the day long. I’m just frightened of death and kitchen. And then I decided, “Well wait, I don’t want to think about it. I want to we got to change.” You know people move and keep going and just keep had—men began to have office jobs like moving. I’m not frightened of not being is going to get you in lawyers, like Dutch [Morial]. And they able to do, because I figure if I pray hard began to have professional jobs. So that’s enough, I don’t think God would take me trouble some day. when I changed, and we had to start this far and then drop me like a hot getting lunches at first, making lunches. potato. I don’t believe he’ll do that to me. And then we started to put the dinner Work is like medicine to me. It just ” menu on, because people were beginning makes me go and it just makes me want you this piece of paper and took the or Old Forester 100. And you would get to eat out. Black people. But for some to do things, and when I see people come, order. She gave you a fork and a knife the bucket of ice, the little pan of ice, and uncanny reason from time to time, we that makes me want—I get creative again and a paper napkin as you came in. your glass, and maybe a Coke and a 7-Up always had white people. and my mind keeps saying, “You can do Now that’s another thing they said: and your half-pint. Now, if you wanted Even in the ’60s, I was told so many this. You can do that.” Dooky says, “You’re “Nobody is going to eat with this silver your setup dressed, you’d say, “Give me times, “You can’t. You can’t do this. Oh, always thinking about food.” Yeah, I on this table.” Black people were strange my ice dressed.” So that means on top of you can’t do that.” And don’t ever do that, always think about food. about restaurants because, you see, in that ice I’d put lemon and cherries. I’d their minds, they had been brainwashed dress the ice so when you made your Leah Chase served as the first president of the SFA board of directors.

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LEFT TO RIGHT: Gladys Martinez; Cooking tortillas on the comal and aunt. They continued the tradition. and massaged the kernels. Finally, she OPPOSITE PAGE: Grinding in progress Born in 1976 in Pharr, Texas, she grew up ground the corn, either by hand or with great respect for corn and the savvy machine depending on the end use— that made it possible to sustain a business. coarse for tamales and fine for tortillas. It wasn’t long before she became a masa People loved the flavor. expert. Unlike her elders, Martinez had Following her call with Maxey, Mar- to be convinced to make masa her career. tinez pushed to scale up production to By 2011, Martinez had moved to meet new demand. Like many prod- Atlanta. She cleaned properties for a fire uct-based small businesses, she struggled restoration company and sold nutrition- to keep pace with deliveries. David Tran- al supplements for Herbalife. Between coso of La Cosecha Food Service, which shifts, she ground corn and made masa also owns the restaurant chain La Parilla, for her family and friends. Word got stepped in. He offered to help Martinez around that her masa was exceptional—a holy grail for the Mexican home cook. Everyone wanted more. Eventually, a neighbor offered to pay Martinez for her masa. Friendly hook- ups weren’t going to do it anymore— people wanted to count on her ground corn like any other grocery item. Marti- nez realized this was a chance to launch a business that would include her parents ATLANTA’S and sister. “I always sold other people’s call with Maxey, Martinez was elated. Tía products,” Martinez said. “Why not make deliver her masa to Maxey’s restaurants, Gladys was already a favorite in more than my own product to sell?” She called her while she continued to handle the stores. MASA MAVEN seventy markets throughout the Atlanta mother. They decided to bring a molino In May 2014, when Trancoso arrived area, but this would be her introduction de nixtamal, a corn grinder, from Mexico. to pick up the masa, he noticed that Mar- Tía Gladys brings to the city’s intown dining scene. The Corn, she knew. A pathway to a manu- tinez was visibly upset. She had outgrown Ojo de Agua crowds at Superica and El Felix (two lo- facturing and distribution business was the mobile home business. Her tempo- flavor to Atlanta cations each) were undeniable—Maxey less clear. Martinez turned to YouTube rary facility in Calhoun was too far from was going to need a lot of masa. She had and studied how-to videos posted by her house—seventy-five minutes one- BY JENNIFER ZYMAN worked years to achieve such visibility, entrepreneurs. “That was my school. I way. She had found a former tortilleria but this? This felt like a dream. “Oh, my started to learn how do it and then said, space, but was $60,000 short of the ladys martinez had to God,” she thought. “Is this real?” ‘Ok, Mami. We can start with the stores.’” $90,000 price tag. Martinez was consid- catch her breath. It was 2014, and Martinez’s family had deep roots in the The label on the package read Tía ering a loan to bridge the gap. Trancoso G chef Kevin Maxey, of Ford Fry’s masa business, dating back to 1948, when Gladys. Her production facility was a offered a partnership instead, where he Atlanta restaurants Superica and The El her great-grandfather started grinding mobile home—only temporary, she told would facilitate deliveries and invest in Felix, was on the phone. Maxey wanted masa for a fee. At that time, in Ojo de Agua, herself. Her first client was Supermer- the business. Martinez agreed. to use her Tía Gladys brand of masa on San Luis Potosí, central Mexico, he lacked cado La Villa in Acworth. Martinez fol- his menus. Maxey came upon Martinez’s access to electrical power, lowed a meticulous process. She began the tía gladys headquarters sits in a product while at Carnicería Y Tienda La so he relied on a gas-fueled motor. with high-quality corn kernels, which Woodstock strip mall. Inside, the walls are Confianza on Buford Highway. He only Great-granddad taught his son, who she soaked in lime water. To remove the bright orange and lined with an ATM-sized,

needed a taste to know its value. On the taught his daughters, Martinez’s mother Photos by Erik Meadows husks pre-grind, she drained, cooked, metal grinder and a refrigerator with glass

60 | southernfoodways.org Summer 2017 | 61 El Sur Latino double doors. A conveyor belt cuts through tacos, and shrimp tacos dorados. In the the center of the room. Martinez and her corner stands a new tortilla line Tranco- team, which includes her sister, her daugh- so brought from Mexico. Martinez will ter, and a friend, don plastic aprons, hair- use it to fulfill Maxey’s orders. She hopes nets, and gloves. Martinez shovels scoops that other restaurant deals will follow. of soaked corn into a device the size of a Tía Gladys has gained wide recognition washing machine. The machine spits out and Martinez enjoys it. The attention mounds of wet, coarse cornmeal. Marti- also makes her nervous. She gets recog- nez’s team transfers the masa to cookie nized at restaurants as “the masa sheets. When the dough dries, they will bag woman,” but being a local celebrity is it and refrigerate it prior to delivery. awkward for this soft-spoken woman. A Pulling from a bowl of dough, Martinez need for acknowledgment didn’t drive and her colleagues use a press to form Martinez to build Tía Gladys. She wanted

'I always sold other people’s products,' Martinez said. The team at Tía Gladys includes several members of Martinez's family. ‘WHY NOT MAKE MY OWN PRODUCT TO SELL?’

tortillas seven to eight inches. They cook to create a family business and connect the tortillas on a comal the size of a hu- people who left Mexico with a taste of la-hoop. Martinez bounces the hot, thin home. “They wish to eat masa again,” she rounds between her hands to cool before says. “The tortillas that the family makes filling them with chorizo and tomatillo for them…that their mother, or the grand- salsa, spooned from a worn Dutch oven. mother makes. It’s my vision to help the Martinez says it took her five years to get people eat that again so they can remem- to this point—to acquire a loyal customer ber the tortillas from when they were base, to expand her distribution, to pay children.” Sometimes, the life Martinez for the machines. She provides Superica built with Tía Gladys still feels like a and El Felix with three hundred pounds dream. Thanks to her, a generation of of masa every week. With that masa, Southerners are creating masa-filled Maxey and his crew make tamales, puffy memories that feel real.

Jennifer Zyman writes about dining for Atlanta magazine. Martinez sends more than 300 pounds of masa per week to Superica and The El Felix.

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The last part was personal interviews By categories of presidential cooks, with presidential cooks who were willing you mean all staffers who were in- to talk to me. I reached out to several. I volved with food preparation. tracked down ten former White House Yes. I didn’t just deal with cooks in the BACK OF THE chefs: four African American, six white. basement kitchen. I tried to take a look Of the four African Americans, none would at the constellation of cooks who sup- talk to me. And of the white chefs, five out ported and fed our First Families. That WHITE HOUSE of the six, not only did they talk to me, helped with the research gaps, because Researching the history of they’re telling me stuff that I shouldn’t then I could include people that cooked US presidents’ kitchens even hear. That is interesting because they on trains, yachts, and other places. all signed the same paperwork. The white AS TOLD TO GRAVY chefs felt more liberated to talk than the Do you see a correlation between the BY ADRIAN MILLER black chefs. I think understandably the influence of a president and what we black chefs were like, “There’s probably know about their household foodways? more professional repercussions for us if There definitely is something about ce- ecently, unc press pub - we’re seen as talking out of school.” lebrity status. People were more curious lished Adrian Miller’s The Pres- about what was going in their household Rident’s Kitchen Cabinet: The Story Going into the ninteenth century, and there are more references to it. But of the African Americans Who Have Fed many kitchen staffers weren’t the interesting thing is, there’s not a lot Our First Families, from the Washingtons referred to by name, or by their full of information about the food they ate to the Obamas. An SFA member and the name. How did this impact your while they were president. I thought that James Beard Award–winning author of ability to identify people? all these people who had dinner with Soul Food, Miller aimed to fill in the “his- cookbooks that were either written by Once I got a stray reference about a cook, them, everybody would write about it in torical silhouettes” of the black culinary White House cooks or by third parties I became obsessed with trying to find out their diaries. I didn’t see much, and I was figures whose influence he noted while as a summary of White House cooking, as much as I could. The primary resource a surprised by that. researching his first book. For Miller, this because I wanted to see references made here was historic newspapers. The Library book is about righting the record. While to African Americans. Then I looked at of Congress and several private companies Is this related to our increased inter- the circumstances, names, and personal presidential memoirs and biographies to have digitized old newspapers, and they’re est in food reporting over the years? contributions of these men and women see who was mentioned. They just word-searchable. But if I couldn’t find I think that our presidents were self-con- often passed without attention, Miller jumped off the page. anything through newspapers or through scious about not giving fodder to their argues that these African Americans I visited eight presidential libraries. It’s Google Books, I figured it was just going political enemies to criticize them. Food were culinary artists whose recognition hit or miss in terms of what the libraries to be a needle in a haystack. was one of the tools that people used. is long overdue. “Many were also family have on food. If the archival team and the For each chapter, I created categories Washington was self-conscious about confidants,” he told Gravy. “In some White House photographer weren’t inter- of presidential cooks, then tried to find appearing like a monarch. cases, they were civil rights advocates. ested in the food or the kitchen, then there’s three to four people whom I could find Some were all three.” very little. But you had some that were enough detail about to anchor that You’re saying politicians were con- interested and detailed. At the Jimmy chapter. There’s a lot of information cerned with how their food tastes How did you compile research for this Carter Presidential Library, if you pick a about cooks in the founding fathers age could be used against them. project? day when Carter was in the White House, up to Jefferson. Washington and Jeffer- Right. The poster child for all of this is This started when I was doing the Soul you can pretty much get the menu of what son compiled a ton of information about Martin Van Buren. His political enemies Food book research. I found stray refer- he ate in the residence. Most of the time, their cooks and then it’s pretty bone dry. painted him as an out-of-touch elitist by ences about African Americans who we only get menus for the state dinners. But I knew that once I got past the 1890s, talking about how he ate with golden cooked for our presidents in newspaper But they didn’t start printing or saving there’d be more. From the 1890s to the utensils. That narrative stuck, and he

articles. Then I gathered all of the them until the Eisenhower administration. Courtesy Miller of Adrian 1980s, there’s a lot of information. actually lost reelection.

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That barb has persisted—the out-of- much. It was mostly Negro or colored heard the story of how at FDR’s passing, touch elitist—arugula, and what not. cook, and Negro or colored caterer. I she wrote on the wall that she cooked the Exactly right. Food is often a leading indi- didn’t find “Negro chef” or “colored first and last meal for the president. I cator of having an elitist attitude. One more chef.” It was “cook.” went into the cottage that she lived in on thing that was annoying for me, just to the grounds. Unlike other people I write show you how differently we view food Let’s talk about a few specific figures. about in the book, I was able to have a now compared to the past: Even with the Laura “Dollie” Johnson cooks for Ben- physical attachment to Daisy. I could go state dinners, which are these grand en- jamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland to the workspace where she worked and tertainments, I’d find elaborate, intricate in the late 1880s and early 1890s. Then the place she stayed when she cooked descriptions of the table settings, the she capitalizes on her time in the there. For a lot of these other people, flowers, everything. Then they’d say, “And White House and opens a restaurant where they worked, where they stayed, there was a grand meal held.” in Lexington, Kentucky, afterward. all of that has been demolished. What impressed you about her? She’s one of the most fascinating people Describe country captain, a local I’ve come across in my research. She is specialty she cooks for FDR. somebody who has to be persuaded to It’s a chicken curry dish. The story, likely work at the White House. Before her apocryphal, is that a ship from the West time, most African American White Indies was carrying spices and was FDR LOVED House cooks were either enslaved or forced to dock in Savannah due to a DAISY BONNER’S already a longtime cook for somebody storm. A local cook uses the spices to who happened to become president. create this curry dish. It’s a Georgia thing: PIGS’ FEET. Here’s this woman who wants to start a chicken with a curry sauce, and you add And she made a pecan business, and presidential staff is plead- condiments like toasted coconut, ing with her to come cook for them. It peanuts, raisins, or currants. cake that he really liked. shows me the leverage and bargaining power she had. She cooked for Harrison Bonner gets FDR hooked on pigs’ feet. but only stayed for several months FDR loved her pigs’ feet. When she made because her daughter got sick, so she pigs’ feet for him, she would broil them returned to Lexington. But when Cleve- and butter them. And she made a pecan land gets elected, he begs her to come Daisy Bonner cooked for FDR at his cake that he really liked. Then of course What terms did you search under? work for him. Warm Springs, Georgia, estate. there’s the cheese soufflé, which sup- I’d look for “White House” or “presi- I’ve been trying to figure out why she posedly stood for two hours after he dent’s house”—they didn’t start calling was so distinctive. There were others her through newspaper clippings. I went died. I don’t know how that happened, it the White House until later in the who were similarly situated who did not to Warm Springs and listened to the park because I made that recipe and the thing 1800s. Also “meal,” “dinner,” “state get the national headlines that she got. ranger’s stories. In the book Hi-Ya Neigh- falls immediately. dinner,” “grand entertainment,” and “bill Maybe it was because Theodore Roos- bor, which is about FDR’s time in Warm of fare”—people didn’t really say menu. evelt was a booster of hers, and he rec- Springs, Bonner is all over that book. Zephyr Wright is a key figure. She Those terms generated a lot of menu and ommends Dollie Johnson to Harrison. That’s what really catapulted her story travels with Lyndon Johnson and his dinner descriptions. For the cooks, I’d for me. There are pictures of her; it talks family, but stops because of the indig- search “White House,” “colored cook” Let’s talk about Daisy Bonner, who about several of the dishes she cooked nities she faces due to segregation. or “Negro cook,” and sometimes I’d do cooked for Franklin Delano Roosevelt for FDR, and how they interacted. Their relationship influences his lob- “nigger cook” just to see if it came up. at his estate in Warm Springs, Georgia. The thing that hit me hard was going bying Congress to support the Civil Even in The New York Times they would I found several different strands of the through Warm Springs on the tour. I was Rights Act. What about her story was use that term, but it didn’t show up as story about Daisy Bonner. I get alerted to LibraryCourtesy of FDR Presidential in the kitchen where she cooked and new for you?

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When you read interviews with her, she Hercules, has his freedom dangled in would leave in late May or early June and seems to be, as she recounts it, non- front of him and finally runs away. Did return in the fall when the weather cooled. plussed about the civil rights movement. you feel like you pulled back the curtain But Jefferson made these women stay and She wasn’t really a firebrand. LBJ would on how difficult these roles were? cook for the skeleton staff that remained, often ask her, “What do black people The relationship between the president so Fossett and Hern never got to go back think about what I’m doing? Do they and the cook varies. Washington has a home to Monticello. Working in a hot appreciate what I’m doing?” And she complicated relationship with Hercules. kitchen during the sweltering summers would give these answers that would Washington shuffles him back and forth in DC was no joy either. Believe it or not, infuriate him. She’d say, “I guess,” or “I between Pennsylvania and Mount in the nineteenth century, summer White don’t know.” I’m not sure if she’s messing Vernon to avoid Pennsylvania law that House employees would sometimes get with him or what. These exchanges were would allow Hercules to be free after six stricken with tropical diseases like surprising to me. Because what I’d months in residency. malaria! There are stories of these fancied were these deep moments where Washington would let him walk about women’s husbands escaping Monticello she’s counseling him, where she’s the town after he finished his cooking duties. just to visit their wives. But Jefferson inspirational force for him to act. But it Hercules could go to the opera. He even would have the men caught before they seems like it was more by her example let Hercules sell leftovers out of the got to DC and send them back. rather than her actively pressing him. kitchen. And this brother’s cooking was In terms of the modern inconvenienc- I do love the story of LBJ using Zephyr good—he was making $5,000 a year (in es, traditionally White House kitchen staff Wright’s Jim Crow experiences. Not only Adrian Miller current dollars) selling leftovers. But at has earned low pay compared to what did he do this with members of Congress, the end of his presidency, Washington is somebody could command in the private he started doing this with the elites in I think it’s a mix—it’s certainly part of the suspicious that Hercules is going to try sector. And even then, the black cooks Georgetown. He knew that it was an latter. But she was one of the few people to escape. Rather than send him to the were always paid less than the white inside/outside game. If he could use her who could talk back to him. A story that kitchen at Mount Vernon, he sends Her- cooks. I’d also see complaints about the story to change the hearts and minds of LBJ loved was that at the height of the cules into the fields to do hard labor. That long hours. The thing that bothered the the academics and the wealthy people in Vietnam War, one of his strongest critics was too jarring for Hercules. After Her- cooks the most were presidents who were Georgetown, that could help him get lever- was Senator William Fulbright. Fulbright cules ran away, Washington spent a lot consistently late, and presidents who age and influence members of Congress. said in the press that LBJ had an arro- of time and spared no expense trying to show up with guests at the last minute. gance of power. LBJ cornered him at a get Hercules back. The other part is the diminished status. Wright and Johnson had a unique cocktail reception and pulled a handwrit- But the poignant example to me is two Ever since Jacqueline Kennedy made a rapport, it seems. ten note out of his pocket from Zephyr enslaved women, Edith Hern Fossett and change in leadership, African Americans You hear stories about LBJ; he was not Wright. I’m paraphrasing, but it said, “Mr. Frances Gillette Hern, who cooked for have been assistant chefs. I don’t mean a shrinking violet. But Zephyr Wright President, you don’t seem to want to take Jefferson. They were assistant cooks. to demean that position, but 1968 is the gave it right back. He’d show up at 9 p.m. care of yourself. I’m gonna be your boss. These women lived most of their lives in last time you have an African American at night demanding dinner and she’d yell, So from now on you’re going to eat what- the White House basement; their slave running the White House kitchen. “You just go sit in the kitchen and wait.” ever I put in front of you, and you’re not quarters were right off the main kitchen. And he’d do it! going to complain.” LBJ would say, “If I They gave birth to kids in the White What did Jacqueline Kennedy do get a talking-to from my cook, how can I House basement, and some of their kids differently? Is that indicative of real power Wright be an arrogant person?” died there. First, let’s go back to the 1800s. The cooks held, or is that akin to the mammy were primarily African American women. role—in that during this period white The kitchen staffers in your book ex- You’ll have to explain that. But during the Theodore Roosevelt ad- people with black, domestic employ- perience personal stress and hardships Anyone who’s been in DC in July or ministration, there was a sharp break ees tolerated a certain amount of at- during their time serving presidents. August can understand this because DC from African American cooks having the titude from black women? How do we Wright gains eighty pounds during her Bernard Grant is essentially a reclaimed swap—the White dominant position. There was a Swedish read an exchange like that? tenure. Washington’s enslaved chef, House was a seasonal residence. People cook vibe from 1904–1920. I don’t know

68 | southernfoodways.org Summer 2017 | 69 Off the Shelf

women often experienced in society. Even though these presidents weren’t interested in improving the status of black people overall, I found these won- derful expressions of genuine sentiment DIRTY PAGES between the presidents and their staff— celebrating family births, giving anniver- My ex’s favorite icing sary gifts. Some of these African Amer- AS TOLD TO ican professionals named their kids after JENNIFER JUSTUS presidents they worked for. Presidents BY MINDY MERRELL attended the funerals and were moved by the deaths of these cooks. You hear Dollie Johnson cooked for President about deathbed farewells. It doesn’t Benjamin Harrison in the early 1890s. square with the dynamics of the time. Dirty pages are the messiest recipes in our collections. Dusted with cocoa powder and what that’s about. Swedish and Irish Did your aim in writing this book ringed with coffee stains, handed down women were running the White House change in the process? from family or shared by friends, they kitchen. Then you get to FDR, and there When I started, it was about my curiosity. offer good instructions and deliver the best was a run of black cooks for quite a while. Then I became fueled by a fierce determi- stories. Dirty Pages, the ongoing recipe Truman and Eisenhower have white nation to make sure these people got ad- exhibit, launched in Nashville in 2015, a chefs, and Eisenhower had a Filipino equate due. I want to correct the record collaboration with Erin Byers Murray and chef as well, Pedro Udo. and possibly be a springboard for deeper Cindy Wall. The series peeks into the scholarship about this aspect of the pres- homes of cooks across the South. In this A Filipino chef! idency. I’m not going to lie: At times I was installment for Gravy, we hear from food His son is still alive; I’m trying to get in angry. I’d read the sources and I’d figure writer Mindy Merrell, who still makes her touch with him so I can interview him. out the role that an African American ex-husband’s grandmother’s frosting. She But Jacqueline Kennedy was not feeling played in a situation, and it’s stunning to stores the recipe between the pages of her Udo because he was a military cook. She me that they’re not even mentioned. grandmother’s 1964 paperback edition of changed the standard to European food Joy of Cooking. –Jennifer Justus from European-trained chefs. That It underscores the arguments about started a thirty-year run of European culinary justice and attribution. chefs running the White House kitchen. I was definitely thinking about that. It was interrupted briefly because LBJ This is one of the most stunning exam- and the French cook that Kennedy hired ples of the need for balance, to bring didn’t get along, so he quit. LBJ brought to light what these folks actually did. his family cook, Zephyr Wright. I think these African American cooks gave our presidents a window on black You write about the peculiar balance life. A lot of presidents chose not to of the special connections these cooks open that window, but because of the had with the presidents they served, ones who did, I think our country is and the subjugated role these men and better for it.

Adrian Miller is also the author of Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an Library of Congress

American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time. Photos by Jennifer Justus

70 | southernfoodways.org Summer 2017 | 71 Gravy is a publication of the Southern Foodways Alliance, a member-supported institute of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi.

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