SUMMER 2017 • A QUARTERLY PUBLICATION FROM THE SOUTHERN FOODWAYS ALLIANCE • $7 THERE’S A REASON FOODIES AND CHEFS PREFER OUR WATER. ACTUALLY, THERE ARE MANY. Since 1871, The Mountain Valley has been the choice of foodies, chefs, and the health conscious. Its unique blend of rich minerals gives it a crisp, GAGA FOR refreshing taste. Plus, it’s sodium-free with a GÜNTER naturally detoxifying high alkalinity. It was even PAGE 26 named “Best-Tasting Water in the World” – twice – at Berkeley Springs International Water Tasting. ROADSIDE PEACHES PAGE 36 FOR HOME, OFFICE OR RESTAURANT DELIVERY, VISIT BOOZE MountainValleySpring.com LEGENDS PAGE 45 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. 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 FEATURED CONTRIBUTOR 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. Wha AT THE PLEASURE OF THE SFA a restaurant? 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 What can we learn from such a at a time snuggling the cutest, most of The West Wing. Meanwhile, Osayi reading? What are the larger perfect baby girl in the world (I say that had pushed ahead with this issue of cultural questions? 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 JOHN 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 Halfway into this series, has your work? Did that explain its appeal? “It’s is mostly dead, with a few exceptions.” thinking about the role of the chef or more than that,” Melissa said. “It’s the He had our attention. The way we talk the restaurant space changed? 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.