Gravy

Episodes

• The Deli Diaspora

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  Feb 24 2021

  Order a hot pastrami on rye at any delicatessen and you’ll taste the briny terroir of the Jewish Diaspora. Pastrami is an iconic cured meat that migrated with Eastern European Jews to America and became synonymous with the deli, a beloved third place for Jewish communities across the country. In Jackson, Mississippi, that place was the Olde Tyme Deli, which Judy and Irv Feldman owned and operated from 1961 until 2000. In this episode, we’ll trace the migration of pastrami to the Deep South, where Southern Jewish identity coalesced during another moment of reckoning—the civil rights movement....more

  Episode

• Eating a Muffaletta in Des Moines, by Brian Spears

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  Feb 10 2021

  "Eating a Muffaletta in Des Moines," by Brian Spears. Featured in Vinegar & Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance. University of Georgia Press, 2018.

  Episode

• It is Simple, by Jon Pineda

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  Jan 20 2021

  "It is Simple," by Jon Pineda. Featured in Vinegar & Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance. University of Georgia Press, 2018.

  Episode

• Scrap That: Charlotte's attempt to compost food waste

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  Dec 30 2020

  In 2018, Beverlee Sanders launched a novel pilot project in Charlotte, North Carolina: collecting food scraps from a small number of homes and sending them to a composting facility, rather than to the landfill. Food is the number one category of waste going to landfills. Once dumped, it produces methane, a very potent greenhouse gas. Beverlee, who works for the city’s solid waste services division, thought if she could show how much food she kept out of the landfill—seven tons after just 18 weeks—it would help Charlotte consider a citywide composting program. Research shows that a centralized composting system is the most effective method for diverting refuse from landfills and reducing greenhouse gases associated with waste. But since the pilot ended, she hasn’t been able to revive her composting efforts. Many cities that want to reduce organic waste struggle with this—composting is expensive and it can be hard to achieve buy-in....more

  Episode

• Christians Take Up Climate Change

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  Dec 23 2020

  Anna Shine is an Episcopal parish priest in Boone, North Carolina. Her focus, both during her education and now in her work, has been 'creation care,' which is theologically motivated environmentalism. She sees food security and climate change as intrinsically Christian issues, with representation and instruction present in scripture. And she's not alone. Other church leaders in the South—who continue to hold sway that clergy in less religious parts of the country may not—are also renewing their commitment to environmental issues. In Black churches, where the connections between ecology and religion have been severed by the history of slavery, those conversations are particularly important and, some leaders say, timely. ...more

  Episode

• Take it Easement: Save a farm to save the future?

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  Dec 16 2020

  The U.S. is losing agricultural land to commercial, industrial, and residential development. Every state is converting ag acres to other uses, but the South is losing more farmland than any other region. Southern states' policy response has also lagged behind other parts of the country. Why does this matter? First, it matters because we need land to grow food. And second, agricultural land can sequester carbon and it emits less greenhouse gases than developed land.  Some municipalities, like Lexington, Kentucky, are stepping up farmland preservation efforts. Taking advantage of their local program, the James family, in Lexington, has placed conservation easements on their farm to guarantee it can never be developed. But not all landowners can rely on such programs to protect their land. ...more

  Episode

• Low-Carbon Dining: How much can restaurants do?

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  Dec 09 2020

  Restaurants—and not just those working with Zero Foodprint—are starting to wake up to the issues around climate change, food, and the role chefs can play in driving change. That can mean being purposeful about the kinds of farmers they work with, but also educating diners, who may ultimately bring more sustainable ingredients to their home kitchens, too. 

  Episode

• A Peach for a Warming South

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  Dec 02 2020

  Lawton Pearson grows more than 30 peach varieties in his Georgia orchard. Among them is a special new cultivar, the Crimson Joy peach, designed to thrive in the warmer temperatures climate change brings. But that might be a hard sell for farmers like Pearson, for whom the peach is not only an important crop but also a cultural touchstone. Can scientists keep up with climate change? 

  Episode

• Goat is the Future: An Interview with Tom Rankin

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  Oct 29 2020

  Goat Light provides focused reflections by Tom Rankin and Jill McCorkle upon their home and farm northwest of Hillsborough in rural Orange County, North Carolina. In this episode of Gravy, Tom Rankin talks about how goat can figure into a Southern future. This episode is part of a 4-episode 2020 symposium series where Gravy interviews authors whose work shapes our ideas about the future of the South.

  Episode

• Praising Fireflies with Aimee Nezhukumatathil

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  Oct 22 2020

  Gravy host John T Edge talks with poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil about her book, World of Wonders. The poetry collection integrates everyday life, family history, and natural history, and offers a path, to see and think anew. This episode is part of a 4-episode 2020 symposium series where Gravy interviews authors whose work shapes our ideas about the future of the South.

  Episode

• Pondering the Fate of Food: An Interview with Amanda Little

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  Oct 15 2020

  In her book The Fate Of Food: What We'll Eat In A Bigger, Hotter, Smarter World, Amanda Little considers the sustainable food revolution in light of growing global populations and climate change. Gravy interviews Amanda Little in this special episode that considers the future of food.

  Episode

• Mapping the Green Book: An Interview with Candacy Taylor

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  Oct 08 2020

  Author, photographer, and cultural documentarian Candacy Taylor's most recent project is Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America (Abrams Books). In this interview with Melissa Hall, Taylor talks about the process of researching the Green Book, visiting the sites, and taking photographs. She also speaks to the way the work connected her with her stepfather, who had personal stories that enriched her study.

  Episode

• Such As, by Wo Chan

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  Sep 17 2020

  "Such As," by Wo Chan. Featured in Vinegar & Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance. University of Georgia Press, 2018.

  Episode

• Visible Yam

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  Sep 03 2020

  The SFA mourns the passing of Randall Kenan, a long-time member and frequent presenter at SFA events. This Gravy episode is a re-broadcast of Randall Kenan's presentation at the 2018 Southern Foodways Symposium, which studied food and literature.

  Episode

• We the People are Larger Than We Used to Be

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  Aug 27 2020

  What are the legacies of our pasts? How does the past shape our today? How do the lives our parents and grandparents led affect the lives we lead today? Those are some of the questions writer Tommy Tomlinson of Charlotte has been asking himself. And he's asking them in a really interesting way. We are accustomed to hearing that question asked about something like education. If your parents went to college, you have a greater chance of going to college. But how does the life and work of your people affect your health? How does it affect what you eat? That's a newer and now urgent question for many Southerners. Tommy Tomlinson is the author of The Elephant in the Room, a memoir about his decision to swear off Krispy Kreme and chili dogs as he approached 50 years old at 460 pounds. His podcast SouthBound features interviews with Southerners–artists, athletes, preachers, and politicians–exploring how place shapes what they do. He worked 23 years as a reporter and columnist for the Charlotte Observer. This presentation was originally shared at the 2019 SFA fall symposium on food and labor. Matt Pearl produced the episode....more

  Episode

• Magic City Poetry

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  Aug 20 2020

  In this episode of Gravy, Ashley M. Jones and Lee Bains III share verses about food labor. Jones is an award-winning poet from Birmingham, Alabama. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Florida International University, and she is the author of Magic City Gospel (Hub City Press 2017),  dark / / thing (Pleiades Press 2019), and Reparations Now! (Hub City Press 2021). Her work has earned several awards, including the Silver Medal in the Independent Publishers Book Awards and the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award. She is founding director of the Magic City Poetry Festival. She shared the poems in this episode at the 2019 Winter Symposium in Birmingham. Bains, also a native of Birmingham, is a singer/songwriter who founded the Glory Fires. His first interest in music came from the church he attended as a child. He went on to study literature at college in New York, but returned to Alabama and refocused his writing attention on music. Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires have released 4 albums, including 2019’s Live at the Nick.  The songs shared in this episode were performed at the 2019 Southern Foodways Symposium in Oxford, Mississippi....more

  Episode

• Punchin' the Dough: Singing about Food Labor

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  Aug 13 2020

  From Punchin' the Dough to Peach Pickin' Time in Georgia, music has long included songs about labor. Scott Barretta, who once served as editor of Living Blues magazine, shares songs about food labor in folk, blues, and country music traditions.

  Episode

• Food Festival Financials

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  Aug 06 2020

  Festivals are terrific ways to celebrate place and food, to showcase community and culture. At their best, festivals are gathering spots for people who see each other all too seldom. They're celebrations of what a community values. And food festivals can democratize access to artisan goods and artisan producers by offering a bite, a taste, a glimpse, and a sip of the rarefied world of white-tablecloth dining. But that access comes with costs. Most festival-goers likely think their ticket price covers the food and wine they've queued up to taste. Most festival-goers would be wrong. Hannah Raskin reported this story. Raskin explores food and culture for The Post and Courier in Charleston, South Carolina. This presentation was originally commissioned for the 2019 Southern Foodways Fall Symposium on Food and Labor....more

  Episode

• Shucking, by Elton Glaser

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  Jul 16 2020

  "Shucking" by Elton Glaser Featured in Vinegar & Char: Verses from the Southern Foodways Alliance. University of Georgia Press, 2018.

  Episode

• Cajun Kibbe: Eating Lebanese in Louisiana

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  Jun 18 2020

  In 1983, a Lafayette housewife named Bootsie John Landry self-published a cookbook called The Best of South Louisiana Cooking. Sprinkled among the expected Cajun staples were less familiar recipes like fattoush and something called Sittee’s Lentil Salad. Bootsie was part of a large Lebanese family and a greater community that began emigrating from Lebanon to Louisiana as early as the 1880s. Her cousins are the Reggie family, who for the past century have been cooking up traditional Lebanese comfort food from their home in Lafayette. Fred Reggie and his daughter, Simone, share how they’ve peppered traditional Lebanese recipes with Cajun lagniappe to create “LebaCajun” food.   The episode was reported and produced by Sarah Holtz....more

  Episode

• Two Tales of Donaldsonville: True Friends & The Chance Café

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  Jun 11 2020

  This is a story about a briefcase and a cracker box. It’s a story about finding extraordinary things in ordinary places. In the South Louisiana town of Donaldsonville, two families—the Quezaires and the Savoia-Guillots—unearthed time capsules of local history within family keepsakes. These two archives tell the story of a town with a complicated past, unraveling a timeline of slavery, emancipation, immigration, and mutual aid. Roy Quezaire, Jr. shares his memories of the True Friends Benevolent Association, and Julie Guillot unveils a collection of World War II-era heirlooms at her family’s restaurant, the First & Last Chance Café....more

  Episode

• Nueva Acadiana

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  May 28 2020

  When Wanda Lugo opened her Venezuelan restaurant, Patacon Latin Cuisine, in 2015, she wasn’t sure how the city of Lafayette would react. Many Lafayette residents had never tasted Venezuelan food before. Wanda’s opening week was one of the busiest they’ve had in the restaurant’s five-year history. She runs Patacon with her daughter, Maria, her son, Daniel, and her niece, Elimar. It’s no accident that the Lugos ended up in Lafayette. Wanda’s husband, Jose, is an electrical engineer at Halliburton, and like Acadiana, Venezuela is an oil center. When the Venezuelan economy began to show signs of trouble, Jose requested a transfer and the Lugos ended up in Lafayette in 2006. Today, Patacon is a hub for the growing Latinx community in the region, and Lafayette wouldn’t be the same without Patacon’s arepas and empanadas.   The episode was reported and produced by Sarah Holtz. Sarah is an independent radio producer and documentary artist based in New Orleans....more

  Episode

• The Miracle of Slaw and Fishes: Louisiana’s Lenten Fish Fries

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  May 21 2020

  Order a catfish po-boy or a few pounds of crawfish in Acadiana any Friday between Mardi Gras and Easter, and you may be surprised to learn that your delight is another person’s sacrifice. The Catholic tradition of abstaining from meat during Fridays in Lent is alive and well in Southwest Louisiana, a region where more than a third identify as Catholic. Thanks to the long list of Catholic churches and restaurants that roll out an array of delectable seafood options on Lenten Fridays, it’s not much of a burden. St. Francis of Assisi in Breaux Bridge and the Knights of Columbus Council at St. Pius X in Lafayette both have long-standing Lenten fish fry traditions that bring together their communities and welcome anyone hungry for fried catfish, regardless of religion. Olde Tyme Grocery in Lafayette sells close to 2,300 seafood po-boys during the 40-day period. Religious abstinence never tasted so good. This episode of Gravy is reported and produced by Sarah Holtz....more

  Episode

• Ten Gallons and a Bag of Cracklins: Filling Up in Cajun Country

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  May 14 2020

  Along the highways and rural byways of South Louisiana, there’s great boudin, cracklins, and plenty more to be found. Many of these food destinations have one thing in common -- they’re found within gas stations. Acadiana’s roadside stops attract thousands of customers each day, whether they’re travelers making a pilgrimage across the state to fill their ice boxes with boudin, or oil and gas workers stopping for a bag of cracklins before heading out to the refinery or offshore rig. Cajun gas station fare is not fast food, it’s not fine dining, and it’s not quite a plate lunch, either. It’s a category unto itself, and as it turns out, these gas stations speak volumes about the diverse communities of Acadiana. ...more

  Episode

• Eat 'Em Till You Beat 'Em: Florida’s Lionfish Problem

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  Mar 19 2020

  Poisonous, spiky, bug-eyed and edible: Lionfish are a prolific invasive species off the coast of Florida. Their voracious appetites are destroying native reef fish populations, leaving decimated reefs in their wake. Chefs and concerned eaters are attempting to eat their way through this problem. You can find items like lionfish sushi, poached and broiled lionfish, and lionfish dumplings on menus throughout South Florida. Reporter Wilson Sayre takes us to the Florida Keys to catch a few lionfish and see how much of a bite diners are taking out of the problem....more

  Episode

• Grape Expectations for Virginia Wine

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  Mar 12 2020

  Virginia is often heralded as the birthplace of American wine. But from colonial times through efforts made by Thomas Jefferson, those efforts were seen as a failure. The archetypical image of wine country—arid, rocky places—is not what one thinks of when conjuring images of wet, humid, Virginia summers.  But a few pioneering grape growers and winemakers have made huge strides over the past few decades, giving wine enthusiasts a taste for Virginia terroir.  Reporter Wilson Sayre explores this history and evolution of wine from the Old Dominion....more

  Episode

• Sorghum: Planting Possibilities

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  Mar 05 2020

  For many people in the American South, sorghum is a condiment to be spread, like maple syrup, on top of warm, pillowy biscuits, pancakes, and cornbread. But for most of the world, particularly in West Africa, sorghum is a grain used much like rice or quinoa. There is a growing group of chefs, millers, plant breeders, and farmers that is trying to reconnect with the West African roots of sorghum and create gastronomic and growing opportunities in this region. Reporter Wilson Sayre explains how sorghum might again become a grain of the American South. ...more

  Episode

• The Rise and Fall and Rise of Pitmaster Ed Mitchell

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  Feb 27 2020

  Ed Mitchell’s name has come to be synonymous with Eastern North Carolina wood-smoked whole-hog barbecue. From Wilson, North Carolina, he grew up smoking hogs and has tried to continue that tradition, using old techniques and traditionally farm-raised pigs. But almost since the start, Ed Mitchell’s barbeque journey has not been a straight line—business relationships, racism, and smoke have all shaped his rollercoaster ride.

  Episode

• Greetings from Ham & Bacon High School

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  Feb 20 2020

  How much is too much for bacon? $10 a pound? $20? What about $500 a pound? In New Martinsville, West Virginia someone actually paid $500 a pound at auction for bacon raised and butchered under pretty special circumstances. The bacon, along with ham and eggs, sold at this auction are raised and butchered by high schoolers as part of their school curriculum. Reporter Corey Knollinger tell us the story of what it takes to compete in the Wetzel County Ham, Bacon, and Egg show. 

  Episode

• Harassment and the Service Economy

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  Dec 18 2019

  In restaurants, economics and sexual harassment are intimately entwined. Restaurants, along with hotels, have the highest rates of sexual harassment of any industry. For a tipped worker, in particular, how and how much one gets paid can determine how empowered one feels to respond against harassment. We delve into why restaurants pay servers just $2.13 per hour and how that affects how they deal with bad clients. And we look at why money might not be the only culprit when it comes to harassment.   ...more

  Episode

• Spinning Carolina Gold Rice into Sake

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  Dec 11 2019

  For much of the 19th Century, Carolina Gold rice was a favorite of American rice growers, before disappearing in the early 20th Century. Brought back to life in the 1980s, it again occupies a much beloved, if niche, place in the South's canon of heirloom ingredients. Now, Hagood Coxe, a daughter of a Carolina Gold farmer, wants to make sake, a Japanese rice wine, out of the grain.

  Episode

• Are prison diets punitive? A report from behind bars

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  Dec 04 2019

  Is prison food causing problems for public health? Gravy investigates.

  Episode

• Access Denied: Cooperative Extension and Tribal Lands

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  Nov 27 2019

  Cooperative extension is a century-old government program that places agricultural agents in counties to educate and work with farmers. But for years, agents failed to show up for Native American communities.

  Episode

• Preserving Community Canneries

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  Nov 20 2019

  Community canneries–facilities, often subsidized by local government, where people can in bulk–are closing. With groceries easily available even in rural communities, there's less need. And with busy schedules, people have less time for the labor-intensive process of canning their own food. But people who continue to use the still-operational canneries, like Arnold and Donna Lafon, find community and pride in the practice.

  Episode

• Mahalia Jackson's Glori-Fried Chicken

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  Sep 05 2019

  In addition to her work as an international recording artist and civil rights activist, the Queen of Gospel entered the restaurant business in the late 1960s with Mahalia Jackson’s Glori-fried Chicken. The fast food chain was more than a brand extension for the star; it was the first African American-owned franchise in the South. Producer Betsy Shepherd tells how Mahalia used the gospel bird to push for economic empowerment in the black community.

  Episode

• Where Mexico Meets Arkansas

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  Aug 29 2019

  Menudo, sopes, gorditas, tortas, gringas, huaraches, mangonadas, and alambres are just some of the specialty dishes of De Queen, Arkansas, population 6,600. A majority of the town's residents are Latino. Many of them migrated from Mexico to southwest Arkansas for jobs in poultry processing plants. Producer Betsy Shepherd attends Fiesta Fest, the town’s Cinco de Mayo celebration, to sample local food and music and to hear stories from the men and women who make it.

  Episode

• A Taste of Dollywood

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  Aug 22 2019

  Dollywood, Dolly Parton’s Appalachian-themed amusement park, draws millions of country fans and thrill seekers to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, every year. The tourist attraction features roller coasters, live music, folk art demonstrations, and a Dolly museum in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains. Recently, the park has started marketing itself as a culinary destination. Producer Betsy Shepherd goes on a Dollywood tasting tour to gain insight on her musical idol and experience Dolly’s vision of the mountain South....more

  Episode

• Electric Tofu

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  Aug 15 2019

  In the early 1970s, two hundred hippies from San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury neighborhood resettled in rural Tennessee. They founded a vegetarian commune and agricultural operation called The Farm. With help from their neighbors and a psychedelic soundtrack from their house band, the back-to-landers got their social experiment off the ground and produced some of the first vegan cookbooks and commercial soy products in the United States. The Farm outlived the Flower Power era to become a model of environmental sustainability and community farming that is still thriving nearly 50 years later. Producer Betsy Shepherd tells how tempeh, experimental rock, midwifery, and the antinuclear movement grew from a seed of West Coast counterculture planted in Southern soil.   ...more

  Episode

• Biscuit Blues

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  Aug 08 2019

  Delta blues found its voice and audience on the airwaves of KFFA’s King Biscuit Time, a daily broadcast out of Helena, Arkansas. Bluesmen like Sonny Boy Williamson and Robert Lockwood Jr., who would go on to become legends, interspersed their own songs with advertising jingles. King Biscuit Time, which launched in 1941, gave unprecedented exposure to African American musicians while selling everyday grocery staples like flour and cornmeal. And it's still on the air. Reporter-producer Betsy Shepherd travels to Helena to tell the story for Gravy. ...more

  Episode

• The Magical, Meandering Life of Eugene Walter

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  May 30 2019

  Eugene Walter (1921–1998) of Mobile, Alabama was a novelist, a poet, a playwright, an actor, a costume designer, and a food writer, among myriad vocations and avocations. He had a deep love for the Mobile of his youth, which nurtured his creativity and informed much of his writing. He spent thirty years in Europe, acting in and translating films, hosting and carousing with artists, actors, and literati. Mobile called him home for the last chapter of his life. His surviving friends agree: Walter changed everyone he met. Twenty-one years after his death, producer Sara Brooke Curtis asks: Why don’t more people know about him? ...more

  Episode

• When Menus Talk

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  May 23 2019

  What do restaurant menus have to say about the identity of a restaurant or the point of view of the chef? It turns out, menus are more nuanced and revealing than we might suspect. They reveal narratives that extend far beyond the bill of fare. They are collectors' items and rich historical documents. They are highly curated and sometimes distinctly engineered texts. They may impact the dining experience more than you think. Reporter Sara Brooke Curtis explores menus as text and menus as literature....more

  Episode

• Cooking Up Social Change with Julia Turshen

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  May 16 2019

  Can cookbooks be a vehicle for social change? What can or should cookbook writers offer readers beyond recipes? Writer and cookbook author Julia Turshen takes her roles very seriously. She crafts accessible, affordable recipes and coaches readers via social media. She uses her platform to build community, foster equity, honor identity, and pay homage to the cooks and writers who came before her.  Sara Brooke Curtis reported and produced this story. 

  Episode

• Catering: Behind the Pipe and Drape

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  May 09 2019

  Have you ever been to a wedding and wondered, how do hundreds of plates of food arrive at the right destinations at the right time—often without an on-site kitchen? This is high-concept cooking, done without a net. Cookbook authors Matt Lee and Ted Lee spent four years immersed in the catering industry and wrote a book about their experiences and revelations called Hotbox. In this episode, with the Lee Brothers as her guides, reporter-producer Sara Brooke Curtis steps behind the scenes.

  Episode

• JoAnn Clevenger: New Orleans’ Uptown Girl Scout

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  May 02 2019

  JoAnn Clevenger is a hospitality archetype. She lives to serve and breathes life into every service encounter. For the past thirty-six years, she’s nurtured a haven for guests and staff at Upperline, her New Orleans restaurant. In an era where chef-driven, trend-surfing restaurants are the norm, how does an old-school institution thrive? Clevenger’s empathy and attitude are the keys to her own success. Reporter-producer Sara Brooke Curtis has the story. 

  Episode

• Spring Season Trailer

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  Apr 22 2019

  The spring season of Gravy, featuring 5 episodes reported and produced by Sara Brooke Curtis, begins on May 2.  With John T. Edge and Melissa Hall as your cohosts, you'll: Sneak behind the pipe-and-drape with the Lee Brothers for a look at the catering industry. Monkey around Mobile with the ghost of Eugene Walter. Behold the quiet power of cookbooks with Julia Turshen. And more. Available at southernfoodways.org and wherever you get your podcasts.   

  Episode

• A Table for All?

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  Feb 21 2019

  At the FARM Café in Boone, North Carolina, diners can pay $10 for meal—or they can pay nothing. The restaurant, one of dozens of its kind, follows a pay-what-you-can model. Guests can dine regardless of their finances. It's an attempt to address food insecurity. While some have dismissed these restaurants as limited-scale, feel-good attempts to address serious hunger issues, the cafés do foster a sense of community.  Irina Zhorov reported and produced this episode. 

  Episode

• Pop-Up Identity

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  Feb 21 2019

  Chefs stage pop-up dinners to tell stories, many of them focused on identity. Whether's it's to highlight African American chefs, develop a platform for Indian American chefs in the South, or focus on Appalachia's food history, the dinners weave identity into the courses.  For chefs, pop-up dinners are opportunities to network and build camaraderie. For diners, they have the potential to educate. Ultimately, these events aim to shift identity narratives.  This episode was reported and produced by Irina Zhorov.   ...more

  Episode

• Home-Cooked Expectations

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  Feb 21 2019

  In the United States, home cooked meals with the family are revered almost to the point of fetishization. Dinners are seen as moral imperatives for happy, healthy families. Women, in particular mothers, have been tasked with serving up meals rich with meaning. Yet, as authors Sarah Bowen, Joslyn Brenton, and Sinikka Elliott write in Pressure Cooker: Why Home Cooking Won't Solve Our Problems and What We Can Do About It, many American women are not happy with their cooking lives. Due to economics and schedules, many mothers are not able to feed their families in the way they've been told they should, which leaves them feeling anxious and inadequate.  Irina Zhorov reported and produced this episode. ...more

  Episode

• Bottled Myth

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  Feb 21 2019

  Legal moonshine—funny as that sounds—has exploded in the South. Instead of on creek banks, it's now produced in gleaming distilleries. But it's the same old stuff: strong, unaged liquor. To sell it, the story is just as important as the hooch. Family-owned distilleries mine their histories to stand out in a market crowded by hillbilly nostalgia.  Irina Zhorov reported and produced this episode. 

  Episode

• A New Recipe for Charlotte

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  Feb 21 2019

  Charlotte, North Carolina, has long been a banking town. These days, its dining scene is booming as well. As the city works to rebrand itself as a destination for food and drink, it has to choose which stories to tell in order to sell the place. In highlighting local, chef-driven restaurants, what is gained...and what's lost?  Irina Zhorov reported and produced this episode. 

  Episode

• Y'all Have Chilaquiles?

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  Dec 20 2018

  With its vibrant take on Mexican breakfast, Con Huevos restaurant is bringing Louisville, Kentucky, brand-new answers to the question of what to eat for breakfast. Answers like tortas, chilaquiles, huevos rancheros, and poached eggs with chipotle gravy. Con Huevos, which opened in 2015, has quickly become one of the most popular breakfast spots in Louisville. On this episode of Gravy, reporter-producer Parker Hobson bellies up to the counter to find out why, to meet the Mexican-Americans that make it go, and to think about what its popularity might mean for this historic river city. ...more

  Episode

• Smoking on the South Side

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  Dec 06 2018

  Barbecue purists from the Carolinas to Texas might balk at the notion that Chicago, Illinois, has a barbecue tradition all its own. But owing to the Great Migration, and to a special piece of equipment called the aquarium smoker, reporter-producer Ambriehl Crutchfield finds that Chicago barbecue has evolved into a style unto itself. 

  Episode

• Vinegar & Char

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  Nov 15 2018

  Vinegar & Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance, edited by poet Sandra Beasley, is SFA's latest book, available now from University of Georgia Press.  In this special episode, you'll hear half a dozen of the poems in the collection, read by their authors.  This is just a taste of the fifty-plus poems collected in the volume. Find the collection wherever you buy books.   

  Episode

• Visible Yam

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  Nov 01 2018

  “For me, the hallmark of food in literature, raised to the level of art, is food interacting with character. Food as character. Food doing stuff. Food being stuff. Just as it happens with our flesh and blood, our mouths and our bellies and our memories. The best writers, the better writers, know that food is identity. Food is alive. Food is us.” Randall Kenan first delivered this talk at the 2018 Southern Foodways Symposium on food and literature in Oxford, Mississippi. A professor of creative writing at UNC Chapel Hill, he is the author or editor of half a dozen books of fiction and nonfiction, including A Visitation of Spirits and Let the Dead Bury Their Dead....more

  Episode

• The Swamp Witches

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  Oct 18 2018

  The Swamp Witches, as this group of friends call themselves, have been duck hunting together for nearly 20 years. Men are often surprised to stumble upon a half-dozen women—not in the company of fathers or husbands or brothers—out hunting. In this episode of Gravy, reporter-producer Dana Bialek goes hunting with the Swamp Witches and explores the rise in women hunters, how hunter recruitment is connected to the conservation of waterfowl habitat, and what it means to celebrate hunted game around the table....more

  Episode

• Comfort Food

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  Aug 09 2018

  This week, we bring you Gravy's first foray into fiction. It's a story of macaroni and cheese and maternal love, set in the fictional Canard County, Kentucky.  Robert Gipe is the author of the novels Trampoline and Weedeater. He teaches and coordinates the Appalachian Program at Southeast Kentucky Community College.  This is the last episode of our summer season. After a short hiatus, Gravy will return with new episodes in the fall. 

  Episode

• Agave Diplomacy

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  Jul 26 2018

  Bars mean different things to different people. For some, they are places to find community and discover new ingredients and flavors. They can serve as a gateway for cultural understanding. A group of bar operators in Houston, Texas, use their establishments as vehicles to foster conversation and educate their guests about our neighbors to the south in Mexico. Sean Beck, Bobby Heugel, and Alba Huerta use agave spirits to bridge gaps in divided times. Producer Shanna Farrell explores how their work has ignited interest in Mexican culture alongside craft cocktails. ...more

  Episode

• What Is Latino Enough?

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  Jul 12 2018

  Mine is a slightly funky ancestry: a Colombian mother, a Cuban father, a combination that leads many Latinos to say, “¡Que mezcla tan rara!” But even in saying the phrase myself, it’s clear that neither tongue works comfortably for me. My Spanish is passable, sure, but it is also glaringly self-conscious, mainly because it is a first language that began to fade during a boyhood in the South, despite my parents’ best efforts to preserve it. The fact that it evolved from a first language to a second one for lack of practice—for lack of commitment—evokes a mash of complicated feelings shared by anyone belonging to an immigrant family’s transitional generation who feels adrift between cultures. It begins as code-switching, but over time, the tools you need to switch back are harder to find. Paul Reyes is the editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review. ...more

  Episode

• Catfish Dream

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  Jun 28 2018

  When he was shut out of the industry during the 1980s catfish boom, Scott turned 160 acres of arable farmland into catfish ponds and built a processing plant of concrete and stainless steel atop the bones of an old tractor shed. In doing so, he marched into history. Scott used food as a weapon and a megaphone: feeding civil rights workers, employing dozens of his friends and neighbors, joining a class action suit against the federal government, and providing an example of perseverance for future generations.  This episode is adapted from the book Catfish Dream: Ed Scott’s Fight for His Family Farm and Racial Justice in the Mississippi Delta by Julian Rankin (published by University of Georgia Press; Southern Foodways Alliance Studies in Culture, People, and Place series). Learn more at www.catfishdream.com.  Julian Rankin wrote this episode. Beau York of Podastery Studios in Jackson, MS, was the producer. ...more

  Episode

• The Price of Cheap Milk

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  Jun 14 2018

  When we pour a glass of milk, most of us don’t consider the economics that brought that milk from a cow to our kitchen. Reporter-producer Allison Salerno visited two women, friends and neighbors in southeast Georgia, who both grew up and spent their working lives on dairy farms. One woman watched this spring as auctioneers sold her family's cows and farm equipment. The other dairy woman has changed her business model to stay afloat. Their way of life is rapidly disappearing in Georgia and throughout rural America as milk prices remain low....more

  Episode

• Native Strangers of the South

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  May 31 2018

  Writer Naben Ruthnum compares outsiders' expectations and assumptions about the South Asian diaspora to those about the American South.  This week's episode is adapted from a lecture Ruthnum gave at SFA's Taste of the South at Blackberry Farm in Walland, TN. 

  Episode

• Where Kentucky Meets Somalia

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  May 17 2018

  Many Muslims in the United States feel the stings of xenophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment on a daily basis. For them, safe public spaces are essential. As many lament the death of the American mall, the International Mall on 8th and York Streets in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, provides a lifeline to thousands of resettled refugees from Somalia. But this mall is more than a place to buy food, or a place where teenagers hang out. From playing dominoes, to watching soccer to catching up with community news the International Mall serves as a hub for Louisville’s Somali community....more

  Episode

• A Message and a Verse

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  Apr 19 2018

  Gravy listeners, we invite you to join us in Lexington, Kentucky, June 21–23, for our annual SFA Summer Symposium. Today, listen to Kentucky poet—and Summer Symposium presenter—Rebecca Gayle Howell reading her poem "What Wealth Is."  Visit southernfoodways.org to learn more about the Summer Symposium and to purchase tickets.  Tune in on May 17 when we return from hiatus with a new episode. 

  Episode

• Subterranean Chop Suey

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  Mar 22 2018

  In the early 20th century, an Arkansan real estate developer named C.A. Linebarger had an idea. American was in the throes of the Great Depression, and the worst drought in recorded history gripped the heartland. Times were tough. But like many folks on the Ozark Plateau, Linebarger owned a cave. And like many folks with caves in their possession during Prohibition, he was going to make good with it. Thus, the Wonderland Underground Nightclub came to be. It wasn’t uncommon to find booze or dancing or relics from civilizations gone by in these caves. But what made Wonderland different was that it served a very distinct kind of fare: chop suey. Reporter-producer (and former Gravy Intern) Robin Miniter travels to Bella Vista, Arkansas to find the cultural threads that led to this dish being served along with chicken salad sandwiches and a side of big band tunes. In a story of policy and palate, she dives into to the attitudes that shaped this menu and shaped the white tourist imagination....more

  Episode

• Hungry in the Mississippi Delta

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  Mar 08 2018

  While civil rights activists worked in Mississippi in 1964, they encountered a poverty they could never have imagined. People were hungry, starving to death from malnutrition, particularly in the Mississippi Delta. Doctors and medical professionals, including Dr. Jack Geiger, joined together to form the Medical Committee for Human Rights. Geiger founded a community health center in Mound Bayou, Mississippi where he and his medical team wrote prescriptions for food, started a farm cooperative, taught nutrition classes, and ultimately reduced hunger in the region. This episode was produced by Sarah Reynolds....more

  Episode

• Hostesses of the Movement

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  Feb 22 2018

  The hostesses of the Civil Rights Movement: They were school teachers, church ladies, and club women. Their subtle contributions played a vital role in the change that was to come. While others hit the streets, marching, singing protest songs, and risking arrest, these women made their contributions to the Civil Rights Movement in their kitchens. They opened their homes to the architects and strategists of the Movement, providing home cooked meals, places to rest, and safe rooms for plotting attacks on Jim Crow. Rosalind Bentley is a longtime journalist, but she didn’t know how a very special aunt became one of those stealth contributors. She traveled to Albany, Georgia to learn more about how that aunt became one of the Hostesses of the Movement....more

  Episode

• Dispatch from Duplin County

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  Feb 08 2018

  By the end of the twentieth century, hog farming had replaced tobacco as the backbone of eastern North Carolina's economy. Today, the hog industry is a source of both contention and pride in the area. In rural Duplin County, the home of Smithfield Foods, hogs outnumber people 40 to 1. Open-air lagoons store massive amounts of hog waste, which is then sprayed over the surrounding fields as fertilizer. For decades, residents have claimed that these waste management practices cause a host of health issues, environmental harm, and loss of property value.  Reporter-producer Otis Gray travels to Duplin County, where a group of concerned citizens believes that industrial hog farms disproportionately affect low-income communities of color. Residents and activists have now filed a civil rights complaint with the EPA, and they hope that their voices will be heard. ...more

  Episode

• Home with the Armadillo: The Austin Sound, with a Side of Nachos

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  Jan 25 2018

  Austin, Texas, calls itself the Live Music Capital of the World. Back in the 1970s, country music mixed with rock-and-roll to create the "Austin sound." Its cradle was the Armadillo World Headquarters, where the so-called hippies and rednecks came together over cold beer, cheap nachos, and cosmic cowboy sounds. Reporter Ryan Katz looks at the history of the Dillo and its legacy in Austin today.

  Episode

• Hidden in Plain Sight: Las Pulgas of New Orleans

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  Jan 11 2018

  When people think of New Orleans food, jambalayas, gumbos, and beignets usually come to mind. But with the arrival of thousands of Central American and Mexican immigrants after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Latin foods are increasingly present across the city…if you look in the right places. In 2011, Dix Jazz Market, part of a vending space colloquially called La Pulga, opened in the Algiers neighborhood of New Orleans. With over sixty individual vendors and booths, you can find anything from knockoff soccer jerseys to used record players. Thirty of the vendors sell prepared foods, from tacos and  carne asada  to  sopas  and the classic Honduran dish,  pollo con tajadas.  Success from La Pulga  led to the opening of a second market—the Westbank Pulga—just three miles away. Meet Ivan, a vendor at the Westbank Pulga, who uses his profits to fund a support group for LGBT Latinx in the New Orleans area.  ...more

  Episode

• Baptism by Biryani

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  Dec 28 2017

  If you want to see the American future, visit Greater Houston, the nation's most diverse major metropolitan area and home to the South's biggest city. Since the 1982 collapse of the oil boom, the city's sprawling and overbuilt subdivisions have attracted newcomers, and their food traditions, from around the world. Reporter Barry Yeoman spent time with one of those families—and particularly with John Marthand, an immigrant from Hyderabad, India, and his 14-year-old, U.S.-born son, Joshua. The Marthand men bond in the kitchen, often while cooking biryani, a rice dish with origins as international as John's adopted home....more

  Episode

• A Taste of Place: Whiskey as Food

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  Dec 14 2017

  When most people sit down to enjoy a pour of whiskey, they aren't thinking about where the grain that it is made with comes from, nor do they think much about how it's produced agriculturally. Though spirits are distilled from wheat, potatoes, rice, and even quinoa, many don’t view the end result as an agricultural product. The discussion about composition of whiskey’s mashbill is usually where the conversation about the grain begins and ends, creating a disconnect between the way in which we perceive the food on our plates and the alcohol in our snifters. When we do start to engage with this aspect of spirits in a meaningful way, however, we can start to notice their terroir.Reporter-producer Shanna Farrell explores how whiskey can have a sense of place, as seen through High Wire Distilling Company's use of landrace grains in their spirit production. Husband and wife duo Scott Blackwell and Ann Marshall founded High Wire Distilling in 2013, the first distillery in South Carolina since Prohibition. Their mission is to source the best possible ingredients to make small batch spirits. They work with the farm community, as well as with Anson Mills, to source the raw materials for their product. This is true of their Jimmy Red Bourbon, which has a terroir unique to the three farms on which it is grown. Their work in using landrace grains grown locally is a great example of the strong connection between spirit production and agriculture....more

  Episode

• A Most Civil Union: from Reconstruction to Restaurateur

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  Nov 30 2017

  Brunswick, Georgia's The Farmer & The Larder restaurant is forward-facing with its menu, while paying homage to an agricultural legacy that reaches back to days of Reconstruction. Rose Reid reports the story of self-described "CheFarmer" Matthew Raiford's family connection to the land, and how he and his partner, Jovan Sage, navigate a dual venture on the Georgia coast.   Please note: The Farmer & The Larder's hours have changed since this story was reported. For details, please visit the restaurant's website. ...more

  Episode

• Stories from the Hem of my Mother's Apron

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  Nov 16 2017

  For Hannah Drake, it all started with a trip to Dakar, Senegal. The author, poet, mother, and native Kentuckian was transformed by the communal experience of simply preparing and eating food with other women. So occasionally she gathers a group of women for dinner. All the women have to do is bring a dish, along with their mother or sister. The goal: To cook and eat a meal with loved ones, and share stories and recipes. Reporter and producer Roxanne Scott brings us today's story.  

  Episode

• Of Hunger and Humanity: Resilience on the Texas Coast

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  Nov 02 2017

  When Hurricane Harvey unleashed 30 trillion gallons of rain on Texas last summer, thousands of evacuees and first responders needed to be fed. Restaurants and commercial kitchens were turned into relief operations, and residents hauled their grills to rescue staging grounds. The response was extraordinary. Reporting this episode of Gravy, Barry Yeoman followed two Texans-chef Bryan Caswell and his wife and business partner Jennifer Caswell-as they coordinated a food caravan from their Houston restaurant Reef to the ruined coast. Along the way, he met an immigrant crabber, a military veteran who takes injured warriors fishing, and a volunteer for the Christian ministry Mercy Chefs....more

  Episode

• The Wise Family at Work: A Sound Portrait

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  Oct 19 2017

  Historically, African Americans played a central role in the nation’s agriculture system, and, through their labor and know-how on farms and plantations, in the very building of the American economy – particularly in the South. Of course, black people did much of that work in bondage, over more than two hundred years, followed by a century of sharecropping and tenant farming. Remarkably, in the early 20th century, black families owned 15 million acres, one-seventh of the nation’s farmland. Today, though, black farm ownership is down to about one million acres, and only one in 100 American farm families is black.  This episode of Gravy is a sound portrait of an African American farm couple in North Carolina, Eddie and Dorothy Wise. For twenty years, they operated a small hog operation near the town of Rocky Mount, in North Carolina’s rolling Piedmont region. Producer John Biewen, host of the Scene on Radio podcast, visited the Wises many times in 2008 and 2009, and recorded Eddie and Dorothy as they went about their days and as Eddie worked with their herd of hogs. John assembled this documentary, which is mostly narrated by the Wises themselves.  Update: In early 2016, the U.S. Department of Agriculture foreclosed on the Wises’ farm loan and evicted them from their land. The Wises accuse the USDA of systematic discrimination over more than two decades, saying that government officials set them up to fail and went out of their way to drive the Wises off. John Biewen tells that story in an investigative documentary, Losing Ground, produced in collaboration with Reveal and available on the Scene on Radio podcast.  In September, 2017, Dorothy Wise passed away from complications of diabetes....more

  Episode

• Booze Legends

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  Oct 05 2017

  Striking up a conversation with a stranger in a bar is accepted, even expected. And storytelling is a big part of that engagement. But when it comes to origin stories behind cocktails, Wayne Curtis has noticed a shift in focus over the last ten years. Hand in hand with the recent cocktail revival and the increased professionalization of bartending, an obsession with fact over fancy has emerged. “I started hearing a phrase in bars that I don’t think had ever been uttered before inside a bar: ‘What’s your source on that?’” In this episode of Gravy, Wayne Curtis reflects on what’s lost and gained as cocktail and spirits writers—as well as curious consumers—seek out well-supported history over well-spun stories behind the bar....more

  Episode

• Kimchi and Cornbread

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  Sep 21 2017

  When you sit down for a meat and three in Montgomery, Alabama, say at the Davis Café, you choose from the menu and you get one plate all for you, but at a Korean table in Montgomery – or anywhere – your plates are all shared. And there are many of them. Meat and six or seven, you might say.   Since the Hyundai plant opened in Montgomery in 2005, Koreans have been moving there, some for work at the plant, but others because they see the growing community of Koreans and Korean businesses in this small capital city in Alabama. So, a small southern K-Town is cropping up in the strip malls along the Eastern Boulevard.   Reporter and producer, Sarah Reynolds travels to Montgomery to eat at several Korean tables. And Chef Edward Lee joins her – a Korean–American chef who made his name in Louisville, Kentucky. He borrows from Korean and American Southern cuisines to make collards and kimchi, grits and galbi. What’s happening in Montgomery reveals a shared hospitality and love of food between these two cultures....more

  Episode

• Shad Stories: The Ebb and Flow of the Founding Fish

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  Sep 07 2017

  The American shad were once as plentiful in the water along the east coast as the buffalo were in the west. But after decades of overfishing and pollution, their numbers plummeted and Virginia outlawed commercial fishing of shad in the 1970s. Now, shad are returning to the Chesapeake Bay, due in part to scientists and waterman who have worked on a restoration project for the fish over the last twenty years. Shad are a keystone in the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem, a food source for animals as varied as other fish, eagles and dolphins. Helping them could help other species rebound, too. The fish is also important for the Shad Planking, a Virginia political tradition that dates back to the 1930s. The event started in southeast Virginia with a few men gathering to cook shad on planks (where the name comes from) and talk politics. The Shad Planking eventually was taken over by the Wakefield Ruritans, a civic group, and grew to a popular event that would run out of tickets and have the governor flying in every April for the event. In recent years the numbers of attendees have dwindled. Like the shad, the Ruritans are trying to stage a come back, adding local wineries and breweries to attract a new crowd....more

  Episode

• Pie by Another Name: The Burekas of Or Ve Shalom

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  Aug 24 2017

  Every Tuesday a group of women gets together at Or Ve Shalom Synagogue in Atlanta to bake hundreds of savory hand-held pies. They're called burekas, from the Turkish word Burek, which means pie. Sephardic Jews trace their heritage to the countries around the Mediterranean including Turkey and medieval Spain; the Spanish Inquisition of 1492 forced Sephardic Jews to leave Spain and settle in other countries. The weekly ritual of baking Burekas at the Or Ve Shalom Synagogue is a testament to the preservation of Sephardic Jewish culture in the American South....more

  Episode

• Hostesses of the Movement

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  Aug 10 2017

  This week’s Gravy podcast looks at hostesses of the Civil Rights Movement. They were school teachers, church ladies and club women who were not direct in their assault of segregation, but nonetheless played a vital role in the change that was to come. While others hit the streets, marching, singing protest songs, and risking arrest, these women made their contributions to the Civil Rights Movement in their kitchens. They opened their homes to the architects and strategists of the Movement, providing home cooked meals, places to rest, and safe rooms for plotting attacks on Jim Crow. Rosalind Bentley is a longtime journalist, but she didn’t know how a very special aunt became one of those stealth contributors. She traveled to Albany, Georgia to learn more about how that aunt became one of the Hostesses of the Movement....more

  Episode

• The Mala Project: Chinese Flavors, Tennessee Family

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  Jul 27 2017

  What happens when a white family in the American South adopts an 11-year-old Chinese girl who’s never eaten a meal other than Chinese in her entire life and has no intention of starting now? Fear and frustration on all sides give way to a solution in this fiery story of creating a family from strangers by cooking Sichuan food. Fongchong steers clear of traditional American food both inside and outside her new home, but eventually finds her place in the New Nashville by befriending other immigrants and refugees and their food, while remaining fiercely loyal to her own cuisine. ...more

  Episode

• Bluegrass Tacos

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  Jul 13 2017

  In the northwestern part of Lexington, Kentucky, just inside the city’s loop road, there is a little bit of Mexico. In all directions, there are signs in Spanish – a bakery, a restaurant, a grocery store, a daycare, a church. And just down the road more of the same, including a bilingual public library. But at the crux of any diaspora is food – the familiar flavor of the old home mixing with a new one – tacos, in this case. And Lexington, Kentucky is expressing just that.   At Tortilleria and Taqueria Ramirez, husband and wife team Alberto and Laura make their very Mexican tortillas from local Kentucky corn, farmed just down the road in Hardin County. They’re holding up an ancient tradition from Mexico with Kentucky’s help. In a small shop shop in Lexington, they pump out thousands of tortillas a week with an old tortilla-making machine they hauled all the way from Mexico nearly 20 years ago. They sell them one bag at a time – 28 tortillas per bag will cost you $1.90.   Dr. Steve Alvarez taught a class at the University of Kentucky last spring called Taco Literacy and sent his students out into the Mexican community to learn about politics and history and the cultural literacy of this food and these people – that Mexican foodways are southern foodways, too....more

  Episode

• Separation of Church and Coffee

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  Jun 29 2017

  How many of us would be lost without our regular coffeeshop? In the age of wifi and telecommuting, cafes have become more than purveyors of lattes and cappuccinos. They’re the office, the community hub, and the conference room as much as the provider of our caffeine fix. And now—are they also a surrogate for the church? In cities and towns across the South, an increasing number of the folks offering up latte art and high-end pourovers are devout Christians. Is it an unlikely and subtle tool for proselytizing? Or a more nuanced expression of 21st Century Christianity, intertwined with social events and professional endeavors. We sent writer T Cooper to explore the coffee scene in the famously bible-minded city of Knoxville, Tennessee, to find out.  ...more

  Episode

• Going Whole Hog in Israel

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  Jun 15 2017

  When you think about Israeli cuisine there are a few things that may come to mind; hummus or shawarma, shakshuka and baba ganoush. What probably doesn’t come to mind is pork. After all, Israel is the self-proclaimed home for Jews in the Middle East. A large portion of the population follows kosher law, which outlaws pork, shellfish, and mixtures of meat and milk.   On this episode of Gravy we go global to explore the spread of a prolific Southern food to an unlikely place: pork barbecue in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv. We’ll take a look at the state of pork back home as well, learning about the relationship between Jews and pork in the American South, and how the nature of trayf barbecue is changing below the Mason Dixon line, as well as abroad....more

  Episode

• How A Texas Vine Saved European Wine

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  May 31 2017

  Thanks to Texan viticulturist Thomas Volney Munson, you should probably think of Texas when you think of that French wine you're drinking. During an agricultural crisis in France in the late 1800's, his tough grafted Texan vines saved the industry from total collapse. And many of the vines in Europe are still growing strong from that rootstock today. This week's episode tells this story of T.V. Munson and how his obsession with grape vines saved old world wine.  

  Episode

• Farmer's Blues

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  May 18 2017

  Imagine you’re a young person wanting to be a farmer. If you don’t inherit land from your family, the challenges of finding and affording farmland might make your dream a non-starter. The average farmer in the United States is in her late 50s, and much of this country’s farmland is at risk of development or buy-out for intensive monoculture. In this episode of Gravy, Caroline Leland explores these challenges along with some of the keen individuals and organizations working to overcome them.

  Episode

• Halal Memphis

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  May 04 2017

  Chicken shawarma might not be the first food that comes to mind when you think of Memphis. This episode of Gravy takes us inside Ali Baba Mediterranean Grill to meet Mahmoud al-Hazaz, who made his home in the U.S. South after being forced to leave his native Syria. Syria shares borders with Turkey, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon. Those countries also share a history and—equally important for us—they share a larder. By peeling back the layers on Mahmoud’s story, producer Rose Reid get a picture of the miles traveled and hardships endured by other Middle Eastern immigrants to Memphis....more

  Episode

• Booze Legends

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  Apr 19 2017

  Striking up a conversation with a stranger in a bar is accepted, even expected. And storytelling is a big part of that engagement. But when it comes to origin stories behind cocktails, Wayne Curtis has noticed a shift in focus over the last ten years. Hand in hand with the recent cocktail revival and the increased professionalization of bartending, an obsession with fact over fancy has emerged. “I started hearing a phrase in bars that I don’t think had ever been uttered before inside a bar: ‘What’s your source on that?’” In this episode of Gravy, Wayne Curtis reflects on what’s lost and gained as cocktail and spirits writers—as well as curious consumers—seek out well-supported history over well-spun stories behind the bar....more

  Episode

• Corned Beef Sandwiches in the Delta

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  Apr 06 2017

  It’s the season for communal meals, like Easter dinners and Passover Seders. In the Mississippi Delta town of Greenville, members of the Hebrew Union Congregation synagogue have been hosting a community meal on the past 130 years. It brings together hundreds of Jews and gentiles from all over the Delta to share a corned beef on rye.  In the past twenty years, Greenville’s once thriving Jewish population has dwindled to just a few dozen, and there wasn’t enough synagogue members to make the 1,500 sandwiches for the luncheon. So the Jews of Greenville got a little help from their friends - Baptists, Presbyterians, Catholics, and Episcopalians. Each year the number of Jews in Greenville gets smaller. Some older residents have died. The children have moved to places like Atlanta, Jackson, and Memphis. Even Esther Solomon - the matriarch of Greenville’s Jewish community whose great-great grandmother started the tradition in the 1880s - is leaving after this year’s luncheon to be with her adult children in Atlanta. Solomon worries that even with the help of Christian volunteers, the days of the luncheon - and the Jewish community in Greenville - are numbered, and the 130-year old tradition of Jews in Greenville and the deli lunch will disappear.          ...more

  Episode

• The Chili Powder Cheat: A Tex-Mex Story

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  Mar 22 2017

    Texas: the land of BBQ, breakfast tacos…and of course Tex-Mex. But what if we told you Tex-Mex wasn’t created by a Texan or Mexican, but a German immigrant? On this episode of Gravy, we tell you the story of William Gebhardt, the inventor of chili powder. Gebhardt loved the chili con carne of the streetfood sold in the plazas of San Antonio. He adapted it back at his café, but quickly ran into a problem: chili peppers proved expensive and difficult to import. So he devised a solution. Gebhardt dried the peppers in an oven and used a hand-cranked coffee mill to grind them into a dust. He then mixed together the ground peppers with cumin seeds, oregano and some black pepper until he reached the right flavor. The end result? Gebhardt’s Eagle Chili Powder. As it spread, chili powder came to define the taste of Tex-Mex. Chili, enchiladas, fajitas, nachos are all dishes built on the spice. And today, Tex-Mex dominates; traditional cuisines of the region are less popular. Gebhardt’s history is a typical inventor tale. But he essentially took what poor Mexican-American streetfood vendors made, changed it and sold it for wider consumption. And boy, did Gebhardt market the heck out of it. Gebhardt’s slogan was “that real Mexican tang.” Ryan Katz looks into the issue of chili powder’s authenticity....more

  Episode

• Southern Food Gets Christopher Columbus-ed

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  Mar 09 2017

  So much of our national culture—food, music, dance—has come from the South. Where would American dance be without Jane Brown? Where would American music be without Robert Johnson, the Delta blues player? Where would American modern food be now if you didn't have grits and fried chicken and biscuits on every menu around the country, from fine dining restaurants to fast food establishments? But what happens if these cultural expressions become so generic as to no longer be associated with anywhere in particular?...more

  Episode

• Korean BBQ in Coolsville: A Memphis Report

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  Feb 23 2017

  What happens when Korean barbecue goes from suburban strip malls to restaurant rows in cities like Atlanta, New Orleans, and Memphis? On the latest Gravy, new host (and old SFA director) John T Edge reports from DWJ Korean BBQ in Memphis, Tennessee, where kalbi (grilled beef short ribs) is the money dish. Looking back to his grad school days, when he wrote a paper about the Italian-inspired Memphis dishes barbecue pizza and barbecue spaghetti, Edge argues that this traditional-seeming barbecue town has long been a hotbed of multicultural experimentation and innovation....more

  Episode

• Reclaiming Native Ground

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  Feb 09 2017

  For centuries, the bayous and lowlands of coastal Louisiana have fed the Point-au-Chien Indian Tribe. From cattle to crabs, oranges to okra, the fertile landscape provided almost everything they needed to eat. But now, the land is disappearing,  and the Point-au-Chien are joining together with other tribes to figure out what to do next. In this episode of Gravy, Barry Yeoman reports on the rich food traditions of tribes in South Louisiana, the threat to them posed by coastal land loss, and intertribal efforts towards solutions....more

  Episode

• Ironies and Onion Rings: The Layered Story of the Vidalia Onion

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  Jan 26 2017

  If you know and love the Vidalia onion—an onion sweet enough, its fans say, to eat like an apple—you likely also know it as a product of Georgia, as proudly claimed as the peach. But the story of the Vidalia’s popularity is far more complex than just one of a local onion made good. In this episode of Gravy: an onion’s success story, born of clever marketing, government wrangling, technological innovation and global trade.

  Episode

• Hungry in the Mississippi Delta

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  Jan 12 2017

  While civil rights activists worked in Mississippi in 1964, they encountered a poverty they could never have imagined. People were hungry, starving to death from malnutrition, particularly in the Mississippi Delta. Doctors and medical professionals, including Dr. Jack Geiger, joined together to form the Medical Committee for Human Rights. Geiger founded a community health center in Mound Bayou, Mississippi where he and his medical team wrote prescriptions for food, started a farm cooperative, taught nutrition classes, and ultimately reduced hunger in the region....more

  Episode

• ENCORE: The Emotional Life of Eating

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  Dec 29 2016

  Many of the stories we hear and tell about food are positive—food’s power to nourish, to comfort, to bring people together. But it also has the potential to cause shame, fear, disgust and a whole host of other uncomfortable emotions. Today on Gravy: personal stories around food that aren’t so sweet. These are the kinds of stories Francis Lam wanted to explore for a presentation he gave at the Southern Foodways Alliance’s annual Symposium. Francis is an editor at large at Clarkson Potter Publishers and a New York Times Magazine columnist. He’s also someone who’s spent a lot of time eating in the South and writing about it. (You can check out some of his SFA oral histories about Biloxi, Mississippi’s shrimping industry here.) Francis was curious about the food stories that often go untold because they deal with topics we’d prefer not to talk about....more

  Episode

• A Tale of Two Krauts

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  Dec 15 2016

  Sarah Reynolds takes us into the kitchens of Louise Frazier and Sandor Katz to learn how fermenting vegetables has helped them both carry on through illness and aging. Frazier learned to ferment from her mother in the 1920s, while Katz studied the the practice after moving to rural Tennessee from New York City.

  Episode

• The Southern Story of Coca Cola (Gravy Ep. 51)

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  Dec 01 2016

  You might think of Coca Cola as an iconic American brand… and you’d be right. But: it was born in the South. How did Coke’s Atlanta birthplace shape what the soft drink became? And how has Coke shaped the South? It’s a story that includes many surprising twists turns, from Civil War wounds to temperance movements, racist fears to philanthropy, small town soda jerks to Peruvian coca farmers.  

  Episode

• Beyond the Golden Leaf (Gravy Ep. 50)

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  Nov 17 2016

  For generations, farmers in western North Carolina have relied on tobacco as a core crop, their lifeblood. It was more than just income, though: tobacco supplied these families with a cultural backbone, a way of ordering their year—and their meals. So: what’s happening to that culture as the tobacco industry has changed? In this episode of Gravy, radio producer Jen Nathan Orris tells the story of two farmers following different paths, and how food is part of the solution for each.

  Episode

• Maize Migrations (Gravy Ep. 49)

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  Nov 03 2016

  Corn is a ubiquitous part of Southern food—from bread to whiskey. But how did it get to be that way? In this episode of Gravy, we go on a hunt for the origins of corn, and how it came to be so fully embedded in the South. Stephen Satterfield is a fifth generation Atlantan who can trace his ancestors back to the plantations on which they were enslaved. His family has been eating corn for more than a century. In this story, Stephen takes us along in his quest for corn’s prehistory. On the way, he stumbles upon some delicious ideas about corn’s future too....more

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