Southern Fork Sustenance: A Conversation with Writer & Podcaster Deb Freeman about Edna Lewis and Virginia Foodways
Release Date: 08/09/2024
Sammy Monsour & Kassady Wiggins: Salt & Shore Cookbook / Joyce LA (Charleston, SC)
The Southern Fork
I have a passion for sustainable seafood, and it’s been both an important subject here on the show and the subject of many of my written pieces throughout the years. When I first interviewed Sammy Monsour in 2020, I discovered that we shared this passion, and I’ve watched as he has really blossomed into a chef leader on this front. Therefore, when I first heard that he and Kassady Wiggins, his wife and beverage director partner, wanted to write a cookbook about Southern seafood, I encouraged them to go for it. What has resulted is Salt & Shore: Recipes from the Coastal South, filled...
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Michael Toscano: Le Farfalle, da Toscano, Porchetta Shop, & Fugazzi (Charleston, SC & NYC)
The Southern Fork
When I first spoke with Chef Michael Toscano in 2017, he and his family were just getting settled in Charleston with the opening of Le Farfalle. Now, seven years later, the chef seems as if he’s truly settled into a new rhythm between NYC and the Lowcountry. He and his wife Caitlin currently have four restaurants: the aforementioned Le Farfalle, da Toscano in New York’s Greenwich Village, da Toscano Porchetta Shop in Charleston, and Fugazzi, a small spot inside Charleston’s Revelry Brewing that serves what Michael calls unauthentic Italian-inspired American food. The last two are...
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Southern Fork Sustenance: A Conversation with Writer & Podcaster Deb Freeman about Edna Lewis and Virginia Foodways
The Southern Fork
Deborah Freeman is the creator of , a multi-award winning podcast exploring Black foodways and culinary history that in 2023 was honored by the International Association of Culinary Professionals as “Podcast of the Year.” She’s also a colleague in the food writing world, with contributions including to Eater, Condé Nast Traveler, and Garden and Gun, and is the food editor for Richmond’s Style Weekly. We sat down via Zoom to talk about her most recent project, Finding Edna Lewis, a new docuseries for Virginia Public Media that explores the life of the Black female trailblazer who was a...
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Roosevelt Brownlee: Jazz Chef and Soul Food Master (Savannah, GA)
The Southern Fork
lives on the curve of a quiet street in Savannah, GA, the tall stalks of okra in his vegetable garden just visible from the side drive. It’s one of many such streets in the port city, and only a few minutes from the old City Market area where he spent his earliest years. But in between those two Savannah addresses, Roosevelt has traveled the world, from France to Africa, the Caribbean to Denmark, cooking for everyone from Muddy Waters and Stan Getz to Nina Simone and the Rothchild family. His fried chicken was famous in Europe, his family’s red rice recipe honed and tweaked in chateau...
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Sandra Gutierrez: Latinísimo and the Home Cooking of Latin America (Cary, NC)
The Southern Fork
One of my greatest quiet joys is cooking from a well-written cookbook on a weekend night, music on the bluetooth and new scents and tastes filling the kitchen. My favorite cookbook that I’ve cooked from this year is . Sweeping in its scope, it is an encyclopedia of the home cooking of Latin America today, and each of the hundreds of recipes is approachable and very doable for a cook like me. I’m not surprised. Sandra -- who grew up in Guatemala City but has lived in Cary, NC for decades -- is the former food editor of the Cary News, an historian, professional cooking instructor, and author...
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Tim Gardner: Lula Drake Wine Parlor (Columbia, SC)
The Southern Fork
Columbia, SC’s Main Street architecture still has much of the charm of a mid-century movie set. There are jewelry stores, restaurants, hotels, and gift shops in buildings that range from the turn of the 20th Century to modern day. Tucked in among the hustle and bustle is , which eight plus years ago was just another dusty building awaiting renovation. Now it is a gilded lily that comes alive at night like the culinary theater it is. Sommelier Tim Gardner knows his role as the lead actor, greeting guests in a well-tailored sport coat or sliding behind the bar to offer a taste of champagne...
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Tuan Nguyen: Le's Sandwiches & Cafe (Charlotte, NC)
The Southern Fork
Charlotte, NC is one of the fastest growing metropolitan cities in the United States. While the city has always looked forward, it was actually founded before the American Revolution and the site of the first US Mint. But in the past two decades, the intense growth and the addition of a light rail system have brought immense changes citywide. In the middle of it all, the Nguyen family has been feeding its community, one Bahn Mi sandwich at a time. From homemade beginnings to a cornerstone business of the Asian Corner Mall, now has another new chapter of its own. Tuan Nguyen has taken over the...
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Southern Fork Sustenance: Talking Cookbooks and Editor Judith Jones with Author Sara Franklin
The Southern Fork
Over more than half a century as an editor at Knopf, Judith Jones became a legend, nurturing future literary icons such as Sylvia Plath, Anne Tyler, and John Updike. But although I was an English major, I first learned of Judith Jones years later, when I realized that Edna Lewis, M.F.K. Fisher, Claudia Roden, Madhur Jaffrey, James Beard, and, most famously, Julia Child, all had the same editor -- her. Judith celebrated the art and pleasures of cooking and culinary diversity, and in the process changed the way Americans think about food. , is a highly anticipated biography of Judith that...
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Rollen Chalmers: Rollens Raw Grains (Levy, SC)
The Southern Fork
Rice was South Carolina’s first great agricultural staple. Before the American Revolution, it had already made South Carolina the richest of the 13 original colonies, and Charleston one of the richest cities in the world. But it did so on the backs of enslaved skilled laborers, most of whom had been kidnapped from the rice growing regions of West Africa. For hundreds of years, they and their descendants built earthworks, tended, cultivated, harvested and processed rice all by hand in remote locations in the subtropical forests and swamps of the Southern US coast. After the Civil War,...
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Shaun Brian Sells: Cudaco (James Island, SC)
The Southern Fork
Shaun Brian Sells started life in a two-person tent surrounded by plantation ruins in the flats of Coral Bay, St. John, US Virgin Islands. It was in that environment where his love for cooking began– by roaming and foraging through the valley, fishing off his dad’s sailboat and cooking for up to eight siblings at a time. Those challenges became the source of his inspiration. At on James Island, SC, he brings that inspiration full circle, celebrating sustainable seafood practices and the creativity of the kitchen. Cudaco is part seafood market, part wine shop, part catering, and part...
info_outlineDeborah Freeman is the creator of Setting the Table, a multi-award winning podcast exploring Black foodways and culinary history that in 2023 was honored by the International Association of Culinary Professionals as “Podcast of the Year.” She’s also a colleague in the food writing world, with contributions including to Eater, Condé Nast Traveler, and Garden and Gun, and is the food editor for Richmond’s Style Weekly. We sat down via Zoom to talk about her most recent project, Finding Edna Lewis, a new docuseries for Virginia Public Media that explores the life of the Black female trailblazer who was a celebrated chef and author. As a proud Virginia native, Deb champions Virginia foodways and the power of personal history as a through line in food that can teach us about ourselves and connect us to our ancestors. It’s something that Edna Lewis’ work illustrates and the kind of work Deb is doing in the world, too; therefore, here’s another Southern Fork sustenance conversation, diving deep into the foundational “why” when it comes to the power of food.