He was a television repairman, a Baptist deacon, and owner of the fried chicken restaurant Burton’s Grill. “Deacon” Lydell Burton, who practiced his craft in the heart of Inman Park. The people carrying Southern food forward are not of one color.Ĭan you name some Atlanta-based black cooks who deserve that debt of pleasure? At the same time, if I’m going to spend five years rooting around in the attic we call the South, I come out of it recognizing that the evolution of that food has been helped by white people, Mexican people, Vietnamese people. The first step in recognizing what Southern food is involves paying down a debt of pleasure to the cooks who have sustained us through the years, people like Mildred Council of Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

You say it’s a dance between black and white, but, ultimately, who does Southern food belong to? We created this beautiful cultural totem that actually happens to be deeply and profoundly enjoyable. We did this together-despite adversity, despite our worst instincts-because of our best instincts. There are totemic dishes that define the region: Barbecue is one of them, fried chicken is one of them, cornbread is one of them, and so is potlikker. I think of it also as the proudest and best expression of this place. Southern food is a kind of fitful dance between black and white. The book explores a big question: What is Southern food? What’s your answer? He reminded me of that when I called him at his “office,” a tin-roof tool shed in the backyard of his Oxford, Mississippi, home.

The Potlikker Papers is a food history of the modern South, “the South that awakes from slumber in 1955 when the cooks and maids in Montgomery step off the buses and begin walking to work, rejecting Jim Crow,” says Edge.Įxcuse me: John T. The director of the Southern Foodways Alliance, Edge has been studying Southern food culture for more than 20 years, and his latest book arrives on shelves May 16.

The Potlikker Papers by John T. Edge