Welcome to the SFA

Welcome to the Southern Foodways Alliance -- an institute of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture with headquarters at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi.

The Southern Foodways Alliance documents and celebrates the diverse food cultures of the American South. We set a common table where black and white, rich and poor -- all who gather-- may consider our history and our future in a spirit of reconciliation.

Pralines, Seasoned With Tears

By R. W. Apple Jr.
The New York Times
November 2, 2005

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OXFORD, Miss.

OFFICIALLY, the theme of the eighth annual Southern Foodways Symposium that ended Sunday at the University of Mississippi here was the region's lasting love affair with sugar and sweets.

Sure enough, the 250 people in attendance heard learned presentations about, or scarfed down large quantities of, cane syrup, cupcakes, pralines, sweet (iced) tea, sugar-cured country ham and cotton candy. But like other people in the American food world, north and south, east and west, they talked mostly about New Orleans and the Gulf Coast and their culinary future in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

The mood of those from New Orleans - some back home now, others still part of the Crescent City diaspora - caromed from fury to hope to melancholy to downright gloom.

"I hope our city has a season or two of loss, then bounces back," Elizabeth M. Williams, president of the Southern Food and Beverage Museum planned for the city, said in a typically guarded comment. "I have to emphasize, that's what I hope. I'm not making any predictions."

After dinner one night at the City Grocery, Oxford's leading restaurant, its chef, John Currence, a native of New Orleans, sat down with Julia Reed, a writer based there, and several others with ties to the city. They denounced the management of Galatoire's, an old-line French Quarter restaurant where the New Orleans elite have long congregated for boozy Friday lunches featuring shrimp rémoulade.

What was Galatoire's sin? Melvin Rodrigue, its general manager, announced recently that the restaurant hoped to open its first branch in November, in Baton Rouge. The flagship restaurant, he said, will reopen later, sometime early in the new year. That cut no ice with die-hards here, who looked askance at anything that might symbolize inadequate devotion to rebuilding New Orleans quickly and completely.

"Traitors!" Mr. Currence cried.

On Friday afternoon, Randy Fertel, a son of the founder of the Ruth's Chris Steak House empire, who heads the family charitable foundation, felt compelled to distance himself from the chain's current executives, who decided to move its corporate headquarters to Orlando, Fla., after serious damage by Katrina.

"My mother would never have done that," he said to cheers from the audience, "and she would have reopened our original Broad Street restaurant, too."

Perhaps no city in the United States has as distinctive and vital a food culture as New Orleans. The city has epitomized good eating (and hedonism in general) to several generations of Americans, and Southerners treasure it more than anyone.

"If it were not for New Orleans and Louisiana," said John Egerton of Nashville, whose 1987 book "Southern Food" (Knopf) is considered the classic treatment of the subject, "Southern food would probably not be as revered as it is. If New Orleans doesn't come back, it will accelerate the gradual disappearance of traditional Southern food, which has already gone from a way of life to something for ceremonial occasions, at least for most people."

Several major New Orleans restaurants have reopened, some on a limited basis, including Lilette, Cuvée and Herbsaint. Frank Brigtsen, who is living temporarily in Shreveport, La., has pledged to reopen his Uptown establishment, Brigtsen's. The Brennan family, which owns Commander's Palace and nine other places, has reopened several and promised to bring them all back, but several, including Commander's, need major repairs, and the timetable remains unclear.

John T. Edge, the director of the Southern Foodways Alliance, which runs the symposium, told me he was confident that nearly all the nationally known New Orleans restaurants would eventually reopen. What troubles him, he said, is the po' boy shops, oyster bars, red-beans-and-rice joints and other mom-and-pop businesses that have given New Orleans dining so much of its zest. Some are already gone. Uglesich's, one of the most beloved neighborhood places, closed before the storms; Austin Leslie, the fried-chicken wizard, was evacuated after Katrina struck and died in Atlanta.

Casamento's, one of the city's most revered oyster houses, will reopen on Nov. 15, the conferees excitedly told one another. But for every bit of cheerful news, there were worried questions, especially about the small, often black-owned places in hard-hit parts of town. At 82, would Leah Chase somehow find the energy to rehabilitate her iconic restaurant, Dooky Chase? And what about Willie Mae Seaton, 89, and her splendiferous paprika-spiked fried chicken? Her son, Charles, who helps her at the Scotch House, is in his 70's; can they come back?

"Those sorts of places have been disappearing for quite a while," said Lolis Eric Elie, a columnist for The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, in a discussion on Saturday. "I fear the hurricanes will only quicken the process. Young black people have other career options. Who will replace the older people when they're gone?"

JoAnn Clevenger, the owner of Upperline, one of the city's longtime favorites, has reopened her restaurant. But "these are hard times in New Orleans," she said, and John Besh, the chef and owner of August, another esteemed place that is back in business, said that "we have a very long row to hoe."

The biggest problem is personnel. Cooks and waiters have scattered to a dozen or more states. Many have lost their homes, and some need public schools for their children, which are not available in New Orleans. Many will never return, restaurateurs and others at the symposium predicted. Nor are the losses confined to the lower ranks. Jonathan Wright of the Windsor Court Hotel, the most innovative young chef in the city, has left for Indianapolis, and others are expected to follow.

Supplies are an issue, too.

"Every single fisherman whom I've dealt with in the past is out of business," Mr. Besh said. "The Vietnamese will adapt, and maybe move down the coast, but it looks dismal for the small native fishermen. Most of them have no boats now."

No big conventions are likely to be booked until 2008, and Ms. Clevenger, the most determinedly upbeat of the panelists, conceded that even after rebuilding, restaurants will do less business than before the storms.

"But at the turn of the last century there were very few tourists, and the restaurants survived with locals," she said. "Maybe we can do it again with the locals and a few visitors. Proust was right, you know: you can overcome the sadness of today and perhaps tomorrow with the delicious tastes and smells of yesterday."

All the panelists expressed optimism of some sort that eventually New Orleans and its food culture could be rebuilt. But they also aired their concern that it would be rebuilt as a kind of Disneyland, rather than what Mr. Elie called "a good facsimile of the old New Orleans, with all the things we loved about it."

He and others bemoaned what they termed a lack of leadership - not only in the political sphere, at the federal, state and local levels, but also within their industry. Many voiced disappointment with Emeril Lagasse, the city's most famous chef, who has three restaurants here and two daily television shows on the Food Network. Mr. Lagasse has returned to the city only briefly since the storms, his restaurants remain shuttered, and his colleagues said he had not spoken out vigorously enough on the problems they all face.

But Mimi Rice, Mr. Lagasse's spokeswoman, said he has worked on several hurricane relief events. Two of his New Orleans restaurants will reopen soon, she reported, Emeril's on Dec. 8, NOLA on Dec. 13. Emeril's Delmonico, heavily battered, will reopen next year.

If anyone in Oxford had lost sight of what was at stake - what was so worth preserving - they were reminded at a smack-up New Orleans lunch cooked by Ms. Clevenger's chef, Ken Smith. It began with a duck étouffée, served with cornbread enlivened by a smear of pepper jelly. Then came a salad of bitter greens with feta cheese and sugared pecans, and sautéed Cane River country shrimp, sauced with shrimp bisque, with wedge-shaped deep-fried grits cakes. Crunchy on the outside, moist inside, the cakes made a big hit, as did a miraculously light version of that often gluelike Southern favorite, banana pudding, made by Dana Logsdon of La Spiga Bakery in New Orleans. One of the exiles, she is camping out in Baton Rouge.

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