Gravy

In “Annie Laura Squalls and Her Mile High Pie,” Gravy producer Kayla Stewart tells the story of Annie Laura Squalls, who, in 1960, became head baker at the Caribbean Room, the popular in-house restaurant at New Orleans’ renowned Pontchartrain Hotel. It was there where Squalls created her “Seven Mile High Pie,” known colloquially as the “Mile High Pie.” But while many people know the legendary pie,...

A reflection on the 2004 Southern Foodways Symposium, by soul food scholar Adrian Miller. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A reflection on the first Southern Foodways Alliance Barbecue Symposium, by Founding Director John T. Edge. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In “Rib Tips, Hot Links, and the Mississippi Roots of Chicago Barbecue,” Gravy producer Courtney DeLong dives into the history of Chicago barbecue and its connection to the Great Migration.  When people think about the best barbecue cities in America, they tend to think about places like Memphis, Kansas City, and Austin. In doing so, many neglect a unique and innovative barbecue hub: Southside Chi...

In “Father, Son, Fire: A Chat with Howard and Harrison Conyers,” the fourth episode in Gravy’s five-part series on barbecue, Howard Conyers—a barbecue expert and NASA rocket scientist—introduces listeners to a formative influence in his barbecue education and journey: his father, Harrison Conyers.  Some people find barbecue, but the Conyers family was born into a barbecue tradition that survived i...

In “Grandpa’s Barbecue Blooms Out West,” Gravy producer Monica Gokey takes listeners to Idaho Falls, Idaho, to explore what happens when a Southerner leaves the South and opens a barbecue joint in the West.  Grandpa’s Southern Bar-B-Q originally opened in the small town of Arco, Idaho, which is obscurely famous for being the first community in the U.S. powered by nuclear energy. At the time Grandp...

In “Brisket Pho, a Viet Tex Story,” Gravy producer Jess Eng explores the emergence of Viet Tex, a cuisine created in recent years by contemporary Vietnamese-Texan chefs. These chefs grew up steeped in multicultural dining, eating Central Texas barbecue alongside family recipes. Now, in their own businesses, they marry smoked meats and barbecue spices with the flavorful broths and bright herbs that...

In “Henry Perry, Kansas City’s 'Barbecue King,'” Gravy producer Mackenzie Martin tells the story of Henry Perry, the first person to really make a living selling barbecue in Kansas City. He even coined the local style. But, until recently, most people in KC didn’t know his name.  Perry was born in Shelby County, Tennessee, and started learning how to barbecue when he was just seven. By fifteen, he...

In “Bread and Friends,” the final episode in her five-part series for Gravy, producer Irina Zhorov meets Camille Cogswell and Drew DiTomo in the final stages of preparation to open their new bakery. They hope that Walnut Family Bakery will be a special space in its Marshall, North Carolina community, where people run into friends, meet new acquaintances, and generally feel good entering. But how d...

In “Making That Dough,” the fourth episode in her five-part series for Gravy, producer Irina Zhorov explores the business of cottage bakeries—and how small-scale bakers make amazing loaves out of home kitchens and converted garages. “Cottage” bakeries refer to those in which people sell baked goods out of their homes. For much of the twentieth century, selling food made at home was largely prohibi...

In “Fresh Flour to the People,” the third episode in her five-part series for Gravy, producer Irina Zhorov talks to bakers who have started demanding more from a key element in their craft—flour.  When we talk about ingredients, there’s a lot to consider: how fresh the fruit, how local the meat, how wild the fish. But for some reason, these are not questions most of us have been asking about flour...

In “Bread by Fire,” the second episode in her five-part season for Gravy, producer Irina Zhorov takes listeners to the little house in Marshall, North Carolina, whose residents have produced some of the most exciting baking in the South. The property is a hotbed for baking specifically because of the ovens. Two large, wood-fired ovens anchor the space and attract a very specific kind of baker to t...

In “Genealogy of a Bakery,” Gravy producer Irina Zhorov takes listeners up into the mountains of western North Carolina, to a town called Marshall and a property that’s been used as a bakery for more than two decades.  The little building with a metal roof and ovens with more than sixty square feet of stone hearth has been home to some of the most exciting baking in the country. It’s one of the pl...

Lucien Darjeun Meadows is an English, German, and Cherokee writer born and raised in the Appalachian Mountains. His debut poetry collection, In the Hands of the River, is forthcoming from Hub City Press in September 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Can Co-Ops Fix a Broken Food Delivery Model? Gravy producer Sarah Holtz introduces listeners to food industry veterans in Lexington, Kentucky, who launched a food delivery co-op during the COVID era as an alternative to Big Delivery (think DoorDash, GrubHub, Postmates, or UberEats). It aimed to put drivers, restaurants, and take-out customers all on the same team. Listen to learn more about the pr...

“The Bare Minimum,” producer Sarah Holtz follows Florida’s Fight for 15, a labor campaign aimed at raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour. Though there are countless labor issues associated with restaurant work, from wage theft to sexual harassment, the minimum wage is a concrete area to affect change, because it improves material conditions for hourly workers in every industry. Historically, it...

In “The Bitter and the Sweet of Craft Chocolate in the Global South” episode of Gravy, producer Sarah Holtz engages important voices in the complex conversation about ethical chocolate, from central Ghana to southern Missouri.  In the chocolate world, terms like corporate sustainability and ethical sourcing are gradually entering the mainstream, but they remain a little vague. Holtz explores how d...

In "Memphis Restaurant Workers Unite," Gravy follows a group of restaurant workers that’s slated to become the first formal union of food and beverage workers in Memphis, Tennessee. Led by Lily Nicholson, the group, Memphis Restaurant Workers United (MRWU), organized a petition that resulted in $2.5 million in pandemic support grants from the county government and has begun negotiating contracts w...

What’s in the fridge? In New Orleans, solidarity means a stocked fridge. In this episode of Gravy, producer Sarah Holtz takes listeners inside a mutual aid society called New Orleans Community Fridges, which formed during the pandemic to help feed people in need. Since its start, the group has been gifted around 20 fridges. They sit on neighborhood sidewalks, plugged into power strips, some powere...

"Married," by Jo McDougall. Featured in Vinegar & Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance. University of Georgia Press, 2018. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Marlanda Dekine is a poet and author obsessed with ancestry, memory, and the process of staying within one’s own body. This poem appears in their collection Thresh & Hold, forthcoming from Hub City Press on March 29, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"Carlo Flunk the Seventh Grade," by Greg Brownderville. Featured in Vinegar & Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance. University of Georgia Press, 2018. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In "Filipino Balikbayan is Homecoming in a Box," Gravy explores the histories underlying the balikbayan box—a large box filled with everything from tubes of toothpaste to cassette tapes to cans of Spam—that Filipinos in the United States customarily send home to family in the Philippines. There is an entire industry in Filipino enclaves across the United States dedicated to the logistics of shippi...

In "New Orleans Street Vendors, Old and New," Gravy explores the history of street food vendors in New Orleans, from Mr. Okra to the pralinière, or praline vendor. A conversation with urbanist Amy Stelly, who grew up in Tremé and remembers when street vendors populated her neighborhood, reveals that there is a fraught line between cultural appreciation and cultural appropriation. What is the legac...

In "The Skinny on the South Beach Diet" producer Katie Jane Fernelius speaks with Adrienne Bitar, author of Diet and the Disease of Civilization, all about diet books and why they capture the American imagination. They discuss the South Beach Diet, in particular, and the ways it answered a specific moral panic over obesity in the early 2000s. But who and what are the inheritors of the diet book in...