Gravy

The home of Civil Rights leaders like John Lewis and Martin Luther King, Jr., Atlanta has a remarkably storied Black history. It’s birthed the musical careers of legends like Andre 3000, Usher, and Gladys Knight. And recently, it made political history when the state—largely due to Black voters—flipped blue for the first time in nearly 30 years, impacting one of the most consequential elections in modern history. The state’s role in Black culture and identity extends internationally, too. Atlanta has become a popular city of choice for immigrants who’ve arrived in the U.S. In 2018, 1.1 million immigrants made 10 percent of the state’s population. In 2000, nearly 5,500 Ethiopians called Atlanta home. Today, that number has more than doubled, making Atlanta home to one of the country’s largest Ethiopian communities. Immigrants brought their families, their traditions, and their food.

The restaurant landscape is just one window into international Atlanta, but it is extremely important. It signals that new communities are working to carve out a space, create opportunity, and share the best parts of their homeplaces with fellow Atlantans. Reporter Kayla Stewart shares the story of Atlanta’s Ethiopian community with visits to three restaurants—Piassa Restaurant and Market, Ledet, and Desta Ethiopian Kitchen. All three places serve traditional Ethiopian food to their customers, and Desta Ethiopian Kitchen has modified their menu in a way that accommodates Ethiopian and American influences. In a classroom, the technique is called global assemblage. In restaurant speak, it’s called hospitality.

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The largest city in Texas doesn’t disappoint when it comes to food. Houston is one of the most diverse cities in the United States. There is a bustling and ever-growing immigrant community that has brought food and culture to almost every corner of the city. Amid strip centers filled with pho shops, taco trucks, and Indian restaurants, however, Indonesian immigrants have struggled to make their food recognizable and understood in the city’s dining community. In central Houston, Gravy reporter Kayla Stewart speaks to a group of Indonesian women working to make sure that Indonesian food gets its overdue respect. 

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"Drill," by Atsuro Riley. Featured in Vinegar & Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance. University of Georgia Press, 2018.

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"Because Men Do What They Want To Do," by TJ Jarrett. Featured in Vinegar & Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance. University of Georgia Press, 2018.

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Nearly every cuisine has its own flavor base. In Louisiana, this technique has become doctrine. The Holy Trinity, a base of finely chopped and sautéed onion, celery, and green bell pepper, is the starting point for jambalaya, gumbo, and étouffée. So iconic have these dishes become that the Trinity manifests whenever Louisianans have migrated. In this episode, we find the Holy Trinity in Oakland, California—an unexpected hub for chefs with Louisiana roots. 

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Pasteles mean Christmas to many Puerto Ricans, both on and off the island. Why is this beloved, labor-intensive dish popping up at plate sales in suburban Orlando—and what does climate change have to do with this phenomenon?

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Horchata, a refreshing drink originally made from tiger nuts, made its way to present-day Texas and Mexico via the Islamic conquest of Spain and the Spanish conquest of the Americas. How do indigenous populations reckon with colonialism in their diets?

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The black-eyed pea is not your average bean. Like many staple foods of the African Diaspora, it’s become a powerful symbol of food sovereignty and survival. With the migration of the black-eyed pea from West Africa during the transatlantic slave trade came a superstition about good luck. This belief combines folklore from West Africa and Western Europe in the American South. Our episode follows the journey of the black-eyed pea, time-traveling through the folklore of the past and an Afrofuturist vision of what’s still to come.

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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.

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

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