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What the Future of Southern Cuisine Could Be in Dallas and Beyond

Chefs in Texas are changing the way we understand Southern food outside of the "home-cooked comfort fare" interpretation.
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Culinary historian Jessica B. Harris and High on the Hog host Stephen Satterfield stop in front of an okra stand at the Dantokpa Market in Cotonou, Benin. The Netflix series is based on Harris’s 2011 book of the same name.
Netflix

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past,” as one of William Faulker’s best-known lines goes. History informs the present and, by extension, the future. Food is an ever-evolving organism, metastasizing into identical fast-casual concepts or, instead, becoming a new form of itself. Southern food has already had many pioneers who spun grandma’s low-fuss fare into high-end fine dining.

In Dallas, chefs Dean Fearing and Stephan Pyles represent an moment of pulling away from the past and diving into a reimagined world of Southwest cuisine. Twenty years ago, they “started a culinary revolution”  by “fiddling around with regional ingredients and taking tips from their Mexican line cooks,” says this D Magazine article from 2003. Today, pushing cuisine forward feels different—is different. To forge ahead culinary leaders want to first understand those that blazed the trails before them.

You can see this unfold in High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America. It’s a new Netflix short docuseries based on the book of the same name by culinary historian Dr. Jessica B. Harris and hosted by writer and Whetstone Magazine founder Stephen Satterfield. For food nerds, it is a must-watch. The show unpacks the impact and rarely extolled influence of foodways from the African diaspora on the way we eat in the U.S. today. (Texas Monthly published a nice recap of it.)

The fourth episode in particular, entitled “Freedom,” starts in Texas. Through static-burdened audio comes the voice of a Laura Smalley, a former enslaved person who recalls the moment when, at long last, they found out they were free two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation: “Turned them loose on the nineteenth of June. That’s why we celebrate that day.” Below is a clip from another Laura Smalley interview. At minute 8:43 Smalley talks about eating big dinners on June 19, otherwise known as Juneteenth. (Audio via the Library of Congress.)

Observation of the holiday commemorating the practical ending of slavery comes in many forms: cookouts with the requisite red food and drink to civic and social engagement. D arts and culture editor Taylor Crumpton penned a touching essay about what Juneteenth means to Black Texans like herself. Meanwhile, Alex Macon spoke to Remembering Black Dallas president Deborah Hopes on the meaning of Juneteenth then and—crucially—now.

I revisited this Juneteenth article in a 2020 issue of Bon Appetit written by Michael W. Twitty, a cookbook author and culinary historian who likewise makes an appearance in an earlier episode of High on the Hog. Twitty recounts chefs from the South cooking food their way and on their terms as they recognize the oft-food-centered liberation celebration.

While the holiday has come and gone, it reminds me of a recent conversation with chef Tiffany Derry, whose Roots Southern Table opened two weeks ago in Farmers Branch. When I sat down with Derry, she, too, spoke on the importance of Black cookery.

“The idea of Southern [cuisine], a lot of time people talk about specific dishes like fried chicken, mac and cheese, and that is how they classify Southern,” she told me. “For us, Southern is about the land, about the water, about the people who live in the South and what they contribute to Southern cuisine.”

While there’s no Dallas representation in the current season of Top Chef, Dawn Burrell of Houston and Austin’s Gabe Erales are both holding it down for the Lone Star State. Spoilers ahoy: The two Texas chefs have made it into the Top Chef finale along with Seattle chef Shota Nakajima. Burrell is tapped to helm Late August, a forthcoming Afro-Asian restaurant in Houston from chef-owner Chris Williams.

For those who aren’t following Top Chef, Burrell’s cooking philosophy is guided, in part, by what she feels and by which ingredients she’s inspired by in the moment. It’s not too much unlike what drives Derry as well.

In episode three, chef-testants visit Pan-African restaurants in Portland, Oregon. “Everyone knows French cuisine and Italian food, but there are a lot of chefs that have never eaten West African cuisine before,” Burrell says in the episode. “They are now enlightened.” She makes a Guyanese-inspired curried goat with crispy roti and green pepper sauce. (It was a home run favorite.) Throughout the season, Burrell has impressed with her flavors which often took cues from the South.

If there’s anything—and there are many things—to take away from shows like High on the Hog and chefs Derry and Burrell, it’s that food history clarifies the future of food. The force-of-nature chefs will not be pigeon-holed. Neither will the entirety of Southern cuisine, and by extension, the food of the African diaspora, so much of which is American cuisine full stop.


A version of this story was published in the June 15 SideDish newsletter. Sign up here so you don’t miss the latest food and drink news and stories.

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