Chef Mashama Bailey on reclaiming African-American food

Life and Art from FT Weekend

Forhecz Topher

Tv & Film, Arts, Society & Culture

4.6 • 601 Ratings

🗓️ 13 August 2022

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week Lilah goes to Savannah, Georgia, to visit chef Mashama Bailey. Mashama recently won Outstanding Chef at the James Beard Awards. Since 2014, she has been chef and partner at The Grey, a restaurant located in a formerly segregated bus station. And she has been redefining American food by reclaiming its African-American roots. But because so much of this history hasn't been documented, how do you find and preserve it, and also expand on it? Mashama explains her creative process. We also speak with Stephen Satterfield, host of the Netflix docuseries High on the Hog. Stephen is the founder of Whetstone Media, which is dedicated to tracing food stories back to their roots of origin.

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Want to say hi? We love hearing from you. We’re on Twitter @ftweekendpod, and Lilah is on Instagram and Twitter @lilahrap.

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Links and mentions from the episode:

Lilah’s written piece on Mashama in the FT Magazine: https://on.ft.com/3I8v4br

Mashama and her business partner John O Morisano’s memoir about The Grey is called Black, White, and the Grey

Stephen is the founder of Whetstone Magazine and Whetstone Media. You can learn more at https://www.whetstonemagazine.com/

Whetstone Radio Collective has a suite of podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/channel/whetstone-radio/id6442689915

Dr Jessica B Harris’s seminal book on African-American food history is called High on the Hog: a Culinary Journey from Africa to America

Edna Lewis is considered the first lady of Southern cooking. Her groundbreaking cookbook, published in 1976, is called The Taste of Country Cooking

Lilah also recommends Bryant Terry's 2021 cookbook Black Food, and the work of Michael W Twitty. Michael is on Instagram at @thecookinggene and has an excellent Masterclass session on tracing your roots through food

Mashama is on Instagram at @mashamabailey. Stephen is at @isawstephen

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Original music by Metaphor Music. Mixing and sound design by Breen Turner and Sam Giovinco.

Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This white and blue glass is called vitrolight.
0:10.6	It's March, and I'm in Savannah, Georgia, outside of the famed restaurant, The Grey.
0:15.9	The managing partner, Jono Morissano, is showing me around.
0:19.2	The first things we wanted to do was put the facade back to what it was, except that no one makes vitrolyte anymore.
0:26.1	John's white.
0:27.1	He's got a handlebar mustache and glasses and tattoos.
0:30.9	He looks like a hipster from New York, which he is.
0:34.8	From the street, the building looks like a vintage diner with shiny, curved windows.
0:40.6	And this was a segregated lunch counter called the Union News Cafe.
0:45.9	We walked through the doors and passed the kitchen on the right.
0:49.4	Then the restaurant opens into a beautiful, high-ceilinged Art Deco dining room.
0:55.1	Its centerpiece is a sunken, curved EAD bar.
0:59.1	It feels grand.
1:00.8	The bus terminal was the first fully air-conditioned bus terminal in the south.
1:04.8	We keep going across the dining room into the back.
1:08.0	The back is small and cramped.
1:10.2	It has low ceilings. The server station is back here and the back. The back is small and cramped. It has low ceilings.
1:11.8	The server station is back here and the bathrooms.
1:15.1	If you didn't know the history of this space, you probably wouldn't remember it.
1:18.5	And then we walk through and we come to sort of the darkest part of the history of the space,
1:25.7	which is the colored waiting room.
1:28.6	And the colored, that was the colored waiting room, and the colored,
	...

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