Specialty Food Magazine is the leading publication for retailers, manufacturers and foodservice professionals in the specialty food trade. It provides news, trends and business-building insights that help readers keep their businesses competitive.
Issue link: https://specialtyfoodmagazine.epubxp.com/i/691740
BY BRANDON FOX The Authentic South John T. Edge of the Southern Foodways Alliance talks about evolving culture, why he doesn't like the phrase "ethnic food," and the importance of corn. T he Southern Foodways Alliance's John T. Edge, in his characteristic dark-framed glasses, strides through the food world leaving large footprints. His influence is considerable— through conferences, speaking engagements, and his own writing, he starts many of the conversations that set food writers on fire. The Southern Foodways Alliance is part of the University of Mississippi's Center for the Study of Southern Culture, and its four-day fall symposium in Oxford, Mississippi, sells out within minutes—and you have to be a dues-paying member to even get the email that allows you to buy a ticket. Here, Edge talks to Specialty Food Magazine about the Alliance and its future. How did the Southern Foodways Alliance evolve? While I was a graduate student in 1998, I came up with the idea of a symposium focused on Southern food. Because the Center [for the Study of Southern Culture] deeply invests in the ideas of its graduate students, the director said, "OK, try it." That initial symposium sparked such interest and passion, it sold out. Out of that passion, a group of 50 people led by John Edgerton came together to found the Southern Foodways Alliance. There was an initial meeting in 1999 in Birmingham, Alabama. [The founders] were diverse in terms of race and class, gender and ethnicity, and in vocation. It was everyone from Kathy Starr, who's a great home cook and wrote a really beautiful book called The Soul of Southern Cooking, to Frank Stitt of [Birmingham's] Highlands Bar and Grill. That group came up with the general operating principles of the organization and thankfully agreed to hire me as the director. The task from the beginning has been to document Southern food culture—not to preserve it—but to document its evolution, to document the people that are often unheralded, and to tell a true and new story. PHOTO: SOUTHERN FOODWAYS ALLIANCE q&a; SUMMER 2016 139