Southern Belly: The Ultimate Food Lover's Guide to the South Review

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(More customer reviews)If you eat, you're gonna want a few copies of this book. One for the house, one for the glove box, and you probably know a couple people who would just love to find a copy under the tree come Christmas.
As director of the Southern Foodways Alliance at the University of Mississippi, John T. Edge knows his subject. But while his knowledge of Southern foodlore is impressively deep and wide, don't think for a minute that this is a scholarly tome filled with academic jargon and lofty observations--nothing like it. In pursuit of his quest, John T. is not a man afraid of getting his hands dirty. Or his elbows. Or his shirt front, when you get down to it.
A native Southerner, John T. Edge stands firm and proud in the face of the Macdonalds and Burger Kings goosestepping through the heart of Dixie. The moral fire of his paean to butter pats offers up testimony to his eye for detail and the purity of his vision. "I fell in love with the Waysider soon after I reached for a pat of butter to slather on one of those thin tiles of coarse cornbread they serve hereabouts. Miracle of miracles, it was just that: a pat of butter, a lemony yellow square of salted, churned cream, sandwiched between a white cardboard base and a thin slip of wax paper. These days most restaurants stock little plastic tubs of margarine emblazoned with names that read like false promises: Country Crock, Farm Churn, and I Can't Believe It's not Butter."
John T. gets beyond the barbeque and biscuits reportage of the food magazine writers who figure if they've eaten a slaw dog at the Varsity they've done their slumming in the South. I bet you don't know what a scuppernong or Tabasco mash is. He does. He ain't too proud to eat a pig ear sandwich. He knows the difference between eastern style and western style North Carolina barbeque. And he has a passion for potlikker that would make an alcoholic blush.
John T. also has a native's understanding of what the South actually is, instead of what sentimental hogwash like Steel Magnolia's would have us think it is. Sure, people named Ballery Bully and Addie Williams contribute to the story of Southern food. But so do people named Rocky Tommaseo: "The first bite (of Wop salad) explodes in your mouth. Like steam rising off Louisiana blacktop after a summer shower..." And people named Kim Wong: "I'm really proud of my chicken cracklins. Woks make the difference. They cook the cracklins more evenly in less oil.'"
John T. doesn't shy away from looking at the less savory aspects of Southern history. An interview with Lawrence Craig gets right to the point. "Folks always talk about how black folks are good cooks. There's a reason for that. Back when I was growing up there were two kinds of jobs black folks could get without being challenged by white folks: cooking and heavy lifting. Folks though black folks could cook--same as they thought black folks could sing and dance..."
He'll tell you about the fine eating at Ollie's Barbeque outside Birmingham, Alabama. He'll also let you know that Ollie McClung filed suit in federal court in 1964 to prevent integration of his restaurant. He goes further, quoting Ollie's son: "It was about race and then again it wasn't. On a deeper level it was about whether the federal government could intrude on the day to day operations of a small business. Before `64 if I had been conscience stricken enough to serve blacks in my restaurant, I would have. I wasn't, mind you." However we may regard the attitudes of people like the McClung's, their story indicates that Southern history, like Southern food, isn't as simple as it may seem.
I'd love to go on and tell you about Lindsey's bereavement platters, Jackson cumback sauce, and Something Better than Barbeque, but you're just gonna have to buy the daggum book.

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In the pages of Southern Belly, Southern food culture chronicler John T. Edge does more than simply steer you to good food. Much more than your ordinary guidebook grocery list of every smoke shack from Hattiesburg to Hahira, this book tells the story behind the food, people, and places that have become Southern institutions. More than 200 entries run the gamut from chicken shacks, fish camps, and meat'n'three joints to profiles of civil rights leaders and veteran barbecue pitmasters. An authoritative and comprehensive view of the food of the American South: a place-specific book that fuses good eating advice with entries that provide historical and cultural perspective on our appreciation of Southern standard -- and not so standard -- fare.

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