Robert Lemon,
Author, Geographer, Documentary Film Maker
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Icons of Mexican cultural identity and America’s melting pot ideal, taco trucks have transformed cityscapes from coast to coast. The taco truck radiates Mexican culture within non-Mexican spaces with a presence—sometimes desired, sometimes resented—that turns a public street corner into a bustling business. Continue reading
Presented by Adrian Miller
Food Writer, Attorney, Certified Barbecue Judge
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Join us as James Beard Award-winning author Adrian Miller discusses the history of African American barbecue culture from his book, Black Smoke: African Americans and the United States of Barbecue. Black Smoke describes how African Americans inherited a type of cooking that fused Native American meat smoking and European grilling techniques that became known as “barbecue.” Continue reading
Presented by Peter Regas
PizzaHistoryBook.com
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Who invented deep-dish pizza? Is there a more controversial question in Chicago food history? There’s little doubt the pizzeria at 29 East Ohio Street in Chicago- originally named “The Pizzeria” later renamed “Pizzeria Uno”- served the original deep-dish pizza. But despite decades of debate and speculation, no one has definitively identified who created the pizza style that now has a market niche worth hundreds of millions of dollars and that -rightly or wrongly- branded Chicago, as a deep-dish pizza town. Continue reading
Presented by John Birdsall, Author,
The Man Who Ate Too Much
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Food of the past that comes to us through recipes and cookbooks can appear to be fixed evidence of what generations before us ate, their tastes and preferences. John Birdsall says that his research for The Man Who Ate Too Much: The Life of James Beard (Norton, 2020) challenged all his assumptions about that. Continue reading
Presented by Vivian Howard
Chef, Author, PBS Host
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Vivian Howard moved from New York back to her rural hometown to open a fine-dining restaurant that she hoped would reshape the palates of eastern North Carolina. But an encounter with collard kraut and a trip to “America’s largest pork display” ignited her interest in the traditional foods and culinary techniques unique to the Carolina coastal plain she calls home. Continue reading