It is possible to live in the South -- to even be born and bred in the South -- and to have no idea how to define Southern food.
Southern cuisine is a moving target unwilling to lie still for even the discriminating palates of Southern food writers. But thankfully, those folks are still out there, cheering, challenging and chewing on everything that Southern food has come to represent. Their stories come together in "Cornbread Nation 6: The Best of Southern Food Writing," edited by Brett Anderson with Sara Camp Arnold (University of Georgia Press, $20).
The sixth volume of the series, which was launched in 2002, features several Atlanta-based writers, including Kim Severson, Atlanta bureau chief for the New York Times; Bill Addison, Atlanta magazine's food editor and restaurant critic; Besha Rodell, former food and drink editor of Creative Loafing; and Atlanta Journal-Constitution food writer John Kessler.
Published in association with the Southern Foodways Alliance at the Center for the Study of Culture at the University of Mississippi, "Cornbread Nation 6″ offers six chapters rich with food lore, including a perennial barbecue debate (Is it a lost art or found science?), a disturbing journey through the food supply of slaves and a look at the global South featuring, for example, the relationship between ravioli and country music.
Severson contributes a semi-autobiographical profile of Edna Lewis, the Virginia-born preservationist of Southern food who lived her final years in Atlanta with chef Scott Peacock. Meanwhile, Rodell writes an open letter to Severson, suggesting she temper the Twitter tantrums in which Severson calls out the sorry state of food in Atlanta.
Kessler reveals the dearth of black chefs through an intimate look at African-American chef Darryl Evans of Columbus -- creator of Atlanta's now shuttered Spice Restaurant -- and two of his proteges who hope to launch their ideal restaurant.
Addison ponders the question "How do you describe Southern Food?" in his story about the co-mingling of foods and flavors in the capable hands of Hugh Acheson, chef-owner of Empire State South. Addison suggests that Acheson's porkbelly over creamed kimchi with smoked peanuts is as worthy of a place in the pantheon of Southern food as fried chicken, shad-stuffed roe and buttered corn bread.
"Cornbread Nation 6″ may not resolve the conundrum of Southern cuisine, but it does gives a revealing and insightful look at its evolution.
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