Craig Claiborne: Mississippi Boy Makes Good, Defines and Deifies American Cookery
When: Friday, June 12, 6:00 p.m. SOLD OUT
Where: Astor Center, 399 Lafayette St. (at East 4th St.), NYC
Admission: free, but space is very limited. Reservations are required.
R.S.V.P.: by June 5 to sfaevents@olemiss.edu
Join the Southern Foodways Alliance and the State of Mississippi on June 12, 2009, in New York City, for a discussion and celebration of the life and work of Craig Claiborne, the Sunflower, Mississippi, native who, over the course of a twenty-five plus year career at the New York Times, catalyzed and catalogued an American culinary renaissance.
Discussants: DAVID KAMP, contributing editor, Vanity Fair, author, The United States of Arugula.
JACQUES PÉPIN, author of more than twenty cookbooks, star of more than a dozen PBS programs, and author of a memoir, The Apprentice.
Moderator: PETE WELLS, dining editor, The New York Times, columnist, New York Times Magazine.
To drink: Champagne
To eat: Tastes of Claiborne’s Mississippi: ANN CASHION, native of Jackson, Mississippi, chef, Johnny’s Half Shell, Washington, D.C.; JOHN CURRENCE, chef, City Grocery, Oxford, Mississippi; TAYLOR BOWEN RICKETTS, chef, Delta Bistro, Greenwood, Mississippi.
The Southern Foodways Alliance, an institute of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi will, in October 2009, award its first Craig Claiborne Lifetime Achievement Award. This event serves as the formal announcement of that initiative. A complementary New York City event, Craig Claiborne and the Invention of Food Journalism, will be held on the evening of Thursday, June 11, at the New School and will feature, among others, Betty Fussell and Molly O’Neill. For five dollar tickets, email: boxoffice@newschool.edu. Details below.
Craig Claiborne and the Invention of Food Journalism
When: Thursday, June 11, 6:00 p.m.
Where: The New School, Theresa Lang Community and Student Center, Arnhold Hall, 55 West 13th St., NYC
Price: $5 (students with valid ID are free)
Purchase tickets: 212-229-5488 or boxoffice@newschool.edu
Called the nation’s preeminent food journalist, Mississippi-born Craig Claiborne trained in Switzerland as a chef on the GI bill after World War II. On his return to the United States, he began writing articles for Gourmet and became an editor at the magazine. His career skyrocketed when The New York Times hired him as its first food columnist in 1957. Claiborne's columns, reviews and cookbooks introduced Americans to a wide range of international and ethnic food. Other newspapers followed The New York Times’s lead, and soon a cadre of authoritative newspaper food writers helped attune millions of Americans to the finer points of good food and cooking.
Our panel explores Claiborne's life, work, and his seminal influence on food journalism inAmerica. With Molly O’Neill, former New York Times columnist, and author of the New York Cookbook; Betty Fussell, author of The Story of Corn and Raising Steaks; Anne Mendelson, author of Stand Facing the Stove, and Milk: the Surprising Story of Milk Through the Ages, and a contributing editor to Gourmet; David Leite, publisher/editor-in-chief, Leite's Culinaria, and author of The New Portuguese Table; John T. Edge, Director, Southern Foodways Alliance, University of Mississippi, contributing editor, Gourmet, author of Southern Belly; and moderated by Andrew F. Smith, editor-in-chief of The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America. Sponsored by the Food Studies Program at The New School.