Welcome to the SFA

Welcome to the Southern Foodways Alliance -- an institute of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture with headquarters at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi.

The Southern Foodways Alliance documents and celebrates the diverse food cultures of the American South. We set a common table where black and white, rich and poor -- all who gather-- may consider our history and our future in a spirit of reconciliation.

Browse additional press in our newsletter, Gravy.

Acclaim for the SFA's Gulf Coast Renaissance efforts -- as featured in USA Today and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

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By Anne Rochell Konigsmark
USA Today
Feb. 5, 2006

In New Orleans, fried chicken for a city's soul

NEW ORLEANS — Saving a fried chicken joint in a run-down neighborhood could be key to saving this storm-battered city's soul.

That's why acclaimed chefs, food lovers and historic reservationists are gathering outside of what's left of Willie Mae's Scotch House, a tiny restaurant owned and operated by 89-year-old Willie Mae Seaton.
"I'm so happy to see all these people," Seaton says as she watches the volunteers begin the work of cleaning out her restaurant, which sat in 4 feet of water after Hurricane Katrina hit on Aug. 29. "I just have to get back in that kitchen."

While countless teams and individuals rebuild homes and businesses in New Orleans, volunteers from around the country are working to save something less tangible: a way of life. People who love New Orleans for its unique culture — the food, the music, the architecture — are pitching in to ensure its survival.

A nightclub is raising money to replace musicians' lost instruments. Habitat for Humanity is building houses for musicians. The National Trust for Historic Preservation is restoring important homes. Loyola University hosted a forum called "New Orleans Culture: How Can It Be Saved?"

On Tuesday, Shell Oil announced it will be the first-ever "presenting sponsor" of Jazz Fest, a spring music festival. Without a sponsor, it might have been dramatically scaled back, producer Quint Davis says. Jazz Fest usually draws almost 500,000 visitors and pumps $200 million into the local economy. "Jazz Fest is a key component to restoring the unique cultural fabric of New Orleans," says Marvin Odum, executive vice president of Shell Exploration and Production in North and South America.

Seaton's restaurant is many blocks and a world away from the famed restaurants of the French Quarter, most of which have reopened since Katrina. But those in the know say the fried chicken made in this small frame house is a treasure worth saving. Seaton, who landed on the culinary map last spring when she won a prestigious James Beard award for her cooking, has no flood insurance and could not reopen without help.

Volunteers organized by the Southern Foodways Alliance, based in Oxford, Miss., are rebuilding the 50-year-old restaurant and Seaton's home on the side of the building.

"It's important to save all this," says Mary Hartwell Howorth of the SFA. "Hopefully, other people will start missing places where they used to eat, and they'll get inspired to save them as well."

The work began last month and will continue through February. The alliance has raised more than $18,000 for the effort, but because hidden damage has been found, Seaton needs at least $50,000 more to get back in her kitchen.

"Gems like the Scotch House are largely overlooked by food critics and even New Orleanians," says John Currence, a New Orleans native who is the chef-owner of two restaurants in Oxford, Miss. "You don't want to lose the roots those things come from."

On a recent Friday afternoon, about two dozen musicians sat on folding chairs at Tipitina's, a nightclub that has long been at the center of the New Orleans music scene. They were learning how to apply for a home in Habitat for Humanity's "Musicians' Village."

The non-profit group has bought land in the Upper 9th Ward, which flooded but not as severely as the Lower 9th Ward, to build nearly 90 affordable homes for musicians displaced by Katrina.

Tipitina's, which sponsored some non-profit activities before Katrina, is now so focused on rebuilding the music community that all net proceeds from the club go to support the Tipitina's Foundation. It offers musicians free use of computers, legal aid, health care and help with housing. It is trying to replace thousands of instruments lost by musicians and by the music departments of flooded schools.

"We're getting donations from all across the world," foundation director Bill Taylor says. "The legacy, the history, the tradition that spring from this place are incredibly powerful."

The foundation also is lending a hand to the Mardi Gras Indians, black social groups who don elaborate, hand-sewn costumes of sequins and feathers and periodically parade and perform on city streets. They are a favorite tradition at Mardi Gras and at Jazz Fest.

Tipitina's is helping 80 Indians repair damage to their costumes. The club has become a practice space for the Indians, who used to gather in neighborhood bars, that are now closed. "We had 300 Indians here last Sunday, and most of them drove in from out of town," Taylor says.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation in Washington, D.C., has raised $1 million to save historically significant homes that were damaged by Katrina. The trust has awarded grants of up to $40,000 to a dozen homeowners.

"This is the largest preservation challenge the trust has ever faced," says trust President Richard Moe. There are 37,000 historic structures in New Orleans, more than in any other U.S. city, he says. While the historic buildings of the French Quarter and the Garden District did not flood, thousands of 19th- and early-20th-century homes in lesser-known neighborhoods did.

Moe calls the working-class historic neighborhoods such as the Treme and Holy Cross "the heart and soul of New Orleans."

The Trust also has sent teams of volunteers to New Orleans to "double-check" the red tags placed on homes the city says should be demolished. "We know we are going to lose some houses, but we don't want to lose any unnecessarily," Moe says.

The mayor's Bring New Orleans Back Commission recently unveiled its plans to revive the city's culture. More than 11,000 people working in the cultural sector lost their jobs after Katrina, the cultural committee of the commission says in its final report. Fewer than 10% of the approximately 2,500 musicians working in New Orleans before the storm have returned, the report says.

The commission recommends building a National Jazz Center to focus the world's attention on New Orleans as the birthplace of jazz.

"The culture of this city is essential to its well-being," says jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, who co-chairs the mayor's cultural committee. "The culture of New Orleans is its identity."

By JIM AUCHMUTEY
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 01/29/06

New Orleans — Willie Mae Seaton didn't have time to gather many of her belongings before the flood. She grabbed a change of clothes and scooped up some family photos, then secured her most prized possession: a bronze medallion attached to a loop of ribbon like an Olympic medal. She wrapped it in a napkin, sealed it in a plastic bag and put it in her purse. Only then did she join two carloads of loved ones as they fled the city ahead of Hurricane Katrina.

The medallion came from the James Beard Foundation. Seaton had never heard of the group that sponsors the prestigious food awards, but she was overjoyed last spring when it named her little soul food restaurant one of "America's Classics." At the awards banquet in New York, she limped to the ballroom podium on bunioned feet and broke down crying as she tried to express her gratitude.

It was the high point of her life.

Four months later, Katrina brought the low point. After the levees failed, 4 to 5 feet of water inundated her street in the Tremé neighborhood of New Orleans and soaked the double shotgun house where her residence and restaurant sit side by side under the same roof.

"I lost everything," Seaton says.

Not quite.

The storm couldn't destroy her reputation for cooking some of the best Southern food around. In recent weeks, that reputation has drawn an unlikely group of food enthusiasts from across the nation to help rebuild Seaton's restaurant in a Habitat for Humanity-style construction project that has given a devastated city a hopeful scene of rebirth.

At 89, it seems, Willie Mae Seaton hasn't fried her last drumstick.

Beloved, but not famous

In a city of famous restaurants, Seaton's is not one of them. Visitors to New Orleans know about Antoine's, Galatoire's, Commander's Palace, Emeril's. Willie Mae's Scotch House — the name refers to its 1957 origins as a bar — isn't even the best-known restaurant in her neighborhood; just two blocks away is Dooky Chase, a black Creole landmark, which also was flooded out.

It was the locals who knew about Willie Mae's. For decades, an interracial crowd including judges and lawyers and several mayors has gone there for lunch in an eight-table dining room decorated with religious art and a portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. The menu is as down-home as Seaton, a gray-headed Mississippi native who smiles under big glasses and calls everyone "baby." She serves country vegetables and old favorites like pork chops and smothered veal and fried chicken, her specialty.

"Nobody fries chicken like I fries chicken," she says, refusing to divulge any secrets except to say that she uses a wet batter and a deep-fryer. "You couldn't pan-fry as much chicken as I've got to fry."

Seaton's following broadened in recent years as New Orleans journalists like Lolis Eric Elie, a Times-Picayune columnist, started to champion her restaurant. Influential food writers like Vogue's

Jeffrey Steingarten and The New Yorker's Calvin Trillin dropped by. The James Beard Foundation, which stages the food world's equivalent of the Oscars, took note.

Elie accompanied Seaton to Manhattan last May to accept the prize. "She was the belle of the ball," he says, remembering how she charmed the food glitterati and kept her stamina during the swirl of cocktail parties.

After the award, New Orleans leaders threw Seaton a birthday gala. Tourists flocked to her corner cafe and sang her praises on Internet food sites.

"I just proposed marriage to Willie Mae after eating her fried chicken," wrote Diner Girl on eGullet.org. "I love this woman, and if there was ever a reason to approve stem cell research legislation for cloning, this is it."

Then came Katrina.

'We need to get back'

On the last Sunday in August, Seaton heeded the city's evacuation order and drove with her family to Shreveport, La., a trip that usually takes six hours but lasted 15 because of the exodus of traffic. Over the next few days, she watched on TV as her hometown descended into chaos.

Even then, she was itching to return.

"She kept saying we need to get back to New Orleans," says Kerry Seaton Blackmon, a great-granddaughter who worked in the restaurant. "And I'd say, What are you going to do in New Orleans? Look at the TV. People are screaming to get out of there."

Seaton tried to return several times but was stopped at roadblocks. She moved from motel to motel in Mississippi and Louisiana before ending up in Houston with her son Charles, who also works in the restaurant. One day she overheard someone say that flights to New Orleans had resumed. She took one on the spur of the moment without telling her family, who were understandably alarmed, and hired a cab to drive her to her place on the corner of Tonti and St. Ann.

The neighborhood was deserted. Downed trees blocked the sidewalks. Abandoned cars lined the streets. The air reeked of sewage and decay.

Seaton stood in front of her property and stared at the water stain circling the building 4 feet above the ground. It looked like a scummy ring on a bathtub. She didn't bother going in.

A police cruiser pulled up. The officers asked what she was doing.

"This is my place," she told them. "I was in Houston, and I had to come back and see about my business."

They said they couldn't leave her alone, so they picked her up and arranged for emergency lodging. Seaton eventually moved into an apartment across the Mississippi River in Algiers. She returned to her neighborhood in January, moving in with an old friend whose home sat higher above the floodwaters.

"She wanted to keep a closer eye on things," says Seaton Blackmon, who also returned, from Atlanta, where she and her husband rented an apartment after the hurricane. At 26, she wants to run the restaurant whenever her great-grandmother decides to step aside.

Seaton's home and business were uninhabitable after Katrina. The deluge ruined the interior. Like so many others on the Gulf Coast, she had no flood insurance and little in the way of savings.

As word of her plight spread, two organizations united to get her back on her feet.

The Heritage Conservation Network, a preservation group based in Colorado, proposed a work project to repair the 1890s structure. The Southern Foodways Alliance at the University of Mississippi put out a call for volunteers to work a series of weekends in January and February. Some 120 people responded, three times the number that could be accommodated.

But the job is proving more expensive than anyone expected. The cost is estimated at more than $100,000, says alliance director John T. Edge. So far, his group has raised about $10,000 through the sale of pickles (www.southernfood ways.com).

"Mrs. Seaton wants to cook again," he says, "and we want to help her."

Lifted up by volunteers

It's an overcast Friday morning as the work project enters its second weekend. Heaps of lath board and plaster have already been removed from the building, along with a sodden jukebox and a grease-encrusted stove hood that still smelled of chicken. On the sidewalk out front, a dozen volunteers gather over coffee and Mardi Gras king cake to get their assignments. The workers include two graduate students from North Carolina, an Episcopal priest from New Mexico, a couple who ran a bakery in northern California and one Beard award-nominated chef, John Currence of City Grocery in Oxford, Miss.

For at least two of the laborers, this dank scene of destruction is all too familiar.

"We were doing this kind of work in our home last fall," says Becky Feder, whose bottom floor was flooded by Katrina's storm surge in Ocean Springs, Miss.

Suited up in white coveralls and respirators that make them look like hazmat technicians, she and her husband, Ron, get busy gutting Seaton's kitchen. Becky takes a whack at a partially rotted 2-by-4 and laughs. "This is a good way to take out our frustration."

At lunchtime, someone goes down the street to fetch Seaton. For the next hour, she sits outside the restaurant in a lawn chair — an elderly peacock in red sweater, white kerchief and burgundy slacks — and holds court.

"Y'all didn't throw away my skillets, did you?" she says. "You know I can clean those up."

Seaton is so cheerful, it hardly seems possible she was washed out of her home and business less than five months before.

The reason? The volunteers.

"These people have put me up on a golden platter and carried me around," she says. "And I want to do something for them. I haven't got any money. But when I'm up and running, I want everyone to come back so I can fix them a big dinner. Pork chops, smothered veal, limey beans, string beans ... "

She rises up in her chair, excited by the mere sound of her menu.
"Baby, it isn't just going to be chicken."

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