In 1971 the iconic chef finished writing her first book, The Edna Lewis Cookbook. Here, friends and protégés reflect on her lasting impact.
“As a chef, I was relying on cooking as a way to get somewhere else, but what Edna Lewis showed me was that I had no reason to apologize for where I already was. In her written accounts of the people, recipes, rituals, and landscape of her early childhood in Freetown, Virginia—a small settlement founded at the end of the Civil War by her formerly enslaved grandfather—she found no shame or need to escape. Only integrity, dignity, and value in humble rural culture. It is thanks to her and our decades-long friendship that I have dedicated my career to the food of the American South.” —Scott Peacock, chef and restaurateur. Read the full essay here »
“What Edna Lewis gave me were clear principles. Because of her philosophy I was able to articulate my own: one of excellence and respect, of honoring the traditions you come from and the ancestors you represent. She brought cooking into a learned space and talked about it like the Europeans did, but in an American vernacular coming out of the African American farming experience. It wasn’t presented as “ethnic.” It wasn’t dumbed down. She laid a real foundation, a consciousness for the American chef. I mean, if you can’t build on that platform, maybe you need to go into computer science.” —Alexander Smalls, chef and restaurateur. Read the full essay here »
So yes this is a love poem of the highest order because the next best cook in the world, my grandmother being the best, just had a birthday and all the asparagus and wild greens and quail and tomatoes on the vines and little peas in spring and half runners in early summer and all the wonderful musty things that come from the ground said EDNA LEWIS is having a birthday and all of us who love all of you who love food wish her a happy birthday because we who are really smart know that chefs make the best lovers…especially when they serve it with oysters on the half shell. —Nikki Giovanni, an excerpt from the 1997 poem, “The Only True Lovers Are Chefs or Happy Birthday Edna Lewis”
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March 24, 2021
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How 1971 Changed the Way We Eat Forever - Bon Appetit
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