Soul food is an ethnic cuisine traditionally high in proteins, carbohydrates and fried meat originating in the Southern United States. It originated from the cuisines of enslaved Africans trafficked to the North American colonies through the Atlantic slave trade during the Antebellum period and is closely associated with the cuisine of the American South. The expression "soul food" originated in the mid-1960s, when "soul" was a common word used to describe African-American culture. Soul food uses cooking techniques and ingredients from West African, Western European, and Indigenous cuisine of the Americas.
The cuisine of the Southern United States encompasses diverse food traditions of several subregions, including Tidewater, Appalachian, Lowcountry, Cajun, Creole, and Floribbean cuisine. In recent history, elements of Southern cuisine have spread to other parts of the United States, influencing other types of American cuisine.
Barbecue or barbeque is a term used with significant regional and national variations to describe various cooking methods that use live fire and smoke to cook the food. The term is also generally applied to the devices associated with those methods, the broader cuisines that these methods produce, and the meals or gatherings at which this style of food is cooked and served. The cooking methods associated with barbecuing vary significantly but most involve outdoor cooking.
Wolfgang Johannes Puck is an Austrian-American chef and restaurateur.
Marcus Samuelsson is an Ethiopian-born Swedish-American celebrity chef, restaurateur and television personality. He is the head chef of Red Rooster in Harlem, New York.
Rick Bayless is an American chef and restaurateur who specializes in traditional Mexican cuisine with modern interpretations. He is widely known for his PBS series Mexico: One Plate at a Time. Among his various accolades are a Michelin star, the title of Top Chef Masters, and seven James Beard Awards.
Steven Raichlen is an American culinary writer, TV host, and novelist.
José Ramón Andrés Puerta is a Washington, D.C.-based, Spanish-American chef and restaurateur. He owns restaurants in several cities around the United States, and has won a number of awards, both for his cooking, and for his humanitarian work. He is a professor and the founder of the Global Food Institute at George Washington University.
Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor was an American culinary anthropologist, griot, poet, food writer, and broadcaster on public media. Born into a Gullah family in the Low Country of South Carolina, she moved with them as a child to Philadelphia during the Great Migration. Later she lived in Paris before settling in New York City. She was active in the Black Arts Movement and performed on Broadway.
Bryant Terry is an African-American vegan chef, food justice activist, and author. He has written four vegan cookbooks and cowrote a book about organic eating. He won a 2015 James Beard Foundation Leadership Award for his food justice work. In 2021 he was awarded a NAACP Image Award for his book Vegetable Kingdom, which received a starred review from Publishers Weekly.
Tanya Holland is an American celebrity chef, restaurateur, podcast host, writer, and cookbook author. She is known as an expert of soul food. Holland is an alumna of Bravo TV's Top Chef, where she competed on the 15th season. She was the owner of Brown Sugar Kitchen in Oakland, California, which received national recognition and multiple Michelin Bib Gourmand awards.
Michael Solomonov is an Israeli chef known for his restaurants in Center City, Philadelphia. His first restaurant Zahav, founded in 2008, has received national recognition including the James Beard Foundation "Outstanding Restaurant" in 2019. Solomonov was also awarded Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic in 2011, Cookbook of the Year in 2016, and Outstanding Chef in 2017 from the James Beard Foundation. In 2021, The New York Times named his restaurant Laser Wolf as one of "the 50 places in America we're most excited about right now."
Tiyan Alile is a Nigerian-American celebrity chef and restaurateur. She established Culinary Academy, the first culinary school in Nigeria. A few of her former restaurants include a grill at the Ibadan Golf Club and a modernized Nigerian restaurant. She is the current President of The Culinary Arts Practitioners Association in Nigeria, the founder and promoter of Culinary Academy and the Executive Chef of Tarragon, a fine dining restaurant and wine club. She has been involved in planning a number of events in the hospitality space and delivering masterclasses at the Fiesta of Flavours Food Fairs, the GTBank Food and Drink Fair, the Mzansi Culinary Festival (SA).
Patricia Jinich is a Mexican chef, TV personality, cookbook author, educator, and food writer. She is best known for her James Beard Award-winning and Emmy-nominated public television series Pati's Mexican Table. Her first cookbook, also titled Pati's Mexican Table, was published in March 2013, her second cookbook, Mexican Today, was published in April 2016, and her third cookbook, Treasures of the Mexican Table, was published in November 2021.
Leroy Haynes (1914–1986) was an expat American restaurateur and actor who resided in Paris, France. As an actor, he appeared in The Butterfly Affair, Bons Baisers de Hong Kong, and Ace High. His restaurant, Chez Haynes was a well known and iconic restaurant which would be visited by well known actors and entertainers.
The 49th NAACP Image Awards ceremony, presented by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), honored outstanding representations and achievements of people of color in motion pictures, television, music, and literature during the 2017 calendar year. The ceremony took place on January 15, 2018 at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, was hosted by Anthony Anderson and broadcast on TV One.
Michael W. Twitty is an African-American Jewish writer, culinary historian, and educator. He is the author of The Cooking Gene, published by HarperCollins/Amistad, which won the 2018 James Beard Foundation Book Award for Book of the Year as well as the category for writing. The book was also a finalist for The Kirkus Prize in nonfiction, the Art of Eating Prize and a Barnes and Noble New Discoveries finalist in nonfiction.
Sean Sherman is an Oglala Lakota Sioux chef, cookbook author, forager, and promoter of indigenous cuisine. Sherman founded the indigenous food education business and caterer The Sioux Chef and cofounded with then-partner Dana Thompson the nonprofit North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems (NĀTIFS). He received a James Beard Foundation Leadership Award and his 2017 cookbook, The Sioux Chef's Indigenous Kitchen, won the 2018 James Beard Award for Best American Cookbook. In 2022 the restaurant he co-owned with Thompson, Owamni, won the James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant.
The James Beard Foundation Awards are annual awards presented by the James Beard Foundation to recognize culinary professionals in the United States. The awards recognize chefs, restaurateurs, authors and journalists each year, and are generally scheduled around James Beard's May birthday.
