Get Southern food history at your fingertips.
Watch the docuseries, “Finding Edna Lewis,” available on VPM Culture YouTube and social media channels. Host and award-winning food writer and podcaster Deb Freeman explores the life and legacy of Virginia chef Edna Lewis, the “Queen of Southern Cooking.”
A seven-minute episode drops the third Friday of each month until February, leading to a one-hour television broadcast sometime that month. There will be an in-person premiere event in Richmond, which will include some never-before-seen footage. Dates and times for the event will be announced.
The first installment was released on July 19 and featured chef Leah Branch of The Roosevelt in Richmond. Freeman and Branch prepared Lewis’ pan-fried quail with country ham while discussing Branch’s plans to have an Edna Lewis dinner at the restaurant.
Lewis was born in 1916 in Freetown, about 85 miles northwest of Richmond in a village co-founded by her grandfather who was born enslaved. In 1948, she became a cook at Café Nicholson in Manhattan, New York, which was frequented by big names such as Gloria Vanderbilt and Eleanor Roosevelt. John Nicholson, the owner, offered her a job after attending a dinner party in her home. She was one of few Black female chefs at that time. Lewis worked there for five years. At some point, she opened and closed her restaurant. She gained acclaim for her books; “The Edna Lewis Cookbook,” which was published in 1972 and four years later “The Taste of Country Cooking,” which became a bestseller and was reprinted 23 times. It took 12 more years before fans read her next release, “In Pursuit of Flavor.” Before retiring in 1995, she cooked at the historic Gage and Tollner in Brooklyn, New York. Lewis’ final book, “The Gift of Southern Cooking,” was co-authored with Scott Peacock in 2003. Lewis is credited with changing the way people perceived Southern cooking and became one of the first pioneers of the farm-to-table movement.
Each episode of the docuseries will reveal more about Lewis through conversations and cooking with guests such as historian and cookbook author Jessica Harris and chef Adrienne Cheatham, author of “Sunday Best: Cooking Up the Weekend Spirit Everyday.”
Freeman hopes the documentary makes people proud of Virginia food, helps them understand the variety of Black foodways and encourages people to open a cookbook and cook.
“Eating something at its peak of flavor and being intentional with ingredients can create something special,” she said. “That’s what Edna Lewis did with her cookbooks and legacy.”
Lewis died in 2006.
Rekaya Gibson, 757-295-8809, rekaya.gibson@virginiamedia.com; on X, @gibsonrekaya
