Southern Foodways Alliance Syposium Was A Smash Hit

I am so absolutely stuffed after soaking up three days of amazing food and fellowship at the Southern Foodways Alliance Symposium in Oxford, Miss. The theme this year was music and it was enlightening and entertaining to hear food imagery pop up in everything from ragtime to hip hop.

I've been going to this magical weekend for five years and it just keeps getting better. I'm not just talking about the incredible meals cooked by famous chefs (Susan Spicer from Bayona in New Orleans, Momofuku's David Chang pictured plating a lunch and Oxford's hometown hero John Currence, winner of this year's James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef in the Southeast were featured, just to name a few). What I adore about this epic event are the surprises and the joy of learning something new. Who knew Jelly Roll doubled for a roll in the hay in many blues songs from way back when?

One of the most riveting speakers was seasoned Nashville singer/songwriter Marshall Chapman who talked about the challenges of finding good food on the road. She's probably logged more miles in more than 30 years of touring than most musicians, much of it in a cramped van, where band members took turns sleeping on a pad laid out across a couple of amps.

I loved her eloquent telling of how she finally declared she would only play in places where there was a good chance of finding tasty local fare. That boiled down to Texas, Louisiana, most anywhere along the Gulf Coast and New York. She conjured a beautiful scene of looking for a post-show snack in a New York snowstorm when the band stumbled into a homey Italian place, the city still under a blanket of white.

Lucky for the 300-plus food writers, scholars, cooks and food enthusiasts who gathered for the Symposium, Marshall said she was moved to perform a song for us after eating a spectacular meal at Big Bad Breakfast, bringing down the house with "I Love Everybody, I Love Everything."

That sentiment kept rolling around in my head throughout the weekend. And I left Oxford, feeling full and a little bit blue, but already thinking about next year. Y'all should come!

Stay tuned for more SFA Symposium dish from Brad Thomas Parsons, who I had the pleasure of hanging with down South.

--Leslie Kelly