Omnivore - Check out Salon’s interview with John T. Edge

For our upcoming annual Best of Atlanta issue, we have selected the return to Southern cooking as the most notable food trend of the last year. Former Atlantan Adam Roberts has a great interview in Salon with John T. Edge, who was just here to speak and sign copies of the updated version of his book, Southern Belly: The Ultimate Food Lover’s Companion to the South. (The Salon link requires a free site pass, granted for viewing a brief ad.)

Here’s a sample:

Except for sex, eating is the most intimate activity we regularly engage in with others. The fight of the citizens of the South to exclude blacks from churches and schools — well, the subtext of that was: “If we let you sit down next to us at the restaurant, the next thing we know you’ll be diddling our wives.” But there were multiple contradictions there too, not the least of which was that the food was oftentimes prepared by African-Americans. The tradition of Southern cooking, the greatness of Southern cookery, leverages for a large part the expertise and the knowledge of African-American cooks. We were very comfortable with blacks cooking our food, but if blacks went from the kitchen to the dining room that’s where the problems began.

You should check out Adam’s stellar food blog, Amateur Gourmet. Adam’s own collection of essays is due out soon.