The Southern Foodways Alliance, the food world's favorite non-profit and symposia host, documents and celebrates the food cultures of the American South through a variety of initiatives — collecting oral histories, mentoring writers, publishing a journal and a podcast. They also produce beautiful and impressive documentaries. Some center on cooks, some on food producers, but all tell intimate and fascinating stories exploring regional food culture.
This year, Eater is teaming up with the SFA to spotlight their documentary work, premiering a short film every other week. This next piece focuses on Mashama Bailey, a chef who moved back to Savannah, Georgia after years cooking in New York to open The Grey, a brand new and critically acclaimed Southern restaurant located in an old Greyhound bus terminal. Says Bailey:
To be a woman a part of this, to be a black woman a part of this, and to be in the south in a Jim Crow-era building, it is beyond, it is amazing. I don't think my grandmother or my great-grandparents would have even dreamed that this day would be possible.
Check it out and check back here for more.
