Gravy

In “A Taste of Mexico City In Memphis,” Gravy reporter Mackenzie Martin visits Las Tortugas Deli Mexicana, a Memphis restaurant run by a father and son duo: Jonathan and José “Pepe”Magallanes.

Every day at Las Tortugas starts the same way: at the markets. According to Pepe, he and Jonathan go daily to source the produce and proteins they need for the two locations. The idea is to replicate the kind of hyper-fresh cuisine that Pepe grew up eating in Mexico City taquerias and torterias as a kid in the 1940s and ‘50s. 

Another nod...

In “Cultivating Korean Greens in North Texas,” Gravy reporter Elizabeth Myong explores how Korean American communities are gardening in North Texas. She reflects on her upbringing in the Richardson suburbs, where she grew up eating Korean herbs and plants from her family’s backyard. 

Those fresh greens were made into dishes with “son-mat,” which directly translates to “hand taste.” It’s the flavor of seasoned hands, usually of a mother or grandmother, making something especially for you. It’s the flavor of love and care mixed with earthen, locally-grown staples like kkaenip (sesame leaves), buchu (Korean garlic chives...

In “Brisket, Kugel, and Community in Birmingham,” Gravy reporter Olivia Ware Terenzio visits Birmingham, Alabama’s Levite Jewish Community Center (“The J”) for the Jewish Food and Culture Fest, a celebration of kugel and cabbage rolls for Jews and non-Jews alike. This episode explores what role the festival plays in a state where less than half of one percent of the population is Jewish—and what we really mean when we talk about Jewish Food. 

The festival started more than two decades ago, which is impressive, considering that there are only about 6,300 Jews in the Birmingham metro area of 1.1 mil...

In Texas and Louisiana, chefs, millers, and home bakers are increasingly turning to using whole-grain, stone-milled flour in their breads, cakes, and pastries. These flours are milled with the ancient process of stone milling: flour is produced by crushing the whole kernel of the wheat grain between enormous stones, versus the more modern process of roller milling, which produces the finely grained, snow-white flour most of us are accustomed to. Stone-ground flour is coarser and more nutrient dense, and can also be more difficult to source, use, and store thanconventional flour. Despite that, these flours are no longer the sole...

In “There’s No Business Like Hansen’s Sno Bliz-ness,” Gravy reporter Eve Troeh takes us to New Orleans, home of the sno-ball. In the South you need strategies to beat the summer heat, and ice plays a big role. Street vendors used to shave big blocks of ice by hand and add flavored syrup—a treat that became known as a sno-ball in the Big Easy. 

In the late 1930s, a local man, Ernest Hansen, invented a machine that changed the tradition. Sharp blades, encased in metal, turned chunks of ice into the most fluffy, fine “snow,” and he e...

In "The Piggly Wiggly Way: A Memphis Story, "Gravy reporter Mackenzie Martin visits the Pink Palace Museum in Memphis to understand how Piggly Wiggly changed grocery shopping forever.

Meal kits. Instacart. Door Dash. At the turn of the 20th century, we didn’t have all of these options. You mostly showed up at a counter and told a clerk what you wanted, and they’d gather all the necessary items and package them up for you. And there wasn’t much in the way of competing brands, either.

Then everything started to change in a big wa...

In “Making Groceries,” New Orleans-based Gravy journalist Katie Jane Fernelius travels to the frontlines of food insecurity in Louisiana—from the bustling warehouse floor of Second Harvest Food Bank in south Louisiana to a grocery aisle in rural Evangeline Parish—to examine the place of food stamps in fighting hunger.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, is a federal food-assistance program that helps low-income households buy groceries. It has consistently been shown to reduce food insecurity and poverty, especially among children.

But SNAP has also been at the center of policy fights for decades, as legis...

In “Spilling the Tea in the Mississippi Pine Belt” Gravy reporter Georgia Sparling explores the tea farms popping up in Mississippi’s Pine Belt, where the tannic soil is perfect for growing tea.

While many think of strong, syrupy sweet, ice-cold tea as quintessentially Southern, the only thing truly Southern about this ubiquitous beverage is how we drink it. Almost every tea leaf we consume in the United States comes from somewhere else.

Tea has been cultivated for more than 5,000 years, first in China and now in India, Nepal, Kenya, and eve...

In “Tasting Haiti in New Orleans,” Gravy reporter Eva Tesfaye gives listeners a taste of Haitian cuisine—and history—in New Orleans.

For Haitians living in the Big Easy, many things remind them of home, from Second Line parades to the architecture to the food. Red beans and rice, boudin, jambalaya… all these iconic Louisiana dishes have connections to Haiti.

That’s because Haitian migrants profoundly shaped New Orleans culture. At the turn of the nineteenth century, enslaved people on the island of St. Domingue broke free from their chains. Led...

Martin Padgett wrote the feature essay “Object Permanence” for the fall 2025 issue of Gravy Quarterly, our sister publication. In the piece, he catalogs the objects we live with actively, those we tolerate like inanimate roommates, and those we give away, sometimes to make room for the new. We liked it so much that we asked them to read it for Gravy podcast listeners.

To read other engaging essays in Gravy, have it shipped to your mailbox by becoming an SFA member at southernfoodways.org, or sign up for a subscription at Hub City Book Shop.

In “American Barbecue’s European Adventure,” Gravy reporter Eve Troeh takes us to meet restaurateurs in Prague, Czech Republic (Big Smokers) and Berlin, Germany (Big Stuff Smoked BBQ) who have gone to great lengths to import the techniques and equipment needed to bring American barbecue to their communities. Along with developing their own recipes, working closely with suppliers to select the right breeds and cuts of meat, and perfecting their overnight smoking process, they have also had to cultivate an understanding of and appreciation for BBQ among their customers.

While “low and slow” smoked barbecue may seem ubiquitous...

In Highland County, Virginia, there are more trees than people. Specifically, the County is rich in sugar maples, the trees whose sap produces maple syrup.

Better known as a “northern” sweetener, maple syrup is something that Highland County residents have been producing for decades—likely as early as the County was first settled in the mid-1700s. They learned the practice from local Indigenous tribes, who took part in tapping trees themselves.

In “Sap's Rising in Highland County, Virginia,” Gravy reporter Sarah Jessee explores Highland County maple syrup production in the pas...

Today, Gravy shares with you the Real Organic Podcast, the award-winning “Best Sustainability, Environment & Climate Podcast” produced by the Real Organic Project.

Recently named one of the "best climate podcasts" by Earth.org, the Real Organic Podcast uncovers the forces reshaping organic food–like how corporate lobbying is redefining what “organic” means and how industry use of new terms like “regenerative” and “hydroponics” are not really organic. Hosted by Linley Dixon and Dave Chapman, each episode features deep conversations with farmers, scientists, chefs, and journalists fighting to keep organic food honest.

Like today’s episo...

In “Sniffing Out American Truffles,” Gravy reporter Irina Zhorov explores truffle production in the U.S.—and how the South is emerging as a hub. 

Truffle production in the U.S. is a young industry. Commercial cultivation started in the 1980s. Truffles are a complicated business. When you’re farming truffles, what you’re really growing is trees. The truffles are fungi that grow on tree roots. The tree and the fungi work synergistically, the tree providing sugars to the fungi for nourishment and the fungi helping the roots reach further into the soil to absorb mo...

In “Virginia Has the Blue Catfish Blues,”Gravy reporter Anya Groner takes listeners to the Chesapeake Bay, where, over the past decade, invasive blue catfish have derailed the ecosystem in the East Coast’s largest fish nursery.

Native to the Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio River basins, blue catfish were first stocked in the bay’s tributary rivers in the 1970s to provide a new trophy fish for recreational anglers. At the time, no one predicted that a freshwater catfish could make its way into the brackish waters of the Chesapeake Bay, much less outcompete native crabs, oysters, and fish...

In “A Taste of the Other Georgia in Pensacola,” Gravy reporter Martin Padgett ventures to Pensacola to sample a bit of Georgia—a Georgia much further away than the five-hour car ride to Atlanta.

Florida’s Gulf Coast brings to mind pictures of crystal-sand beaches and the Navy’s Blue Angels, but until recently, it hasn’t been known as a haven for global food. That’s begun to change, and as Pensacola has begun to grow out of its small-town roots, Chef George Lazi has brought a new cuisine to the table, along with a symbol of hospitality...

Atlanta can seem like it’s a very long way from the oystering communities in Florida’s Panhandle. There are, in fact, hundreds of miles between them. But there are ways even distant places are intimately connected, perhaps more intimately than you’d guess. And when one of those places is in trouble, those connections get revealed.

This is the story of what’s happening to the oysters in Apalachicola Bay, and why that has inspired interstate legal battles—even a Supreme Court lawsuit. It’s also the story of what a place whose whole identity revolves around seafo...

Order a catfish po-boy or a few pounds of crawfish in Acadiana any Friday between Mardi Gras and Easter, and you may be surprised to learn that your delight is another person’s sacrifice. The Catholic tradition of abstaining from meat on Fridays in Lent is alive and well in Southwest Louisiana, a region where more than a third identify as Catholic. Thanks to the long list of Catholic churches and restaurants that roll out an array of delectable seafood options on Lenten Fridays, it’s not much of a burden. St. Francis of Assisi in Breaux Bridge and the...

In “Trade, Taste, and the Evolving Tale of Texas Whiskey,” Gravy reporter Evan Stern visits the Lone Star State to get a taste of a growing movement: Texas whiskey.

Given the importance of saloons in cowboy culture and western mythology, one might think Texas whiskey has a long and storied history. But though Texans have always had a fondness for the demon drink, as a legal industry, Texas whiskey is barely even twenty years old. Despite this youth, however, its growth has been explosive. While as recently as 2010, the state claimed a mere two whis...

In “Fruitcake in Space,” Gravy reporter Bronwen Wyatt explores a bizarre footnote in the annals of human space travel. In 1968, a scientist at a military research facility developed a very unusual recipe: a nutritionally-fortified fruitcake designed as an emergency ration for astronauts. It might be easy to dismiss this fruitcake, but we’re here to argue that it’s part of a larger story—one that takes us from the early days of NASA’s space program to our current quest for Mars. Wyatt investigates the importance of safe preservation techniques in space, how NASA determines what food astronauts will actuall...

In “How a Humble Crab Dish Became the Soul of Tampa,” Gravy reporter Nicole Hutcheson travels across Tampa to trace the story of a lesser-known local dish—crab chilau.

Every city has a dish that says something true about the people who built it. In Tampa, that dish is crab chilau. Made with blue crabs and simmered in tomatoes, garlic, spices, and served over pasta, crab chilau is shaped by Sicilians, Cuban and Afro-Cuban families, and Tampa’s Black community—each group adding a twist to make it their own.

Hutcheson’s journey travels from historic Ybo...

In “Southern caviar is wild, nutty, and...sustainable?” Gravy reporter Irina Zhorov takes us to the Tombigbee River, where valuable paddlefish swim, and makes a case for caviar as an ingredient with a Southern pedigree.

Every mature female fish makes roe—that’s the term for their clusters of unfertilized eggs. But caviar, for purists, comes from an ancient fish called sturgeon. There are more than two dozen species of sturgeon, but the best-known caviars come from a handful of species native to Russia and Central Asia: Beluga, Sevruga, Kaluga and Osetra. These fish are diadromous, which means th...

In “Boars Gone Wild: Texans Hunt, Trap, and Cook a Piggy Pest,” Gravy reporter Georgia Sparling takes a deep dive into the conundrum around Texas’ pig problem.

They say everything’s bigger in Texas, and that is certainly true of the wild hog population. Millions of feral pigs roam the rural (and not so rural) areas of the Lone Star State — destroying farmland, pushing out native animals, obstructing roadways, and leaving behind billions of dollars in damage each year. And their numbers are growing at an astounding rate.

Hunters and landowners in Texas have a green ligh...

In “Texas Pecans, A Thirsty Nut to Crack,” Gravy reporter Avery Thompson explores how a changing climate is impacting pecans in Texas, and introduces listeners to the innovative Texans using both age-old techniques and twenty-first-century adaptations to ensure Texas pecans make it to the grocery shelves—and into a Thanksgiving pie near you.

For about as long as there have been humans in what we now know as Texas, they have likely found sustenance in the land’s native pecans. For many years, Texas supplied the world with the bulk of its pecans—but in recent years, the state...

In the sixth and final episode of her six-part Tending series, host Shirlette Ammons seeks insight on the future of Black farming and asks if there is a world in which farmers are not dependent on the USDA.

About Tending

Hosted by award-winning musician and documentary producer Shirlette Ammons, Tending is a six-part narrative series that explores the ongoing struggles of Black farmers through the lens of Pigford v. Glickman—once the largest civil rights class-action lawsuit in U.S. history. Ammons—an eastern North Carolina native with deep farming roots—travels across seven Southern states to...

In this fifth installment of Gravy's Tending series, producer Shirlette Ammons examines the Discrimination Financial Assistance Program, comparing it to the Pigford settlement and assessing whether this new federal program represents a genuine step toward justice for Black farmers.

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The fourth installment of the six-part Tending series explores the power of the USDA's county committees, recounting a Black family’s tragic story of land loss and harassment and examining why these local committees are often called "the last plantation."

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In the third episode of her six-part Tending series, host Shirlette Ammons visits Nicodemus, Kansas, a historic Black settlement, to learn how one family’s decades-long battle against the USDA’s discrimination began and how their case became a foundation for the Pigford v. Glickman lawsuit.

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In this second episode of Tending, Shirlette Ammons travels to Georgia, where she meets two Black farmers whose stories illustrate the emotional and physical toll of fighting the USDA's discrimination.

About Tending

Hosted by award-winning musician and documentary producer Shirlette Ammons, Tending is a six-part narrative series that explores the ongoing struggles of Black farmers through the lens of Pigford v. Glickman—once the largest civil rights class-action lawsuit in U.S. history. Ammons—an eastern North Carolina native with deep farming roots—travels across seven Southern states to meet Pigford claimants and their...

In the first episode of “Tending,” host Shirlette Ammons begins a journey to reclaim her family's legacy by exploring the largest civil rights lawsuit in U.S. history, Pigford v. Glickman, in which Black farmers fought against discrimination by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to save their family land.

About “Tending”

Hosted by award-winning musician and documentary producer Shirlette Ammons, “Tending” is a six-part narrative series that explores the ongoing struggles of Black farmers through the lens of Pigford v. Glickman—once the largest civil rights class-action lawsuit in U.S. history. Ammons—an eastern North Ca...

Listen to Gravy's preview of “Tending,” a 6-part weekly narrative series debuting October 15, 2025. Hosted by award-winning musician and documentary producer Shirlette Ammons, “Tending” explores the ongoing struggles of Black farmers through the lens of Pigford v. Glickman—the largest civil rights class-action lawsuit in U.S. history.  

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In “The Long Recovery: Farmers and Hurricane Helene,” Gravy reporter Irina Zhorov looks at how North Carolina farmers are building back after Hurricane Helene and finds that many still have a long way to go.

The storm hit in late September, 2024. It killed at least 250 people and left nearly $80 billion worth of damage, the majority of that in mountainous western North Carolina. Farmers, who work flood-prone bottomlands and steep slopes in the high country, suffered catastrophic losses.

There are thousands of farms in the region, which prides itself on its local foodways and strong network of p...

In “An Orthodox Jewish Congregation Keeps on (Food) Truckin' in Birmingham,” Gravy reporter Margaret Weinberg Norman documents the story of JJ’s Sandwich Shop, a glatt kosher deli on wheels operated by the oldest Orthodox Jewish congregation in Birmingham, Alabama.

In the Magic City, food trucks are familiar, but both kosher restaurants and authentic delis are rare. Knesseth Israel, founded in 1889, is filling both gaps while exploring a surprising new way to sustain its historic congregation. Like many small Southern synagogues, Knesseth Israel faced dwindling membership, financial pressures, and questions about its future. After selling their synagogue buildi...

In “Southern Cooking Comes to Portugal,” Gravy reporter Adwoa Gyimah-Brempong takes listeners to Porto, the second-largest city in Portugal, which anchors the northern region. Porto is famous for its wine and its hearty francesinha sandwiches. But this city of a quarter million people has a food scene whose depth might surprise you. Porto runs the gamut from picturesque century-old markets to hipster bakeries whose joelho pastries and glazed cornflake croissants frequently spawn lines out the door. And it’s also home to not one, but two Black Alabamian women reinventing what it means to be a Southern chef. While Gravy...

In “We Sure Eat Good When Someone Dies,” Gravy reporter Caleb Johnson takes listeners back to August 2024, when his extended family gathered inside a Baptist church in Arley, Alabama, to mourn the loss of their matriarch—his grandmother, Celia Sampley. Before the funeral service, the church served lunch for the family, including chicken and dumplings, green-bean casserole, and plenty of desserts. A particular cake caught Caleb’s eye that day, called a pea picking cake. In this episode, Caleb steps into the kitchen of the woman who baked that memorable cake and explores how eating something sweet helps us process...

In “Virginia Public Schools Serve Indigenous Cuisine,” Gravy reporter Anya Groner takes listeners to the second annual Indigenous Peoples Feast at the College of William & Mary. The evening’s menu showcases indigenous food–foraged wild rice, duck confit, acorn grits, and a four-corn stew. But these dishes aren’t just for enjoying tonight. With the help of a USDA grant, they’ll eventually be served at public school cafeterias in Virginia’s coastal Tidewater Region.

Coming up with the menu wasn’t easy. Centuries of forced assimilation, land grabs, and genocide prevented cultural knowledge from being passed down through gen...

This week, Gravy is excited to share a special episode from a show we think you’ll love: Culinary Characters Unlocked. Hosted by David Page, the creator of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, the show highlights bold food makers whose stories might surprise you. 

In this episode, we meet chef Marisa Baggett, a Black, Jewish, female sushi chef whose journey began in a Mississippi café where she’d never even seen sushi before. One question from a customer launched her into a new world, eventually leading her to train at the California Sushi Academy and write two cookbooks that m...

While immigration is at the forefront of today’s news cycle, it’s hardly a new issue in Southeast Texas. Since the 1800s, Galveston has been a major port of entry for foreign newcomers. That pattern continues today up Highway 45 in Houston, which ranks among America’s largest destinations for refugee resettlement.

While Harris County has many resources for assistance, transitioning into the workplace in a new country and culture is rarely easy for even the most skilled, educated, and adaptable English-speaking arrivals. But for those arriving from rural and agrarian backgrounds, it is even more difficult. There...

In “What's Brewing in Memphis?” Gravy reporter Brandi Hunter takes listeners to Memphis to explore what it takes to build a craft beer brand in an industry where less than one percent of breweries are Black-owned, and systemic barriers continue to limit growth.

Kelvin Kolheim, founder of Beale Street Brewing Company, is at the center of this episode. A former economic development executive for Memphis, Kolheim turned his hobby into a full-time business. The nuanced craft beer flavors he creates, such as King’s Ransom and Space Age Sippin’, reflect the city’s culture and complexity. Like many indep...

In “There’s No Business Like Hansen’s Sno Bliz-ness,” Gravy reporter Eve Troeh takes us to New Orleans, home of the sno-ball. In the South you need strategies to beat the summer heat, and ice plays a big role. Street vendors used to shave big blocks of ice by hand and add flavored syrup—a treat that became known as a sno-ball in the Big Easy.

In the late 1930s, a local man, Ernest Hansen, invented a machine that changed the tradition. Sharp blades, encased in metal, turned chunks of ice into the most fluffy, fine “snow,” and h...