These leading chefs won’t let Atlanta forget Edna Lewis

Credit: Alphonso Whitfield

Credit: Alphonso Whitfield

The Edna Lewis Sunday Supper is in its fourth year of celebrating the life and legacy of Lewis, a pioneering Black chef considered a matriarch of not just Black food but Southern cooking.

Born in 1916 and raised on a family farm in Virginia, Lewis began her career in New York City as a seamstress. While her sewing talent attracted celebrity clientele like Marilyn Monroe, Lewis herself became renowned for hosting salon-style dinner parties where she’d prepare dishes she learned to cook growing up in the South.

In 1948, she opened a 30-seat restaurant in Manhattan called Café Nicholson, which served Southern staples like fried chicken, she-crab soup, country ham and biscuits. Needless to say, she turned New York City out. Café Nicholson became a storied hangout, regularly hosting elites like Eleanor Roosevelt, Salvador Dalí and Gloria Vanderbilt.

Through Café Nicholson and her time leading the kitchen at New York’s iconic restaurant Gage & Tollner, at the age of 72, Lewis introduced many traditionally Southern dishes to Northeastern diners. She also influenced what’s now known as “farm-to-table” cuisine, focusing intensely on seasonality and advocating for the use and enjoyment of fresh vegetables in all cooking. Revolutionary at the time, her idea has taken hold throughout the U.S.

Lewis lived for several years in Decatur, working with her good friend chef Scott Peacock of Horseradish Grill and Watershed to document her recipes. Chef Matt Marcus, owner of Truth Be Told, worked under Peacock at Watershed and met Lewis in his formative years. Marcus now owns several items formerly belonging to Lewis, including recipes and vintage pie tins.

“It shows up in every single thing that I do,” Marcus said of Lewis’ influence on his style of cooking. “There is a constant underlying understanding of tasting raw product, putting your hands in the dirt, feeling, cooking with your hands — just being involved … with the food at every level.”

Credit: Handout

Credit: Handout

Marcus said he, too, likes that Atlanta has recurring opportunities to learn more about Lewis.

“If Edna ever me taught me anything, it’s good food knows no bounds,” he said.

Many culinarians, including Dixon and other affiliates of Stolen Goods, an Atlanta-based crew of mostly Black chefs and people of color, believe Lewis should be a household name.

“I mean, if you think about it, she is to the South what Alice Waters is to the West Coast,” Dixon said.

Sunday’s dinner will highlight Africa’s influence on American cuisine and culture, and its diversity across the diaspora. But it’s all through a lens of appreciation for this Southern matriarch of American food, according to Stolen Goods founder Max Hines, executive chef of Breaker Breaker.

Credit: Alphonso Whitfield

Credit: Alphonso Whitfield

“I don’t think you could look at Southern cooking without her being a part of that conversation; that’s no matter what color you are,” Hines said in an AJC interview. “If you enjoy food in the South, and they’re cooking with intention and seasonal, then there’s probably a little bit of Edna Lewis in there.”

Hines is preparing the first course of the dinner: roasted sweet potato mezzaluna with crispy Brussels sprouts, salsa macha and Parmesan cheese. He said the dinner is particularly meaningful in a city like Atlanta.

“If you look at some of the members of Stolen Goods and other chefs, they’ve taken what we would consider soul food and given it more international influences. I feel like that’s Atlanta. That’s Buford Highway. That’s the Civil Rights Movement. That’s the melting pot, and that’s why it makes sense for it to be here,” Hines said.

Credit: Alphonso Whitfield

Credit: Alphonso Whitfield

In addition to Hines’ pasta and Dixon’s Cheerwine duck, the menu will also feature contributions from chefs Cleophus Heathington Jr., now executive chef at Los Angeles restaurant Lucia, and Demetrius Brown, owner of Bread & Butterfly, where the dinner will be held.

An optional beverage pairing from mixologist Keyatta Mincey is also available at additional cost. Mincey said all guests will receive a complimentary welcome beverage: bourbon punch made with Black-owned Edmond’s Honor bourbon whiskey, cocoa nibs, hibiscus, rose hips and cinnamon.

Credit: Alphonso Whitfield

Credit: Alphonso Whitfield

Mincey hopes the family-style dinner brings people of different backgrounds to the same table.

“I’m really hoping that there are people in the room that are not Black because I really feel like it’s the time where non-Black people need to see that we’re out here just trying to live and be who we are. We don’t hate anybody. We always want people to be a part of what we’re doing,” she said. “Try something new.”

Calling Lewis a motivational figure, Dixon said it’s important that she’s seen not only for her impact but also her perseverance, particularly in a business that often neglects to properly credit African Americans with the culinary contributions they’ve made in the U.S.

Dixon said her story influenced his approach to his own professional journey from chef to restaurant owner, through the kitchens of some of Atlanta’s most esteemed restaurants like the now-shuttered Spence and the Shed at Glenwood.

“I know how hard it was for me and all I’ve had to go through. I can only imagine the world that Edna Lewis cooked in, not only as a Black person, but as a Black woman.”

Edna Lewis Sunday Supper: Sunday, Feb. 22. 5:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Bread & Butterfly, 290 Elizabeth St. NE F, Atlanta. 678-515-4536. Tickets are available here.