Christopher Meyers

“Cracking the code of the vernacular is just half the battle. Fish are as seasonal as birds or fruit. Their world is invisible to us unless we are on intimate terms with it. I felt nauseous writing about this part of the foodscape because unlike my father and ancestors before him, I had never spent any measurable time "gone fishin" in my life. I felt deprived of a harmony robbed of me by pollution, fear of nature, overpopulation, and poor stewardship of water and air, but something in me felt healed knowing the explorers of the next generation could identify bream and its habits, getting knowledge passed down from the generations gone fishin' before.”
― Michael W. Twitty, The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South

“JJ, as a professional chef, defends the ground on which he stands. “ When we were promoting the cuisine of the Cecil, I got into a little argument with one sister. I said our cuisine is the celebration of the food of slaves. She winced. ‘ How can you celebrate the slaves?’ No, I’m not celebrating slavery, I’m celebrating how they survived, and you have to know the source and what happens when people from that background met incoming migrants from Asia. But that’s the part I really need to know. I never made it to the slave castle and that’s why I need to get back. I’m going to learn more about our cooking, the way our ancestral grandmothers cooked because at the end of the day, your goal as a chef is you want to cook like your grandmother.”
― Michael W. Twitty, The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South

“There is no chef without a homeland. To be a chef today is to center yourself in the traditions of your roots and use them to define your art and speak to any human being about who you are; your plate is your flag. Many of our most pungent memories are carried through food, just as connections to our ancestors are reaffirmed by cooking the dishes handed down to us. For some chefs, this bond is as easy as pointing to a Tuscan village or a Korean neighborhood, while others adopt the foods of culinary kinfolk outside their own background and use them to express their personal identity. Many take for granted their fast and easy connections to a food narrative that grounds them in a tradition, gives them a broad palette to explore, and affords them a genuine taste of eudaemonia, all of which is the holistic feeling of flourishing in life; and of course it is often blissfully apolitical.”
― Michael W. Twitty