SMOKES & EARS AT NYC FOOD FILM FESTIVAL, JUNE 25

Geno Lee, recipient of the 2009 Ruth Fertel Keeper of the Flame Award, will be serving pig ear sandwiches at the New York Food Film Festival this weekend while the sold out crowd watches him on the big screen in Smokes & Ears, an SFA film by Joe York.

Check out the Clarion Ledger article on Geno's travels, and listen to filmmaker Joe York talk about the festival (and his other projects) on the radio program Hot Grease.

NASHVILLE FLOOD RELIEF DINNER, JULY 13

Click here for more information and to buy tickets.

GRAVY GULF EDITION: AN IMPORTANT CHAPTER

A DISPATCH FROM ASHLEY HALL:

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 23, 2010

There is a voice of this story that I don’t think I’ve been able to adequately capture. And that is the voice of the Southeast Asian immigrants that populate the fishing communities of southeast Mississippi and southwest Alabama. I wish I had had the opportunity to interview more people about this. But here’s what I know.

Many people don’t know that immigrants from Viet Nam, Cambodia and Loas make up about a third of the population of Bayou la Batre and its environs. They started coming to the US in the mid and late 1970′s as refugees fleeing the Viet Nam war, Communist dictators and the genocidal rule of the Khmer Rouge. They flocked to the fishing and shrimping communities here because shrimping and fishing is what they knew.

“I think they saved the shrimping industry on the Mississippi Gulf coast,” said Richard Gollot, who has run oyster and shrimp processing plants his whole adult life. Oystering and shrimping are grueling work. Once the SE Asian immigrants landed in New Orleans, they began seeking out these most jobs shucking oysters and heading shrimp. And they were good. They were good and they worked longer hours than any of the locals at the time.

Word spread down the coast, and Richard started driving the 90 miles to New Orleans to pick up the refugees who wanted work. He said he was able to increase production, and the oystering became more profitable for him. He said his production levels before the Vietnamese began working for him had been restricted simply by the hours folks were willing to shuck. Eventually the immigrant population proliferated all the way down to Mobile Bay.

A generation has gone by, and many of the workers’ children are now well educated. Many are doctors, from the stories I’ve heard. But they are now and integral part of the local fabric.

An organization called Boat People SOS operates as support for the whole community of Bayou La Batre, but they specialize in translations for the southeast asian immigrants, so that’s who they service most. David Pham, an SOS employee, says that since the spill, demand has spiked. By this past April, the community was well established. SOS was doing a lot of financial literacy classes and English as a second language support. Positive steps, not crisis management. But since the beginning of May they’re helping people file for food stamps, unemployment and BP claims.

Many of the local fisherman are in OK shape, as they can work for BP scouting oil or continue to shrimp in Mississippi. But most of the immigrants work in the support industries. Impaired by the language barrier, they are stuck. Most worked for the processing plants, which now have 70-90% less product to process. A lot of the folks I’ve spoken to say that normally this time of year, they’d be working 70-hour weeks. It is peak shrimping season, after all. But now many are lucky to get 20 hours, if they’re plant hasn’t shut down all together.

If you want to help, you could donate money to their food bank. Many of these lifelong seafood workers are going hungry. Visit Boat People SOS's Gulf Coast Oil Spill page for information.

* * *

Ashley Hall is an SFA member and contributer to Gravy, the SFA's foodletter. She is traveling along the Gulf Coast to capture stories relating to the oil spill as a traveling Gravy correspondent. We'll be posting relevant entries here, but visit the blog she's set up for the project, Third Coast Byways, for more.

GRAVY GULF EDITION: TRAVEL LOG

A DISPATCH FROM ASHLEY HALL:
TUESDAY, JUNE 22, 2010

A few hours ago I arrived in Fairhope, AL and it feels like I’m 1,000 miles away from the fishing communities of southeast Mississippi and southwest Alabama.

As one rolls into the village here you find yoga studios, Aveda spas, and some store that calls itself an “antiquery.” In fact there are dozens of stores here that I would definitely classify as “antiqueries”, if that was a word. I had a cheese plate for dinner with two glasses of Tavel.

It’s lovely here. If you drive to the end of a residential street, you can see the sun set right into Mobile Bay. But right now I’m thinking of earlier today. I spent some time in Biloxi, MS, a small city gutted by Katrina. First thing in the morning, I spoke with Richard Gollot of Gollot Seafood Company, another seafood processor. He gave me a tour of the plant, and I have some great photos. He has a super regional perspective, and the most optimistic attitude I’ve encountered so far.

I sat down with the super-smart, ultra-passionate, spunky, honorary mayor (I only say that because she is so invested in her community), Leonie Johnston. She owns a hair salon, gives back to her community constantly, is on four local boards, and, after a lifetime on the beleaguered shores of Biloxi, is, for the first time, wondering what she has left emotionally.

Frank Parker also generously sat down with me. He’s given oral histories before, to the very talented SFA member, and Salon.com Food Editor Francis Lam. Frank is a devoted, no-nonsense shrimper with a college degree in fish. Now working for BP, he’s bored, but providing well for his family.

Each of these people have a unique perspective of the relationship of oil and Biloxi. They’re all life-long residents, all equally devoted to its success. But emotions today were all over. At one point I was convinced the oil spill was a minor hiccup. Later I felt inspired to action. I knew this would be emotional, and it is. But in the face of these fierce people of Biloxi and Bayou La Batre, these people who lost ev-er-y-thing fewer than five years ago, you can’t help but keep your chin up.

I plan to publish their stories in detail soon. It was an honor to spend time with each of them.

-Ashley Hall

* * *

Ashley Hall is an SFA member and contributer to Gravy, the SFA's foodletter. She is traveling along the Gulf Coast to capture stories relating to the oil spill as a traveling Gravy correspondent. We'll be posting relevant entries here, but visit the blog she's set up for the project, Third Coast Byways, for more.

BUFORD HWY ORAL HISTORY PROJECT NOW ONLINE

EDDIE HERNANDEZ - TAQUERIA DEL SOL from Southern Foodways on Vimeo.

Last week, we introduced you to Frank Ma, grandfather of Atlanta's Chinese restaurant scene. Today, you can meet the rest of the people whose stories were collected by SFA friend and colleague Kate Medley as part of our oral history project documenting Atlanta's Buford Highway. People like Eddie Hernandez of Taqueria del Sol, featured above. Go here to experience the project in its entirety.

We also commissioned a short multi-media piece on Buford Highway through our SFA Greenhouse program. Rachel Bailey, a writer and photographer based in Atlanta, created a slideshow entitled Buford HWY-A Home Away From Home, which you can view here.

For those of you heading to Atlanta this weekend for the SFA field trip, you can look forward to not only meeting some of the subjects of this work, but the the fine folks who collected their stories.

Dig in!

GRAVY GULF EDITION: SEA PEARL SEAFOOD COMPANY

A DISPATCH FROM ASHLEY HALL:


MONDAY, JUNE 22, 2010


I interviewed Greg Ladnier (pronounced “Lad-neer”) very early this morning. Greg is Leslie’s first cousin, and President of the Sea Pearl Seafood Company here in Bayou La Batre. I asked Greg if he’d been working in the seafood business his whole life. “My whole life,” he said, trying compassionately to stifle a chuckle. “More than my whole life, I feel like.”

Greg is a third generation seafood processor, and his son will be the fourth. Though the company started as an oyster processing company in the 1960s, today they just deal in shrimp. Five million pounds of it each year.

His processing plant takes the raw materials and makes them headless, peeled, deveined,frozen, or some combination thereof. In a normal year Greg buys shrimp from about 40 different boats. Right now there are two.

“One of the main reasons that production is down is because all the boats are working for BP trying to clean the spill up,” he said. “Right now there’s more money working for BP than there could be shrimping.” Boat owners who sign up for skimming, booming and spotting duties are said to make about $1200/day, plus expenses.

But even if the shrimpers weren’t in the oil capturing business, there are far fewer waters to shrimp out of now. As of today, Alabama shrimping is completely closed. All the “inside water,” that is, water between the long strand of barrier islands and the mainland, are closed between the eastern bank of the Mississippi River in Louisiana to at least the Florida line. There are shrimp coming out of western Louisiana and Eastern Florida, for now. And there are a few open patches off the coast of Mississippi.

But as much as anything, Greg, like many others I talked to today, is concerned with the negative public relations that Gulf seafood is getting. “People just don’t know the facts. They don’t know how the feds and the states work. They are really micromanaging. If there is any chance of contamination, they close it down.” So basically, seafood is only coming out of the waters that the feds say is clean. I asked if an oil-contaminated shrimp was easy to eyeball. “You can’t see it, but you can smell it. It’s unmistakable. But so far we’ve had zero problems.”

Zero problems with oil in their plant, but plenty of problems with supply. In May they’re production was down 75%, and in June, it’s looking like it’ll be down 50-60%. While Greg thinks this year’s crop in Alabama is a goner, there’s a lot of hope riding on Texas. Texas’s shrimping season starts the latest, this year likely between July 5 and 15.

“If we lose Texas, if the oil moves into Texas, then we’re going to lose a huge amount of our production.” So far there’s no oil in Texas, and none headed that way. But Greg utters the sentiment that’s on everyone’s lips here: “We’re not sure what’s going to happen tomorrow.”

-Ashley Hall

MORE PHOTOS: Go here to view more of Ashley's photos from the Alabama coast.

* * *

Ashley Hall is an SFA member and contributer to Gravy, the SFA's foodletter. She is traveling along the Gulf Coast to capture stories relating to the oil spill as a traveling Gravy correspondent. We'll be posting relevant entries here, but visit the blog she's set up for the project, Third Coast Byways, for more.

GRAVY GULF EDITION: ARRIVING IN BAYOU LA BATRE, ALABAMA

A line of shrimp boats return to the Bayou promptly at 5pm. None carry any shrimp. They are working for BP "spotting oil." That's a boom in the middle. There's an unoiled pelican perched on the left.

A DISPATCH FROM ASHLEY HALL:


SUNDAY, JUNE 21, 2010

As I arrived in Bayou La Batre after my six and a half hour drive, I fell into the supportive embrace of Leslie Mallet Canter. Leslie and her husband Robert took me immediately to the home of Leslie’s parents, Wallace and Francis Mallet. There I was introduced to a half-dozen family members stopping by for Father’s Day greetings. And there, as I sat in a recliner so plush it almost swallowed me up, we talked oil.

Most tourists who visit the Alabama Gulf Coast will never visit Bayou La Batre. It’s located on the less fashionable west side of Mobile Bay, just a few miles off the Gulf shore. It’s populated by hard-working refinery workers, defense contractors, and–less and less– by shrimpers. Fishing, shrimping and oyster harvesting has a rich heritage here, dating back to the days when Native Americans worked the waters for survival. Everyone you meet here has been a fisherman or shrimper at one time or is related to someone who was. But today, I heard at least five different times that it’s “impossible” to make a living harvesting seafood here. High fuel prices raise costs and cheap imports are supplanting local breeds in the South’s restaurant kitchens. And that was before the oil.

In a normal year, the local brown shrimp (aka “brownie”) season would have started a week or so ago. Instead it’s on hold indefinitely. The white shrimp season usually commences in August, but no one much expects that to happen either.

-Ashley Hall

* * *

Ashley Hall is an SFA member and contributer to Gravy, the SFA's foodletter. She is traveling along the Gulf Coast to capture stories relating to the oil spill as a traveling Gravy correspondent. We'll be posting relevant entries here, but visit the blog she's set up for the project, Third Coast Byways, for more.

My Gracious Hosts Leslie and Robert Canter. A line of shrimp boats return to the Bayou. Leslie said she hadn't seen that many boats come in in years. But we all know there's no shrimp on them. "I'm sad," she said with a sigh.

None of the shrimp boats are carrying any nets. No need, unfortunately.

GRAVY DISPATCHES FROM THE GULF COAST

SFA member and Gravy contributer Ashley Hall has embarked on a journey to collect stories relating to the effects of the oil spill along the Gulf Coast from Mississippi to the Florida panhandle. Her trip is part personal, part professional. Ashley felt a calling to experience the effect the Gulf oil spill is having on the coast and saw fit to collaborate with the SFA to collect voices and images she encounters along the way. She'll be traveling from Biloxi to Apalachicola as a field correspondent for Gravy, the SFA foodletter, revisiting SFA oral history subjects when possible and recording her experiences on a blog she's set up for the project, Third Coast Byways. We'll share relevant entries here, but visit the blog directly to experience Ashley's journey in its entirety.

NEW SFA PROJECT DOCUMENTING ATLANTA'S BUFORD HIGHWAY

FRANK MA - RETIRED RESTAURANTEUR from Southern Foodways on Vimeo.

As we gear up for next week's field trip to Atlanta, we're putting the finishing touches on a new oral history project that documents Buford Highway, arguably the South's oldest and most diverse international corridor. As usual, we explore the place through food.

Interviews for our newest oral history project were collected by our friend and colleague Kate Medley, who lives in Atlanta. She gathered stories from first- and second-generation immigrants who brought the foods of their homelands with them and were introduced to and often inspired by other culinary traditions they encountered while living in Georgia. You'll meet people like Frank Ma, featured above, the grandfather of Chinese restaurants in Atlanta, who arrived in the city in 1972. He also loves to eat at the Waffle House.

Look for the rest of the interviews to appear online next week. And look for the SFA along Atlanta's Buford Highway next weekend!

 

OXFORD'S BROWN FAMILY DAIRY IN THE NEW YORK TIMES

Image via The New York Times

Oxford's own Brown Family Dairy is profiled in The New York Times, and the Southern Studies grad student film on the dairy is a featured link.

Read the article here. Watch the film here.