Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 212
•
Trim: 6⅜ x 9⅜
978-0-7591-2136-2 • Hardback • December 2012 • $63.00 • (£48.00)
978-1-4422-6962-0 • Paperback • April 2016 • $27.00 • (£19.99)
978-0-7591-2138-6 • eBook • December 2012 • $59.50 • (£46.00)
Elizabeth M. Williams is founder and president of the Southern Food and Beverage Museum in New Orleans, which celebrates the food of the American South, with exhibits, a library, archives, collections, and programming. SoFab is one of Saveur's "5 Great Museums Devoted to Food" (5/2011). Williams is also consulting professor at the Kabacoff School of Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism, University of New Orleans. Her roles there include teaching, writing, and researching issues in hospitality law, culinary history, and culture and nonprofit administration. She has contributed a number of articles on aspects of Southern food
to journals. Williams has a law degree and co-authored The A to Z Encyclopedia of Food Controversies and the Law (2010).
Series Foreword, by Ken Albala
Preface
Timeline
1. Introduction: A Real Cuisine
2. The Material Resources
3. The First Inhabitants and Their Foodways
4. The Old World in the New
5. Immigrants: Their Neighborhoods and Contributions
6. Markets, Retailing, and “Making Groceries”
7. Restaurants
8. Drinking in New Orleans
9. Cooking at Home and Cookbooks
10. Signature Foods and Dishes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author
Only in New Orleans would our food be considered just as important as any person and worthy of its own biography! So, whether you’re a native New Orleanian or simply a fan of our cooking, just reading New Orleans: A Food Biography is sure to satisfy your craving. This book digs into the rich, centuries-old history of the many ethnic and geographic influences that have gone into making our cuisine so uniquely New Orleans.
— Dickie Brennan, New Orleans chef/restaurateur
Liz Williams loads us into her time capsule for a journey to the mecca of New World cuisine. Through New Orleans: A Food Biography we experience the richness of the original fusion cuisine. New Orleans brought together every Western food tradition, and the Amerindian traditions, and over the centuries the glory that is New Orlean’s cuisine evolved. Like to eat? Read this now.
— Dale DeGroff, master mixologist and author of The Craft of the Cocktail
Williams, the director of the Southern Food and Beverage Museum, a New Orleans non-profit living history organization (southernfood.org), draws upon insights from history, economics, the law, and geography to craft a compelling book-length narrative from a considerable variety of data. . . This is all done very well. . . . The description of local foods in the final chapter and the bibliography are both also very useful, and the book is notable for its attention to more contemporary developments in New Orleans restaurant culture. ... New Orleans: A Food Biography is a book well worth reading and using. It evidences its narrative by a range of useful information from several fields; it includes the basics on many of the key people, institutions, and foods of the area; and it presents a picture of local foodways that will be accessible and interesting to students and general readers as well as scholars. I look forward to more books in this series.
— Digest: A Journal of Foodways & Culture