On Friday, May 7th at 7:30 PM, ODUS hosted a virtual lecture featuring Professor Tera Hunter in conversation with Chef Deborah VanTrece. It was the latest event in the FOCUS Speaker Series, a program designed to deepen and enrich anti-racist education at Princeton.
Tera W. Hunter is the Edwards Professor of American History and Professor of African American Studies at Princeton, where she teaches in both the History Department and the African American Studies Department. Her research focuses on race, gender, slavery, and labor in the American South. Her latest book is Bound in Wedlock: Slave and Free Black Marriage in the Nineteenth Century. Deborah VanTrece is the chef, creative director, and owner of Twisted Soul Cookhouse and Pours, a fixture of the Atlanta restaurant scene. VanTrece has worked as a chef for twenty-five years and was awarded the Atlanta Business League’s 2017 Super Tuesday Conference Award for Creative Style. She was also featured as one of Zagat’s Most Badass Female Chefs in the US.
Professor Hunter and Chef VanTrece were introduced by Wade Rakes ’02, who is an Atlanta-based class agent, a member of the national Annual Giving Committee, and a member of the President's Advisory Council. Rakes spoke briefly about his own connection – as well as Princeton’s – to Georgia before handing things over to the panelists.
Professor Hunter then stepped in to guide the conversation, asking Chef VanTrece a series of wide-ranging questions about her experiences in the culinary world. She began by asking VanTrece about how and why she became interested in food. VanTrece grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, and recalled how important cooking and food were to her family and her sense of community. She remembered watching her grandmother cook, and learning from her along the way. “At the time,” she said, “I don't think I realized the importance of what she was teaching me in terms of, you know, it being more than just food to nourish us. It was history. It was love. It was food that fed the soul.”
VanTrece credited seventh grade home economics, as well as her family, with sparking her interest in cooking. But it was only after a career as a flight attendant, during which she sampled food from virtually every part of the world, that she decided to start cooking professionally. She described making meals from scratch on airplanes and in hotel rooms, and the smiles on her colleagues’ faces when they tried her food. So, when flight attendants went on strike, she decided to go to culinary school and cook professionally.
Professor Hunter asked VanTrece about what influenced her food. Her family and her travels topped the list, but she also talked about the experience of finding new meaning in food through history and culture. In culinary school, the curriculum barely touched on African American cuisine; VanTrece even remembered the instructor turning the lesson over to her, as one of the few Black students in the class. She realized that African American cuisine was still suffering from a history of slavery, oppression, and discrimination. Many of the most common soul food dishes were born out of necessity; chitlins, for example, were first made by enslaved people who were given only scraps (like pigs’ intestines) to eat. And yet, for those same reasons, food could also be a medium of cultural expression and a tool for uplifting and empowering communities. “To think that there were slaves that were that knowledgeable and artful in cuisine to take those things and make incredibly delicious and nutritious meals out of them, that's important, and that's the story that should be told,” said VanTrece.
The process of entering the restaurant world – a world that is notorious for its lack of diversity and its resistance to change – was not easy. VanTrece spoke about facing discrimination on the basis of race, gender, and sexual orientation. The first iteration of her restaurant, Twisted Soul, was in Decatur, Georgia. Although she had thought that Decatur would be a welcoming place, other, (mostly white) restaurateurs proved extremely hostile to her business. The “good old boys” who still dominated Decatur’s food scene made VanTrece doubt herself despite her expertise and her twenty years of cooking experience.
From there, VanTrece talked about relocating the restaurant to Atlanta and its success in a healthier environment. She also discussed her new cookbook, The Twisted Soul Cookbook: Modern Soul Food with Global Flavors as well as the difficulties and triumphs of adapting and reimagining soul food. She mentioned pushback both from inside and outside the African American community – people who said her food was not true soul food – and presented the cookbook as a response to that. “I'm hoping that people understand how my mind works a little bit and how I connect the dots and how I describe soul food. And understand that it's a personal thing. You know, food and our food journeys. No one's is the same, just like any part of our journeys.”
The conversation then moved to role models and representation in the restaurant industry. Professor Hunter asked VanTrece who her role models were; she listed Leyah Chase, the “Queen of Creole Cuisine,” and Edna Lewis, both Black female chefs who rose to the top of the culinary world. But she also mentioned allies in the fight for representation like Scott Peacock, a white male chef who she credited with bringing Black female chefs into the spotlight, and Toni Tipton-Martin, a food journalist and historian who focuses on the cultural heritage and background of specific dishes.
Professor Hunter’s final question was about the Covid-19 pandemic and how VanTrece and Twisted Soul had made it through. Twisted Soul, she said, pivoted towards take-out options which it had never offered before. It also began to offer a pay-what-you-can pricing model to help out members of the community who were suffering. Overall, she said, Twisted Soul was lucky and is coming out the other side of the pandemic as strong or stronger than ever.
Audience members were then invited to ask questions of Hunter and VanTrece. One attendee asked Chef VanTrece why Atlanta seemed to hold such influence in the worlds of food, art, and entertainment. In response, VanTrece pointed to a thriving African American community which, despite decades of discrimination and hardship, managed to become an engine of creativity, education, and prosperity. Another audience member asked Professor Hunter about her research into the role of food for Black families in the South. She discussed food as a medium for and a manifestation of Black culture. “There are very, very few [cultural] events without food. If you think about, you know, African-American history in terms of, like, church life, family reunions, holiday celebrations, food often is the center. And especially for people who are mostly working class, people who have very few resources, food becomes a way of sharing, a way of communicating a sense of community. So it's been an important part and it continues to be an important part of African-American history and culture.” Southern cuisine, she said, was largely Black cuisine – pioneered and prepared by enslaved people, mostly women, and then disseminated into the larger food tradition.
When asked what advice she would give to young chefs, especially female chefs of color, VanTrece had one major recommendation: study the business side of running a restaurant. “It's a business. And it needs to be planned out. It needs thought. You have to have all of your ducks in a row, you have to understand how to make money with it. And growing followers is not always the answer. You know, I mentor a lot and that is one of the biggest things. It's not saying that the social media channels are not important from a marketing standpoint, but becoming a celebrity, you know, will not get you where you need to go.” The last question was similarly incisive. An audience member wanted to know Chef VanTrece’s thoughts on cultural appropriation in the food industry. In response, she pointed out that cross-cultural interaction is essential for innovation and growth. The food world “will not change, pretty much, unless we are borrowing from each other. But understand it's a borrow, you know. It's not a take.” She urged chefs and artists to pay homage to other cultures, but not to claim those cultures’ ideas as their own.
The discussion was a deep dive into the worlds of food, culture, and history from an academic as well as an experiential viewpoint. Professor Hunter and Chef VanTrece each brought a unique perspective and unparalleled expertise to the conversation. We hope you will join us for future FOCUS events, which will be announced on the FOCUS website or on our social media platforms.