The first season of High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America found host Stephen Satterfield and food historian Dr. Jessica B. Harris, who penned the book on which the series is based, in Benin. In season two, producers Fabienne Toback and Karis Jagger pick up where they left off, visiting Charleston, Charlottesville, and Houston, among other cities.
The four-episode second season of High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America is now streaming on Netflix.
Evan Kleiman: What stellar work you've done for the second season. Kudos.
Karis Jagger: We're so thrilled that you enjoyed the show.
Let’s start in New Orleans, where you look at the blended cultures of Creole cooking. How does Dr. J, as host Stephen Satterfield affectionately refers to Jessica B. Harris, explain what makes the cuisine so special and makes it one of the hemisphere's culinary meccas?
Karis Jagger: I think that the most incredible thing about New Orleans is that it is America's one city that really has a blend of French, Spanish, African, and indigenous cuisine that is all melted together. And Serigne Mbaye, who is the chef from Dakar NOLA, really starts the show off by reminding us how the connection is rooted in African cuisine and Creole cuisine, how many links there are to it. It was a beautiful way to start out the episode, hearkening back to Africa, to where we started in Benin, in season one.
There was a really interesting part in the conversation where those who were sitting around the table started to talk about how French technique is misattributed as a major influence of the city's food.
Karis Jagger: They're comparing bouillabaisse, and we don't think about the African origins of something like bouillabaisse.
It was a fascinating conversation. I have to shout out how the visual richness of this season struck me when they are all sitting and being served the food. And this is true throughout every episode. You really want to be able to eat that food. It leaps off the plate.
Karis Jagger: [Cinematographer] Jerry Henry is absolutely amazing. He's brought so much beauty to this season as well as the last one.
I found Stephen's conversation with Elvin Shields, a former mechanical engineer who grew up as a sharecropper, especially revealing and moving. Can you describe his early experiences growing up? It was such a shocking testimony.
Fabienne Toback: Sharecropping was a really awful thing. After emancipation, people were released or free to go but didn't have some place that they could go. It was such an unjust system because here are these people who were working on these plantations where they were once enslaved and having to purchase tools to do the job. Many of the times, they would end up making less money and sometimes being in debt. But as Elvin says, he's taking back the word plantation because that was his home. Even if it was a small percentage, it was something that they had ownership of. It is quite moving. It's a difficult scene as well. You really hear the sort of pride that he has but also that it was very difficult and hard.
The way he explains to Stephen, who has a traumatic reaction to the word "plantation," how he basically feels that everything created by plantations was created by enslaved people — the beauty, the food — and they should own the positive parts of that.
Karis Jagger: I think Elvin Shields speaks about how his ancestors lived and died there, and they created the first black community in that place. So [we should] take it as our own word and make it our own and own it.
DeVonn Francis, founder of Yardy World, explores his Carribean identity through food and dinner parties. Photo courtesy of Netflix.
Then people started to leave the south when mechanization came to plantations, and the Great Migration began. Talk a little bit about George Pullman who capitalized on the black workforce during that time and Stephen's relationship to it.
Karis Jagger: We learned that Stephen's grandfather was a Pullman porter. George Pullman wanted to take newly emancipated slaves as Pullman porters because he wanted to create this train experience that was reminiscent of slavery. So you can imagine that poorly treated Pullman porters survived on very low wages and mostly tips. But it also enabled a whole black middle class to come out of this train travel and was very important in creating the first black union. So while there was a lot of hardship, it also created incredible wealth, and we were very fortunate to have a Pullman porter speaking with us. He has since passed but it was beautiful to have that firsthand experience and get to hear his very moving story.
It was quite wonderful when Stephen sat across from these two men, one the son of a Pullman porter, the other a man who was, I believe, 100 at the time he was being interviewed. You could see that Stephen saw his grandfather, who he never met, in these two men. I loved how he made the link to being the person he is, someone who enjoys travel and expanding his worldview, and how that was part of being a Pullman porter. With all the negatives, they still had this entree into a larger world because of the nature of the train.
Fabienne Toback: Absolutely. What was really striking in this season is that we unearth more of Stephen's personal story and his connection to these events, whether it's the Pullman porter or, not to get ahead of ourselves, but through the Harlem Renaissance, where we find out, I'm not sure if it's the same grandfather, but another one who was a moonshiner. And, of course, going to his hometown of Atlanta.
Let's talk about Alexander Smalls, a present day chef and former aspiring opera singer who makes a connection between the general creativity of the Harlem Renaissance and food, how there was this flowing back and forth and food was the punctuation.
Fabienne Toback: Well, food is always the punctuation on any gathering, I feel. He definitely makes that point. Alexander Smalls, his home, where he entertains, if you're seated at his table, you've got a coveted spot. His home is covered with all these artifacts from his time of being an opera singer. He had opened a restaurant called Cafe Beulah and was also the owner of Cecil's up in Harlem. He has also written several books. So it's really warm to see their interaction.
There's so much affection between the two of them. I love when Alexander says, "I realized I couldn't have a seat at the table unless I owned the table," acknowledging food as currency.
Fabienne Toback: As an opera singer, he had realized he had hit that glass ceiling. I think there's a lot of frustration that a lot of African Americans feel. Where do I go? How can I move? I know I'm capable of so much more, and there's not that opportunity. So yes, that's what he did. He opened a restaurant because there he realized he could go further in his success and his abilities.
Let's move to the episode called "The Defiance," which focuses on the Civil Rights Movement and how it was funded by food, by so many small entrepreneurs. Could you talk about the relationship between food and the movement?
Karis Jagger: I think that Stephen says that food has an incredibly deep connection to this Civil Rights Movement. We look at Georgia Gilmore, who was a chef who funded the movement with her Club From Nowhere that Cheryl Day [of Back In The Day Bakery in Savannah, Georgia] speaks about so beautifully in episode three. Then, we also sit down with three former student activists who planned and executed a civil rights operation to desegregate restaurants in Atlanta. I think Stephen's conversation with them at Paschal's, which was another famous restaurant during the Civil Rights Movement because it was a place where people could congregate to plan, was an incredibly moving scene.
Host Stephen Satterfield travels to New Orleans, Harlem, Atlanta, and Los Angeles in the second season of the award-winning series, "High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America." Photo courtesy of Netflix.
The last episode is called "Feeding The Culture." There's a beat about the Black Panthers and the free breakfast program they created, which has been so powerful and still lives on today. Who are the Black food activists that should be on our radar today?
Fabienne Toback: In our episode, we have Nia Lee, who does the Stormé Supper Club, which is creating a black queer community. She's amazing. There's also Devonn Francis, who's doing that with Yardy World in New York City. He's also a Bon Appetit video host. Ghetto Gastro is doing a lot of work in terms of their unapologetic approach to elevating Black cuisine and the conversations around it. There's countless books that people are doing. I think that's always great. People buy cookbooks, and it really does help.
Karis Jagger: I wanted to mention Karen Washington because she's been turning empty lots into community gardens. She is really working to shift the food justice conversation. So I would like to include her in people to look out for and support.
Fabienne Toback: And also KJ Kearney, who does Black Food Fridays.
Is this the end of High on the Hog or will we get to see another season?
Fabienne Toback: From your lips to Netflix's ears. There was no fat to trim. We could add four more episodes of food in the Black community. And to all the listeners that watched the series, we hope that the algorithm is in our favor.