A Belle Époque for African-American Cooking

At Salare, a restaurant in Seattle, Edouardo Jordan serves winter squash with fried okra and a seed-based sauce modeled on the egusi stews of Nigeria.

In “The Up South Cookbook” by the Brooklyn author Nicole A. Taylor, collard greens are cooked Japanese style, with a coating of sesame dressing.

And in California, chefs create swoon-inducing and deeply personal takes on shrimp and grits at places like Brown Sugar Kitchen in Oakland, 1300 on Fillmore in San Francisco and Willie Jane and Post & Beam in Los Angeles.

Across the country, a new generation of black chefs and cookbook authors has been reinventing, reinterpreting and reinvigorating what’s thought of as African-American food. Their work is part of the culinary development and self-discovery that has been going on for decades — centuries, really — but for anyone sampling their handiwork now, it’s clear that we’re in the middle of a belle époque.

All sorts of revolutions in African-American cooking have been building momentum. Especially on the West Coast, age-old conventions of soul food and Lowcountry cooking are getting a fresh take via farm-to-table philosophy and contemporary technique.

this article continues here
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/27/dining/beyond-soul-food-african-american-chefs.html

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this is a very interesting article !
I revisited a (family recipe) version of shrimp & grits during
the recent, east coast blizzard. It was still as
decadent & delicious, comforting as always! _t.b.