Hulu's Searching for Soul Food is a love letter to soul food around the world. Though often equated with the comfort cuisine of the American South, chef Alisa Reynolds travels the world in this eight-episode series to expand your mind and palate and broaden the definition of what we consider to be soul food.
Opening shot: An animated collage appears on the screen with old photos of our hostess, Alisa Reynolds, when she was a younger chef and when she was a child. On one side of it are a French flag and images of classic French cooking, and on the other side of it are illustrations of a crayfish, a boombox, and a woman with an afro. She narrates: “I am chef Alisa Reynolds: classically trained, raised on soul food. At my restaurant in Los Angeles, I apply my classical training to what I know: soul food."
Star: Alisa Reynolds
The Gist: Reynolds begins this series in Mississippi, the heart of the American South and slavery, to begin his story of the origins of soul food. This is a show dedicated to understanding not only the American version of soul food, but also what that term means around the world: In later episodes, Reynolds visits Jamaica, Italy, South Africa, and Peru, but along the way, connect the dots. between the African roots of soul food with other indigenous cultures and the way customs traveled around the world, due in part to the slave trade.
At 25 minutes each, the episodes move at a brisk pace and the show is packed with information (and plenty of ogling food). Reynolds visits celebrity chefs in the region who have made a name for themselves cooking the food of her ancestors: succotash, stewed vegetables and black-eyed beans. But for every dish he loves, there's also a message about the meaning of that particular food, like how Africans hid things like okra and collard greens in their hair during the mid-Atlantic crossing to bring back food. their homes to America. Later, Reynolds learns that often the only meat poor southerners ate was leftovers they could pluck from their employer's or master's kitchen.
During a visit with bookstore owner Maati Jone Primm, Primm explains: “That's the genius of being black. We oppress ourselves, we get sad, we create the blues. We take the garbage and turn it into good cooking”. The food we are celebrating is rooted in hardship and exploitation and yet look at it now.
The show also focuses on the contributions of indigenous peoples, who inhabited many of the same areas as slaves, and the cultures intersected and shared many of the same customs. Reynolds explains, for example, that while hush puppies have long been considered southern soul food, they were first introduced to black culture by Native Americans, who had a long history of first cooking with corn.
Reynolds mentions Webster's dictionary definition of soul food at one point, saying, “Despite what my friend Webster has to say, soul food isn't just food that black people eat. Duh.” While her origins are often associated with slaveholders, she says, Africans were frying and baking and using "soul food" cooking techniques before coming to America, which brings us to the rest of the series, which explores the origins and traditions of cultures. from all over the world who also create their own versions of soul food.
What shows will it remind you of? Searching For Soul Food has a similar premise to Padma Lakshmi's Hulu travel series Taste The Nation; both programs pay attention to cultures or regions that are often overlooked or not given due credit for influencing culture.
Our Take: From the start, I felt like this show was trying to do too many things at once. Visits with chefs in Jackson and Natchez, Mississippi, were interspersed with lively history lessons and a sketch comedy featuring an actor playing an angry, knife-throwing version of Thomas Jefferson's personal chef (and slave) James Hemings. . (Although the sketch felt tonally out of place in the midst of this rather serious travel show, I still appreciated the message that Hemings, a black man, was the first American chef to be classically trained in French cuisine, and was responsible for popularize foods like French fries and macaroni and cheese).
And yet, despite the show's sometimes hectic pace and disjointed segments, I found myself interested in and curious about everything about it.
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