NEWSLETTER OF THE Culinary Historians of Chicago

FALL 2001

PRESIDENT'S LETTER The Grit in Grits and Greens The Grits and Greens II Conference was another massive undertaking for an organization composed of volunteers: love of food has not lost its (voluntary) laborers. Bouquets to everyone who devoted so much time and energy to the cause. I have just one addition to the idea of Soul Food. Years ago I was talking with the proprietor of Alice's Restaurant on the West Side. The dishes came from western and southern Mississippi, south of Memphis and into neighboring Arkansas. They seemed to me, after having read several of the Southern Living cookbooks, to be generally Southern. I asked what the difference between Soul (or Black, as Alice said) and White cookery might be. She smiled broadly, looked me straight in the eye and said, "You know what the difference between us is? Ours has Soul in it!" On the Early History of the CHC The Culinary Historians of Chicago organization grew out of casual conversation between Gloria Billick (our first secretary without whose labors the CHC would not exist) and me in the spring of 1993. A mature graduate student, she was the first to begin work in culinary history at Roosevelt University. A long-time member of the Culinary Historians of Boston, one day she brought copies of that organization's newsletter to my office at the university. Poring over these excellent publications, we wondered why no such group had been formed in Chicago. After recruiting a group of like-minded people (Linda Calafiore, Carol Haddix and Joan Reardon among others, with apologies to those original members omitted here) we did just that. Our intention was to have a broadly based membership that would include working academicians, writers, chefs, and anyone else interested in the history of food and foodways. Discussions rising from a diverse group, we thought, would be intellectually stimulating in the same way that sampling diverse cuisines would be stimulating in other ways. The Culinary Historians of Chicago held its first major event in the autumn of 1994. Louis Szathmary expressed interest in the organization from the first he heard of it and agreed to be our first speaker. Speaking to an audience of more than 120, Chef Louis sketched the history of dining in Chicago, illustrated with wonderful slides of old restaurants. The lecture ended with exhortation: no one had ever studied the history of dining in Chicago, nor in another other city that he knew...and he knew many. With the city's rich heritage slipping out of memory, he said, the Culinary Historians should begin this important a work. Expanded to mean social and cultural history of food, this has become our organizations main research goal. Not that we have concentrated solely on Chicago, or lacked grand plans. In the fall of 1993, Joan Reardon gave a memorable, intimate talk on her experiences in Bordeaux accompanied by a wonderful dinner put on by Chef Michael Carmel and his students at Kendall College's culinary school. On the grand scale, in May 1994, we and the Chicago Historical Society sponsored a major symposium devoted to the foods of the Columbian Exposition. Jan Longone of the Wine and Food Library came from Ann Arbor, and Frank Cassel, an eminent historian of the great Chicago event, joined her as the main speakers. It was a thought-provoking session capped by Eve Jochnowitz, from the New York Culinary Historians, who gave a delightful survey of the New York World's Fair of 1939. Thoughtful programs have been a feature of CHC. From meetings in ethnic restaurants to discussions of ethnic foodways, all have been tasty morsels of food for thought. And many have been valuable contributions to further research. Two, among many, come to mind. Long-time member and eminent anthropologist, Susan Tax Freeman, delivered a model lecture on the history of Spanish cuisine and foodways that was quoted in a recent book on Hispanic food. More recently, her husband and no less notable a scholar, Les Freeman, gave an enthralling talk on the foods of the Upper Paleolithic era in Europe and how we know about them. Over the years of our existence, the CHC has been graced with many such programs (again, apologies for those I have neglected to mention). With new officers and a fully functioning program committee, we are certain to have a vital program schedule for the remainder of this and the upcoming new year. Bruce Kraig, September 2001, Chicago