771: 50 Years of Edna Lewis’s "The Taste of Country Cooking" with BEM’s Gabrielle Davenport

About this episode

Gabrielle Davenport discusses the legacy of Edna Lewis and the Edna Lewis Festival while Aliza and Matt explore recent food trends.

Gabrielle Davenport is the cofounder of BEM, a bookstore and community space for Black food literature in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. It’s been a wonderfully busy season of cookbook events and releases, and this week BEM is reaching a whole new level by hosting the Edna Lewis Festival. It’s a week of all-star events honoring the 50th anniversary reissue of Edna Lewis’s seminal cookbook The Taste of Country Cooking. Today on the show, Gabrielle shares updates from the always-busy world of BEM and goes deep into Edna Lewis’s legacy and how it’s living on today. And it’s the return of Three Things where Aliza and Matt discuss what’s interesting in the food world including recent dessert explorations at Superiority Burger, Uncle’s Thai Food x Apollo Bagels, Hots Pizza is a new favorite NYC slice. Also: Chef Shuai Wang's Sichuan Hot Chicken Spice is terrific. Also, Oatly gets creative with NYC bar Schmuck and New York has a new cookbook store! Wild Sorrel Cookbooks is a gem. Subscribe to This Is TASTE: ⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠, ⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠, ⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

People in this episode

Hosts: Aliza Abarbanel, Matt Rodbard

Guest: Gabrielle Davenport

Topics covered

• Edna Lewis
• cookbook events
• Black food literature
• food culture
• dessert explorations
• community spaces

Keywords

• Edna Lewis
• The Taste of Country Cooking
• BEM
• cookbook
• food events
• desserts
• NYC food
• Black food literature

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: BEM, Superiority Burger, Uncle’s Thai Food, Apollo Bagels, Hots Pizza, Oatly, Schmuck, Wild Sorrel Cookbooks

Books & works: The Taste of Country Cooking

Places: Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, NYC, New York

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