Southern Food: At Home, on the Road, in History [Paperback]

John Egerton (Author), Al Clayton (Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1993

Egerton explores southern food in over 200 restaurants in 11 southern states and describes their specialties and recounts his conversations with owners, cooks, waiters, and customers. He offers over 150 regional recipes, including barbecue, spoonbread, muscadine jam, and key lime pie, with information about each one.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Egerton (Generations, Nashville, etc.) writes here not as a food critic or professional historian but as an affectionate observer. The book commences with an informal history that suffuses the entire volume, from notes on 19th century meat packing in Nashville to the invention of the hot Brown sandwich at the Brown Hotel in Louisville in the 1930s. However, aside from a few wistful observations, such as a comment that the golden age of oysters peaked in 1850, the book celebrates the here and now of Southern food. Extensive travel and tasting produce a narrative account of more than 200 restaurants, from unique pockets of homestyle cooking to the Po Folks franchise, which has 167 restaurants in 24 states. Home cooking also is well represented with descriptions of dishes and the people who prepare them. Included are recipes for a number of traditional items such as burgoo, a hearty stew, which can be made entirely with grocery-store ingredients though "a squirrel or two would have added much in the way of both flavor and history," pecan bourbon cake, deviled crabs, red-eye gravy and buttermilk pie. Photos.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

Southern food and cooking viewed with a critical but not jaundiced eye, and with a sense of urgency about capturing the past before it disappears forever. Egerton follows a short history of Southern food with a report on eating placesfew of them fancy but each with a regional specialtywhich he visited on a tour of 11 states. A chapter on eating at home includes 160 recipes chosen to show Southern food at its home-cooked best. His roster of 225 restaurants listed by state is a gold mine for travelers who would like to sample the past at meal time; a 300-item annotated bibliography is a gold mine for readers. An odeno, a symphonyto what is left of a glorious past: less than it ought to be but infinitely better than nothing. Ruth Diebold, M.L.S., Upper Nyack, N.Y.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: University of North Carolina Press (June 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807844179
• ISBN-13: 978-0807844175
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #957,755 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the best book in my library, October 27, 2000

By 

Timothy B. Tyson (Duke University) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Southern Food: At Home, on the Road, in History (Paperback)

As a Southerner exiled to the frozen tundra of Wisconsin, John Egerton's SOUTHERN FOOD has been food for the soul. And no matter where you are from, this book offers fascinating historical and cultural information about Southern food and many, many wonderful recipes. I have learned as much about Southern cooking in Wisconsin as I did in all my years back home, all because of this wonderful book. It's charming and often lyrical, immensely well-informed, and points the way to both restaurants and recipes. The barbecue instructions have been a lifesaver. I have bought five or six copies of this book--one because I wore out the first copy, and the others because it makes a great gift for practically anyone.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book will make your mouth water and your belly growl, March 21, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Southern Food: At Home, on the Road, in History (Paperback)

This is a wonderful book about eating in the South, eating out and eating in, about a whole host of things like family and fellowship that gather around any groaning board in the south, and what you want to eat where and what the people who live there eat, how to cook it and where you're likely to find it at a reasonable price made by food-loving hands. John Egerton clearly ate his way across the south to write this book, and he was careful to stay well off the beaten path. It's anthropology, sociology, recipes, culture and good humor, from the North Carolina mountains to the swamps of Cajun country. This book will make your mouth water and your belly growl, but most of all it's a fine read.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great, even if partially dated, February 5, 2009

By 

Winter Maiden (San Diego CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Southern Food: At Home, on the Road, in History (Paperback)

This book is a must-have for any fan of Southern cooking or serious student of Southern culture. Be warned, though, that about a third of the book is a survey of eating places across the South, and inevitably quite out of date, since the book is fifteen years old. (Well-traveled fans of Southern food might enjoy it from a nostalgic point of view.) Even without that part of the book, however, it is still worth it, and it has a fantastic bibliography.