Black, White and the Grey

Oct 19

Black, White, and The Grey is an unconventional book about food and the friendship of John O. Morisano and Mashama Bailey, first time restaurateurs who turned a Greyhound bus station in Savannah, Georgia into a hot ticket Southern Food Restaurant. This isn’t a cookbook per se, but a dialogue between both authors punctuated by recipes that are meaningful to the story, such as dishes that they cooked for each other at different junctures, or dishes they trialled for the restaurant opening, kind of like an adult scratch and sniff book.

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A lot is made in this book of the difference between Italian and Southern cooking. I think it’s one of the devices Johno uses to describe their relationship. Mashama is Black, Johno is white, Mashama wants to open a Southern food restaurant, Johno wants her to cook Italian food. One of Mashama’s contributions to this book is to point out that the differences Johno sees between them are sometimes superficial. The recipes in this book illustrate that to an extent: Italian or Southern, these are simple dishes made with what is seasonal and available, designed to nurture and satisfy family and friends. Recipe development plays a big part in the narrative. While trying to solidify the opening menu at The Grey, Johno and Mashama go to Italy, where Johno hopes she will be inspired to create an Italian menu. The influence makes its way into the menu, but during a first tasting with friends, it flops. One guest, Cynthia Hayes, the founder of an African American farmer’s network, helps Mashama refocus by offering her an introduction to some local farmers and producers. The difference between Italian and Southern food dissolves in this moment. Really the important thing is cooking in the place where you are, on that land, and with the people who produce the ingredients.

Because each recipe is tied into a moment in the story, they also point to the way food is an expression of the cook and the people around them. After a chapter where Mashama begins to consider moving to Savannah, there is a recipe for a caesar with a bagna cauda she first had at Prune in New York, and a discourse on lettuce that comes locally from a farm in Georgia. The one-two punch of story and food is a theme of the book, and makes me think about how cookbooks are constructed, often with the story being secondary to the photos and recipes. Very few books nail a balance of food and why the food is meaningful. I can think of Chef Nuit’s Kiin as an example, and a book I haven’t reviewed yet, Aegean, which is so much an expression of Marianna Leivaditaki’s life and upbringing it’s almost impossible to cook from if you’re not adjacent the Mediterranean Sea, where she grew up.

I thought this book was really good, and I read it in a few days, wanting to know what happened next, and what recipe would be at the end of each chapter. I also found certain parts of the book were cringy (on purpose, I think) and it felt like Johno’s story with interjections from Mashama. I kept wondering, if she wrote the first draft of this book, what stories and moments would she choose?

Technical
★★★☆☆

Interesting
★★★★☆

Good mix of recipes
★★★★★

Delicious
★★★★☆

We never got a reservation at The Grey when we were in Savannah, but we did get to try Chef Bailey’s Earl Grey Buttermilk Pie (as well as a killer shrimp po-boy) at The Grey Market and it. was. incredible.

Get a flavour for this book

Oysters, bell pepper, parmesan, peanuts

If you make one recipe

The Dirty Rice knocked my socks off, but more surprising my partner’s socks, who is, to put it lightly, not a liver fan. This is a gateway liver dish. Feed it to a picky, iron-deficient friend, and watch them convert.

Our bus was climbing up a hill in Birmingham, Alabama. We were masked and quiet, it was sunny and the air conditioning was doing its best but not enough. At the top of the hill we stopped in front of a bungalow with a wide front lawn. Outside the house was a marker with a smiling photograph of Arthur Shores, a prominent civil rights lawyer who filed and won a lawsuit deeming segregation in Birmingham unconstitutional. Outside his house today was a crowd, another Civil Rights tour, we assumed. Our guide stopped the bus and explained this street was the segregated boundary between white and black neighbourhoods. Shores lived on one side of the road. White-owned homes would have faced his house on the other side. Our guide Mike, a tall wide man whose son moved back to Birmingham to open this tour company, pointed to areas of his house where the brick didn’t match. “That is where the house was rebuilt after being bombed. Twice.” As Mike spoke the guide for the other group came over and they tapped their elbows. Mike had already told us about this man who was with the other group. He grew up just up the street. He was a child in the 60s but remembered riding on the shoulders of Uncle Mike (Martin Luther King, Jr. nee Micheal), a close friend of his parents. His tour group was listening to the daughter of Arthur Shores speak, and he invited us to join them. We were on a schedule and couldn’t stop, but Mike thanked him. As he stepped off the bus he looked back at us. “Welcome to Dynamite Hill,” he said.

My partner and I were on a road trip. I was turning 40 and when my dream of spending my birthday in Japan fell through due to the pandemic, I suggested a road trip through the South. I wanted to see Savannah, Georgia, New Orleans, and Austin. We mapped out the stops in between that were at most a 4 hour drive apart. Then, Hurricane Ida took out the power in New Orleans and we had to reroute. We flew into Charlotte, North Carolina and after a diner breakfast, drove to Charleston, South Carolina. From there we drove to Savannah, Atlanta, and then west to Birmingham and Jackson, Mississippi before ducking into Texas. I had no expectations going into Birmingham. In fact, I was concerned about Alabama and Mississippi altogether. I’m blond and white and Jewish. The last time I travelled in the South I was driving from Montreal to Guatemala with my mom. When we hit the Virginia border my mom told me to take off my Star of David necklace (which I lost shortly after). Stepping off the airplane in North Carolina, we braced ourselves for the type of overt racism and Trumpism we had been watching on TV in Canada for the last half-decade. My American friend, as we were leaving Toronto, said “you will see confederate flags” and we did.

What we felt travelling in the South was different than what we expected, though. In Charleston and Savannah we had experienced something below the surface that made us uneasy. In cities that were over 50 percent African American, we found ourselves in all white spaces more often than not. No Jim Crow laws, no walls or checkpoints to cross, but a palpable divide. In Birmingham, our tour guide pointed out 18th street, the street that historically divided the white and black sides of Downtown. There was no sign to mark that line in the 50’s, but it was a very real division. It seemed to us that invisible dividing lines were as real as the visible ones.

The Birmingham that Arthur Shores lived in would see you thrown in jail or worse if you were Black and you crossed the wrong line: went into a white house, used the wrong washroom, or sent your children to a white school. The police would enforce the law to the extent they could and the Klan would fill in the gaps where they couldn’t. It’s the latter who bombed upwards of 50 homes, churches, and other buildings between 1947 and 1965, a number of which were in Smithfield, on so-called Dynamite Hill. We were shocked when the guide welcomed us to “Dynamite Hill.” The history was gruesome and violent: families asleep in their homes had their living rooms blown up by the Klan. But Dynamite Hill was also a site of resistance, and there was a lot of pride in that. At the end of the tour, we talked as a group. A Black couple from Miami (celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary on roadtrip of their own) summed up our tour: that if you focus only on the violence you might miss the triumph, the struggle, and the dignity of survival.

*The childhood home of Angela Davis on Dynamite Hill, Birmingham*

*Clams Oreganata*
When I posted these online I got all sort of messages about how intimidating mollusks are to cook. These were easy and delicious. I made them for myself alone in my house while my husband was out of town (he’s not a clam guy) but I would also make them for other people if you twisted my arm. They would make an excellent party food or appetizer.

Photo by Amy Dickinson — used without permission, I’m so sorry. Here is her site!

*Mock Caesar Salad with Broken Anchovy Dressing*
Like, you’re not getting oohs and aahs when you bring a romaine salad to the table, but this is a workhorse with a really simple 4-ingredient dressing that yes, is caesar-ish but so much lighter and simpler and you don’t need to whisk egg and oil until your wrist snaps, so that’s a plus. Also between 4 of us we ate the whole bowl so there you go.

*The historic Greyhound station in Birmingham where the police gave permission to the KKK to beat arriving Freedom Riders for a pre-set time of 15 minutes before intervening.*

I thought about this while reading the passage in the book about a painting that is hung in The Grey. Mashama and Johno commissioned a piece of art from Marcus Kenney for their new restaurant. It shows an interracial couple from New York getting off a bus in Savannah. Mashama loved it instantly where Johno was worried it was too provocative or that people wouldn’t “get it.” Mashama felt that they might not get it, but that’s ok. While reading this book I realized I made a terrible mistake when I arrived in Savannah. I asked the porter in our hotel, a young Black guy, where he hung out. He started naming very touristy spots in the historic district. I asked him with a smile “is that where YOU hang out?” hoping to tease some local tips out of him. I felt some awkwardness which I chalked up to him not wanting to go off the hotel script. “Yes ma’am” he replied in that kind Southern way. Walking through the historic district later I knew this wasn’t true. There is an invisible border in Savannah, like 18th street in Birmingham. Martin Luther King blvd.—which is also the street The Grey sits on—is the border of the historic district, which is overwhelmingly white. (My hometown of Montreal has an invisible border too, between French and English, called St. Laurent.) Mashama and Johno pointed out the significance of opening The Grey on this invisible line. The painting is a way of pointing to that line and saying “look.” Of course people would be uncomfortable, but they’ll also be uncomfortable with a Black female chef running what is now the most lauded restaurant in Savannah. The painting, like the vision for The Grey, is a beautiful dream in a place that still reserves its beauty for only certain people.

We saw old Greyhound stations in a few of the cities we visited: in Savannah, Atlanta in Birmingham and in Jackson, Mississippi. During Jim Crow, the Supreme Court banned racial discrimination in interstate travel. Ignoring the ruling, Southern States maintained separate facilities in Greyhound stations. The Freedom Riders rode the buses from Washington, DC to Jackson to test the Supreme Court ruling in these Southern bus stations. They were beaten and buses were set on fire with riders inside. Freedom Riders filled up prisons in Birmingham and Jackson. Along with freedom rides, lunch counter sit-ins, bus boycotts, beach sit-ins, and other demonstrations, Civil Rights heroes used their bodies and purchasing power to desegregate the South and demand better jobs. But in Jackson MI, a town that is 79% African American, we sat in a BBQ restaurant with a seating capacity into the hundreds where we didn’t see a single Black customer or worker.

From what we saw, the invisible lines are still there. In a lot of ways they’ve modernized. As a gold-star eater, I was looking for the best meals in every city we visited. I scoured online magazines, Instagram, and looked for James Beard award winners in each city. As a tourist it was very difficult to find black owned restaurants, and Black chefs. I’m not ruling out my frame of reference as a white person being a factor. But this has major implications on Black wealth and opportunity. If Savannah’s majority African American population (54%) is largely shut out of benefitting from the city’s tourism, that’s a (pre-COVID) industry worth $3 billion. The culinary, cultural, artistic, and social contributions of Black people are what draw people to travel and spend time in the South. Meanwhile, the money coming in is still concentrated back into the pockets of white people. I’ve understood on a higher level why it’s important to push organizations like the James Beard Foundation to award more people of colour, why Bon Appetit needs to hire Black creators, why it’s important to follow Black chefs on Instagram. Visiting places like Savannah and Jackson gave me a more tactile insight into what we’re doing when we consume Black culture without spending our money with the Black people who created it.

Back on our road trip I woke up at an airbnb in a small town in Texas. We arrived the night before and settled in for the night. In the morning I went for a run around town, which was sleepy on a Sunday. On every lawn and in business windows across town were Thin Blue Line and Blue Lives Matter signs. This was the most overt display of anti-Blackness we saw, and it made me cut my run short and hit the road quicker than I would have otherwise. But overall, I don’t think many people we came in contact with on our road trip would be considered racists. Last week, I had a conversation with a friend about anti-racism, which a family member asked her to explain to him. To be anti-racist is to be actively rooting out racist institutions, systems, and attitudes. There’s a moment in this book where Johno decides he needs to find a Black, female chef for The Grey. At first when I read this I winced at how earnest that decision was. Over time, and after spending three weeks in the South, I began to understand: it’s not by waiting around and professing your lack of racism that you dismantle unjust systems. You need to seek out the opportunities to disrupt the status quo. In Johno’s case that meant seeking out Mashama, on our road trip it was spending time on Google with search terms like “Black Chef Austin.” Our individual attempts are marginally impactful without the support of institutions. The James Beard Foundation, The New York Times, and Conde Nast need to add Black-owned restaurants and Black chefs to their best-of and 24-hours-in lists. There has been some jostling here but those dividing lines won’t come down without some serious movement.