VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — As slave ships crossed the Atlantic with their tragic cargo of bodies, they also carried okra, black-eyed peas, yams and rice. Africans who survived the journey planted their staples and eventually mixed them with maize and oysters from Indigenous people and sugar cane and swine from the colonizers.
The stew of ingredients and cultures produced different types of cuisine, one often referred to as “Southern food” (fried chicken, hoppin’ John, pecan pie) and the other “soul food” (chitterlings, ham hocks, collard greens) — and a delicious debate: Is there a difference between Southern food and soul food?
I was born and raised in Indiana and have lived all across the country — from the District of Columbia to New Orleans to Las Vegas — and have always wondered. I’ve consulted with some of the most respected culinary historians, chefs and eaters who say they aren’t sure of the difference — but they can taste it.
Adrian Miller is a food historian, attorney and author of two James Beard Award-winning books, “Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time” and “Black Smoke: African Americans and the United States of Barbecue.” Online, he’s known as “the soul food scholar.”
It’s difficult for him to define the difference because Southern and soul food overlap.
“They have common ingredients, culinary techniques, traditions and the same source material — the combination of West Africa, Western Europe and the Americas and the American South,” he said in an interview from Denver, where he lives. He associates soul food with Black people.
Miller explains the evolution of the terms “soul food” and “soul” which, ironically, started with a white guy who never set foot in America.
The earliest joining of the words soul and food in the English language, Miller says, dates back to the 1590s when William Shakespeare’s play “Two Gentlemen of Verona” is believed to have been written. In the second act, noblewoman Julia shares her feelings about Proteus, a nobleman from Verona, to her lady-in-waiting, Lucetta.
“O, know’st thou not his looks are my soul’s food?” Julia says.
For the next 400-plus years, “soul food” meant anything to edify your spiritual life, such as listening to a sermon, singing a hymn or studying Scripture, Miller said.
In the late 1940s and early ‘50s, a group of African American jazz artists took their music to a place where their white counterparts couldn’t imitate the sound — the Black church in the rural South. Black artists started describing the tone as “soul” and “funky.”
‘Soul music’ came first, and then ‘soul brothers,’ ‘soul sister’ and ‘soul food,’” Miller said.
Miller believes the difference between what is known as Southern and soul has emerged over time but thinks it’s in the cooking, too.
“Some key differences are that soul food tends to be more highly seasoned,” he said.
An example: The classic Nashville hot chicken — “It makes complete sense that an intensely, insanely spiced version of fried chicken would come out of Black culture.”
Miller explains other differences.
“It would not be usual to go to a Black restaurant and have gumbo with bone-in chicken; whereas in a Southern restaurant, the chicken would be cut up and the bones removed.”
The lines also are blurred between savory and sweet.
“Almost every soul food recipe that I’ve seen for cornbread has some amount of sugar,” he said. “White Southern cooks would call this cake.”
Another difference is the use of white corn meal versus yellow corn meal.
Blacks used white corn meal in the South, and yellow corn meal became popular among those who left, he explained. They started making substitutions to ingredients as their way to re-create home. Exposure to different cultures also influenced a fusion of soul food — for example, soul food egg rolls. (Or, in Hampton Roads, the fusion of Chinese culture to produce yock.)
Miller said, “I define soul food in my books as the food that Black migrants took out of the South and transplanted across the country.”
But, “for some people, all food of the American South is Southern food and soul food or home cooking.”
Camille Sheppard, executive chef and owner of Soulivia’s Art plus Soul Restaurant in Chesapeake, shares similar sentiments. Her family comes from the Geechee Gullah culture and they live in St. Helena Island, South Carolina.
Slaves were brought to the island primarily from West Africa.
“The African culture and people from the low country helped to create Gullah’s version of soul food.” The Gullah red rice is similar to the African jollof rice, a tomato and rice dish.
To Sheppard, the spirit of the food is what makes it soulful; “Southern food” refers simply to where people live.
“Anybody from the South can make Southern food; however, soul food only comes from the Black or African American culture,” she said.
Expressions of Black identity spread across the country and throughout the world during the 1960s. The movement was resistance to white supremacy and racial terror, as well as a celebration of Black creative capital, says Catarina Passidomo. At the University of Mississippi, she’s the Southern Foodways Alliance associate professor of Southern studies.
She admits there’s no simple way to describe the difference between Southern food and soul food. But focusing on the meaning of “soul” as involving survival, resistance and reclaiming identity, she says, can give “soul food” those inflections.
“I think of soul food as a culinary articulation of African Americans, most of whom trace their lineage to the American South. Therefore, I think of soul food as the foundation of Southern food,” she said.
For some Hampton Roads cooks, “soul food” expresses emotion, connection, the physical experience — and even an unusual gift.
Jamyce Freeman, a personal chef in Virginia Beach, grew up in Mississippi where her Aunt Shirley made cast iron cornbread on the stove and cooked with bacon grease and lard. This leads to the question: If the making of food comes from a place of love or “soul,” can any ethnic group call its food soul food?
“I don’t think there’s a clear definition of soul food. Soul food is something you do from the soul,” said Freeman. “A lot of people cannot be taught.”
She is one of several I spoke with who equate soul food with experience.
Soul food brings people together, Freeman said, to experience something delicious and beautiful.
Elaina Dariah, a Norfolk resident and friend who traveled the world with the Navy, describes soul food as an experience and Southern food as extravagance, as in how it is displayed.
“Soul food is about the people, the food and taste of food and wanting to please the palate through the love of food,” she said. “Southern food is the big table with a Southern breakfast and the look of abundance.”
Heaven Fitzgerald of Virginia Beach associates the difference with the experience, too.
She thinks about Georgia accents, collard greens, cornbread and good food. Soul food triggers thoughts about the 1997 movie of the same name that starred Vivica A. Fox, Vanessa Williams and Nia Long. The film focused on how Sunday meals kept an African American family together during difficult times. It featured the matriarch and her three daughters cooking food after church — food such as salmon croquettes, macaroni and cheese, and fried chicken.
Fitzgerald’s memories of soul food are similar to the movie. She went to her grandma’s house on Sundays, where the menu consisted of fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, and collards.
“Everyone is smiling and laughing,” she said.
Harper Bradshaw, chef and owner of Harper’s Table in Suffolk, serves Southern cuisine. He grew up in Franklin and was taught early in life that time around the table with family was worth celebrating; good food was part of that. He loved cooking and took on his first cooking job during his freshman year of college, working in a food hall at James Madison University. He continued and worked for great chefs who were mentors, such as Pete Evans and Sam McGann.
Bradshaw had an epiphany while working in a restaurant serving Southern cuisine. He was Southern. His roots were Southern.
“I opened a Southern food restaurant because that’s who I am,” he wrote in an email. “That’s how I cook.”
On his menu, customers can find pork belly biscuits, shrimp and grits, and downtown Suffolk barbecue.
Bradshaw believes soul food is part of Southern food, and he breaks down the two by race.
“Soul food came from the kitchens of the African American South,” he said.
They cooked with humble ingredients such as greens, which were a product of social, economic and cultural situations, Bradshaw said. People used soul — love, calm, compassion and beauty — to transform those ingredients into the best plate on the dinner table.
Some people describe the differences between Southern food and soul food by taste.
Telvin Martin eats it, cooks it and, with his brother Timothy, has a new restaurant to serve it — Martin’s Soul Food To-Go in Virginia Beach. He sees the difference between Southern and soul foods in taste but admits his distinctions aren’t that clear.
“Soul food has oomph and feeds the soul. Southern country food is deep fried and has a vibe,” he said, laughing at his explanation.
Chef Greg Burroughs, who teaches at the Culinary Institute of Virginia in Virginia Beach, grew up eating soul food. His father owned a truck stop in Oklahoma that specialized in collards, candied yams and buttermilk fried chicken.
His childhood was humble, he said, and he sees soul food as making the most from the least, too — for example, using the entire pig, rendering the fat and adding onions. Instead of eating high on the hog, his family — like many others — ate close to the ground like pig feet, ham hocks and belly because they were poor.
As a white man, he believes “your soul food is my soul food” and that this notion is true for most people around the world. For example, a country-fried steak is similar to the German pork schnitzel, he explained.
I met David Cariens — an author and retired Central Intelligence Agency analyst who lives in Palmyra, Virginia — while he was visiting Virginia Beach. He considers soul and Southern food the same: delicious, fried and somewhat unhealthy, including his beloved biscuits and gravy.
Later, Cariens added that both emerged during a dark period in American history.
“Nowadays,” he said, “Southern food and soul food bring people together.”
As for me, I learned that the definitions and differences of Southern and soul food have evolved depending on who’s debating, and vary by where people grew up and when.
Three things I now know for certain: I’m a fan of both; the ancestors created magical moments in the kitchen to help shape American cuisine; and any fare can be soulful.
