In “Southern Cooking Comes to Portugal,” Gravy producer Adwoa Gyimah-Brempong takes listeners to Porto, the second largest city in Portugal, which anchors the northern region. Porto is famous for its wine and its hearty francesinha sandwiches. But this city of a quarter million people has a food scene whose depth might surprise you. Porto runs the gamut from picturesque century-old markets to hipster bakeries whose joelho pastries and glazed cornflake croissants frequently spawn lines out the door. And it’s also home to not one, but two Black Alabamian women reinventing what it means to be a Southern chef. While Gravy is a show about the changing American South, this is a story about the malleability of Southern identity—and changing American Southerners.
Angela Sellers is the owner of Piccolo Cameo, a Mediterranean fusion restaurant focusing on bright, seasonal pastas. The restaurant happened almost by accident, but it has grown to be one of the
city’s culinary gems. And Bridget Jones (yes, that’s her real name) serves rustic cuisine with southern charm as SouthernGal in Portugal. Her business was also not something she planned when she moved to Portugal—it felt like the universe nudged it into place.
Bridget and Angela are among the thousands of Americans currently living in Portugal, as is Adwoa, this episode’s producer. Not long after Adwoa moved to Porto, a friend told her that the city felt like the opening scene of Beauty and the Beast: everybody waking up to say "bonjour" (or "bom dia," as the case may be). People's manners feel familiar to her in a way that puts her at ease.
For Bridget, that southern adjacency is also reflected in the food: Portuenses eat similarly to American Southerners, fatback and ham hock included. But Angela has found freedom in redefining what
it means to be a Southern chef. In both cases, their identity is something they carried with them through customs—something that informs who they are, but doesn’t define their identity. Each of these women has lived in many corners of the world, but there’s something about the city of Porto that makes room at the table for everything they are.
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We Sure Eat Good When Someone Dies
In “We Sure Eat Good When Someone Dies,” Gravy producer Caleb Johnson takes listeners back to August 2024, when his extended family gathered inside a Baptist church in Arley, Alabama, to mourn the loss of their matriarch—his grandmother, Celia Sampley. Before the funeral service, the church served lunch for the family, including chicken and dumplings, green-bean casserole, and plenty of desserts. A particular cake caught Caleb’s eye that day, called a pea picking cake. In this episode, Caleb steps into the kitchen of the woman who baked that memorable cake and explores how eating something sweet helps us process grief.
The cook’s name is Sandra Stewart, and she was a good friend of Caleb’s grandmother. They attended Bethel Baptist Church together for many years. When it came time to bake something for the funeral wake, Sandra looked through her large recipe book. She chose a pea picking cake because all the ingredients she needed were already in her pantry. Her choice was mainly for convenience.
Traditionally, recipes for pea picking cake call for using a box cake mix. The first box cake mix was created in the 1930s, but it didn’t become popular until after World War II. Caleb talks with food historian KC Hysmith about the mysterious origins of the pea picking cake and how it fits into a tradition of fancy box cakes that grew popular in the second half of the twentieth century, a time when home cooks started using more store-bought, convenience ingredients.
Caleb also speaks with Dr. Candi K. Cann, a professor of religion at Baylor University and a self-described death scholar, about funeral traditions involving food around the world. She explains that these traditions help mourners revisit meaningful relationships. However, despite the close link between funerals and foodways, Dr. Cann says Americans aren’t taught how to navigate grief, partly because individualism is a key part of the Protestant faith. She believes this has led to less emphasis on communal meals like the one served at Caleb’s grandmother’s wake.
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This episode was reported by Caleb Johnson. Johnson is the author of the novel Treeborne, and a frequent contributor to the Gravy podcast and magazine. He teaches creative writing at Appalachian State University.
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Virginia Public Schools Serve Indigenous Cuisine
In “Virginia Public Schools Serve Indigenous Cuisine,” Gravy producer Anya Groner takes listeners to the second annual Indigenous Peoples
Feast at the College of William & Mary. The evening’s menu showcases
indigenous food–foraged wild rice, duck confit, acorn grits, and a four-corn
stew. But these dishes aren’t just for enjoying tonight. With the help of a
USDA grant, they’ll eventually be served at public school cafeterias in
Virginia’s coastal Tidewater Region.
Coming up with the menu wasn’t easy. Centuries of forced assimilation, land grabs, and genocide prevented cultural knowledge from being passed down through generations. Designed by Chef Diosa Hall from the Mohawk
Nation and Chef Joe Rocchi from the Pamunkey Tribe, the meal combined native plants and fowl from the Eastern Seaboard with contemporary culinary trends, emphasizing the entire production process, from tiny seed to plated meal. Volunteers foraged herbs like plantain and bergamot. Hunters donated ducks. Growers harvested sustainably farmed vegetables.
Scaling up the supply chain to make these ingredients available to hundreds of schools could take two or three decades. Dr. Troy Wiipongwii is the Director of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Conservation at the College of William and Mary and a founding member of the Traditional Eastern Woodlands Foodways Alliance, the intertribal group leading this program. He says sustainable foods cost almost double to produce, but they’re
worth it. Agricultural systems like food forests not only rebuild ecosystems, but they also produce nutrient-dense food that’s healthier to eat. Wiipongwii put together a K-12 curriculum integrating indigenous foodways into science, math, health, and humanities to change attitudes around food production.
Chef Hall believes making native foods available in public schools will give indigenous students a sense of belonging. That’s especially important because schools haven’t always been welcoming places for Native
children. For centuries, residential schools took children from Native families
and forced them to learn European culture and adopt Christianity. Hall hopes
the new menu she helped put together will reclaim some of the cultural
practices targeted by the residential schools.
Listen to find out what it will take to keep indigenous food traditions visible in the nation’s cultural landscape—and how kids rate acorn grits and butternut squash against the typical school lunch.
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Culinary Characters Unlocked: Marisa Baggett
This week, Gravy is excited to share a special episode from a show we think you’ll love: Culinary Characters Unlocked. Hosted by David Page, the creator of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, the show highlights bold food makers whose stories might surprise you.
In this episode, we meet chef Marisa Baggett, a Black, Jewish, female sushi chef whose journey began in a Mississippi café where she’d never even seen sushi before. One question from a customer launched her into a new world, eventually leading her to train at the California Sushi Academy and write two cookbooks that make sushi more accessible to home cooks everywhere. Marisa’s story is one of passion, persistence, and breaking expectations—both cultural and culinary. We think you’ll be as fascinated by Marisa's story as we are.
If you like what you hear, tune in every Tuesday for new episodes of Culinary Characters Unlocked.
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Planting it Forward in Houston
While immigration is at the forefront of today’s news cycle,
it’s hardly a new issue in Southeast Texas. Since the 1800s, Galveston has been a major port of entry for foreign newcomers. That pattern continues today up Highway 45 in Houston, which ranks among America’s largest destinations for refugee resettlement.
While Harris County has many resources for assistance, transitioning into the workplace in a new country and culture is rarely easy for even the most skilled, educated, and adaptable English-speaking arrivals. But for those arriving from rural and agrarian backgrounds, it is even more difficult. There are few options for finding dignified work.
One charity that is working to fill this void is Plant It Forward. They empower refugees to build income through sustainable urban farming businesses. Plant It Forward secures land access, provides mentorship, and facilitates sales opportunities at area markets.
In this episode, we’ll take a trip to America’s fourth-largest
city with Gravy reporter Evan Stern to hear about how Plant It Forward’s
efforts have impacted the lives of its participants and the area’s foodscape. Teresa O’Donnell, who traces her unlikely journey from tech executive to nonprofit founder, will share Plant It Forward’s history. And CEO Nirjhor Rahman will argue that beyond helping members, Plant it Forward is introducing “a new type of farmer” to Texas’s fast-aging agricultural sector.
One of these new farmers is Constant Ngouala. A native of
Congo-Brazzaville, he joined Plant it Forward shortly after arriving in Houston. He now mentors new arrivals as a Master Gardener while farming his own rented plot. In addition to sharing his experiences as a refugee, he discusses the difficulties he faces as an area market farmer.
What is the sustainable food movement’s viability in Houston? Gravy explores how, by working the land, Plant It Forward’s farmers may represent a continuum in keeping with the region’s culture and history.
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Gravy shares stories of the changing American South through the foods we eat. Gravy showcases a South that is constantly evolving, accommodating new immigrants, adopting new traditions, and lovingly maintaining old ones. It uses food as a means to explore all of that, to dig into lesser-known corners of the region, complicate stereotypes, document new dynamics, and give voice to the unsung folk who grow, cook, and serve our daily meals.
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