“I have seen much to both encourage and alarm me about the state of Southern food, but nothing has caused me to abandon my belief in its social and cultural importance.” – John Egerton, Southern Food: At Home, on the Road, in History
In Birmingham, it is no secret that we love food.
Sure, looking at some of our waistlines (not yours, of course), it becomes obvious that many of us would rather pull up to the table instead of pushing back from it. But there’s more evidence than that – a plate full, in fact – that we not only love food itself, but also talking about food, writing about food, studying about food, legislating about food and even arguing about food.
Remember the firestorm over the big blue Pepsi sign? The hassle over food truck regulations? The Birmingham Police being called to discourage charitably minded folks from feeding the homeless beneath underpasses? That was all food – or at least, food-related.
It would also be impossible to miss the fact that the fifth annual REV Birmingham-promoted Birmingham Restaurant Week begins Friday, which REV promises will “spotlight the immensely diverse and dynamic restaurant offerings of our city” as “Birmingham’s most successful and anticipated culinary event,” showing Birmingham “as a premier dining destination.”
Birmingham’s foodie reputation is becoming a major bright spot in national discussions of the city. For example, “Birmingham has leapt to the forefront of the state’s food movement,” according to FoodRepublic.com. “Whether you’re looking for James Beard Award-winning fine dining or good ol’ fashioned ‘Q, you’re sure to find something that sparks your palate.”
Hype aside, there is no denying that food is a big part of our culture and our cultural discussion, whether you’re talking about Birmingham’s growing league of extraordinary celebrity chefs on the one hand, or on the other, about the “food deserts” in the community where people live too far away from fresh, healthy, affordable food to easily make the best nutritional choices.
It’s baked in
Part of the reason food is so important here is because of Alabama being, after all, the Heart of Dixie. “There is no denying the long-term vitality and importance of Southern food,” John Egerton wrote in the abovementioned tome, Southern Food: At Home, on the Road, in History. “Our food has been a powerful reflection of our history, an open window on the daily joys and sorrows of our lives, a constant reminder of who we are and where we came from. The appeal of Southern cooking transcends the barriers of race, class, sex, religion, and politics. Here in this historically unique region of the United States – unique for a great many reasons, good and bad – food has been perhaps the most positive element of our collective character, an inspiring symbol of reconciliation, healing, and union.”
But even in the South, when it comes to food Birmingham has some unique traits of its own. Just ask the assistant professor of nutrition sciences at UAB, who, before she moved to the Magic City, had lived elsewhere in the South – Atlanta, and Virginia, to name a couple of places – the perfectly named (for this story, anyway) Beth Kitchin. Birmingham, she said, taught her a few things about food.
Despite her upbringing – geographically speaking – Kitchin grew up with more Italian food than anything else. “When I moved to the South, to Birmingham, that’s when I really learned about Southern food and learned how to really appreciate Southern food. … I learned about foods that I had never eaten before. I didn’t know there were this many breakfast meats as there are. I really fell in love with barbecue. I never really grew up with barbecue. I didn’t know there were so many kinds.”
Living in Birmingham, she also became familiar with different regional foods such as Low Country – South Carolina, north Georgia coast – and Cajun from Louisiana. “It was really an eye opener for me, and I really fell in love with a lot of things I had never had before, like pimento cheese, for one thing.”
In Birmingham, even nutritionists love comfort food. “I really actually love fried food,” Kitchin confessed, without a hint of shame. She was indoctrinated in the ways of food in Birmingham fairly soon after her arrival. “I’ll never forget when I first came to Birmingham and I was doing a food history with a patient and asked them what vegetables had they had, and they said, ‘Macaroni and cheese,’” she recalled. “I found that very interesting. And I slowly realized that that was because of the Southern vegetable plate that you get – you know, at the Piggly Wiggly or at a restaurant – and that anything that’s not a meat is a vegetable on the vegetable plate.”
Whether CheesyMac is really a vegetable or not, Kitchin noted, as many have elsewhere, that Birmingham is becoming known for food for good reasons. You can start with the acclaimed reputations of restaurants like Hot and Hot Fish Club and Highlands Bar and Grill (not necessarily in that order), but continue with a food scene which is continually evolving. “From the perspective of good food, I think Birmingham is kind of becoming a food mecca,” she said. “I think we’re seeing, from my experience, an explosion of really great food – and not just from different ethnicities, but you see a lot of food trucks evolving into restaurants.”
Besides the growing numbers of food trucks drawing crowds of the hungry to the streets and parking lots around the city, there are also specialty restaurants popping up everywhere, with interesting, monosyllabic names like Hooked, Saw’s, MELT and Slice.
Adding to the food-intense culture are the food festivals, massive gatherings for everything from barbecue to beer – Magic City microbreweries are plentiful lately. Kitchin knows something about that from personal experience. “I was one of the first judges for the Fry Down for the Cahaba River,” she said, an annual event which raises money for the Cahaba River Society. “We eat eight servings of fried catfish in order to judge it for the festival. And that’s a lot of fun for me.”
While food is fun from one perspective, it also can be a serious issue in a town like Birmingham.
Food problems
Amidst all the plenty, however, there are food related problems in metro Birmingham as well.
Feedingamerica.org shows that in 2012, 18.3 percent of people living in Jefferson County are classified as “food insecure,” meaning that at times, there is not enough food in the household to provide “an active, healthy life for all household members” or just not enough “nutritionally adequate foods.”
In Birmingham there are resources for those who lack adequate food. Community Food Bank of Central Alabama, for instance, serves 12 counties, fighting chronic hunger with food from government agencies and donors locally and outside the area. The food bank, which was established in 1982, “operates as a central clearinghouse for collecting food that might otherwise be wasted.” Part of a national network of 200 food banks, the local organization distributes food to 501©(3) nonprofits and religious institutions, including shelters, soup kitchens and homes for the elderly and handicapped. The agencies that receive the food have to distribute it to the public at no charge.
Community Food Bank of Central Alabama’s website has a substantial listing of agencies, programs, food drives and other resources. To learn more, visit feedingal.org.
Better choices
According to the website F as in Fat, which is a project of the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Alabama has the fifth highest obesity rate in the country, with the adult obesity rate climbing from 28.4 percent in 2003 to 33 percent in 2012. In 2013, 1.2 million adults in Alabama were obese, according to americashealthrankings.org. Obesity leads to correspondingly high rates of diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, arthritis and cancer. While there are other factors involved in disease, obesity can be the flipside of our cultural love of food.
Kitchin noted that restaurant food is not necessarily attractive because of its health benefits; there are ways to improve what people eat in Birmingham. Restaurants, for example, could do something that may draw a collective gasp in the South: offering smaller portion sizes. “I think portion sizes are so gigantic,” Kitchin said. “I’d like to see more reasonable portion sizes. Because that’s one of the big mistakes that we make when we go out to eat – the portions are just so huge, especially at the more midrange kinds of restaurants.
“On a personal level, I actually really do like big portions because I’m a big fan of the doggy bag, and I always get two meals. But from the perspective of a public health scientist, I think smaller portion sizes would be really good for the public.”
Of course, individuals could also just choose to eat less.
And closer to home
And, Kitchin said, individually, we could choose to eat local. “What I would like to see, and I think we’re moving toward that, is buying and using local foods,” she said. “So using what’s in season, using what local farmers are growing. I kind of go back [to] the slow food movement. That’s one of my favorite things in the world and I’m a big believer in the slow food movement. … I don’t believe in eating fast. I believe in sitting down and enjoying. … I like the whole slow food perspective where you know where your food comes from. You know how it was raised and how it was grown and how it was prepared. So I’d like to see that because I think that promoting small farms is good for us from the economic perspective, from the social perspective, [and] sometimes from the environmental perspective. Because corporate farming sometimes can be worse for the environment.”
Jeff Gentry, the proprietor behind Bamawise, thinks eating local is good for other reasons. “We have the best food, I think, in the world, here,” he said.
Gentry began the company, housed on Birmingham’s Southside, last year to promote and market all kinds of made-in-Alabama food. A visit to Bamawise.com reveals some 24 different products from 12 different vendors located all over the state. Holmsted Fines chutney and Chuck’s Choice beef jerky are from Birmingham. Mook Mills Cheese Straws originates in the Shoals area. Cake by Donna comes from Fairhope.
“Throughout the years I came across some very really good vendors here in Alabama,” Gentry said. “So I wanted to find a way to help all of them and help these retailers be able to buy all their Alabama products from one vendor – a specialty vendor who has experience not only here but throughout the country. And to help [the producers] venture off. So that’s kind of what I’m trying to do. That’s the whole concept.”
As he travels and introduces customers to the Alabama products Bamawise represents, Gentry said that “the feedback I’m getting is just incredible. … It’s so cool, some of these things these people are doing.”
Bamawise has plans to market by samples – using gift trays assembled by another local producer, the Alabama Institutes for the Deaf and Blind in Talladega, he said, starting next month.
The company also serves the needs of the vendors, allowing them to work together and learn from each other, “almost like a co-op,” Gentry said. And offering local products gives small grocers an edge. “I’ve got a good relationship with my grocers. We’ve got the best independent grocery stores in the world around here. A lot of these products they can get and they can make themselves different than the bigger box chains,” he said.
Identifying with food
Birmingham’s love for food is contributing to changes in how people view the city. “I think food is important to the identity of the city,” Kitchin said. “And I think as Birmingham tries to become more attractive to people on the outside who want to either come here to work or come here for conferences, having a vibrant food scene is really important. I mean when I go to a new city for a conference, the first thing I’m thinking about is where are the good restaurants, where am I going to go eat.”
The city is becoming home to more restaurants that do what Kitchin likes so much about Saw’s: a creative twist on food endemic to Southern culture. “So I think restaurants that kind of use our culture but then take it to that next step are really exciting and I think it gives us the identity of sort of the New South, with a little bit of the good parts of the Old South mixed in, so to speak. I think it can really help us with our identity. Things like the food in the city really contribute a lot to the identity of that city,” she said. “We have really terrific restaurants and I think as we get better known for that, it’s really going to raise our profile.”