It began with a stack of old recipe books that a chef in Blacksburg discovered at a local bookstore.
Stephen Doyle, sous chef at the Maroon Door then used the recipe books in a meal themed around historical, Appalachian dishes.
Now, he and three chefs from across the region are planning a dinner on March 26, centered around their family’s food traditions, and the foods they serve might surprise you, including oysters, ham, rabbit, salmon cakes, grits, pepperoni-roll biscuits, apple-rhubarb cobbler, and more.
The meal is part of a project through Virginia Tech, called Chefs Doing History, explained Anna Zeide, director of Virginia Tech’s food studies program and professor of history. She collaborated with the four chefs as they dug into the archives at the Culinary History Archives at Virginia Tech's Special Collections and University Archives.
“Looking through old recipe books, old menu collections, old train car menus,” Zeide said. “To kind of be inspired by and understand the roots in a kind of archival context.”
The chefs stumbled on many unexpected discoveries, including a collection of cooking and catering notes from Nikki Giovanni’s family. In addition to being a renowned writer, Giovanni was an avid cook, and wrote about the food her grandmother grew and made.
Chef Travis Milton said reading her family’s notes was like peeking through a window of her story.
“And seeing that you know really kind of spoke to me,” Milton said. “And it about made me break down in tears. Like I got to know Nikki decently and she was an amazing influence on me and a lot of other chefs and people in the region I know.”
Stereotypes about Appalachia have led many people to both ridicule and romanticize the food from this region. Over the years, Milton, a James Beard Award Finalist, has been one of the voices advocating for a more nuanced narrative.
“I feel like there’s this need of like, I need to tap into something ancient or back to the roots of Appalachia. I’m like, no no no. Tap into what you experienced,” Milton said. “Because I feel like too often people try to paint their own experience of Appalachia as the definitive experience.”
Milton encouraged the other chefs in the project to think more about their family’s food traditions. They talked about eating vegetables grown in gardens. And dishes that use processed and canned foods—ingredients available to working families—like spam and canned salmon.
“And those are equally valid and have equal value in my mind,” Milton said. “And when you can tap into something that’s inside of you, it really shows through to the guests.”
Milton lives and works in Southwest Virginia. The three other chefs work at the Maroon Door restaurant in Blacksburg.
“I grew up with going into the garden with my grandmother and picking vegetables and stuff,” recalled chef Justin Bailey, who was born in McDowell County, West Virginia.
“And I honestly looked at it more as work at that point. Until I grew up and realized that, you know, the love that was in every meal, and I think that's the most important part to me about Appalachian cuisine is the family, sharing it with everybody,” Bailey said.
Stephen Doyle grew up a few miles outside Blacksburg, and he too has vivid memories of his grandmother’s cooking.
“Justin and I's approach to how we treat cuisine is pretty often rooted in what we grew up with and what we enjoy cooking, which is Appalachian food,” Doyle said.
Last summer, Doyle discovered a box of old recipe books and used that as an inspiration for a meal he served at the Maroon Door. That’s actually what sparked this collaboration. When Zeide heard about Doyle’s historical cookbook meal, her team invited the chefs to collaborate with them on an Appalachian themed dinner.
“And I think using true historical research and analysis can pull back on some of those stereotypes, help us to expand our understanding of the different, complex strands,” Zeide said. “And the changeability of Appalachian cuisine over time.”
Danille Christensen is an associate professor of folklore and Appalachian Studies at Virginia Tech, and another collaborator in the project. She says exploring our food traditions can help expand how we understand all the things Appalachia is.
“So we’ve got stuff from the garden, we’ve got things that people have processed in their homes,” Christensen described. “We’ve got things that people have foraged from the woods. And then also access to industrial produced commercial foods, right? And the ways that all of those, sort of four different strands, come together on the table is something that I’m super excited to see.”
You can taste the results of “chefs doing history” on March 26 at 6:00 pm at the Maroon Door in Blacksburg. Space is limited, and tickets are on sale now.
