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"High on the Hog" and the significance of African American cuisine | Frank Buckley Interviews – Transcript
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- The four-part documentary series High on the Hog, how African American cuisine transformed America is streaming on Netflix.
- Executive producers Karis Jagger and Fabianne Tobak discussed how enslaved chefs like James Hemings were foundational to American cuisine.
- President Biden signed a bill to recognize Juneteenth as a federal holiday during the week of the series release.
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Despite the fact that we were in hell, we were suffering somehow in all of that nonsense, we created a cuisine. Is this something that would have been served to Jefferson and Washington by their enslaved chefs?
Absolutely. Hercules and Hemmys were foundational to the foods that we love today. When you understand your history and understand where you come from, that understanding gives you purpose. From fresh yams on sale in the markets of Benin to a whole hog barbecue pit in Gullah country, the story of African Americans and their food is long and profound.
The story of that cuisine, where it started and how it got here to the new world is the subject of a new four-part documentary series called High on the Hog, how African American cuisine transformed America. It is streaming now on Netflix and I am delighted to welcome the executive producers, Karis Jagger and Fabianne Tobak to Frank Buckley interviews.
Look at you both smiling, it is great to see you. Congratulations, it is so good and I hope people will see it. It must be gratifying the great notices you're getting.
We could not be more delighted. It has been a long journey and we are just absolutely thrilled. Fabianne, Elena ran into you at Trader Joe's a few months ago, my wife. She came home and told me that you were working on this project.
You both know her and I thought, oh, this will be fun, a food documentary on Netflix. As we know, there are a million of them. I had no idea that what you produced would be so moving and profound and full of joy, all of these things together.
And I just wonder for you personally, as you began the journey and went into this journey, did you think that you would find and experience all these things that we did as viewers of it?
Well, I mean, to be honest, yeah, I think that was always our intention. We were so passionate about the story and how it could communicate and what it would do for the public that, yeah, I mean, we're super excited.
And it's kind of doing what we wanted it to do. We've had amazing support. We had an amazing crew. We had an amazing partners. And, you know, it's all the special sauce. You put all those things together and you cross your fingers. It's going to be a success.
But we were super delighted. I think that I think that the same feeling that we had when we read the book and fell in love with it is what people are experiencing now. And that delights us. Here's the thing, you know, I sort of joked about the fact that there are many food documentaries, not just on Netflix, but everywhere.
But they tend to focus on Europe or Asia, never as far as I know, on Africa. And then the journey from Africa to America. And then how much we eat every day is originated originated in Africa.
I mean, you obviously knew this going into the project. But did you know about it as you were growing up yourselves, the food that you ate? Did you think, oh, this originally came from Africa? Not at all. Not even close.
I mean, that's what was so amazing about the book. We, you know, I went to culinary school. Harris is an amazing home chef. And, you know, we read the book in one sitting and were crying.
We were just like, had no knowledge of any of these things. Jessica has spent her life, you know, writing and exploring the African food diaspora. So, I mean, it felt like it felt actually urgent, you know, that we needed to get this information.
Yeah. And the Jessica that you mentioned is Jessica B. Harris, who wrote the book, High on the Hog, that inspires this series. I want to share a clip from your trip to Benin and to West Africa with the host, Steven Satterfield.
He's walking through a market. Let's just show the clip and I'll ask you to react on the other side. Seeing my own likeness. Isn't it? Reflected. Isn't it? And the hair.
I see our style and garments and how we wear stuff. And in our swagger. Our swagger, our ingenuity, our resourcefulness. It really is, we feel so transported in this series.
And Steven clearly was transported himself. And we'll see later in the documentary when people go to watch it. Such a moving moment when it truly got to his soul. The fact of being in this location where so many slaves were, this was the last thing they saw before they were sent to America as slaves.
I wonder the two of you being in that spot. How did it affect you? It was, it was, you know, it was a it was a very dark day, heavy with rain and everyone was incredibly emotional.
It's you can't sit in that space and be in that place and not feel just incredible sadness. You know, I think it there's no other way to describe it. I mean, everyone on the crew was just bawling.
Yeah, it was very intense. Yeah. And we see foods in this market that we just show that are so associated with quote unquote soul food here in America, whether it's the yams that the okra, the rice and specifically with yams, how when Africans got here to the U.S., they couldn't get yams.
And so what did they do? They do the next best thing and they have sweet potatoes, you know? Yeah. And there's this whole thing about sweet potatoes and yams in which we don't even think about it.
Yeah. And now you've seen a real yam. You won't forget that you're eating a sweet potato. Yeah, I mean, those yams are huge. It was something else. As Dr. Harris calls them, a hairy, a lone-foot. There's part of this journey that is about food that isn't from Africa, but is something that African-Americans might consider part of their culture.
One of those foods is the American staple, mac and cheese, something that we've all eaten growing up that we continue to eat. And you interview a descendant of James Hemmings, who was instrumental in making it part of the American diet.
I'm gonna show that clip in a second, but first, set it up. Who is James Hemmings? Well, he was the enslaved chef of Thomas Jefferson. He went with Thomas Jefferson to Paris. He went to a cordon bleu or like a cooking school there.
He also was foundational in terms of bringing back our modern stove. He was fluent in like four languages. I mean, he was an amazing chef in person. All right, with that as the setup, let's take a look at this clip about mac and cheese.
I feel a special relationship to this mac and cheese. So you must have grown up eating mac and cheese? Well, sure, we all did, didn't we? Yeah, we all did, right? And so how did it feel once you realized that you were a descendant of the person or the family that helped popularize this dish in the US?
Well, first of all, I didn't grow up with that knowledge. I didn't learn that until recently. And now that I know that, I'm wondering where my royalties are. Thank you. We're all wondering that, actually. And beyond that, listen, it's really an honor.
I'm lucky enough to know that history. But every black American has something like that in their background. They just don't know it. They just don't know it. And isn't that sort of at the heart of all of this as well?
They don't know it, we don't know it. And this is a way for black Americans, African Americans to take pride in this space, in the food space. Absolutely. Gail Jessup-Waite, who was speaking there, who's the relative of James Hemings.