Dishing With Documentarian Joe York
Photo credit: Pableaux Johnson/Facebook
In the early 2000s, Joe York was digging up dead people. Specifically, he was working as an archaeologist in the American South and Mexico, trying to piece together what he could about the long-buried bones.
"I just found archaeology kind of frustrating, because you wanted these people you were excavating to tell you more about them," York told us. "I wondered: What did they look like? What were their stories? Then you just realize that you’re never going to really know who these people were.”
Eventually, York switched his focus from the dead to the living: In 2004, he earned a master’s degree in Southern studies at the University of Mississippi (“which is a real thing, believe it or not”) and began filming oral histories of Southern food businesses, artisans, and workers. Today, he produces the videos in collaboration with his alma mater’s Center for the Study of Southern Culture and the Southern Foodways Alliance.
"I think the main reason that we make these films and do these oral histories is because we recognize that Southern culture is unique," York said. "And we also recognize that history is really just what we pass down from one generation to another."
When Helen Turner serves up tender, oak-and-hickory-smoked pulled pork at Helen’s Bar-B-Que, of which York filmed a short video, it’s not just a business transaction, he explained. “We’re actually sharing a culture with one another, and that’s really important in any culture throughout the world.”
Food-inflected storytelling in the South can also be a means of delving into more complex social issues. As evidence, York brought up a video he recently shot featuring Goren Avery, an African American server who has been a staple at the lauded Birmingham, Alabama restaurant Highlands Bar and Grill since it opened in 1982. (The video will go live on the Southern Foodways Alliance website later this week.)
"Goren kind of talks about what it was like to be a waiter in Alabama before he started working at the Highlands. What it’s like, as a human being, to have people snap their fingers at you and call you ‘boy’ and look at you as a servant," York said. "To go from that situation to now, where he really is referred to as ‘the Ambassador of the Highlands,’ it’s even more cool to watch when you understand what he had to go through and what he did to get where he is."
Watch some of York’s Southern oral histories here:
Helen’s Bar-B-Que Is a Place On Earth
See How the Country’s Best Bourbon Is Made
Boiled Peanuts, the Caviar of the South
What are your Southern food stories? Tell us about your favorite dishes, producers, and food memories from below the Mason-Dixon line.
