Gravy Podcast

Series produced by Southern Foodways Alliance

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Gravy is the SFA’s collection of original stories—fresh, unexpected, and thought-provoking. Like all of the SFA’s work, 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. Gravy the print journal lands in the mailboxes of SFA members four times per year. Gravy the podcast releases a new episode every other week.


154 Pieces

Order by: Newest First | Oldest First
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How did Huntsville, Alabama become home to a whole host of German restaurants? It has more to do with rocket science, than with Southerners’ love o...

Bought by KVLU


  • Added: Jul 28, 2016
  • Length: 33:42
  • Purchases: 1
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You’ve heard of explorers discovering new lands, but new… fruits? In this episode of Gravy, a couple of young fruit explorers scour the South on a ...

Bought by KVLU, West Virginia Public Broadcasting, and KSFR


  • Added: Aug 15, 2016
  • Length: 26:09
  • Purchases: 3
Caption: Coal miner Ronnie Johnson, with his lunchbox.
For decades, Ronnie Johnson woke up in the late afternoon, and fixed a lunch to bring with him 2,000 feet underground, as he worked all night in a ...

Bought by WMMT, KVLU, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and West Virginia Public Broadcasting


  • Added: Aug 25, 2016
  • Length: 31:48
  • Purchases: 4
Caption: Man with rake and drying shrimp. , Credit: Photo courtesy of The Historic New Orleans Collection.
Imagine this: deep in the Louisiana wetlands, a wooden platform the size of three football fields, covered in shrimp, drying in the sun… which are ...

Bought by KVLU


  • Added: Sep 08, 2016
  • Length: 25:44
  • Purchases: 1
Caption: Justin Hopkins performing the role of Booker Wright in "Repast." , Credit: Photo by Brandall Atkinson.
One spring day in 1965, a waiter in Greenwood, Mississippi gave an interview for an NBC television documentary. What he said has made him an unlike...

Bought by KVLU


  • Added: Sep 22, 2016
  • Length: 36:08
  • Purchases: 1
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In 1986, Ernest Matthew Mickler of Palm Valley, Florida, published White Trash Cooking. It was a loving ode to his people—rural, white, working-cla...

Bought by KVLU


  • Added: Oct 11, 2016
  • Length: 27:31
  • Purchases: 1
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In Chapel Hill, there’s a farm that’s much more than just a spot to grow food: it’s a gathering place for refugees, including a group of Karen teen...

Bought by KVLU


  • Added: Oct 20, 2016
  • Length: 27:14
  • Purchases: 1
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Corn is a ubiquitous part of Southern food—from bread to whiskey. But how did it get to be that way? In this episode of Gravy, we go on a hunt for ...

Bought by KVLU and West Virginia Public Broadcasting


  • Added: Nov 03, 2016
  • Length: 25:21
  • Purchases: 2
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For generations, farmers in western North Carolina have relied on tobacco as a core crop, their lifeblood. It was more than just income, though: to...

Bought by KVLU


  • Added: Nov 17, 2016
  • Length: 26:01
  • Purchases: 1
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You might think of Coca Cola as an iconic American brand… but it was born in the South. How did Coke’s Atlanta birthplace shape what the soft drink...

Bought by KPTZ, Port Townsend, WA and KVLU


  • Added: Dec 01, 2016
  • Length: 25:24
  • Purchases: 2
Caption: Sandor Katz holds up a whole head of Napa Cabbage that’s been fermenting in a clay crock., Credit: Sarah Reynolds
Sarah Reynolds takes us into the kitchens of Louise Frazier and Sandor Katz to learn how fermenting vegetables has helped them both carry on throug...

Bought by WMMT and KVLU


  • Added: May 31, 2017
  • Length: 29:41
  • Purchases: 2
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Civil Rights workers in the Mississippi Delta saw a poverty they could never have imagined. This Gravy episode tells the story of how hunger in the...

  • Added: Jan 12, 2017
  • Length: 01:15:38
Caption: The Vidalia Onion Museum in Vidalia, Georgia. , Credit: Photo by Tyler Pratt.
If you know and love the Vidalia onion—an onion sweet enough, its fans say, to eat like an apple—you likely also know it as a product of Georgia, a...

Bought by WMMT, KVLU, and West Virginia Public Broadcasting


  • Added: Jan 26, 2017
  • Length: 28:42
  • Purchases: 3
Caption: Island Road connects Pointe-Aux-Chenes with Isle de Jean Charles. At high tide, the road can be completely covered with water making it impassable for school buses., Credit: Edmund D. Fountain
For centuries, the bayous and lowlands of coastal Louisiana have fed the Point-au-Chien Indian Tribe. From cattle to crabs, oranges to okra, the fe...

Bought by KVLU


  • Added: Feb 09, 2017
  • Length: 29:02
  • Purchases: 1
Caption: Kalbi lunch at DWJ., Credit: John T Edge
What happens when Korean barbecue goes from suburban strip malls to restaurant rows in cities like Atlanta, New Orleans, and Memphis? On the latest...

  • Added: Feb 23, 2017
  • Length: 20:41
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Texas: the land of BBQ, breakfast tacos…and of course Tex-Mex. But what if we told you Tex-Mex wasn’t created by a Texan or Mexican, but a German i...

Bought by KVLU


  • Added: Mar 23, 2017
  • Length: 29:39
  • Purchases: 1
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It’s the season for communal meals, like Easter dinners and Passover Seders. In the Mississippi Delta town of Greenville, members of the Hebrew Uni...

Bought by KVLU and KPTZ, Port Townsend, WA


  • Added: Apr 06, 2017
  • Length: 20:26
  • Purchases: 2
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Striking up a conversation with a stranger in a bar is accepted, even expected. And storytelling is a big part of that engagement. But what happens...

  • Added: Apr 20, 2017
  • Length: 26:35
Caption: Chicken shawarma at Ali Baba Mediterranean Grill, Credit: Rose Reid
Chicken shawarma might not be the first food that comes to mind when you think of Memphis. This episode of Gravy takes us inside Ali Baba Mediterra...

Bought by KVLU


  • Added: May 31, 2017
  • Length: 27:59
  • Purchases: 1
Caption: Heather Sevcik harvests greens on her farm with an intern., Credit: Caroline Leland
In this episode of Gravy, Caroline Leland explores the challenges of finding and affording farmland, along with some of the keen individuals and or...

Bought by KVLU and West Virginia Public Broadcasting


  • Added: May 31, 2017
  • Length: 22:06
  • Purchases: 2