Carla Hall Isn't Going Back To The Frozen Food Section (Reheat)

Carla Hall is known for her quirky, energetic personality on TV. But in some ways she’s very different today from the woman who first appeared as a contestant on Top Chef almost two decades ago. "I didn't want to show up as my Blackness if it wasn't going to be accepted," the former co-host of The Chew says of her first foray into food media.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dan Pashman?

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• 0:43Dan Pashman?

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• 1:06Speaker 01

  Sirius XM Podcasts.

• 1:14Dan Pashman?

  Hey, it's Dan here with a reheat for you. And I'm really excited to share this one. You know, certain conversations kind of change or deepen my perception of somebody. Like I've seen them in their public person, but I had never met them before. And that's really the case here with Carla Hall. Because, you know, she's known as this kind of like fun, very quirky, somewhat silly, lovable oddball. And in this interview, like she is, she is all those things. That's not an act. But she's also so smart and sharp and thoughtful about her own experiences and about the world of food. And I really appreciated this conversation. Of course, you know Carla from Top Chef, ABC's The Chew and her cookbooks. She's actually got a new book coming out in September called Carla Bakes. And in this episode, we talk about her last cookbook, Carla Hall's Soul Food.

• 1:57Dan Pashman?

  And that book is, it was really a culminating moment for Carla in her relationship with the southern food that she grew up eating. Of course, if this is Sporkful episode, you want us to reheat, we take requests. Drop me a line at [email protected]. Thanks so much and enjoy.

• 2:12Speaker 02

  I did a rap. I had a woman in Nashville, Alita Miles, wrote a rap for me for this cookbook.

• 2:20Dan Pashman?

  This is celebrity chef Carla Hall. She was a fan favorite on Top Chef and a host of The Chew. Now she's got a new cookbook called Carla Hall's Soul Food.

• 2:29Speaker 02

  Let me see if I can find the track, or I can just do it freestyle without the music.

• 2:32Dan Pashman?

  Yo, mate, that would be even more amazing.

• 2:34Speaker 02

  What, freestyle without the music?

• 2:35Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, let's see it. Come on, Carla.

• 2:37Speaker 02

  Are you willing to do it now?

• 2:38Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, sure, if you want. Yeah, let's do it.

• 2:40Speaker 02

  Okay. Watch me fricka see a cabbage from Top Chef to The Chew. I'm better than your average player. Dash a saw from Himalaya. I'm a soul food slayer. I used to run from the collard greens, mac and cheese, yams and beans, but my ancestors talked to me through these things. When they said, "Go," I had to listen. Took a trip to the Delta, backwoods of Carolinas, where these recipes found shelter. Came back with a cookbook with an outlook. Beans and chow-chow, that'll leave you shook. I don't mean to brag, but you'll have the best time that you ever had with these everyday creations. A celebration of soul food in moderation.

• 3:18Dan Pashman?

  Yeah. Standing ovation from the control room.

• 3:24Dan Pashman?

  Please tell me we were rolling just now.

• 3:32Dan Pashman?

  On TV, Carla Hall is known for her quirky personality. She's earned the nickname Kooky Carla. So kicking off a 10 a.m. podcast interview with a homestyle rap? Classic Carla. But as we'll hear, in some ways, she's very different today from the woman who first appeared on Top Chef 10 years ago.

• 3:51Speaker 02

  I didn't want to be that person. I didn't want to show up as my blackness if it wasn't going to be accepted.

• 3:58Dan Pashman?

  This journey Carla's been on has led her to write a new cookbook that's not like anything she's ever done before. The story of how she got to this point is full of false starts, U-turns, and a mail truck full of sandwiches. We'll hear about all of it. Stick around.

• 4:22Dan Pashman?

  This is The Sporkful. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people. Let's get right into my conversation with Carla Hall. To understand why her new cookbook is so meaningful to her, we have to begin in Nashville, where Carla grew up, eating all the soul food staples.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  Cornbread dressing was absolutely the center of focus. Collard greens, my granny's mac and cheese, her five-flavor pound cake. In this book, I do a chocolate pound cake. When you walked into my grandmother's house for one of the big holidays, you're like, "Wait, are you catering? Is there 100 people coming by?" Because you had enough food for whoever would drop by. Ah, it was so good. And always, pickles in the fridge. Right now, if you look at my fridge, you would think I have a pickle problem. There are condiments and pickles. I have-- hi, my name is Carla, and I have a pickle problem. Hi, Carla, keep coming back.

• 5:22Dan Pashman?

  This is a safe space, Carla.

• 5:23Speaker 02

  It's a safe space.

• 5:24Dan Pashman?

  That's something I think that a lot of people-- and that I didn't understand until more recently. People don't understand about soul food, and especially a lot of the food in Nashville, is that it's not just about fat. And it's not even just about fat and heat. It's also about tart and tang.

• 5:44Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 5:44Dan Pashman?

  And fermentation.

• 5:45Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 5:46Dan Pashman?

  These more complex flavors that I think that people don't realize are part of that cuisine.

• 5:50Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. It is a balance between that tartness, that acid and sweet. So when you have your sweet tea, you're balancing it with all those bitter greens and all that other sour.

• 6:03Dan Pashman?

  Carla was born in Nashville in 1964. Her maternal grandfather was a respected doctor, and Carla grew up on the good side of town, a phrase she uses with air quotes.

• 6:12Speaker 02

  I remember being the only Black family in this community where we were living. And we had left the Black side of town, and somebody had broken into our house. My mom's like, "Oh, no, no more of this. We're gonna move." And then we moved to this place where my sister and I are the only Black kids. And I remember there, a guy, a kid, throwing rocks at me or spitting on me. And I'm like, "Whoa." But it's funny, because when you're young, you don't think about-- The color that you are. People remind you that you're different.

• 6:51Dan Pashman?

  So am I correct in understanding that it's it sounds like for you, growing up, you had to learn to navigate white spaces?

• 7:02Speaker 02

  Interestingly enough, I didn't focus on it, though. I really didn't. I had a variety of friends. The thing was, I always chose the friend who seemed like a misfit. I was that person. You would look at my friends, you're like, oh, look at the misfit toys.

• 7:24Dan Pashman?

  Let's move on to your entry into the world of food. Now, Carla, it seems like you took the most tried and true, most really trite route to celebrity chefdom. You started as an accountant.

• 7:40Speaker 02

  Yes, that's the path.

• 7:42Dan Pashman?

  That's, I mean, I'm pretty sure Julia Child, Jacques Papin, they were all accountants, right?

• 7:47Speaker 02

  You know, right, right, right.

• 7:48Dan Pashman?

  So what drew you to accounting?

• 7:51Speaker 02

  I wanted to go to Boston University, to the conservatory there, and do acting. And I didn't get in. And so my sister was going to Howard, and I was like, OK, I'll go to Howard. I liked my accounting teacher. It was really that simple. And so you're on that track. They tell you, OK, you're going to work at a Big Eight at the time. Now it's a Big Six or Big Four. And then you take the CPA exam, and that was the path. And I didn't even give it much thought. I feel like I was beaten down. My mother probably had a voodoo doll somewhere and trying to change me, and she kept turning it, you know? She was so relieved that I decided to major in accounting.

• 8:32Speaker 02

  Well, the thing that people don't know about me, and I have, I'm borderline introvert extrovert. So I have this thing of process and puzzles, and I think that's why I do like cooking, but that's also why I liked accounting. I mean, there were lanes, there were, you know, spreadsheets. I still love a good spreadsheet, and I love order and things. And when you look at my grocery list when I go to the store, I have everything lined up based on where it is in the store.

• 8:56Dan Pashman?

  Like, when you get all the way to the dairy section, and you realize you forgot something in the vegetable section, don't you just feel like a total failure at life?

• 9:01Speaker 02

  Yes. It's like, why am I, how am I planning this thing?

• 9:06Dan Pashman?

  Like, in the grand scheme of life, like, so you lose two minutes.

• 9:09Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 9:10Dan Pashman?

  But you feel like such a fool. Like, why didn't I plan this out better?

• 9:14Speaker 02

  Yes. But then again, when you think about it, if you arranged your life like that, you're like, you know what? Sometimes you're gonna be in the frozen section, and sometimes you have to go back to the produce section. But a lot of times, what people do when they get into their careers, you know what? I'm in the frozen section. I'm just gonna stay here. I'm not gonna go outside this lane. I'm comfortable over here. But sometimes you just have to get in, go to the other side of the store, because you know that you need something over there, so you need to go over there and get it.

• 9:44Dan Pashman?

  Sometimes you gotta throw your spreadsheet in the garbage.

• 9:46Speaker 02

  That's right. That's right.

• 9:49Dan Pashman?

  And so that's what you did.

• 9:50Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 9:51Dan Pashman?

  You threw the spreadsheets in the garbage.

• 9:53Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 9:53Dan Pashman?

  And you went to the logical next step from accounting: modeling.

• 9:58Speaker 02

  Right. Right. That's what you do.

• 10:02Dan Pashman?

  That was you going back to the produce section.

• 10:04Speaker 02

  That was me going back to the produce section. I'm like, wait, I left something over there. Fun, joy, happiness.

• 10:13Dan Pashman?

  Carla had done a little modeling already, but she says she wasn't really interested in making it a career. It was just a bridge to something other than accounting. To what exactly? She wasn't sure. But when a couple other models she knew decided to move to Paris, Carla went too. She did do some work there, but the most important thing that happened to Carla in Paris didn't have much to do with modeling.

• 10:35Speaker 02

  There was a woman named Elaine Evans from Memphis, Tennessee, of all places, who lived in Paris. And she would have all these models come. It was very similar to my Sunday suppers at my grandmother's house. And they were doing buffalo wings and macaroni and cheese.

• 10:50Dan Pashman?

  In Paris.

• 10:50Speaker 02

  In Paris. It was amazing. And I'm sitting there, and I was never in the kitchen with my grandmother. I'm like, when the food's ready, just call me. I'll be in. And here, everybody's having all these stories, and they're talking about how their mothers or whoever makes their macaroni and cheese. And I realized I had no idea. I don't know how it's made. And I started going to the English bookstore and buying cookbooks, and I started cooking for the people who were allowing me to sleep on their couch. And that's how I got into food.

• 11:29Dan Pashman?

  Carla returned to DC, where she'd gone to college, and started her own catering business. She made lunches and delivered them to offices, barber shops, and hair salons in a mostly black neighborhood. She was hustling.

• 11:40Speaker 02

  I had egg salad, tuna salad, fruit salad. I was doing biscuits with smoked turkey. And I was busy. I was cooking all the time and going to the grocery store. That was my life.

• 11:50Dan Pashman?

  And you bought a mail truck?

• 11:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, for $200.

• 11:53Dan Pashman?

  Wow.

• 11:53Speaker 02

  $200.

• 11:54Dan Pashman?

  Oh, my god.

• 11:55Speaker 02

  I know.

• 11:56Dan Pashman?

  I want a mail truck.

• 11:58Speaker 02

  Well, I don't even know if you can get them now. It was a mail truck with one seat, and then I would put a cooler in.

• 12:02Dan Pashman?

  Did it have the steering wheel on the wrong side?

• 12:04Speaker 02

  No, it was actually on the correct side for us.

• 12:07Dan Pashman?

  OK.

• 12:07Speaker 02

  And whoever visited me was working with me. So you would have to ride shotgun and sit on a cooler, no seatbelt, really highly illegal. And the brakes on that thing were terrible. So the day that my mother made me give it up, she happened to be in the mail truck on the cooler. And I'm coasting down this hill. I'm like, uh-oh, the light is red. The light is red. The car is going. It's not stopping. Oh, there's a car there. And I coasted into this mail truck, which is all still, into this other car.

• 12:40Dan Pashman?

  This is with your foot? Your foot is on the brake?

• 12:42Speaker 02

  The foot is on the brake.

• 12:43Dan Pashman?

  And the truck's not stopping?

• 12:44Speaker 02

  Truck's not stopping. Mama is in the car. Mama, my mother's like, Carla, Carla, I don't know why you have this thing. I don't know why you have this. This is not safe. This is not safe. And the sandwiches from the impact went everywhere.

• 12:57Dan Pashman?

  Oh, no.

• 12:57Speaker 02

  They were everywhere in the car. It was crazy.

• 13:01Dan Pashman?

  Carla ran her catering business for five years, only taking a handful of days off. Then, at age 30, she decided she wanted to take her cooking game to the next level. So she enrolled in a fancy French culinary school in the DC area. Most of the other students were right out of college. They didn't have years of experience like Carla did. But in a French cooking school, Carla found that her kind of experience didn't count for much.

• 13:25Speaker 02

  I mean, we were doing fricasse, we were doing the five mother sauces. You know, we weren't doing soul food. It never came up. There was no presence whatsoever of anything that looked like me. When we were doing our, there was one girl, Mary Ann Ali, and we were putting our mirepoix.

• 13:47Dan Pashman?

  And we should just say real quick, like for folks, mirepoix.

• 13:49Speaker 02

  Uh, mirepoix is the base for all these soups and sauces. It is three parts onions, two parts carrots, and one part celery. And these are, this is how you get the flavor in a sauce.

• 14:01Dan Pashman?

  Especially like in French and European cooking.

• 14:03Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly. And we were putting our mirepoix in this, our beef bourguignon. And when we took it out, and we were like, oh, we're gonna serve this mirepoix on the side, as a side dish, right? And after you cook all of this food, your, the chef instructor comes around, he's like, eh, what is this? And I'm like, oh, it's the mirepoix. These are some really delicious vegetables with all this wine and everything in it. He said, oh, we don't eat the mirepoix? I'm like, oh, no, we eat the mirepoix. We, we eat the mirepoix. You know, this is some good stuff, all the flavors in there. It was the shaming. I mean, we were shamed in front of the whole class.

• 14:46Dan Pashman?

  You know, you said that sort of growing up, race wasn't something that you were super conscious of, even though you were often the only black person in the room. How conscious of it were you in culinary school?

• 15:00Speaker 02

  I wa, I wasn't. No, that's not true. That's not true, because I had my friend, Mary Ann Ali, and we were talking about the differences. But I was still in a place where I wanted to lean into this food, and what felt fancy, and what felt like it was validating everything that I was trying to do. And I didn't know really what that was. So I, again, when I did accounting, and I said, okay, I'm gonna be on this path, and the path takes me down to a big AID accounting firm, and getting my CPA. This path takes me to French restaurants. It takes me to the pedigree of working for a French chef and getting placed in a really great kitchen. I was focused on that.

• 15:45Speaker 02

  So being on that path, I didn't see my heritage. I didn't see soul food. I didn't see any of that, because I wasn't taught that.

• 15:54Dan Pashman?

  So you were kind of, in a way, you were back in the frozen food section.

• 15:58Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. Oh, my God, look how you connected that. This, this is blowing my mind because I'm gonna leave here feeling like I just got some Oprah moment, some deep thing from you. And I was like, oh, my God. This is great. Oh, keep talking. I need this.

• 16:13Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, good, good.

• 16:14Speaker 02

  You should have a couch on this side of it. This side of the microphone.

• 16:18Dan Pashman?

  Feel free to turn your chair back. Yeah, just, just stay close enough to the mic that we can hear you.

• 16:20Speaker 02

  Yes. Keep talking. Let me learn about myself.

• 16:26Dan Pashman?

  So you come out of culinary school with a very different perception of your heritage and the food you grew up with.

• 16:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm not even looking at my heritage because once I went to the French cooking school that my grandmother paid for, by the way, I got edumacated. And then I came back saying, Granny, girl, I'm gonna help you with that broken macaroni and cheese. You know, now that I'm educated, I'm gonna go to my grandmother, who's 85, and tell her that her macaroni and cheese isn't quite right. When I tell you that I don't know where that spoon came from, that she went, whoa, that she whipped out of somewhere unbeknownst to me and just popped me, I, the disrespect that I showed her in that moment still lives with me.

• 17:17Speaker 02

  And what I didn't realize, now looking back, the disrespect that I showed my culture and my heritage from just turning my back on it because I'm like, oh, now it's all about French food and this is the be all and end all. You say goodbye to everything in your heritage.

• 17:45Dan Pashman?

  Coming up, Carla gets famous on TV, where a confrontation changes her course forever. Stick around.

• 18:07Speaker 03

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• 19:38Dan Pashman?

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• 20:20Dan Pashman?

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• 21:03Dan Pashman?

  that seems like a good episode. Why? How did I miss that? Well, you missed it because you're probably not following our show in your podcasting app. And it's really important that you do. So please do this right now. Go to our show page in your podcasting app of choice. If it's Apple Podcasts or Spotify, you click follow. Other apps, maybe it's a plus sign or a heart or a favorite or the word subscribe, whatever it is in your app. It's really important that you click it. That way you won't miss great episodes. It's super quick and easy. You can do it right now. Thank you so much. Now, back to my conversation with Carla Hall. When we left off with her story, she was in her early 30s. She had just graduated from a fancy French culinary school and,

• 21:44Dan Pashman?

  as she put it, turned her back on her heritage and the foods she grew up with. When Carla closed the door on soul food, she expected other doors to open. And they did. She got a job in a good kitchen, worked her way up, became an executive chef at a hotel in DC. Next, she opened her own catering company, this time much more high end, no more mail truck. Everything was on track, just like it was drawn up on the spreadsheet. Then, in 2008, Carla was cast as a contestant on the Bravo show Top Chef. Decades after not getting into that acting program at Boston University, she had a second chance. And remember how she said she always thought of herself as a misfit? Well, on Top Chef, her oddball personality was an asset. That's where she earned the nickname Kooky Carla.

• 22:29Speaker 02

  When I think of the judges' table, I think of a place where there's stress and apprehension.

• 22:38Speaker 04

  The singing, I can't deal with. I can't deal with the singing, yeah.

• 22:41Speaker 02

  Oh, gotta make something of yourself, girl, yeah. She definitely is hyper. Hooty-hoo, hooty-hoo. Hooty-hoo is something that my husband and I say when we go out.

• 22:54Dan Pashman?

  Carla was fun to watch, for sure, but behind the scenes, it wasn't much fun for her. She says cooking competition shows are really intense, and that intensity pushed her away from French food and back toward her roots.

• 23:07Speaker 02

  Because when you're stressed, you sort of fall back into this pattern of what makes you feel good. And for me, it was the food from those Sunday suppers. And so I was cooking food that I wanted and needed to eat. So this became my thing.

• 23:24Dan Pashman?

  Carla didn't win Top Chef, but she did well, and she was a fan favorite. People loved her. She became known for that catchphrase, "hooty-hoo." A few years later, she returned for Top Chef All Stars. Then, in 2011, she was selected as one of the hosts of a new daytime talk show on ABC called The Chew. This is ABC, national TV. And The Chew was sort of like a food-centric version of The View, with cooking segments and celebrity interviews. There were five hosts, each with a specialty. Mario Batali, he was the big name. He did Italian food. Michael Simon was all about meat. Clinton Kelly did fashion and entertaining. Daphne Oz did health food. And Carla?

• 24:03Speaker 02

  I was the black perspective, African-American, and southern. So I was bringing that southern food, the comfort food that I had done on Top Chef.

• 24:17Dan Pashman?

  In the first couple of years, The Chew did very well, but Carla struggled.

• 24:22Speaker 02

  It was really a hard transition because you're cooking, you're hosting, you're talking to your friends, and you're making it look easy. And anybody who's on television who makes it look easy... Knows what they're doing. And I thought I was gonna get fired. Like, for two years. I thought I was gonna get fired.

• 24:41Dan Pashman?

  Carla got more and more frustrated. She felt the producers weren't assigning her enough cooking demos and interview segments. So there was no way for her to learn and improve. Then came a turning point. Legendary soul singer Gladys Knight was coming on the show for an interview and to cook one of her recipes. And typically, when a celebrity came on the show, one host was selected to do the segment with that guest.

• 25:03Speaker 02

  So Gladys Knight came on the show, and I was so excited. And Gladys Knight cooked with Michael Simon. And they made a smothered chicken dish. And I'm like, what the heck?

• 25:15Dan Pashman?

  Michael Simon, who is white, we should say.

• 25:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, Michael Simon is white, and his perspective for the show was doing-

• 25:22Dan Pashman?

  Midwestern Meat Guy.

• 25:23Speaker 02

  Exactly, the Midwestern Meat Guy. And I am like, oh, my God, I am doing soul food, comfort food. Gladys Knight, freaking Gladys Knight, who means everything to any black person of my generation. I'm 54. But I didn't get to cook with Gladys. And I got so mad. And so I said to the producers afterwards, I said, I want to call a meeting. I want to call a meeting. And in that meeting, I said, if I'm gonna get fired, just in case, I'm gonna say everything that's on my mind. Because I don't want to sit at home and say, I wish I had said. This may be, I may be going back into frozen food right now. I don't know.

• 26:04Speaker 02

  But I said, if you didn't think that I would want to cook with Gladys Knight, then that is your report card. Because as a person who is black and from my generation, and then being that she would be a connection to me, and she lives in the South, you fail. That is your report card, and you fail. If I didn't cook with Gladys Knight because there is something wrong with my interviewing skills and my demoing skills, and you never told me to help me prepare and get to that place, it is also your report card, and you fail. And I talked about how, you know, for me and Daphne, we were sitting there, and-

• 26:45Speaker 02

  I was told that the audience didn't know us and the guys were doing so much better than we were doing. And I'm like, you know, you've made us great backup singers. We have supported the guys and we've done all of this for the guys. The reason they don't know is because we don't get to speak about ourselves. And so I was telling them all of this and after I was like crying and I was, you know, I was just saying everything because I'm like, I'm not sitting at home. I said, I wish I had of. And then Gordon Elliot starts doing this slow clap and clapping.

• 27:19Dan Pashman?

  He's like the head producer.

• 27:20Speaker 02

  He's the head producer and the creator. And he said, okay, you're ready to get to work. And I'm looking at him and I was like, it was such a relief. And, and I tell that story because it is not about them demonizing me. My lesson was to be my authentic self. And after that, I began to settle in and be myself and do the food that I wanted and everything became so much easier.

• 27:51Dan Pashman?

  What's interesting is that, so at a couple of points in this conversation, I've said to you like, well, but you were the only black person in this situation or that situation. You had to learn to navigate white spaces and you're kind of like, yeah, sort of, but like, I didn't really think about it. Yeah, I guess, but it wasn't that big of a deal.

• 28:05Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:06Dan Pashman?

  But it, please feel free to tell me again that I'm mis, mishearing, but it, it feels like it was, like, like that experience from the time being the only black kid in school all the way up to the chew, even if you weren't conscious of it at the time, it was having a big impact.

• 28:25Speaker 02

  Yes. And that is the thing that you don't realize. I was numb to it. I basically was in survival mode my entire life. I was in survival mode because I don't want to be ostracized. You're going to get me to crying. I don't, I didn't want to be that person. I didn't want to show up as my blackness if it wasn't going to be accepted. And I'm going to tell you, two days ago, I was talking to Hugh Atchison and he had asked me about, Hugh Atchison is a chef in Augusta, Georgia. And we start talking about Paula Deen.

• 29:01Dan Pashman?

  Just for people who don't remember that story, Paula Deen was a big Food Network star, a white woman who was doing southern food. And then it was revealed that she had repeatedly used the N-word.

• 29:11Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. And I remember when all of that stuff blew up about Paula Deen, and I defended her on The Chew. Me, a black woman from the South. And I was talking about how I know her. And if the intention was not to hurt or to harm, then you have to embrace this person. I got such a backlash from the black community. Shoot, from the white community. I got-- and I was like, wait, you white person can't tell me, right? But I didn't realize it. Again, I was numb to all of this. I had shut down in order to get along.

• 29:53Speaker 02

  It did not hit me until two days ago that I did that. And it was this journey with this book that continues to unfold. People use this term woke. And I-- I didn't even know that was a thing. But, OK, that's how out of the loop I am. But I am having an honest reaction. I don't-- I don't give it a term. I don't give it whatever people are calling it these days. But I am having it.

• 30:33Dan Pashman?

  Coming up, Carla tells me why she didn't want to write a purely joyful cookbook about soul food. That's after the break. Stick around.

• 30:41Speaker 05

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• 33:23Dan Pashman?

  Welcome back. Let's return out of my conversation with Chef Carla Hall.

• 33:29Dan Pashman?

  And I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like you kind of, you were still in survival mode of your first two cookbooks, which are great cookbooks, but they're, Carla's comfort foods, Cooking with Love. You didn't use the word soul food. You didn't use the word southern. And, and the entire look and feel of those books was more like straight ahead, middle of the road cookbook.

• 33:50Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. Don't offend anybody. Make sure it's homogenized. Make sure that everybody feels included. But the thing is, in what I have found for this experience, the more I can love my heritage and, and be connected to that, the more that I can love somebody else's.

• 34:06Dan Pashman?

  Right. You need, you need security before you can have generosity.

• 34:10Speaker 02

  Yes. Oh, my God. Where's the couch?

• 34:16Speaker 02

  I mean, seriously, come on.

• 34:20Dan Pashman?

  A couple of specific things in this book that I wanna, that I think are really noteworthy, where it's, the phrasing is interesting to me. So I just want to read a couple of little bits here. "This book champions delicious dishes everyone will love and will show you how to embrace it as your own." Later on, you say, "You may not see many African Americans as executive chefs or winning big awards. Not yet. You don't see us, but we're here. We've always been here and we're rising. I've been blessed with this platform. I'm using it to say, I want all of us to be proud of soul food. Soul food is ours. Claim it."

• 34:56Dan Pashman?

  So in that first part, you said, like, "This book will show you how to embrace it as your own," which suggests that it's not your own now, not, not the own of the person you're talking to in that section. Then in another part, you're saying, "I want all of us to be proud of soul food."

• 35:14Dan Pashman?

  It feels like you're consciously trying to talk to white people and black people at the same time.

• 35:18Speaker 02

  Yes, I am. And so what I'm saying is, the same way that I don't have to be Italian to do Italian food, I don't have to be Chinese to do Chinese food, I'm telling you that you can do these foods with my recipes and make soul food, because it is a cuisine. But I'm also saying to all of those black cooks out there, those of you who have run away from soul food because you didn't think that it was valuable or valued, to come back to it and to embrace it, because we should be presenting our food to the world. We should not leave it for somebody else to present.

• 35:55Dan Pashman?

  And one of the big focal points of the book is to highlight the idea that soul food also has a lot of vegetables.

• 36:02Speaker 02

  Hello, there are farms. Hello, poor people have farms.

• 36:07Dan Pashman?

  I love the line in the book where you're like, "You think you discovered kale?"

• 36:10Speaker 02

  Chao.

• 36:13Speaker 02

  I mean, I mean, it's like, "Oh, my God!" It's like people finding religion. You know when people find religion, they're like, "Oh, my God," they talk about it all the time, and then it settles down, because once you realize other people go to church, and now it's spiritual too. And that's how kale is. And I say that tongue-in-cheek, because when the white community sees something that they enjoy, and they're like, "Oh, my God, look at this," even with kimchi, "look at kimchi," so now every Korean person says, "Tell us about your kimchi recipe. Tell us about how your family does kimchi." You're going to ignore everything else in that culture.

• 36:55Speaker 02

  And you're going to deem that the thing that is the be-all in this season, like what's hot, what's this. And when you talk about what's hot, and especially when you're talking about somebody's culture, what you're saying is, "Okay, what's hot that you're so in right now? Oh, soul food is in right now." So are you dissing all of the generations that came before this in moment and after? Because what comes in has to go out. And I think that for black people who've had kale and collards and mustard greens and all these other grains, it's like, "Dude, don't talk to me like you discovered it, or that you're going to show it to me." The best thing about that, though, the best thing about that trend, was then I could get raw kale, actually, in restaurants who would have never had it. So, thank you for that.

• 37:40Dan Pashman?

  On behalf of white people, you're welcome.

• 37:49Dan Pashman?

  The first thing that struck me when I opened this book, and this is kind of a good note to end on. I mean, you open it up, there's the table of contents. There's a couple of, there's a food, beautiful food photo, there's you in the kitchen. And then, still in the introduction, I'm on page six here.

• 38:06Dan Pashman?

  This is not Carla being joyous and quirky in the kitchen. We see Carla, stone-faced, standing on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. Site of one of the most pivotal moments in the civil rights.

• 38:17Speaker 02

  Bloody Sunday.

• 38:18Dan Pashman?

  Right. Unarmed civil rights marchers were attempting to cross the bridge. They were brutally beaten by police. That's not what, that's, this is not the type of image you typically see in a sort of like, "Feel good, we're all in the kitchen cooking together, bright colors, like yay."

• 38:34Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 38:35Dan Pashman?

  This is a very specific choice.

• 38:39Speaker 02

  It was really specific because I want to show people that there's a lot of pain in this food, in our culture.

• 38:51Speaker 02

  And I want to show you where this food comes from. And when I walked across that bridge and I am feeling all of this energy of just horrific pain from Bloody Sunday, you feel it. It was, and I was crying, I was walking up there and it's...

• 39:12Speaker 02

  And then as I get to the other side and I'm walking down this picture, I feel as though all of those people who didn't make it off that bridge and everything that they did. And I felt like I am coming through this path with the wind that they have created on my back. And to say, "How can I not talk about our heritage and our food and our contributions? And to diss it, and all those years that I dissed it."

• 39:47Speaker 02

  You can't erase all of that pain and expect us to be invisible and to not honor it. So, so, yes, I didn't, I didn't want that joyful book. I wanted every part of it. And the thing is, when you go to the South and you go to those kitchens that come on, baby, I don't care who you are, what color you are, they're still have that welcoming gene. They're still inviting other people to the table.

• 40:40Dan Pashman?

  That's Carla Hall. Her new cookbook is called Carla Hall Soul Food: Every Day in Celebration. It's out now. Earlier this year, The Chew was canceled due to declining ratings and the sexual assault allegations against Mario Batali. But Carla is doing great. You can catch her regular cooking segments on Good Morning America and GMA Day, the show that replaced The Chew.

• 41:03Dan Pashman?

  This show is produced by Anne, Sandy, and me. Aviva DeKornfeld is our assistant producer. Gianna Palmer is our editor. The show is mixed by Dan Dzula. Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of Stitcher. Our executive producers are Chris Bannon and Jenny Rattlet. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.

• 41:18Speaker 07

  And I'm Randall Cooper of Nashville, Tennessee, reminding you to eat more, eat better, and to eat more better.

• 41:32Dan Pashman?

  This reheat was produced by

• 41:33Speaker 02

  Gianna Palmer.

• 41:35Dan Pashman?

  The team that produces The Sporkful today includes me, along with managing producer

• 41:38Speaker 02

  Emma Morgenstern.

• 41:39Dan Pashman?

  And senior producer Andres. Our engineer is Jared O'Connell. Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of SiriusXM Podcast. Our executive producer is Camille Stanley. And hey, did you know you can listen to The Sporkful on the SiriusXM app? Yes, the SiriusXM app, it has all your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad-free music channels curated by genre and era, plus live sports coverage. Does your podcasting app have that? And there's interviews with A-list stars and so much more. It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one. And right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the SiriusXM app by going to siriusxm.com/sporkful. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.

• 42:27Dan Pashman?

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