Edna Lewis
Encyclopedia
Edna Lewis was an African-American chef
and author
best known for her books on traditional Southern cuisine.
, Virginia
, the granddaughter of an emancipated
slave
who helped start the community. She was one of eight children.
She left Freetown at age 16, after her father died, and moved to Washington and eventually to New York City
.. When she arrived in New York, an acquaintance found her a job in a Brooklyn
laundry, where she was assigned to an ironing board. She had never ironed and lasted three hours before she was dismissed. She soon found work as a seamstress, and copied Christian Dior
dresses for Dorcas Avedon, then the wife of Richard Avedon
. She made a dress for Marilyn Monroe
, as well as the African-inspired dresses for which she became well-known.
.
She also worked for the communist newspaper The Daily Worker, was involved in political demonstrations, and campaigned for Franklin D. Roosevelt
..
, she married Steve Kingston, a retired merchant seaman and a communist. Shortly afterward, she met John Nicholson, an antiques dealer who in 1949 decided to open a restaurant on 58th Street, on the East Side of Manhattan
. She became the cook, preparing cheese soufflés and roast chicken. Café Nicholson
became an instant success among bohemians and artists. The restaurant was frequented by William Faulkner
, Marlon Brando
, Tennessee Williams
, Truman Capote
, Richard Avedon
, Gloria Vanderbilt
, Marlene Dietrich
, and Diana Vreeland
.. Lewis remained at the restaurant until the late 1950s. In the late 1960s, she broke her leg and was temporarily forced to stop cooking professionally. With encouragement from Judith Jones, the cookbook editor at Knopf who also edited Julia Child
, she turned her handwritten pages into The Edna Lewis Cookbook (1972). This was followed by The Taste of Country Cooking in 1976. The book is considered a classic study of Southern cooking. In 1979, Craig Claiborne
of The New York Times
said the book "may well be the most entertaining regional cookbook in America"..
At the end of the short passageway was the Dining Room, roughly 18 feet by 35 feet. On the right was a dark wood buffet topped with white marble, stacked high with white china plates, glassware, flatware and nappery interspersed with wire baskets loaded with lemons and other comestibles and a tub or two of highstanding palms. To the left were the small bare marble-topped cafe tables and bentwood or wire-framed chairs. A fine meal might begin with Mussels and herbed rice presented in their blue-blackshells on a white plate; then a perfectly roasted chicken, a simple salad of Boston Lettuce with a coating of lemon garlic dressing, and completed with a dark brown puff of chocolate soufflé
, containers of whipped cream and molten chocolate offered at the side.
At the back of the dining room was a door leading out to the garden, a space of about 20 feet by 50 feet, furnished with more small tables and chairs similar to those seen inside. A famous photograph by Karl Bassinger shows the back of the brownstone with a group of young New Yorkers becoming world famous in their separate careers. Gore Vidal
is believed to be the sole surviving member of the photograph.
Subsequently Cafe Nicholson moved to the studio located to the right of the on-ramp of the Queensboro Bridge
on East 58th Street. For a time it was later located on the uptown side of 57th Street between Lexington Avenue and 3rd Avenue.
After The Taste of Country Cooking was published, Lewis returned to restaurants, most notably to Gage and Tollner
in Brooklyn
. She worked there for five years before retiring in the mid-1990s. She co-founded the Society for the Revival and Preservation of Southern Food, a precursor to the Southern Foodways Alliance (SFA).
Lewis also lived and worked in Chapel Hill, North Carolina
and Charleston, South Carolina
. For example, from 1983 to 1984 she served as guest chef of The Fearrington House Restaurant located in Pittsboro
, just outside Chapel Hill.
She introduced the chocolate soufflé
dessert to the menu, and it has remained on the menu to this day. The dessert graced the cover of Gourmet magazine in 1983 and helped launch the Restaurant, then three years old.
in 2006, aged 89. She was sometimes called "the South's answer to Julia Child
".
Chef
A chef is a person who cooks professionally for other people. Although over time the term has come to describe any person who cooks for a living, traditionally it refers to a highly skilled professional who is proficient in all aspects of food preparation.-Etymology:The word "chef" is borrowed ...
and author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
best known for her books on traditional Southern cuisine.
Early life and career
Lewis was born in the small farming settlement of Freetown, Orange CountyOrange County, Virginia
As of the census of 2000, there were 25,881 people, 10,150 households, and 7,470 families residing in the county. The population density was 76 people per square mile . There were 11,354 housing units at an average density of 33 per square mile...
, Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
, the granddaughter of an emancipated
Abolitionism
Abolitionism is a movement to end slavery.In western Europe and the Americas abolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and set slaves free. At the behest of Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas who was shocked at the treatment of natives in the New World, Spain enacted the first...
slave
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
who helped start the community. She was one of eight children.
She left Freetown at age 16, after her father died, and moved to Washington and eventually to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
.. When she arrived in New York, an acquaintance found her a job in a Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
laundry, where she was assigned to an ironing board. She had never ironed and lasted three hours before she was dismissed. She soon found work as a seamstress, and copied Christian Dior
Christian Dior
Christian Dior , was a French fashion designer, best known as the founder of one of the world's top fashion houses, also called Christian Dior.-Life:...
dresses for Dorcas Avedon, then the wife of Richard Avedon
Richard Avedon
Richard Avedon was an American photographer. An obituary published in The New York Times said that "his fashion and portrait photographs helped define America's image of style, beauty and culture for the last half-century."-Photography career:Avedon was born in New York City to a Jewish Russian...
. She made a dress for Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....
, as well as the African-inspired dresses for which she became well-known.
.
She also worked for the communist newspaper The Daily Worker, was involved in political demonstrations, and campaigned for Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
..
Café Nicholson and cookbook fame
In New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, she married Steve Kingston, a retired merchant seaman and a communist. Shortly afterward, she met John Nicholson, an antiques dealer who in 1949 decided to open a restaurant on 58th Street, on the East Side of Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
. She became the cook, preparing cheese soufflés and roast chicken. Café Nicholson
Café Nicholson
Café Nicholson was a popular New York City restaurant that operated between 1949–2000. The establishment was a New York hot-spot for many years.-History:...
became an instant success among bohemians and artists. The restaurant was frequented by William Faulkner
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...
, Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando, Jr. was an American movie star and political activist. "Unchallenged as the most important actor in modern American Cinema" according to the St...
, Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams
Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs...
, Truman Capote
Truman Capote
Truman Streckfus Persons , known as Truman Capote , was an American author, many of whose short stories, novels, plays, and nonfiction are recognized literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's and the true crime novel In Cold Blood , which he labeled a "nonfiction novel." At...
, Richard Avedon
Richard Avedon
Richard Avedon was an American photographer. An obituary published in The New York Times said that "his fashion and portrait photographs helped define America's image of style, beauty and culture for the last half-century."-Photography career:Avedon was born in New York City to a Jewish Russian...
, Gloria Vanderbilt
Gloria Vanderbilt
Gloria Laura Vanderbilt is an American artist, author, actress, heiress, and socialite most noted as an early developer of designer blue jeans...
, Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich was a German-American actress and singer.Dietrich remained popular throughout her long career by continually re-inventing herself, professionally and characteristically. In the Berlin of the 1920s, she acted on the stage and in silent films...
, and Diana Vreeland
Diana Vreeland
Diana Vreeland was a noted columnist and editor in the field of fashion. She worked for the fashion magazines Harper's Bazaar and Vogue and the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.Born as Diana Dalziel, Vreeland was the eldest daughter of American socialite mother Emily Key Hoffman...
.. Lewis remained at the restaurant until the late 1950s. In the late 1960s, she broke her leg and was temporarily forced to stop cooking professionally. With encouragement from Judith Jones, the cookbook editor at Knopf who also edited Julia Child
Julia Child
Julia Child was an American chef, author, and television personality. She is recognized for introducing French cuisine to the American public with her debut cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and her subsequent television programs, the most notable of which was The French Chef, which...
, she turned her handwritten pages into The Edna Lewis Cookbook (1972). This was followed by The Taste of Country Cooking in 1976. The book is considered a classic study of Southern cooking. In 1979, Craig Claiborne
Craig Claiborne
Craig Claiborne was an American restaurant critic, food writer and former food editor of the New York Times. He was the author of numerous cookbooks and an autobiography...
of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
said the book "may well be the most entertaining regional cookbook in America"..
Early career at Cafe Nicholson
In 1949 Cafe Nicholson was located at ground level of a narrow brownstone building on the downtown side of 52nd Street between 2nd Avenue and 3rd Avenue. One entered on the right, directly into a passageway separated from the kitchen by a screenwall of dark wood with openings above shoulder height that gave a view of the narrow kitchen, roughly 12 feet by 16 feet, having two windows facing 52nd street, and not much wall space to arrange cooking facilities. Most frequently Edna Lewis would be there to look up with greetings, dressed in something dark, and often with an Indian Paisley wrapped round her shoulders.At the end of the short passageway was the Dining Room, roughly 18 feet by 35 feet. On the right was a dark wood buffet topped with white marble, stacked high with white china plates, glassware, flatware and nappery interspersed with wire baskets loaded with lemons and other comestibles and a tub or two of highstanding palms. To the left were the small bare marble-topped cafe tables and bentwood or wire-framed chairs. A fine meal might begin with Mussels and herbed rice presented in their blue-blackshells on a white plate; then a perfectly roasted chicken, a simple salad of Boston Lettuce with a coating of lemon garlic dressing, and completed with a dark brown puff of chocolate soufflé
Soufflé
A soufflé is a light baked cake made with egg yolks and beaten egg whites combined with various other ingredients and served as a savoury main dish or sweetened as a dessert...
, containers of whipped cream and molten chocolate offered at the side.
At the back of the dining room was a door leading out to the garden, a space of about 20 feet by 50 feet, furnished with more small tables and chairs similar to those seen inside. A famous photograph by Karl Bassinger shows the back of the brownstone with a group of young New Yorkers becoming world famous in their separate careers. Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...
is believed to be the sole surviving member of the photograph.
Subsequently Cafe Nicholson moved to the studio located to the right of the on-ramp of the Queensboro Bridge
Queensboro Bridge
The Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge, also known as the 59th Street Bridge – because its Manhattan end is located between 59th and 60th Streets – or simply the Queensboro Bridge, is a cantilever bridge over the East River in New York City that was completed in 1909...
on East 58th Street. For a time it was later located on the uptown side of 57th Street between Lexington Avenue and 3rd Avenue.
Later career
In a 1989 interview with The New York Times, Lewis said: "As a child in Virginia, I thought all food tasted delicious. After growing up, I didn't think food tasted the same, so it has been my lifelong effort to try and recapture those good flavors of the past."After The Taste of Country Cooking was published, Lewis returned to restaurants, most notably to Gage and Tollner
Gage and Tollner
Gage and Tollner was a restaurant on Fulton Street in Downtown Brooklyn. It had been in business since 1879 and in the same location since 1892 until it closed on February 14, 2004. The Brownstone where it was housed has been in existence since 1875....
in Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
. She worked there for five years before retiring in the mid-1990s. She co-founded the Society for the Revival and Preservation of Southern Food, a precursor to the Southern Foodways Alliance (SFA).
Lewis also lived and worked in Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Chapel Hill is a town in Orange County, North Carolina, United States and the home of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and UNC Health Care...
and Charleston, South Carolina
Charleston, South Carolina
Charleston is the second largest city in the U.S. state of South Carolina. It was made the county seat of Charleston County in 1901 when Charleston County was founded. The city's original name was Charles Towne in 1670, and it moved to its present location from a location on the west bank of the...
. For example, from 1983 to 1984 she served as guest chef of The Fearrington House Restaurant located in Pittsboro
Pittsboro, North Carolina
Pittsboro, North Carolina is a town located in Chatham County, 34 miles southwest of Raleigh, 47 miles southeast of Greensboro, and 17 miles south of Chapel Hill. The population was 3,743 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Chatham County....
, just outside Chapel Hill.
She introduced the chocolate soufflé
Soufflé
A soufflé is a light baked cake made with egg yolks and beaten egg whites combined with various other ingredients and served as a savoury main dish or sweetened as a dessert...
dessert to the menu, and it has remained on the menu to this day. The dessert graced the cover of Gourmet magazine in 1983 and helped launch the Restaurant, then three years old.
Death
She died peacefully in her sleep at her home in Decatur, GeorgiaDecatur, Georgia
Decatur is a city in, and county seat of, DeKalb County, Georgia, United States. With a population of 19,335 in the 2010 census, the city is sometimes assumed to be larger since multiple zip codes in unincorporated DeKalb County bear the Decatur name...
in 2006, aged 89. She was sometimes called "the South's answer to Julia Child
Julia Child
Julia Child was an American chef, author, and television personality. She is recognized for introducing French cuisine to the American public with her debut cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and her subsequent television programs, the most notable of which was The French Chef, which...
".
Published works
- The Edna Lewis Cookbook (1972)
- The Taste of Country Cooking (1976)
- In Pursuit of Flavor (1988)
- The Gift of Southern Cooking (2003), co-authored with Scott Peacock
Awards and honors
- 1986 — Named Who’s Who in American Cooking by Cook’s Magazine
- 1990 — Lifetime Achievement Award, International Association of Culinary Professionals
- 1995 — James BeardJames BeardJames Andrew Beard was an American chef and food writer. The central figure in the story of the establishment of a gourmet American food identity, Beard was an eccentric personality who brought French cooking to the American middle and upper classes in the 1950s...
Living Legend Award (their first such award.) - 1999 — Named Grande Dame by Les Dames d’Escoffier, an international organization of female culinary professionals.
- 1999 — Lifetime Achievement Award from Southern Foodways Alliance (SFA) (their first such award.)
- 2002 — Barbara TroppBarbara TroppBarbara Tropp was an American chef and cookery writer, who helped introduce Americans to Chinese cuisine.-Background:...
President's Award, Women Chefs & Restaurateurs - 2003 — Inducted into the KitchenAidKitchenAidKitchenAid is a home appliance brand owned by Whirlpool Corporation. The company was started in 1919 by The Hobart Corporation to give restaurants a countertop alternative to their industrial sized mixers. The first model weighed 69 lbs. Each unit is still assembled by hand in Greenville, Ohio...
Cookbook Hall of Fame (James BeardJames BeardJames Andrew Beard was an American chef and food writer. The central figure in the story of the establishment of a gourmet American food identity, Beard was an eccentric personality who brought French cooking to the American middle and upper classes in the 1950s...
) - 2004 — The Gift of Southern Cooking nominated for James BeardJames BeardJames Andrew Beard was an American chef and food writer. The central figure in the story of the establishment of a gourmet American food identity, Beard was an eccentric personality who brought French cooking to the American middle and upper classes in the 1950s...
Award and IACP Award - 2009 — African American Trailblazers in Virginia honoree at the Library of VirginiaLibrary of VirginiaThe Library of Virginia in Richmond, Virginia, is the library agency of the Commonwealth of Virginia, its archival agency, and the reference library at the seat of government. The Library moved into a new building in 1997 and is located at 800 East Broad Street, 2 blocks from the Virginia State...
(in Richmond)