Documenting, studying, and celebrating the diverse food cultures of the changing American South.
Oral History Project Index
SFA Founders
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INTERVIEWS
Ann Abadie
Kaye Adams
Jim Auchmutey
Marilou Awiakta
Ben Barker
Karen Barker
Ella Brennan
Ann Brewer
Karen Cathey
Leah Chase
Al Clayton
Mary Ann Clayton
Shirley Corriher
Norma Jean Darden
Crescent Dragonwagon
Nathalie Dupree
John T. Edge
John Egerton
Lolis Eric Elie
Donna Florio
John Folse
Terry Ford
Psyche Williams-Forson
Damon Lee Fowler
Vertamae Grosvenor
Jessica B. Harris
Cynthia Hizer
Portia James
Martha Johnston
Sally Belk King
Sarah Labensky
Edna Lewis
Rudy Lombard
Ronni Lundy
Louis Osteen
Marlene Osteen
Timothy W. Patridge
Paul Prudhomme
Joe Randall
Marie Rudisill
Dori Sanders
Richard Schweid
Ned Shank
Kathy Starr
Frank Stitt
Pardis Stitt
Marion Sullivan
Van Sykes
John Martin Taylor
Toni Tipton-Martin
Jeanne Voltz
Charles Reagan Wilson
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Interviews by SFA Members and Friends.
Project sponsored by Jim 'N Nick's Bar-B-Q.
I think a lot of people have dismissed the South as a
wasteland...But it’s really
significant...I think the South has given this country its best regional
food.
~Louis Osteen
[Food is] culture...All of these people from all these different cultures within the great Southern culture all had different food habits, different food on the tables.
~Marlene Osteen
"Good Lord, the man can cook!” said the late
R.W. Apple Jr., chief correspondent for the New York Times, of
Louis Osteen. His prowess in the kitchen – preserved duck with red
eye gravy, brown oyster stew with benne seeds, whole flounder with sweet
onion jam, toasted corn cake with brandied figs – is of long note.
A native of Anderson, in the upstate of South Carolina, Louis Osteen is
one of the leading champions of Lowcountry cuisine. He and his wife Marlene
first claimed Pawley’s Island as home in 1980. They have lived either
in Charleston or on Pawley’s ever since.
Since 2001, Louis Osteen has been the chef and co-owner of Louis’s
at Pawley’s. Along the way, he’s found time to write a book,
Louis Osteen's Charleston Cuisine: Recipes from a Lowcountry Chef. Thumb
the pages. It reads like a celebration of Lowcountry traditions, of Lowcountry
people, filtered through the lens of a generous and intelligent cook,
fully in the thrall of his native region.
SUBJECT: Louis & Marlene Osteen, SFA Founders
DATE: October 10, 2004
LOCATION: University of Mississippi – Oxford, MS
INTERVIEWER: April Grayson, friend of the SFA
*TRANSCRIPT: To download a full transcript of this interview in PDF form, please click here.
