The Soul of Food
Chef Carla Hall’s journey to renew respect for everyday foods of the South brings her back to her roots and updates soul-food favorites with tasty twists BY TARA Q. THOMAS
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hen Carla Hall was going to culinary school, the last thing she wanted to cook was soul food. She had grown up in Nashville, home of “hot chicken” and the land of grits, in a respected family on “the good side of town.” Smart, beautiful and sophisticated, she graduated from Howard University in Washington, D.C., and flew to Europe to pursue a modeling career, making a name for herself among friends for the food she whipped up in her downtime. But by the time she made it through Maryland’s L’Academie de Cuisine, she didn’t want to risk being confined by stereotypes. “I didn’t want to be the black girl who makes fried chicken,” Hall says over the phone one morning, explaining how she got from southern food to fancy French chef and back again with her latest book, “Carla Hall’s Soul Food.” After culinary school, she stopped frying chicken and braised it in red wine instead and she turned cornmeal into silky polentas rather than bread. That approach catapulted her through the ranks of professional kitchens to earn the title of executive chef, and it got her into the
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kitchens of D.C.’s elite, who hired her as a private chef and engaged her company to cater their stylish fêtes. Then she landed a spot as a contestant on Bravo’s “Top Chef” reality competition cooking show. As Hall tells it, that’s when she came back to soul food. “Here I am trying to do this thing, and there’s all this fancy food, to my left, to my right, all beautifully plated,” she remembers, thinking back to the pressures of the televised competition. “And I thought, ‘I have to do that.’” But in that moment of near-panic, she conjured up her grandmother’s advice: “It’s your job to be happy, not rich. If you do that, then everything else will follow.” Thinking of the dishes that her granny had made, she infused that spirit in her cooking and worked classic French techniques into the recipes. The results made her an instant star. In one episode, Jacques Pépin is heard murmuring, “I could die happy with this dish,” as he tastes her buttered peas—a recipe inspired by the carrots-and-peas of her childhood, dressed up with lemon and tarragon, à la française. And she cooked with such warmth and abandon, hollering her
