‘IT’S NEVER ABOUT FOOD’
Debra Freeman’s popular ‘Setting the Table’ podcast serves food, history, connection
‘Barbecue started in Virginia,” Deb Freeman said, nodding seriously as she settled into a coffee shop couch in Richmond. We’d met to discuss her latest and most important project to date. She’s confident, not cocky, but it is easy to see (and hear) why Stephen Satterfield, food educator and host of “High on The Hog” on Netflix, has backed her “Setting the Table” podcast with his production company, Whetstone Radio Collective.
His bet is spot-on — her podcast launched in March, and its first episode hit No. 1 on Apple’s U.S. food chart.
Freeman, a Norfolk native and Richmond resident, began writing with a self-admitted-terrible-but-popular music blog in 2016.
“People found me funny, I guess,” she said.
But the humor didn’t work for her.
She wanted to write but struggled to find something that tracked. Freeman’s day job at the time was director of communications and marketing for the Downtown Hampton Development Partnership and she sometimes visited the nearby Hampton History Museum after work. During a stop in 2016, Freeman found her path to writing in a massive black and white picture of Black women crab pickers. She was curious — a table piled high and full with crab in front of a group of women in aprons. For the next few days, Freeman turned the image over in her mind. It wouldn’t leave her. She knew there had to be more to it, and felt drawn to tell the story.
With her work in Hampton, she started to dig more into these women. Research led to connecting dots from the crab-picking women to one of the first African American millionaires in Hampton, John Mallory Phillips, who employed African American men and women in his businesses, including Phillips Seafood. He also created The People’s Building and Loan Association in 1889 so that Black people could buy houses at a time when this wasn’t always a possibility.
Phillips also was integral in financing the Bay Shore Hotel in Hampton, a relaxing respite for Black people during Jim Crow.
After Freeman published an article in 2017, history-based, food-adjacent stories became her foothold. She sees food as the conduit to the story.
“It’s never about food,” she said. “It’s just how you get there.”
The realization became a prolific one for Freeman, who has written for publications including Epicurious, Food52 and Garden & Gun. She’s researched a celebrity tomato, dug into watermelon history along the East Coast (with a little anecdote on wolf urine — not to be missed) and gotten deep into the significance of yellow batter cake.
She wrote about James and Peter Hemings and, in October 2017, held a community dinner in Norfolk in James Hemings’ honor. She also lobbied Gov. Terry McAuliffe to declare the day James Hemings Day in Virginia. (If you are uncertain who Hemings was, put down your
French fries and get to reading.)
Her writing got notice. A Twitter conversation in 2020 with Satterfield begat a pitch meeting. Within a few months with more research and a good production crew, “Setting the Table” became one of the six podcast offerings on Whetstone.
“Setting the Table” episodes are a focused listen, each a brilliant ride about Black foodways. Freeman connects food experiences to the historical chronicling of Black foods and how they are the base and the mold of how we eat today. The first episode shepherds the listener through details of the Great Migration, a trickling exodus of Black Americans out of the South to the North extending from around 1916 to 1970. The next six episodes heed the progress with Black farmers, bakers, chefs, brewers and distillers.
Expect researched discussions on the origins of the food menu at Popeye’s, the beginning of beer making and, of course, the inception of barbecue. Most believe barbecue is a North Carolina or Texas thing. Freeman
disagrees.
She knows where pit masters created the craft of barbecuing and has seen the receipts for shipping whole hogs to other states. She builds her case in Episode 1 and continues as the podcasts progress. She gives brain-bending insight on compelling evidence in magazines from the 1800s and generations of pit master history complete with discovered recipes with vinegar and the logistics of pit digging. When one episode ends, she reminds us to listen to those coming next (and watch an upcoming food show) to learn more.
She’s succinct with me, though, speaking over what’s now a droning of buzzed coffee drinkers, on the who, what and where of barbecue: the inventors, the skill, the time and the origin of the word itself — and it’s all Virginia.
“We need to say their names,” Freeman said, “and I think these are people we need to talk about — giving personhood to the person.”