Enjoy being ‘High on the Hog’
“Never been more excited for a food show in my life,” I tweeted when I first saw news of “High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America,” a Netflix docuseries. And based on the response, those within my realm of the Internet seem to feel the same way. The show is “a story of Black America’s resilience, enduring creativity, and vital contribution to America’s kitchen,” according to press materials, and is based on the heavily decorated culinary historian Jessica B. Harris’s seminal book of the same name.
Executive producers Karis Jagger and Fabienne Toback learned of the book from former Esquire food editor Jeff Gordinier, who in turn heard of it from restaurateur and cookbook author Alexander Smalls. When Harris first heard that someone wanted to buy the rights to her book, she was shocked. “Who’d have thought?” she said in a phone interview. However, “If anybody likes the book enough to want to do something with it, why not see what they can do? And obviously what they could and did do was amazing.”
Having seen the series, I wholeheartedly agree.
Primarily led by executive producer and Oscar-winning director Roger Ross Williams, the series’ four episodes, each just under an hour, serve as a complement to the book to bring it to a new audience. Harris said she hopes viewers “learn that African American food certainly is American food and that it is foundational to American food. And along with that they would learn that African Americans, like their food, are foundational to American culture.”
While Harris is present in the first episode, the host is Stephen Satterfield, journalist and founder of Whetstone Magazine. Satterfield’s soothing presence draws you in, as does his gravitas, knowledge and curiosity.
The topic — and the creator of its source material — made hosting a daunting task. “I know that this is a historic show, and I needed to be able to step outside of my own nerves and insecurity and anxiety, and really step into the presence of the host, the facilitator of this historic text,” Satterfield said in a phone interview. “It wasn’t just the enormity of the production itself, a first for the world of media. I was being called to embody the work of someone who is like an intellectual hero, a giant in my life. So I really got to a point where, in many ways, I was just performing for the approval of an audience of one.”
The series starts in the country of Benin in West Africa, a hub of the transatlantic slave trade. Through it, we get a glimpse of the food of the region then and now, the foundation of the cuisine enslaved Africans carried to a new land. At the end of the episode, Harris and Satterfield visit the Door of No Return in the city of Ouidah, a memorial to the more than 1 million Africans taken from their homeland. The weight of the experience hits Satterfield, and he is overcome with emotion.
The next episode takes us to Charleston, S.C., which the show calls the “capital of the nation’s slave trade” and where many enslaved Africans first landed. Titled “The Rice Kingdom,” the episode explains the importance of the grain in creating the region’s wealth, and thus the necessity of those with the knowledge to grow it: Africans.
While soul food is often relegated to home cooking or considered lower class, the third episode shares another part of the African American food story: The role Black Americans have played in shaping fine dining for the upper echelons of society. Examples include chefs James Hemings and Hercules Posey, who cooked for Founding Fathers Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, respectively; the creation of the entire catering industry; and Thomas Downing as the oyster king of New York City. The entrepreneurial nature of many of these figures highlights the Black wealth not often discussed in history books.
The final episode shows even more facets of the African American impact on food in this country, such as the Black cowboys that “galvanized America’s meat industry,” per press materials, and the African American connection to the roots of barbecue. And throughout all that Black people in this country have endured, the series includes notes of joy and celebration through such holidays as Juneteenth.
All these issues and more are addressed with a grace that is not always afforded when covering Black topics. “I think there’s a lot to be said for this show creatively being put in the hands of Black people,” Satterfield said. “I just think there is a sensitivity in the storytelling that is going to be palpable for people when they watch it.”