Industry Support Webinars

To help navigate the challenges of COVID-19 the James Beard Foundation is hosting Industry Support Webinars to help provide resources for the hospitality industry and to better stay connected throughout difficult times. 

For 400 years in fields, kitchens, taverns, and businesses across the country, African Americans have shaped our national culinary identity. And yet, many assume African American cuisine consists solely of fried chicken, collard greens, and cornbread. African American cuisine is more than soul food—it is the backbone of American cuisine. MOFAD Executive Director Peter J. Kim, Interim-President Catherine Piccoli, and James Beard Award–winning culinary historian Dr. Jessica B. Harris join us to talk about the history and future of African American cuisine. 

The James Beard Foundation is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to celebrate, nurture, and honor chefs and other leaders making America's food culture more delicious, diverse, and sustainable for everyone. 

JESSICA B. HARRIS

Dr. Jessica B. Harris is the author of twelve critically acclaimed cookbooks documenting the foods and foodways of the African Diaspora including Iron Pots and Wooden Spoons: Africa’s Gifts to New World Cooking, Sky Juice and Flying Fish Traditional Caribbean Cooking, The Welcome Table: African-American Heritage Cooking, The Africa Cookbook: Tastes of a Continent, Beyond Gumbo: Creole Fusion Food from the Atlantic Rim. Harris also conceptualized and organized The Black Family Reunion Cook Book. Her book, High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America, was the International Association for Culinary Professionals 2012 prize winner for culinary history. Her most recent book is My Soul Looks Back: A Memoir.

In her more than four decades as a journalist, Dr. Harris has written book reviews, theater reviews, travel, feature, and beauty articles too numerous to note. She has lectured on African-American food and culture at numerous institutions throughout the United States and Abroad and has written extensively about the culture of Africa in the Americas, particularly the foodways. In the most recent edition of the Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, author John Mariani cites Harris as the ranking expert on African American Foodways in the United States.

An award winning journalist, Harris has also written in numerous national and international publications ranging from Essence to German Vogue. Most recently, she’s has been contributing editor at Saveur and drinks columnist and contributing editor at Martha’s Vineyard magazine. In 2012, she began a monthly radio show on Heritage Radio Network, My Welcome Table, that focuses on Food, Travel, Music, and Memoir.

Dr. Harris has been honored with many awards including a lifetime achievement award from the Southern Foodways Alliance (of which she is a founding member) and the Lafcadio Hearn award as a Louisiana culinary icon from The John Folse Culinary Academy at Louisiana’s Nicholls State University. In 2010, she was inducted into the James Beard Who’s Who of Food and Beverage in the United States. In 2015, she received a lifetime achievement award at the Soul Summit, the first national gathering of African Americans working in and studying all aspects of food. The same year, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Johnson & Wales University. In 2016, she received the de Masters Award from the American Association of Food Journalists.

Dr. Harris holds degrees from Bryn Mawr College, Queens College, New York, The Université de Nancy, France, and New York University. Dr. Harris was the inaugural scholar in residence in the Ray Charles Chair in African-American Material Culture at Dillard University in New Orleans where she established an Institute for the Study of Culinary Cultures. Dr. Harris has been a professor of English in the SEEK Program at Queens College/C.U.N.Y. for almost five decades. She is a regular presenter at the annual Literary Festival in Oxford, England, and has worked with Oxford/Brookes University. She is also a Patron of the Oxford Cultural Collective. A sought-after consultant, Harris continues to work internationally at connecting cultures through cuisine.

In 2012, Dr. Harris was asked by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture to conceptualize and curate the cafeteria of the new museum on the Mall in Washington DC and is a member of the Kitchen Cabinet at the Smithsonian Museum of American History. The Heritage Radio Network sums her up saying, “Doctor Jessica B. Harris damn near knows it all when it comes to African and Caribbean cuisines and culinary history. She’s a living legend”. Harris lives in New York, New Orleans and Martha’s Vineyard.

CATHERINE PICCOLI

Catherine is a food historian and writer, whose work focuses on the intersection of food, culture, memory, and place. She brings this multidisciplinary approach to the Museum of Food and Drink. As curatorial director, she oversees the creation of MOFAD’s exhibitions and educational programming, and guides the operations team. Catherine was instrumental in the research, writing, and development of past major exhibitions, Flavor: Making It and Faking It and Chow: Making the Chinese American Restaurant, as well as gallery shows Feasts and Festivals, Knights of the Raj, and Highlights from the Collection. She also established the museum’s robust public programming.

Previously, Catherine worked as a researcher at the Chicago Historical Society and the Heinz History Center, and has written for a number of major publications. She holds a Master’s degree in Food Studies from Chatham University and a Bachelor’s with honors in Social and Cultural History from Carnegie Mellon University. Catherine is currently working on MOFAD’s upcoming exhibition, African/American: Making the Nation’s Table.

PETER J. KIM

In 2011, Peter began working with Dave Arnold on launching MOFAD. Since then, he has overseen all aspects of the project's development, including the opening of the museum's first brick-and-mortar space in October 2015. He and MOFAD have been featured in The New York Times, New Yorker, NPR, and Wall Street Journal, and he has spoken widely about the museum's dynamic approach. He has worked as a hunger policy advocate, public health educator, and international litigator, and he founded and directed L'Art de Vivre, an arts education nonprofit in Cameroon. He holds a BA from Brown University, a JD from the University of Pennsylvania, Master's degrees from both Sciences Po and the Sorbonne in Paris, and an amateur certificate from the French Culinary Institute.