“Settle down far from town get me a pirogue
And I’ll catch all the fish in the bayou…”
–Hank Williams
“Jambalaya (On the Bayou)”
The writer Jim Harrison once ate 144 oysters in one sitting. That’s twelve dozen, if you’re wondering. Harrison’s book The Raw and the Cooked: Adventures of a Roving Gourmand will make you hungry. And thirsty…
Harrison won a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, the Mark Twain Award and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He published dozens of excellent books, and Hollywood adapted Harrison’s stories Legends of the Fall, Cold Feet and Revenge onto film. He died in 2016. In The Raw and the Uncooked, Harrison wrote about dining with Orson Welles, John Huston, Jack Nicholson, Bill Murray and Jimmy Buffet. A writer once called Harrison a ‘poet laureate of appetite’. It’s a tremendous collection.
Harrison wrote in The Raw and the Cooked: “Eating in America is a grand puzzle of thousands of pieces, many of them lost, with the final picture a diorama of our history led by economic considerations and ethnic influences.”
Essays such as “Midrange Road Kill”, “Cooking Your Life”, “Heart Food in L.A”, “Fresh Southern Air” and “Wine” rank as a few of this writer’s favorites. The reader can almost taste the array of unforgettable meals Harrison eats from Montana to Paris in this glorious gastronomical journey. The Raw and the Cooked includes his delectable recipe for spaghetti with meatball sauce as well as correspondence with French writer Gerard Oberle. Harrison tells a funny story about Francis Ford Coppola sticking Danny DeVito with an expensive tab in a fine Hollywood restaurant one evening after a decadent dinner.
In the spirit of Harrison’s book, explore some Never Ending Soul Food Tour dispatches that visit barbecue joints, catfish dens, chicken shacks and other establishments serving memorable vittles. As Lee “Scratch” Perry once sang, “Roast fish and cornbread/Hey hey hey…”
Until later.
Automatic Y’all: Weaver D’s Guide to the Soul
Jim Dickinson’s Favorite Food & Films
Scott’s BBQ
Doo-Dad’s Seafood: Fish & Frog Legs with Birdmane
Elizabeth Josephine’s Linguine & Cream Sauce Recipe
Don Nix: Road Stories & Recipes
Mrs. Wilkes Dining Room in Savannah
Old Clinton BBQ House
Sista’s Kitchen
John Hiatt’s Vegetable Senegalese Stew
Anthony Bourdain: Kitchen Confidential
Stephanie Stuckey’s Unstruck: Rebirth of An American Icon
(Photographs by James Calemine)