Toni Tipton-Martin with Chef Todd Richards

Black American chefs and cooks are often typecast as the experts of only one cuisine—soul food, but Todd Richards’ food is anything but stereotypical. Taste his Hot-Chicken-Style Country-Fried Lamb Steak or Blueberry-Sweet Tea-Brined Chicken Thighs as evidence. While his dishes are rooted in family and the American cuisine known as soul food, he doesn’t let his heritage restrain him. Richards firmly believes that cooks can honor tradition yet be liberated to explore. In this conversation with Toni Tipton-Martin, Richards shares his creativity and passion to highlight what soul food can be for a new generation of cooks.

Todd Richards is a self-taught chef who paid his dues in numerous restaurant kitchens before becoming an executive chef who garnered national attention. As the opening Corporate Chef for One Flew South, located in the international terminal of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Richards lead the esteemed team that propelled One Flew South to become the first airport restaurant in the U.S. to be a contender for the prestigious James Beard Award. He has two James Beard nominations for Best Chef in the Southeast, was an Iron Chef competitor, and was named one of “Four New Chefs to Watch” by Esquire magazine. He is the owner/chef of Richards’ Southern Fried at Krog Street Market in Atlanta.

Toni Tipton-Martin is the author of Jubilee: Recipes From Two Centuries of African American Cooking, a beautifully-photographed recipe collection that takes African American cooking beyond soul food, and The Jemima Code: Two Centuries of African American Cookbooks, a widely-acclaimed, annotated bibliography that tells the story behind her rare collection. The Jemima Code also is the title of a traveling exhibit, featuring larger-than-life images of black cooks at work, curated from Martin’s gallery of authors. She is a contributor to the forthcoming anthology, Southern Women: More Than 100 Stories of Innovators, Artists, and Icons and to Edna Lewis: At the Table with an American Original. In 2005, she published an historic reprint of an early 20th century cookbook, The Blue Grass Cook Book, by Minnie C. Fox, which contains the first known photographs of African American cooks and presents a new portrait of a role model working women can respect and learn from today. Toni also is co-author of A Taste of Heritage: New African-American Cuisine and wrote the chapter on the South for Culinaria: The Food of the United States.

Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking  by Toni Tipton-Martin and 
Soul: A Chef’s Culinary Evolution in 150 Recipes by Chef Todd Richards available through indie bookseller

Jubilee Talks: Toni Tipton-Martin with Chef Todd Richards Sponsored by Lodge Cast Iron