Foodways Events and Announcements

Three Women and Their Restaurants

The Newcomb College Center for Research on Women at Tulane University in New Orleans, from April 15 through May 8, will present an exhibition on the lives of three New Orleans women and their restaurants. The exhibition will feature menus, china, and other artifacts from the restaurants, as well as photographs and written accounts documenting the lives of Elizabeth Begué, Marie Esparbé, and Corinne Dunbar.

For those unaware of the three, a brief synopsis of their careers is warranted: Corinne Dunbar’s grand Garden District restaurant was in operation from the 1930s until the 1970s. Maylie’s was opened originally as a coffee shop in the Poydras Market by Madame Esparbé. By 1876, it had moved to a larger building across the street and soon became famous around the world, remaining so until its closing in 1986. In 1863 Dutrey’s Coffee House began as a Decatur Street café run by Madame Begué and her first husband. She remarried after his death and changed the restaurant’s name to Begué’s in 1880. Breakfast at Begué’s became nationally known during the Cotton Exposition of 1885. In her own way, each woman left a mark on New Orleans restaurant history.

The exhibition will run in conjunction with an April 15 conference titled Cuisine de la Coeur--New Orleans’ Love Affair with Food. Prospective registrants should contact Tulane’s Office of Alumni Affairs at 504-865-5901 or visit the Tulane Alumni web page, http://alumni.tulane.edu.

Grits, Greens, and Everything in Between: Foods of the African Diaspora and Their Transformations in America

This summer, the Culinary Historians of Chicago, in cooperation with the Chicago Historical Society and the University of Illinois Press, will present a two-day symposium on African American food, titled “Grits, Greens, and Everything in Between: Foods of the African Diaspora and Their Transformations in America.”

Papers presented at the June 24-25 conference will explore African and African American culinary history, food’s role in African American culture, and food businesses in the social, political, and economic life of African American communities around the nation, including Chicago’s historic Bronzeville. Additional activities such as bus tours, food tasting events, a book signing, and a screening of the film Soul Food will supplement the conference.

For more information, contact Susan Ridgeway of the Culinary Historians of Chicago at 815-439-3960 or via email at susan.ridgeway@wl.com.

Writer’s Colony with Culinary Emphasis Debuts

The Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow (WCDH), in the Ozark Mountain resort town of Eureka Springs, Arkansas, will open its doors on June 5, 2000. The Mid-South’s first writers’ colony, it will provide writers with residency fellowships of one to three months’ duration. Residency is by application; if accepted, writers pay on a sliding scale, and there are several fellowships that cover all expenses.

WCDH is located at the site of the former Dairy Hollow House Country Inn and Restaurant: three buildings, including an 1880’s farmhouse, in a wooded, secluded hollow. The nonprofit organization was cofounded by SFA charter members Ned Shank and Crescent Dragonwagon, the former innkeepers. Dragonwagon says that reaching out to culinary writers is one of the Colony’s priorities. “Our board thinks that culinary writing has been overlooked as a legitimate literary form and that writers who work in this field are under-served at existing writers colonies.” Indeed, there has not been a single colony in America with a studio-suite equipped with a good home kitchen, so such writers could test recipes and the like. WCDH will change that. Just as important is the interdisciplinary mix, with culinary writers taking their place with novelists, poets, composers, and others.

Download an application form at www.writerscolony.org, or send an SASE requesting a form to WCDH, 515 Spring Street, Eureka Springs, AR 72632.