This Juneteenth, we are celebrating a culinary pioneer with an ongoing legacy that has shaped American cuisine.
In a June 19 segment, TODAY takes viewers into one of New York City’s oldest restaurants, Gage & Tollner, where the spirit and influence of former executive chef Edna Lewis continues to flavor its dishes.
“She always told me that she felt her ancestors were looking over her shoulder,” Nina Williams-Mbengue, Lewis’ niece, tells TODAY’s Laura Jarrett.
Born in Virginia, Lewis was the granddaughter of Chester Lewis, a formerly enslaved man who helped build a self-sustaining Black community. It was there Edna Lewis learned the power food has to unite people.
Although she had no formal training, Lewis became one of the most respected chefs of her time, publishing the groundbreaking cookbook “The Taste of Country Cooking” in 1976. In it, she outlined an “Emancipation Day” menu that speaks to the heart of Juneteenth: gathering, honoring the past and celebrating freedom.
“She was a pioneer when it comes to farm-to-table,” food historian Deb Freeman explains to Jarrett. “That’s a term that we use every day these days. But what she was doing was revolutionary at the time.”
Freeman’s Emmy-nominated PBS documentary “Finding Edna Lewis” peels back the layers of the chef’s life and cultural impact. It also serves as an examination of how Lewis’ work helped redefine Southern cooking and preserve African American culinary traditions.
“It’s a beautiful menu,” Freeman says of Lewis’ Emancipation Day spread. “When you think about that menu, it’s very seasonal. It’s not incredibly elaborate.”
June 19, or Juneteenth, marks the day when word of freedom finally reached the last people subjected to slavery in the United States in Galveston, Texas. That was two years after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863. The day has continued to be a time for many “to celebrate their families and celebrate their community,” says Freeman.
That spirit and sense of achievement despite so many odds, continues to thrive in Gage & Tollner’s kitchen under chef Sohui Kim, whose dishes continue to be inspired by Lewis’ culinary point of view.
“Incredibly so, in the way that we curate our menu, in the way that we source our ingredients,” Kim tells Jarrett. “She wasn’t trained in any fancy schools, but she really brought all the know-how, you know, from her family, from her ancestry — all the Southern cooking that she was so proud of, and you can see that on our menu.”
This Juneteenth, Kim’s menu includes crispy fried chicken, flaky biscuits, fresh seasonal vegetables and red drinks — a staple of the holiday and powerful symbol of the resilience that Lewis embodied.
