Gumbo Tales

Publishers Information

About Gumbo Tales

Publisher Web Link: http://books.wwnorton.com/

Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table

Celebrating New Orleans’ food culture, one specialty at a time.

A cocktail is more than a segue to dinner when it’s a Sazerac, an anise-laced drink of rye whiskey and bitters indigenous to New Orleans. For Wisconsin native Sara Roahen, a Sazerac is also a fine accompaniment to raw oysters, a looking glass into the cocktail culture of her own family—and one more way to gain a foothold in her beloved adopted city. Roahen’s stories of personal discovery introduce readers to New Orleans’ well-known signatures—gumbo, po-boys, red beans and rice—and its lesser-known gems: the pho of its Vietnamese immigrants, the braciolone of its Sicilians, and the ya-ka-mein of its street culture. By eating and cooking her way through a place as unique and unexpected as its infamous turducken, Roahen finds a home. And then Katrina. With humor, poignancy, and hope, she conjures up a city that reveled in its food traditions before the storm—and in many ways has been saved by them since.

Author Information

About Sara Roahen

Author Web Link: http://www.sararoahen.com/Sara_Roahen/Welcome.html

Sara Roahen is a writer and oral historian whose work usually involves food, cooking, memory, and/or place. Not necessarily in that order. Her writing has appeared in Tin House, Chile Pepper, Food & Wine, Wine & Spirits, Gourmet, and Oxford American magazines, as well as Best Food Writing 2003,  Cornbread Nation 2: The United States of Barbecue, and Food and Booze: A Tin House Literary Feast.

Sara’s oral history work can be found at the Souther Food Alliance | Oral History Initiative.

And as of February 5, 2008 (Mardi Gras), she has a book: Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table, published by W. W. Norton.

Sara was born in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin. She spent a year abroad as a foreign exchange student in The Netherlands before earning a BA in the History of Science and Philosophy from St. John’s College (attending both campuses, in Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM). She did time in several other cities and states, working her way from waitress to barista to line cook, before finally moving to New Orleans for the love of a man. Sara married Mathieu de Schutter in 2000, in no small part because he had brought her to New Orleans. 

The hurricanes of 2005 shook loose Sara and Matt’s corporeal ties to the city. They resided for a time in Philadelphia, where Matt pursued a medical career and Sara ate tomato pie. On April 20, 2008, they moved back to New Orleans. Just in time for crawfish season and Jazz Fest.

Sara serves on the Board of the Southern Foodways Alliance and is an emeritus member of the Ark-Presidia Committee of Slow Food USA.

Cookbooks by Sara Roahen

0

Your rating: None

My Cookbook

The Southern Foodways Alliance Community Cookbook

by Southern Foodways Alliance, Sara Roahen, John T. Edge

0

Your rating: None

My Cookbook

Gumbo Tales

by Sara Roahen