Soul Food

Mike: So Dusty-

Dusty: Uh-huh.

Mike: Tell me a little about - you're from Philadelphia, right?

Dusty: Yeah, yeah.

Mike: Tell me a little bit about - soul food.

Dusty: Okay. So soul food - actually, it comes from the South, and Philadelphia has a lot of great soul food restaurants. What soul food is, most of it comes from back in slave days, you know. Slaves, they can't get the really good cuts of the meat or the good parts. They got the kind of leftovers or the thrown away stuff.

Mike: Right.

Dusty: They had to learn how to make it into something a bit better.

Mike: Right.

Dusty: So it's just kind of good, hearty eating. Most of it is cooked - it's not really the healthiest food - a lot of it is cooked in butter, or fried up in lard.

Mike: Right. So can you give me some examples of like some soul food dishes maybe, and what's inside it?

Dusty: So, of course, the classic ones are things like fried chicken or chitlin. And chitlin is basically like stewed pig intestines of seasoning.

Mike: It's tasty.

Dusty: Yeah. It's not something I like, but some people enjoy it.

Mike: Right.

Dusty: And then, there's also things like collard greens, yams, mashed potatoes - a lot of things you see all the time - biscuits. These are all things that are like soul food.

Mike: Just curious, does it differ by region? Like for example, you're from Philadelphia, which is further north. Do you get different types of soul food if you go like further towards the south, like the Cajun parts, let's say Louisiana or something?

Dusty: Well, Cajun food's a bit different, but as you travel down south, you start seeing differences. Like where I was from in the States, we almost never had chitlins in the north, because it was just something that wasn't very appetizing. Or chicken feet is another one, pig's feet - food like that just wasn't as popular. But as you go down south, you get back to the roots of it more, and so you start finding more restaurants that sell these kinds of things.

Mike: Interesting.

Dusty: Yeah. I still can't eat it. It's horrible, but--

Mike: Interesting. So is there a particular favorite kind of soul food dish that you like?

Dusty: Oh, I still love collard greens. One of the things that when I was younger, I didn't like them so much; as I got older, I enjoyed them. It's almost like a kind of spinach basically.

Mike: Okay.

Dusty: But it's kind of a bit more flavored and spicier.

Mike: Wow.

Dusty: Yeah. And macaroni and cheese I love, of course.

Mike: Wow! Right on.