Celebrating Black
culinary innovators

Season 2 of The Black Kitchen Series set out to celebrate the richness and resilience of Black food culture in America, focusing on innovation as its core theme. Through heartfelt conversations, we explored topics like Black veganism, farming as liberation, and the environmental promise of West African grains. Along the way, we met incredible individuals whose stories were filled with passion, creativity, and a deep commitment to transforming the culinary landscape across America.

With each episode a new introduction to the innovators we meet on our journey, we complimented the podcast with a series of short films, offering a more personal connection to the people and places sharing their stories. Together, the podcast and films sparked meaningful conversations, celebrated the power of food to connect communities, and highlighted the transformative impact of Black culinary innovation, earning a James Beard Broadcast Media Award and resonating deeply with audiences across the country.

This is the story of the Williams family and their business, Delta Dirt Distillery, in Helena, Arkansas, the only Black farm-to-bottle distiller in the country, and the only ones turning sweet potatoes into spirits.

KJ Kearney is the charismatic, community-oriented influencer driven by the love of his people. He may be behind the James Beard nominated @BlackFoodFridays TikTok and Instagram accounts, but what drives him goes much deeper than what you can find on the internet. Our host Jade spends the day with him in Charleston and Savannah, and chats with him to find out how (and why) he’s making sense of social in this day and age.

In our next stops on this road trip, we go straight to the heart of the Lowcountry to learn about two ancient and storied grains making big waves today: fonio and Carolina Gold rice. At James Island, our host Jade chats with matriarch in the making, Amethyst Ganaway of Yolélé, about the so-called seed of the universe, before heading further south to Hardeeville, where she meets with master rice grower, Rollen Chalmers of Rollen’s Raw Grains. We may be far from home now, but Jade finds herself closer to her roots than ever before…

Jade’s journey through the South has so far brought her closer to community, closer to family, and now…closer to body? In this episode, vegan chefs Folami Geter of A Peace of Soul Vegan Kitchen in Columbia, SC, and Marlon Rison of Community Vegan in Austin, TX, share how they came to the plant-based lifestyle, what’s keeping them there, and how it connects us to each other and our history in unexpected ways.

We all know that food is more than food. It’s medicine – for the body, the soul, the heart…and for the community? The future? The wounds of the past? Host Jade Varette chases some sunshine in California and meets with two women harnessing the healing power of food in transformative ways: Kelly Carlisle – founder and Executive Director of Acta Non Verba: Youth Urban Farm Project out of Oakland – who is rewriting the narrative around the youth of her community, and chef/artist/Black Food Futurist Nia Lee, who is creating radical sites of healing and joy for Black queer femmes.

At the end of the journey, back in Brooklyn, and putting all the pieces together. Our Season 2 host Jade sits down with Black food historian, Soul Food Scholar, and host of Season 1, Adrian Miller, to make sense of all that she’s encountered over the course of her travels, and why Black food writing lies at the center of it all. Jade also sits down with Chala June to discuss why Black food writing is an act of resistance as much as it is an expression of love.