Delving Into NOLA's Past

 New Orleans hs always been knonw for it's phenomneal food. Many thought the French were responsible for this culinary paradiuse. However delve deeper and its' the enslaved that gave the city its' distinct flavor. Now it's coming to light in a variety of ways.

Regular contributor and famed food writer Brett Anderson wrote about his native cityin today's New York Times Food section.For centuries the French influence was thought to be the guiding light in their local cuisine. However this is wrong. It's the West African influence . It's the force behnd jambalaya and gumbo. A new generation of black chefs is discovering thus as well as the strong Caribbean and Creole influence too. The dishes are being featured in such restaurants as Dakar NOLA. There is Last Meal , a blend of black eyed peas, crispy rice and Louisiana blue crab. A dish  called from ndambe that the restaurant's chef Serigne Mbaye ate while growing upin Senegal. It was fed to enslaved West Africans beofre they boarded ships to the US.LAst Meal's variuation contained palmoil which us high in saturated fat. Kidnapped Africans needed to be Fattened up" before being loaded on tp slave ships.Their investments had to be protected. It's a story that Chef Mbaye shares with diners.

There are other stories that reflect the city's racist history. New Orleans has always been known as a town of merriment and great food and drinks.It was also a majority Black city at possessed a thriving slave market where more than 135,000  individuals were sold. The disparity that started then is still existing now. Chefs  such as Chef Mbaye want to emphasize the importance and contribution of the enslaved in the region's dishes. They are dismantling the whitewashed stories about the European influence  that have been fed to tourists for generations. There's a strong emphasis on the French which extends back to slavery according to Zella Pamer anfood scholar and the director of the Ray Charles Progran in African American Material Culture at Dillard University. She pointed out that most of the enslaved people brought to Louisiana in the early Eighteenth Century came from West African, and that included the Senegambia people.. The New New Orelans are getting more and more West African restaurants and with them the truth about New Orelans cooking. Stories are being told and the Frenhc influence myth like the famed Galatoire's ]was influenced by Chef Prudence instead of Jean Galatoire, a white French man.

NewOrleans is indeed a city of good food. Yet it is not solely French as many are want to think.It is the African Creole and Caribbean influences that make its' food great.