Recalling the “Farm to Table” Pioneer: Edna Lewis

Her blanc mange garnished with raspberries is a welcomed introduction to this legend.

First, Edna Lewis was stunning.

Roughly seven or eight years ago I went down a Southern foodways rabbit hole on Pinterest, searching for recipes that my enslaved ancestors conjured up out of imagination, cellular memory, and necessity.

Then came Edna.

The historic Gage and Tollner restaurant in Brooklyn was the last culinary outfit she helmed, while in her seventh decade of living.

Peter Aschkensay, the restauranteur who owned Gage and Tollner, who lured Lewis to head his kitchen, affectionately said, “…when she walked into a room, well, you had to stop and stare.”

Lewis was Southern to the hilt and imbued her meals with the freshest ingredients. She would often lament how her childhood was filled with food that was equally elevated and organic, sans pesticide and additives.

Born in Freetown, Virginia, a town that was settled by formerly enslaved Black folks, in 1916, Lewis lived a life that never shied away from celebrating her roots and heritage. Early on, Lewis held steadfast to the culinary delights her mother and grandmother cooked up for their brood. Braised forequarter of mutton, puree of green black-eyed peas, crispy biscuits, hazelnut pudding, and dandelion blossom tea for dinner, were commonplace.

There’s no doubt in my mind that Martha Stewart and her cranberry meringue tartlets, with berries culled from her sprawling garden, comes to mind when most imagine “farm to table”.

Or it’s a New Age-y chef illuminating California cool cuisine, where he boasts a rooftop garden at his restaurant on Melrose Avenue in LA. At his eatery, microgreens and mint are handpicked for $40 Cobb salads, going from roof to plate in two minutes.

Better yet, a nonprofit that was started by some former tech bro who wound up lost in a food desert on the edge of Detroit, may be one’s first thought, when “farm to table”, skirts across a computer screen.

I’m here to tell you, now is the time to envision Edna Lewis when you hear those three words.

Farm to table as a philosophy and practice, posits that we should make a more meaningful effort to one, know where our food comes from, and that two, we eat food that was farmed, raised, and harvested closer to home. Essentially, we need to decrease our dependency on consuming food that may have traveled hundreds of miles to make their way to our dinner table.

Adopting this way of thinking and then eating this way has benefits worth savoring.

• It helps to decrease greenhouse gas emissions from food being transported far and wide to your doorstep. #savetheplanet

• It helps local farmers generate income and maintain sustainable farming practices.

• It helps you consume less food that was treated with harmful pesticides and herbicides.

• It helps to boost local economics, “shop local” really drives impact.

Edna Lewis created menus that required ingredients found only a few square miles from preparation straight to the hungry diner eagerly awaiting a bite of her braised Muscovy duck in natural sauce.

She did so as one of the first Black cooks to hit Manhattan in the 1940s and receive acclaim.

After a stint in DC, Lewis made her way to New York City. A gifted seamstress she made dresses for the town’s socialites. She even made a dress for a young Marilyn Monroe.

However, cooking was her life’s blood. She opened the restaurant Café Nicholson in Manhattan, and it was a smashing success, to say the least. Celebrities clamored to her kitchen. From Marlene Dietrich to Tenneessee Williams to Salvador Dali to Eleanor Roosevelt to Truman Capote, all ate, spellbound, at Café Nicholson.

Over the decades Lewis got top billing at renowned restaurants from New York to Georgia.

Best-selling cookbooks, such as, The Taste of Country Cooking, added to her panache.

Her commitment to seasonal cooking and Southern foodways helped her own celebrity rise, well into her Golden years.

Yet, in 2025, not nearly enough of us are aware of the historic trail she blazed as a Black woman cooking with “farm to table” in mind, as an industry respected professional chef.

Her name and legacy should be synonymous with this movement.

That is why I am recalling this legendary pioneer.

We recall recipes. Reach into the trenches of our souls and pull out what our great great-great-great-great grannies buttered and baked. The ham hocks and Carolina gold rice poured into pots. Chicory coffee brewed under smoky mountains and shacks cobbled together with grit and splatters of fat back.

We, meaning Black folks, have a tradition of farm to table, because that was all available to us.

We must reach back and recall our past and move into the present with how we eat, honor, and love.

We have Edna Lewis. We have our grannies. We have our great aunts. We have our uncles.

The butchers, the gardeners, the herbalists, the fancy cooks, the healers, the pioneers, pulsing through our veins.

We must remember them.

As I recall Edna Lewis, I am embarking on a journey to prepare a meal every season from her notable cookbook, The Taste of Country Cooking. It will be no easy feat for me. Her recipes are splendid, practical, and fanciful in equal measure. This woman knew how to throw down in the kitchen! Have you ever made a purple plum tart or beef a la mode? Me either.

My collard greens are dynamite though.

If 2025 reveals anything to us, it’s to be indulgent. To eat well and build community.

That being said, at the beginning of April, the first of Spring, I will select my first meal to prepare and indulge in from, The Taste of Country Cooking, cookbook. I’ll share my journey here (I can’t wait to hand pick collard greens from my garden for some of her Spring and Summer recipes :-).

I aspire to build connections along the way. With you, with more cooks, with more artists, with more gardeners, with more activists, with more nerds, with more lovers, with more peace makers, with more earth workers, with more teachers…

Thank you, Edna Lewis.

You can learn about the Edna Lewis Foundation, HERE.

Here’s a link to her cookbook, The Taste of Country Cooking, and you might like this ONE of hers too! (Note: if you purchase using my link, I will receive a small commission from Bookshop)

Hi! Thanks for reading! Are you a delightfully zany home cook (or aspire to be one)? If so, what’s your favorite recipe to make (or one you fantasize about making)?💗