More than meets the eye

Because we live in a visual culture, and because I wasn’t sure what else to do, one of the first things I did upon learning of Southern food legend Nathalie Dupree’s death on January 13 was look for pictures of my friend.

I wasn’t the only one looking. Other media outlets got in touch to ask if I had any images to share. But as best as I could tell, even after hours of grappling with Amazon Photos and Google Drive, there is almost no photographic evidence of my having known Nathalie. Despite having seen her pose at least a zillion times with adoring fans, reliably commanding them to say “Sex!” to the camera, all I could come up with was the above hasty phone pic of our lunch at a Russian restaurant in Chicago.

Honestly, I think that would have suited Nathalie fine.

Even though her signature glass of Diet Coke hadn’t yet arrived—or perhaps it’s positioned outside of the frame—Nathalie here looks the way I imagine she’d like to be remembered. She’d been inducted the night before into the James Beard Foundation’s Who’s Who of Food and Beverage in America, which I suspect meant something even if Beard medals were strewn about her iconic Queen Street home like Mardi Gras beads. Her hair is perfect; her pearls are on; her table is dressed in white linen.

Nathalie cared about appearances, as I was reminded the last time I saw her in person before the pandemic: We shared a table at the South Carolina Democratic Party’ Spouses Luncheon, held in advance of the state’s first-in-the-South primary. She sized me up and decreed I looked sallow. That should have been insulting, but was instead kind of marvelous, in the truest sense of the word—the store had been out of my usual foundation, issued in 0.25 gradients along a 10-point hue scale, so I’d gone up or down a single notch. Nathalie noticed.

As has been reported in the excellent obituaries published by the New York Times and Washington Post, Nathalie was intimately familiar with life’s imperfections. She knew messy. But she also treasured the opportunities to make things seem just right.

I’ll forever remember when Nathalie’s beloved Les Dames d’Escoffier’s Charleston chapter helped prepare food for the June 25, 2015 funeral of Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, one of nine people massacred at Emanuel AME Church by a racist gunman. A chapter member who had taken enormous care with a cake she’d baked somehow failed to transport it with the same attentiveness, and Nathalie was initially distraught because nobody in the Royal Missionary Baptist kitchen could tell its top from its bottom. Then, with the aplomb that made her famous, she spooned it into a bowl and rechristened it a trifle.

Still, to stress Nathalie’s investment in the make-believe that’s a requisite companion to reality doesn’t do justice to her political awareness and involvement. I found one more picture of Nathalie in my collection, and while I know she wouldn’t like it nearly as much as the one I ended up posting to Instagram, it’s the one which persuaded me to write this column—even though so many people who were closer to Nathalie have already shared their tributes.

Here, Nathalie and her husband, Jack Bass, are watching presidential election returns on November 8, 2016. It’s deeply sad that Nathalie never saw a woman ascend to our nation’s highest office, but it feels essential on this Inauguration Day to celebrate how hard she fought for a society in which such a thing could happen.

Nathalie was political to her core because she cared foremost about power. After she died, a friend texted to say the news inspired her to choose recipes from Nathalie’s first book to cook in her honor. “You do the same!” she suggested. While it’s a lovely gesture, it never would have occurred to me to offer a culinary homage to Nathalie, since I’m not sure I ever really associated her with food in the first place.

At one point, Nathalie kindly offered me a free slot in her five-day cooking class at Southern Season’s Mount Pleasant location. I couldn’t take off work for the week but biked over there between interviews for biscuit tips and saucing suggestions. I’m certain her advice was sterling, but what stuck with me was her constant emphasis on how much control women could flex by running a kitchen. Even though everyone in the room was aproned, those meetings were straight-up consciousness-raising sessions.

I tried to explain this worldview to the Washington Post reporter who interviewed me for her obituary and ended up messaging him this quote from the Southern Foodways Alliance oral history she recorded in 2004:

“Food is the most powerful control issue there is—period. It’s the first thing you do when you’re born; it’s the last thing you get to make a choice about before you die. Unless somebody insists on putting you on foods like Jeb Bush…”

See how quickly she made that pivot? Food was in some ways just a medium for Nathalie’s bigger project of recalibrating power dynamics to uplift women and other marginalized groups.

As someone who founded a food journalism outlet to spark conversations about gender, race, gun violence, and labor rights, that perspective clearly resonated with me. Otherwise, though, I’ve had trouble over the past few days articulating precisely what to thank Nathalie for, beyond all the kitchen implements I borrowed, nights I spent in her spare bedroom, and smart people I met around her dining room table.

I wish I could come up with a pithy summation. For instance, many years ago, I had the chance to take a field trip from the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference to Archer City to visit with Larry McMurtry, among my favorite novelists. McMurty wasn’t feeling well, and neither was our bus, so we had hours to explore his personal collection. What I gleaned from McMurty’s shelves is it’s OK to read the kind of paperback books you used to find on spinning racks at pharmacies; your writing won’t suffer if you stray from the highbrow route.

That’s a quick and easy lesson, and one that Nathalie might have endorsed. After all, she drank industrial soda and ate packaged ice cream in pursuit of pleasure. More importantly, though, it hints at what I learned from Nathalie, who for me was a model critic.

She was intensely curious, of course. Moreover, she was a staunch believer in having and expressing opinions: In Charleston, where nobody is supposed to say anything contentious, she always stood up for me when I was a highly unpopular restaurant reviewer. She herself was outspoken and sassy and keen to challenge the status quo. Along the way, admittedly, she said many hurtful words to and about other people. (I swear I’m over her faulting my cosmetics selection.)

But a critic’s most important job is championing what they like, especially when the rest of the world doesn’t approve—or worse, hasn’t taken the time to care. Nathalie was an unparalleled supporter who never ceased to encourage women, some of whom had more talent than confidence. When I reached the adjective “warm,” in her local obituary, I paused: that hardly seemed her defining characteristic. Yet the generosity, respect, and humor she showed her chosen chickens was extraordinary. And she wasn’t shy about extolling the achievements of her flock.

I really liked Nathalie. I’m going to miss her.