- 5 hours ago
Hulu's Original Series: Searching For Soul Food
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00The best summer ever.
00:03My family had a special connection.
00:05Well, what do we do first?
00:06Ooh, teakups.
00:07Matterhorn.
00:07Bathroom.
00:10I don't want you to cramp my style.
00:12I can't have you cramp my style.
00:16You were the best Peter Pan ever, baby.
00:18Those two hours and 23 minutes really flew by.
00:21The Wonder Years, new Wednesdays on ABC and stream on Hulu.
00:30You know how I feel, breeze drifting on by, you know how I feel.
00:57It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life for me, yeah.
01:07It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life for me.
01:12Ooh, and I'm feeling good.
01:19I'm feeling good.
01:27Fish in the sea, you know how I feel.
01:33River running free, you know how I feel.
01:39Blossom on the tree, you know how I feel.
01:43It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life for me.
01:53And I'm feeling good.
02:01Dragonfly out in the sun, you know what I mean, don't you know?
02:05Butterflies all having fun, you know what I mean.
02:15Sleep in peace when day is done, that's what I mean.
02:19And this old world is a new world and a bold world for me, yeah.
02:29Men, do the variations
02:33Flora in the sea, you know how I feel.
02:37Skars when you shine, you know how I feel.
02:40Sand of the pine, you know how I feel.
02:44Father, freedom is mine.
02:48And I know how I feel.
02:50It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life for me.
02:55It's a new life for me
03:18Oh, I'm feeling good
03:25The right corvette
03:55She wakes up early every morning
04:05Just to do her hand now
04:07Because she cares, y'all
04:09Her day I wouldn't be right
04:13Without her makeup
04:15She's never had her makeup
04:17She's just like you and me
04:20But she's homeless
04:23She's homeless
04:25As she stands there
04:28Singing for money
04:29She's your woman
04:33And she's homeless
04:41Another cop
04:42She's thebat
04:42But she's lost
04:43She's lost
04:47She's of her
04:48Through her
04:49She was homeless
04:51The birth
04:52Pourquoi
04:53The second cop
04:54She wins
04:56Deep inside.
05:26Deep inside.
05:56Deep inside.
06:26Deep inside.
06:52get it. At my restaurant in L.A., I apply my classical training to what I know. Soul food.
07:01Cuisine created with ingenuity through struggle that nourished my people through its hardest
07:05times. And I think just maybe we aren't the only ones with that bomb formula. What do you guys
07:11think? Coming in for a second. Yay! So I'm ready to taste the soul of the rest of the world. And
07:15I'm bringing you along for the journey. Peru, Jamaica, South Africa, y'all. And I feel like
07:20I just tapped into the soul of Napoli. Mamma mia! People say L.A. has a lot of flavor and no soul.
07:27I beg to differ. It's about making something out of nothing with sustenance and love in every bite.
07:32And I want to get a taste of it all. You can't even describe it. You're like,
07:36what we're trying to do here is like let people know the depth within these meals.
07:45Whenever I sit down at a table, it brings back those memories from when I was little.
07:49It is the oldest recipe in South Africa. What? And how long has this tradition been going on?
07:578,000 years? Yeah.
08:02When I eat soul food, it takes me all the way back to like the happiest times of my life.
08:06When you have love in your food, that's what everybody's coming for.
08:10This is history on a plane.
08:11Yeah, we search for soul. Yeah, we search for soul.
08:14You want to sell, teach your soul, boss.
08:16We search for soul food.
08:19Talk to me about your culture.
08:22So, who are we? We are the Maroons.
08:24And Maroons are people whose spirit could not be broken.
08:28Wow.
08:28The origin of the word Maroon is formed from the Spanish word Simaroon, meaning wild and unruly or untamed.
08:36So, the Maroons were herders for the Spaniards.
08:39They would have chased the Simaroon cattle in the woods, keeping them there.
08:43So, they say they were as wild as the cattle they chased.
08:47And I love teaching the history, so I teach my children.
08:49That's how the Maroon knowledge work.
08:51They groom us in herms.
08:53This is called the pepper helder.
08:56And is this what the Maroons used for food and for medicinal when they were fighting off the British?
09:02Right.
09:05So, it's that energy that is in it.
09:09They knew these things from Africa.
09:12Your ancestral source.
09:14Yes.
09:14And they want to reach you.
09:15Wow, this is incredible.
09:17This plant is also the spice that they use on jerks.
09:20This is one of the preservatives in the meat.
09:23People are eating the struggle and they don't even know.
09:26Who do?
09:27People are eating the struggle and they don't even know it.
09:32People, did you hear that?
09:33People are eating the struggle and they don't even know it.
09:36You don't even know what's in the food that you're eating, all the culture, all the history.
09:39That is amazing.
09:41Wow.
09:41Wow, for real, guys.
09:42That was deep.
09:43I just had to start with that.
09:44What a beautiful moment.
09:45Good morning, guys.
09:46Hello.
09:47I am Victoria Womarogi.
09:48I'm the senior lifestyle editor for Essence.
09:50And welcome to Hulu's Black Stories Always Searching for Soul Food panel.
09:54I'm seated here with the wonderful chef, Elisa Reynolds, the renowned executive chef and star of Onyx Collective's food and travel series Searching for Soul Food on Hulu.
10:05And Tracy A. Curry, who is Searching for Soul Food's Oscar-nominated showrunner.
10:09Show them some love, please.
10:11Yes, yes.
10:12Yes, yes.
10:12Yes, yes.
10:14I love it.
10:14I love it.
10:15So the Searching for Soul Food clip that we just saw is a beautiful example of the special moments that chef Elisa creates through her soulful connection with food.
10:24Chef, the series seems to do a great job of encapsulating love, compassion, and the celebration of resilience.
10:29Can you speak to that?
10:30I can, but first of all, thank you, everybody, for coming out and supporting.
10:35Thank Essence for me being here.
10:37This is my first Essence, not my first time in NOLA, but hello to everyone that loves the show.
10:42And it was.
10:43It was an experience that I will never forget.
10:46Jamaica, the Maroons, like you said, eating the struggle and we don't even know it.
10:52This story of resilience is our story, too.
10:57And that's some of the fascinating things that I found out on my search.
11:01And Tracy can also speak to that, too, because if we really had a every.
11:07OK, first of all, I cried every episode, y'all.
11:10I cried because it was so beautiful.
11:12And just to hear the stories and to see the similarities in ours.
11:18So, you know.
11:20Yeah, I think.
11:21Yeah, she did cry in every episode, so we had to edit out a lot of those tears.
11:25But part of the reason was because we were able to create a space for Chef to have such
11:30genuine connections and moments for all of the people that we were meeting on our journey
11:35and really tried to create space for those people to share in as authentically as possible
11:41a manner their stories.
11:43And what's so great about this woman is that there's just something about her that makes
11:46people want to do that.
11:48And I think the end result is what you see on the screen in the show and why it feels
11:52so authentic and real to the experiences of these people.
11:56Now, let me ask you guys a question.
11:58Who out there has a dish that takes them all the way back?
12:02That's their favorite soul food dish.
12:04Raise your hand.
12:05Who who has a dish?
12:07Let me see.
12:08In the green.
12:10Tell me what it is.
12:11Red beans and rice on Monday.
12:13Red beans and rice on Monday.
12:15That's amazing.
12:15I need that.
12:16What's today?
12:17I need it today.
12:18It's Friday.
12:19Am I coming to your house?
12:21It's Saturday.
12:23The woman in the hat back there.
12:32One more time.
12:37Curry gold.
12:38Booyaka, booyaka.
12:39Yes.
12:41Yes.
12:42I had some curry gold in Jamaica.
12:44Nice.
12:45You want to ask anybody else?
12:47One more.
12:48Anybody else?
12:49That meal that you hold dear in your heart.
12:53Let's go on this side.
12:53The woman in the yellow.
12:54Go on.
12:58Collard greens, sweet potatoes.
13:01Collard greens, sweet potatoes, and smothered chicken.
13:02Oh, we.
13:04Smothered chicken, collard greens, and sweet potato.
13:06Y'all know about that, don't you?
13:08Okay.
13:08Let me get a round of applause for yourselves for searching for soul food, y'all.
13:14Nice.
13:14I love that.
13:15And, you know, Tracy, you've been a part of quite a few compelling stories over the years,
13:20such as Attica, 30 for 30, the Michael Vick story, and the black experience in business.
13:25By the way, can we give it up for those receipts?
13:27Because this is an Oscar-nominated one that you're talking about right here.
13:31Show her some love.
13:32Show her some love.
13:33So you're a brilliant storyteller and a true gem in this industry.
13:37So let's talk about your work with searching for soul food.
13:40As a showrunner, what steps did you take to ensure that each location's unique perspective about food was told in a pure and authentic way?
13:47Yeah, I think in some ways it was easy because—so one thing I want to clarify, because I've seen some Twitter comments,
13:54is that our show is not about redefining, changing in any way, taking away what soul food is to black people, right?
14:03In America.
14:03We're in this moment now where it's real cute to, like, take black things and make them into something else.
14:08Like, I rue the day that white people ever learn the word woke, right?
14:12That is not what our show is about.
14:14Talk about it.
14:14What our show does is it centers blackness, and it centers the black soul food story through this woman,
14:21this particular black woman-specific experience as a black woman who's from L.A.,
14:26who's an executive chef, who's classically trained, but who also has her roots in the South,
14:31which is why we started the first episode in Mississippi, right?
14:34And so what happens is when you center a black story in that way and then look at the world through that lens,
14:41all of a sudden all of these other things start to pop out, right?
14:45And so I think part of what is so great about having this woman and a black woman as a host
14:49is that we've seen food and travel series that, like, let's be honest,
14:53have been mostly hosted by white men for a long time, right?
14:55Yeah, yeah, yeah.
14:56And, like, no shade to Tony Bourdain.
14:57I love him.
14:58Love you, allies.
14:59Right?
14:59But when white men host these shows, because whiteness is seen as a default category,
15:05they're not explicit about the experience they're bringing to their travels, right?
15:10About the privilege and what it is to move through the world as a white man
15:13and how that influences where they want to go and what they want to see.
15:17And what we're doing with our show is we're making the implicit explicit by saying this is a black woman.
15:23She has a particular story.
15:25She has a particular point of view.
15:26And it influences the way that she sees the world.
15:29And so what happens is that when you do that, you look around the world and suddenly you see that there are a lot of cultures
15:34that have a story of struggle, of survival, of endurance, and creating something beautiful out of all of that ugly.
15:42So in some ways, once you understand that black point of view is how we're seeing it,
15:46it was very easy to kind of look around the world and around the country and find all of these other stories
15:51that have soul stories of their own and their food.
15:54Nice.
15:55I love that.
15:55And also, let me add on to that, know where it came from, where it got its name from is us.
16:02So we started with that because we wanted to be exclusively clear that soul food came from America.
16:11We created the name here and then we expanded that.
16:14I think it's about elevation.
16:16And sometimes as black people, we don't have to beat our chest all the time.
16:19We can pat ourselves on the back.
16:20Amen, amen.
16:22Is it Saturday?
16:23Is it Sunday?
16:23Because I feel like they're preaching to my soul and, you know, I just got to let you know that.
16:28So, chef, we have seen many, as she noted, we have seen many traveling chefs on television before,
16:33but very rarely are they chefs of color and especially they're not women of color.
16:38So how did bringing your full authentic self to searching for soul food help you to connect
16:42with each of the communities that you visited?
16:43I think me being just me, again, I am a regular, normal person.
16:51I have a business.
16:52I have the struggles.
16:53I have the stress.
16:54I did not create this show to be a celebrity.
16:56I created this show to inspire us, to discover, to show us the world through food, but also through our eyes.
17:05There's been so many shows, food shows, international shows that they've never put us in that place.
17:11And so me being in that place, I now can show the stories through food, but I also can inspire us as people here in America
17:23to travel, to discover, to ask questions, to learn something, and it's all on our plates.
17:29And we are amazing.
17:32And, you know, think about it.
17:33Our original recipes were not written down because we weren't allowed to read, let alone write, when these recipes were originally invented.
17:42So that shows you our resilience.
17:44That shows you our compassion.
17:46And I just wanted to show that on the screen because all the time we have this narrative of negative.
17:52But it's about time that we start showing positive, how positive we are.
17:58We are people that love.
18:01It's in all of our DNAs, and we can't help that.
18:04And so our love language is food, and I wanted to show our love language.
18:08Yes.
18:08It's love in the food for sure.
18:09I love that.
18:10And speaking on that, in many ways, the recipes are stories that are an example of how history lives on through cooking.
18:16So, and, you know, culturally, what is at stake if these type of stories and these recipes aren't amplified on platforms like Hulu
18:24in the way that you guys are getting to do with searching for Sophie?
18:26Yeah, I mean, listen, like, not to get too serious with it,
18:30but we're in a moment in our country where there is an active effort to erase us and our stories from the story of what this country is, right?
18:38Like, there are people who are running for president on the promise that they will erase us.
18:43We just saw what happened in the Supreme Court in the last week.
18:46They're trying to turn history back all the way back to the beginning, right?
18:50And so not to, like, get too deep about a food and travel show, but it really is about, like I said,
18:56centering our stories at the center of what the story of this country is, right?
19:01And so now there is a show that you can go to, and no election, no Supreme Court, no elected official is going to take that away.
19:09It is there.
19:09It is on Hulu.
19:10Like, God willing, it will be streaming forever, and there will be more seasons to come.
19:15And so the more that we can find places to really, like, establish that as an act of resistance to the people that are trying to erase it,
19:22I feel like the stakes are very, very high, and it very much matters that we have shows like this and more of them.
19:28There, Tracy, go preaching again, y'all.
19:30Go ahead and clap for it.
19:31Preach.
19:31But that's what it's about.
19:34There's so many beautiful stories from food to discovery to inventions that we don't know.
19:39And it's not only that we don't know it, they don't know it.
19:43It's not that they're erasing it from only black people, they're erasing it from everybody in the country.
19:47We need to tell more stories of our beauty and not live in the narrative of the beating of the chest.
19:55Pat yourself on the back.
19:56We created the stoplight and the refrigerator.
19:58Let's go.
20:00Tell them.
20:01Tell them.
20:01I love it.
20:02You're giving food.
20:04You're giving our history their flowers.
20:05And in the words of Boyz II Men, talking with you two has been food to my soul.
20:11No, that was the best.
20:12I tried.
20:12I tried.
20:14For all, I just wanted to give you your flowers now.
20:16For all that you've poured into us on this stage today alone,
20:19and for all that you have given to countless others through the TV screening,
20:23on behalf of Onyx Collective and Hulu,
20:25we would love to give you your flowers and say thank you.
20:28So, I'm giving you your flowers.
20:31So sweet.
20:32Here you go, Miss Tracy.
20:33Thank you so much.
20:34Show some love to them, please.
20:44Please accept these flower bouquets as a token of appreciation
20:47for your dedication and creative commitment to telling our stories our way.
20:52So, everybody clap for them one more time.
20:54Thank you so much.
20:55Thank you so much.
20:56And you know what?
20:57With these flowers, I want to pay it forward,
21:00and I want to give somebody in the audience
21:03I'm giving you a gift certificate, I believe it is,
21:07to one of my favorite restaurants in NOLA.
21:10I don't know what it is because I'm not going to tell you it's going to be under your seat.
21:13So, everybody look under the seat and see what you got.
21:15If there's a number under there.
21:17Behind your seat.
21:18Look behind your seat.
21:19Behind it.
21:19Can you see the numbers on the back of your seat?
21:28Big 141.
21:29Who got 141?
21:31You going to dinner tonight?
21:33141?
21:38141.
21:38I hope it's not an empty seat.
21:40I hope it ain't empty.
21:42Is someone sitting?
21:43Look behind your back.
21:43It's somebody else's seat.
21:44Clap for her.
21:45141?
21:46She going to dinner tonight.
21:48Where's she going, Chef?
21:49You are going to one of NOLA's amazing restaurants,
21:53and I'm not going to tell you.
21:54It's a surprise.
21:57Congratulations.
21:57Congratulations.
22:00Well, ladies, you know,
22:01we thank you both for this incredible conversation,
22:04and we're really excited about searching for soul food.
22:06If you guys didn't know about it,
22:07make sure to stream all episodes of Searching for Soul Food
22:10on Hulu.
22:11Please give it up for Miss Tracy A. Curry
22:14and our lovely, lovely, lovely chef,
22:17Elisa Reynolds.
22:18Clap it up for them.
22:20Thank you, everyone.
22:21Thank you, guys.
22:22Thank you so much.
22:23Thank you, thank you, thank you.
22:28They got pictures.
22:29Is it cold?
22:30Oh.
22:30Oh.
22:36Oh.
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23:00Oh.
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23:04Oh.
23:04Oh.
23:05We'll see you next time.
23:35We'll see you next time.
24:05We'll see you then.
24:35We'll see you next time.
25:05We'll see you next time.
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