In “Southern Cooking Comes to Portugal,” Gravy producer Adwoa Gyimah-Brempong takes listeners to Porto, the second largest city in Portugal, which anchors the northern region. Porto is famous for its wine and its hearty francesinha sandwiches. But this city of a quarter million people has a food scene whose depth might surprise you. Porto runs the gamut from picturesque century-old markets to hipster bakeries whose joelho pastries and glazed cornflake croissants frequently spawn lines out the door. And it’s also home to not one, but two Black Alabamian women reinventing what it means to be a Southern chef. While Gravy is a show about the changing American South, this is a story about the malleability of Southern identity—and changing American Southerners.
Angela Sellers is the owner of Piccolo Cameo, a Mediterranean fusion restaurant focusing on bright, seasonal pastas. The restaurant happened almost by accident, but it has grown to be one of the
city’s culinary gems. And Bridget Jones (yes, that’s her real name) serves rustic cuisine with southern charm as SouthernGal in Portugal. Her business was also not something she planned when she moved to Portugal—it felt like the universe nudged it into place.
Bridget and Angela are among the thousands of Americans currently living in Portugal, as is Adwoa, this episode’s producer. Not long after Adwoa moved to Porto, a friend told her that the city felt like the opening scene of Beauty and the Beast: everybody waking up to say "bonjour" (or "bom dia," as the case may be). People's manners feel familiar to her in a way that puts her at ease.
For Bridget, that southern adjacency is also reflected in the food: Portuenses eat similarly to American Southerners, fatback and ham hock included. But Angela has found freedom in redefining what
it means to be a Southern chef. In both cases, their identity is something they carried with them through customs—something that informs who they are, but doesn’t define their identity. Each of these women has lived in many corners of the world, but there’s something about the city of Porto that makes room at the table for everything they are.
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