Home Cooking, Global Reach

Chef Kenny Gilbert honors his family's food traditions while encouraging readers to honor theirs

- EMILY D. CREWS

Kenny Gilbert traveled the world before he ever left home. As a child, he grew up sharing meals with friends and neighbors whose food traditions came from all over the globe. It's not surprising, then, that he developed a robust appreciation for flavors and ingredients that originated continents away from his home state of Ohio well before he became a widely recognized and award-winning Jacksonville, Florida-based chef.

Gilbert's respect for the diversity of international foodways is apparent in the recipes and stories he shares in his new cookbook, Southern Cooking, Global Flavors. He encourages readers to draw on the flavor profiles they grew up with and to cook in ways that honor who they are and where they come from. At the same time, he never loses sight of his own origins. Whether it's his mom's biscuits (beloved of Oprah Winfrey, as Gilbert notes in the Flavor Bomb) or his dad's ribs (the standard against which he measures all others), the dishes he teaches his readers to cook are rooted in Black Southern cuisine and culture, and pay homage to the long history of African American creativity and innovation.

Southern Cooking, Global Flavors invites readers to travel the world one dish at a time. For Southerners anywhere, it's a warm welcome home.

What made you want to write this kind of cookbook and why now?

I've been wanting to write a cookbook for a long time. [During] Covid, when everything was going down, I was going through all this stuff, all these life changes, and I felt like I had a lot to say. My story is mother born and raised in the South, dad from Chicago, I've got employees from all around the world, and I've really been nurturing this story and this talent for a long time. I was buying products from all around the world, and then I would take them and bring them into identifiable, Southern-international dishes. It kind of came to life.