Southern Foodways Alliance Field Trip: Buford Highway, Atlanta

You'll be hard pressed to find an uglier spot on God's green earth than Atlanta's Buford Highway. It's a long, strip-mall-lined expanse of concrete, the only bits of color provided by garish multilingual signs leering down from their steel pillars and dresses worn by immigrant women pushing strollers, their babies dozing to the roaring lullaby of I-285's eight lanes nearby. But in the tacky strip malls and litter-strewn parking lots, cooks from all over the world are making stellar dishes from their native lands, and from that a new brand of Southern food is coming to life.

That's what took the writers, chefs, restaurant owners, and other food lovers to Buford Highway's shores last weekend, for a Southern Foodways Alliance Field Trip to explore this center of ethnic cuisine. The SFA, headquartered at the University of Mississippi, is dedicated to exploring the changing landscape of the American culinary South and has for 10 years been a strong voice for ordinary people preparing good food.

The Vietnamese pho pictured below, from Pho Dai Loi Restaurant II (4186 Buford Highway, Atlanta, 404-633-2111), is a good example, offering pure eating pleasure for less than ten bucks.   

Two bowls of pho, far left and center, and another French-inspired soup at Pho Dai Loi

The word "pho" is pronounced like a cross between "fah" or "feh" (or just about anything besides "foh," which is what I called it until last Saturday). The broth is made with beef stock flavored with a variety of spices that can include star anise and cinnamon. These flavors usually remain in the background, adding depth without overwhelming the beef flavor. Thin slices of rare meat are added (the hot broth cooks the beef), along with onions and noodles.

Unlike most pho I've tried, Pho Dai Loi's spectacularly rich, well-rounded broth didn't need a single drop of soy or chili sauce to improve its flavor, and it would not be out of place in the finest French restaurant. That's no coincidence, because pho itself is a dish that emerged when the Vietnamese incorporated the ingredients and techniques of the French colonizers into their own food. The chef at Pho Dai Loi used tripe, among other things, to give the broth its richness, a move that makes me want to get down on my knees and thank God for people who still recognize that strange fatty bits of meat always make life better.  

At the table, the soup is flavored to individual tastes. Here, the restaurant served basil, lime, jalapenos, bean sprouts, and a large flat leaf that looked like dandelion greens but tasted like cilantro. 

Another highlight of the trip was parihuela at Machu Picchu (3375 Buford Highway, Atlanta, 404-320-3226, www.machupicchuatlanta.com.) Parihuela is a seafood soup, spiced with chili paste, that includes squid, shrimp, and, obviously, crab.

Thank goodness its flavor lived up to the photo, because I made the poor bewildered waiter bring out another bowl just for me. He'd already tried to seat us near a TV so we could watch the World Cup game--why else would a group of twelve mostly white people visit a Peruvian restaurant at 3:00 on a Saturday afternoon?--and seemed surprised that all we wanted to do was . . . eat. A lot. The restaurant also featured ceviche (fish marinated in lime juice to "cook" it) and chupe de camarones, a shrimp soup made with ahi amarillo (yellow chili paste), rice, and milk. (Thanks to Bill Addison, the food editor at Atlanta magazine, for ordering the food and sharing his vast store of knowledge with us.)

For other trip highlights, check out videos at the Southern Foodways Alliance web site and James Kessler's blog for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

I came away from the trip with a better understanding of the latest mix of ingredients that are being tossed into the hodgepodge that is Southern cooking. After all, what is often revered as "true" Southern food is itself a product of immigration, combining ingredients and techniques from English, African, and Spanish newcomers with Native American foods like corn and tomatoes. It's not yet clear how the Central and South Americans, Vietnamese, Koreans, Japanese, Chinese, and Eastern Europeans along Buford Highway will make their mark on Southern food and vice versa. But they will, and the future looks promising.