Guest edited by Hanna Raskin, the Summer 2024 issue of Gravy is devoted to the nexus of restaurants and storytelling, surveying our region’s shared commercial dining spaces for stories forged and stories told. Its contributors posit—in brisk and sometimes provocative fashion—that restaurants aren’t about specific dishes or design: They’re about the people who eat and work in them.


Join food writer Justin Lo on a trip to Social Circle, Georgia, where a Black businessman and a Black chef are setting a new course for the Blue Willow Inn, a restaurant which built its reputation on a Lost Cause narrative. Follow historian Heather Hodges through New Orleans as she seeks out the culinary forebears who don’t merit a mention in Walt Disney World’s new ride themed around the city’s restaurants. Listen to the South’s leading publicists recount how they helped vault Southern restaurants to national fame in the first-ever oral history of the sector.


This issue ranges from the hills of Southern Appalachia, where short story writer Leah Hampton sets her fairy tale about a summertime barbecue joint, to the streets of Charlotte, where artist Mike Daikubara sketches beloved restaurants that have since vanished from the physical landscape. It lingers in ritzy dining rooms, where John Kessler confronts the tyranny of story, and peeks into the soul food luncheonette where Tre’vell Anderson found connection between their taste and their people.