Visually rich and filled with photography, the Fall 2024 issue of Gravy explores themes of service—in restaurants, in communities, and beyond.


Gregory Emilio, a professor of English at Kennesaw State University, reflects on the summer he spent working at the Atlanta restaurant Staplehouse and the service ethic shared by the professions of teaching and restaurant work. Scholar Keon Burns remembers his great-grandparents’ grocery store near Bolton, MS, and how it nourished their community. His piece pairs with a photo essay featuring archival images of Black-owned grocery stores around the South. In addition to being places where Black customers could shop with dignity and autonomy in the Jim Crow South, some Black-owned groceries functioned as voter registration sites, meeting places for Civil Rights activists, juke joints, pool halls, cafés, service stations, informal gathering places, and more.


Irina Zhorov pulls up a chair with the ROMEOs, or Retired Old Men Eating Out, a breakfast club that meets daily at the Jack’s in Jasper, AL, for biscuits, coffee, and fellowship, finding community in the seemingly anonymous space of a fast-food chain. Eve Troeh interviews Sandra Miller Foster, now retired in her hometown of Cleveland, MS. Miller Foster shares wisdom from more than twenty-five years in the restaurant business in Los Angeles, where she and her mother ran the Southern food restaurant Flossie’s.


Gustavo Arellano visits Acamaya, a new seafood-centric Mexican restaurant in New Orleans owned by sisters Lydia and Ana Castro. Jeff Houck meets Reed Smith, an oyster farmer who’s chosen Tampa Bay as his unlikely plot. Marina Greenfeld shares two poems inspired by Dollar General Stores.


Cover art by Natalie Nelson.