Description
This event took place on 14 June 2026. The information below is correct as of the publication date.
Edna Lewis was a chef, teacher and writer who profoundly shaped American culinary identity by preserving and elevating Southern cooking traditions to new heights, yet still rooted in seasonal and local ingredients.
Born in Virginia in 1916, Edna broke barriers as a Black woman in fine dining, influencing generations of chefs to honour authenticity, culture, and storytelling in cuisine. Through her restaurant work and books she documented and celebrated the foodways of rural Black communities, and embodied the values of regional heritage and nose-to-tail, farm-to-table practices long before they became trends.
Fifty years on from the publication of Edna Lewis’s seminal work, The Taste of Country Cooking, chef, author, and broadcaster Andi Oliver and guests explored Edna's legacy and her influence upon modern cookery across the globe.
After a screening of the Emmy Award-winning PBS documentary Finding Edna Lewis, Andi Oliver was joined by food writer Felicity Cloake, journalist and culinary historian Deb Freeman, who hosted and executive produced the documentary, Lewis’s niece Nina Williams-Mbengue, who typed the manuscript for The Taste of Country Cooking at age 12, and chef and facilitator Safiya Robinson. The event explored and celebrated Lewis’s extraordinary impact upon the way we cook and eat today.
This event took place during Big Weekend of the British Library Food Season 2026.
About Food Season Big Weekend:
The Big Weekend is the climax of the British Library Food Season – two days of culinary conversations with leading chefs and cooks, food writers, historians and more.
Thumbnail image credit: Photo of Edna Lewis by Phil Audibert
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Speaker Bios:
Felicity Cloake is the award-winning author of the Guardian’s long-running 'How to Make the Perfect' column and nine books, including the Sunday Times bestseller One More Croissant for the Road, and Peach Street to Lobster Lane, a cycle ride across the USA in the run-up to the 2024 election and a love letter to its richly complicated cuisine. Her first novel, The Underdog, was published by Fourth Estate in May 2026.
Deb Freeman is a food journalist and culinary historian who delves into the intersections of race, culture, and food across the American South. Freeman is the executive producer and host of the PBS documentary Finding Edna Lewis. She is also the host and creator of Setting the Table, a podcast exploring Black foodways and culinary history. She has appeared on Chef Carla’s Hall’s show, Finding Flavor, on HBO/Max, as well as The Key Ingredient on PBS. Her written work includes contributions to Condé Nast Traveler, Plate Magazine and Gastro Obscura, and she has provided cultural commentary for BBC Radio.
Andi Oliver is a broadcaster, chef and author. In 2006 she presented The Truth About Food for the BBC and in 2007 she and Neneh Cherry hosted BBC2 cooking series, Neneh and Andi Dish It Up. Since then, Andi has been a regular on our screens, from shows such as Great British Menu and book programmes on Sky Arts to the two-part film The Caribbean with Andi and Miquita (2021). Andi published her cookbook, The Pepperpot Diaries: Stories From My Caribbean Table, in 2023.
Nina Williams-Mbengue is the niece of chef and author Edna Lewis and the daughter of Lewis’s younger sister, Naomi. At age 12 she lived with her mother and Miss Lewis in New York City and typed the manuscript for Lewis’s seminal cookbook, A Taste of Country Cooking. Nina spent nearly 25 years with the National Conference of State Legislatures’ Child Welfare Project as Program Director and Senior Fellow. She now consults on child welfare policy, is a certified Master Gardener in Colorado and serves on the Board of Trustees of the Edna Lewis Foundation.
Safiya Robinson (also known as sisterwoman) is a chef, interdisciplinary facilitator and culinary artist exploring food as a site of memory, culture and care. She designs embodied experiences grounded in her philosophy of Intentional Nourishment: the practice of using food and shared ritual to cultivate dignity, pleasure, and meaningful connection. Inspired by her Black American, Jamaican, and British heritage, her culinary focus centres deeply considered plant forward soul food through a distinctly London lens. She also hosts and produces The Intentional Nourishment Podcast.
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