The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow At a book signing on the Mississippi Gulf Coast last week, I was hit with a blinding jolt of reality. I have been a victim of out-of-sight out-of-mind Katrina apathy. My hometown of Hattiesburg was hit hard. Yet we bounced back quickly. At Pass Christian Books— a small, independent [...]

Bizarre Foods Exactly one year ago today I was contacted by a producer of the Travel Channel television program “Bizarre Foods.” He said that they were going to be in the area and asked if I knew of anywhere in, or around, my hometown that served bizarre food. I told him that my restaurants were [...]

The Morning Beverage Minority I do not drink coffee. I wish that I drank coffee. I would love to be referred to as a coffee drinker. “There goes Robert,” they would say. “He’s a coffee drinker.” I think it would be cool to sit in a coffee shop and sip some type of mocha concoction [...]

Food Fight! In the cafeteria scene of the 1978 movie Animal House, John Belushi pops up from behind a table and yells, “Food fight!” Chaos ensues. That was my first exposure to the phenomenon of thrown food. There is a cafe near an outlet mall in Alabama where the employees of the restaurant throw yeast [...]

Under the Wire and Off of the Press Today is the fifth anniversary of the release of a cookbook that almost wasn’t. Watercolor artist, Wyatt Waters, and I combined forces five years ago and published a coffee-table cookbook entitled A Southern Palate. The cookbook’s printer was located in Portland, Oregon, but the book was to [...]

Food Quirks Everyone has food quirks. We all prefer certain foods over others. There are plenty of foods that I eat that some folks would never touch, and vice versa. My daughter has a very versatile palate. She’ll try anything once. My son— though not a soldier in the adolescent chicken-tender army— would live on [...]

A Fall Break Diary WATERCOLOR, Fla.— It’s fall break at my children’s school. I don’t remember having a Fall Break when I was in school. We were set free the day before Thanksgiving and a week or so at Christmas and that was it. No fall break, no spring break, no teacher’s meeting break, I [...]

I Am the Egg Man, Goo Goo Ga Joob I am in an egg phase. As I look back over my 46-year eating career, it’s easy to chart my personal dining tendencies. I’ll get on a barbeque kick for a few weeks, or go for months eating a certain dish from the same restaurant over [...]

The Sleepy Shank “Drugged lamb shanks missing from clinic.” I can’t imagine how anyone could read a newspaper headline such as that and not take the time to dive into the rest of the story. I certainly bit. The story came from the Sydney Morning Herald. I’m not in the habit of reading Australian newspapers, [...]

Viking Classic Growing up in Hattiesburg, Miss. in the late 1960s and early 1970s I always looked forward to the Magnolia Classic. The Magnolia Classic was a Professional Golf Association sanctioned event that was held in Hattiesburg every April opposite The Masters tournament in Augusta. Tom Watson and Nick Faldo played here but never won. [...]