Acheson Claims Only Southern Cuisine Has Depth

The city's food culture has become a bit of a media darling following last weekend's Atlanta Food & Wine Festival. Earlier this week, Josh Ozersky proclaimed the South "the new capital of gastronomy," and now our pork-laden cuisine is in the news not once but twice more.

MSNBC Today got down and dirty with Hugh Acheson, who spilled about the ATL food scene and promised Today that there was more to Southern cuisine than pork chop-and-Krispy Kreme sandwiches. He even declared Southern food "the only one that has any depth." Over at BlackBook Mag, Linnea Covington reports on the particular layers of depth: on one hand, the Korean influence that shows up in dishes like Acheson's rice grits with kimchi is becoming more and more evident, and on the other, chefs are going back to their roots, preferring to use local, sustainable ingredients. Southern food, Acheson states, "has to have a reverence for ingredients that is really, really there.” Sourcing locally and putting regional twists on Asian dishes are just two ways to "take Southern food to new levels in the culinary word and let the true nature of the cuisine shine."
· Hugh Acheson: Southern food is the only American cuisine with depth [Bites]
· Atlanta Rising: Redefining Southern Food [BlackBook Mag]
[Photo via Star Chefs]