Food is a Memory

Food is more than something you eat—it’s history, identity, and connection. In this episode of Sankofa Sessions, guest moderator Katina Moss sits down with Duron Chevis and Chef Tye Hall for Food is a Memory, a rich conversation about how cuisine carries the stories of the African diaspora across generations and borders. From ancestral roots to modern kitchens, they explore how flavors, ingredients, and traditions preserve culture, spark nostalgia, and keep heritage alive.

This episode goes beyond the plate, digging into the emotional and cultural power of food—how it connects us to where we come from and shapes where we’re going.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:21

Tandella Hall is a chef, cultural storyteller, and the visionary behind fire and memory, a heritage dinner experience, where every dish carries history and every table tells a story. With over 20 years in the kitchen, she blends classical technique with bold, heritage-driven flavors that honor her roots and her community. As a halal butcher and ethical hunter, she doesn't just cook food, she teaches people how to truly understand it from land to table. She is also the co-host of the podcast from the bottom of the pot, where food, love, and real-life conversations come together. Known for her extensive love for spices and creating immersive, soul-filled dining experiences, Chef Ty invites people to slow down, connect, and remember. Simply put, she's not just serving meals, she's making magic. One dish at a time. Y'all, let's show some love to Chef Tai Nella Hall. Come on, y'all, show her some love. Clap it up, clap it up, clap it up. And also Daron Chavis. Chavis engages in coordinating innovative and dynamic initiatives around the topics of urban agriculture and local food systems. In 2009, Chavis launched the Richmanoir Market, a Saturday farmers market targeting low-income communities located in what the USDA has designated as food deserts in Richmond, Virginia. 2012 marked the development of his first community garden, which subsequently led to the development of urban farms, urban orchards, urban vineyards, and work in poverty mitigation, workforce development, health, and racial equity. Chavis has received numerable accolades for his work. He served in 2011 as a clean air ambassador on behalf of Earth Justice and the Hip Hop Caucus. He is an alumni of Leadership Metro Richmond's class of 2011, received Style Weekly's Top 40 Under 40 Award in 2010, and the Style Weekly Power List in 2014 and 15. Show some love now for Daron Chavis.

SPEAKER_00 2:49

Woo!

SPEAKER_02 2:50

Yes, come on, y'all, clap it up, clap it up, clap it up. Um I just want everyone to really be in this moment as we begin this conversation. And the breeze, it's a little bit of breeze, it's warm. And I just want if you feel like it and you want to close your eyes and just take in the moment and think about a meal that you had as a child. Whether it was at a grandparent's house, your house, an auntie, or your uncle on the grill, whatever it was, I want everyone to just get in the moment of remembering food. Food that has been so good to us that when we go to a restaurant and eat, we might taste something and be like, mmm, and it takes us back to those memories. Because we're talking about St. Kofa looking back and connection, and I personally love the connection that our people have with food. Good food, right? And we have all kinds of jokes about how we season our food and other folks don't season their food. And who made the potato salad? Oh no, I want that pound cake because Auntie made that pound cake. We go to church for homecoming and we look, mm-mm, them green beans don't look right. We got ethics behind our food, right? And so um I'm gonna start with you. Um do you go by Chef Tai, Tanella, Chef Tai? I'm gonna start with you, Chef Tai. What has been your driving memory that has, if there's one or two or three, that has really guided you in your journey with food?

SPEAKER_01 4:46

Um, so my memories um around food. I grew up in a speakeasy. So my grandmother was the lady who cooked food for the community. Food was always a part of my life. Everything was like colorful, and I had aunties and uncles that won't my aunties and uncles, but it was always at the middle of food. I'm a I'm an 80s baby. I came up right when crack hit the black community. And I'm from the bottom of West Philadelphia, right? So it hit us extra hard. And when food stamps weren't on a card, but they were color-coded, and you were given food in cans that just had a white piece of paper to identify what it was but had no nutritional value on it, and even in something as big as that, my grandmother was able to take that over-salted food, that over-processed food, and still be able to create something. And that has been my driving memory, especially since I've lost her, is to bring that back. Being able to make something out of what other people perceive as nothing is my driving force.

SPEAKER_02 6:02

Yes, isn't that good? Yes, that is so good. And so, what about you, Daron? And I know your work has centered urban agriculture, connecting us back to growing our food, right? And how we can take care of ourselves if we just put our hands back to understanding who we are and creating and doing for ourselves in the lane of food and how that affects us nutrition-wise and all of that. What has been your driving memory?

SPEAKER_03 6:34

Um, driving memory. Um, I think my earliest memory of food and family, I was born on Southside, Richmond, um, off of Broad Rock Boulevard. And uh when I was small, I remember my mother, uh I remember my mother, me, my aunts, uncles, my grandmother, all being in the sun room in her house uh off of Brack with newspaper, covering the ground, and everybody cracking crabs. Like, that's one of my most vivid memories of my family being together at my at a at an early age. Um, you know, I think that that that tradition of uh the family getting together for a crab boil is something that I think a lot of folks have a similar memory, you know what I'm saying, being small and not knowing how to crack crabs and like somebody teaching you, you know, what part to eat, what part not to eat, you know what I'm saying? Um so yeah, for me that's been um I would say that's a core memory. Uh and I say it's a driving memory because I feel like family, community, these are for me, synonymous terms. Like they they they mean the same thing. And us coming together around food, laughing, the music, you know, you might not even know your cousin for real, for real, but y'all going to kick it, hanging out. You know, that energy is something that I feel like we really need to get back to. That's why I love events like this, you know, where we're able to just be, breathe, eat, and just vibe and enjoy um the day together. So yeah, yeah, that'll be my drive of memory.

SPEAKER_02 8:39

I love it. Thank you. Chef Tha, I relate to what you were saying, growing up in the speakeasy. My parents were nightclub owners. And it was a nightclub in the country. And some of my fondest memories are when we would get to my grandparents' house on Saturday, and my grandpa, my Papa Howard, and my granny Ada would have fried butterfish and fixed collard greens and a pan of cornbread. And they had that ready for us, right? And the same table, my grandmother and my aunt would, you know, my grandmother would wake up early in the morning and my aunt would always fuss about her rattling pans early in the morning. Nobody wanna hear that noise at five o'clock in the morning. She said, shut up, girl. And, you know, my grandmother was gonna fry potatoes and fix her tomatoes and mayonnaise, and you know, they just did it up at the table, right? And I remember my aunt at the at the deep fryer at the at my parents' business, the nightclub. And it just, there's so many wonderful memories and connections that I have with that food. And when I began to cook, people used to joke on me because um I showed no interest in cooking until I felt like I really needed to. Because I was like, why am I gonna cook? I got all these people to cook. But when I began to cook, it all came to me. And I used to tell people, like, I don't know why you thought I wouldn't be able to cook. I was raised around people who could cook on both sides of my family. And so I think that that's one of the things that we can connect with. And we talk about food is memory and how food connects us to our history. And the like Daron, you just talked about the spirit of just basically gathering together and all the memories that that brings of our cousins and the celebrations. So I'll go back to you, Sheptai. What has your experience been like with just connecting with in a spiritual way, food? Right? What is that then? And um I want I want to hear your story with that.

SPEAKER_01 10:59

So, like you, um, again, I have to go back to like my childhood. I was about seven years old when the drug, the substance abuse entered into my family, and I went from having a childhood to now having to relinquish that and become that person who helped cook. So I ran away from cooking. I didn't want to. It wasn't that I couldn't, I didn't want to. And it wasn't until I started to have my own children that the want to cook come back, right? But when I found my voice was after I had my major accident where I didn't walk for two years. I had been cooking, but I want you to hear my heart in this. When I first started out and I wanted to be a chef, I wanted to be what everybody thought a chef was. So that meant chasing fame, chasing people, chasing something that was not truly what God had for me. And what I learned in that moment was that if I keep eating from everybody else's table, I will surely die because I can get poisoned eating somebody else's blessing that wasn't attached to me. Right? So we fast forward, it's after the pandemic, I find myself on a veteran farm. And on that farm, I butcher or slaughter my first animal, and I learned the history and the story behind this animal gave its life not out of sport, but so that it can feed a community. Right? And as I delved into that, and I stood by a bonfire in 26-degree weather on a farm, I heard the ancestors tap me on my shoulder and say, You have finally stepped into your place. So as a result, I have now given myself back to what our ancestors and what our elders are waiting at the table to tell us. You need to hear their voice. As they age, the fundamentals that we have, like the farmer's almanac, learning how to read it, knowing our cycles of when to plant, when to harvest, when to do all of these things are falling because our children are not at the table with us. There is no community. The big mamas are leaving, so therefore, we're not attaching ourselves to our cousin because she doesn't look right or whatever. We have to become that big mama now. And right now I feel like my mantle has been placed on me to reconnect. And that's what I'm doing with these heritage dinners, right? Like, even though I'm kind of doing the dinner, the voice is to the elder, it's not to me. The spotlight is on the elder, it's not on me. I'm cooking by way of them, but I want you to come and sit and commune around a long table and listen to the elder speak. Grab the nuggets that they're willing to give you before the voice is gone. That's good.

SPEAKER_02 14:14

That's really good. That's really good. Um, what a on both sides of my family, my mom and my dad both grew up in rural areas. My mom, King and Queen County, Virginia, and my dad, Brunswick County, and they met at Virginia State. And so um, agriculture is on both sides of my family. I don't know how to plant a garden from nothing, right? Um, but I'm I'm I know that learning and bringing that part of myself that's a part of me into fruition is there. Um, so Daron, I want to I want you to talk about reconnecting us. Like Chef Chai, you just mentioned, you know, slaughtering your first animal and and that experience. We are agricultural people, we are people who understand the relationship with the earth, with nature, with animals, the responsibility that we have for stewardship. We understand those things inherently. And I think back to both of my parents trying to escape poverty, and all of their siblings, well, not all on my mom's side, but most of the siblings that they had were looking to get away from the country and from agricultural living because it was attached to poverty, right? And now we're seeing the need to really reclaim and reconnect with the basics of who we are and taking care of ourselves, our land. And so, Daron, if you could talk about um food and how we connect to it, and just even in reference to some of the nutritional issues that we have in our community. Um, how we're able to look back, keep the memory of food, but also move forward in a way that doesn't keep us enslaved to habits that are killing us.

SPEAKER_03 16:12

Yeah, um, that's a great question. Um, so we're at the Sankofa uh diaspora festival. Uh Sankofa means, you know, look back, uh go back and fetch it. Look back to the past to bring the lessons that you learned to your today. And the work that I get the honor and privilege of doing is just that, right? Uh the agricultural tradition for black people is rich, diverse, and it's a part of our DNA. Um unfortunately, uh, due to racial terrorism, uh due to the systems that we live in that have harmed us, uh, explicitly in the South and in rural communities, many of us have been disconnected from the land. Right? I hear you. Your folks, you know, decided they wanted to get away from the farm. Um, and it's not no fault of their own, because the systems that existed or exist in rural uh communities is one of racism, you know, right-leaning, ultra-conservative. You know, it's not exactly the most amenable for high-quality living for black and brown people. But at the same time, I think it's imperative for us to not connect the systems that have impacted us negatively to the land itself. These are two different things, right? The land didn't harm us, right? Right? It were the systems that you know govern man on top of the land that have harmed us. Um I spent a lot of time dealing with this, right? Helping people feel comfortable and invited back to be land stewards. And it's a tough challenge. Agriculture is hard work, um, farming is hard work, but it's not as hard when we go back and learn from the lessons of communalism, right? As a people, I was just doing this earlier today, you know, uh come from the farm street over here. So um we had 12 people in my cohort that trained community members how to farm. And we were moving compost, right? 100 foot rows, three feet wide, nine rows, you know, we're building soil fertility, soil fertility, right? And I reminded the folks in the class, you know, it took us two hours to fully compost these rows, put down straw, put down soil amendments, you know what I mean, to get it right, ready for planting. And I reminded them, like, yo, what if you had to do this by yourself? Just one of y'all out here trying to compost these roads, trying to get this thing together. You know, tractor maybe, if it works, but wheelbarrows and shovels. Um and I was like, look at us, it's 12 of us. It took us two hours to do all this work, right? But that's the energy of being rural and black. We have systems of connectivity and support, collaboration, and interdependence that we've lost as a result of moving into these cities and trying to pursue the quote unquote American dream. There's something that we lose when we move away from the family land, right? There's something that we lose when we get away from the communities where we know our cousins and we know the neighbors, and you know, my aunt lives up the road and my uncle lives around the corner, and you know, when your people are in an area, right? It's a different type of energy whereas you might live in a city and you may or may not know your neighbors. I mean, I know I know my neighbors because I'm like, yo, who's around, but I'm just saying we we we live in a society that doesn't really engage us in a way where we're like truly in community with each other. We got a house on a block that may or may not be in relationship, right relationship with the people that live next door. But anyway, food as a tool to bring communities together is a critical point to raise. Because I'm sure, you know, when families dipped away from the self, the idea of going back home for the family reunion has been a thing. It may be dwindling now because so many people are selling the family land. Uh, I want to put a pen in that and just say that if you do have family that has land, your grandparents, your grandfather, you know, your aunts, your uncles, somebody in the family is tending to it, don't sell it. Don't, please don't sell it. It's it's it's they're not making any more land.

SPEAKER_01 21:19

That part. That part. They own the buildings, but they're not making land, right?

SPEAKER_03 21:23

Yeah, the land is the only the land is the only thing that will continue to appreciate and value every year. It's a wealth-building strategy to have land in your ownership, but it's also critical for our survival. I don't know if anybody's been to the grocery store lately.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

I know I did.

SPEAKER_03 21:42

But I have. And food is getting more and more expensive week to week. Right? The price of tomatoes last week is not the price of tomatoes this week.

SPEAKER_01 21:51

You might have some green peppers.

SPEAKER_03 21:53

The price of eggs. Like all of this stuff is skyrocketing. And it's not. Going to get any better anytime soon. So, this conversation about land and us getting back to it is critical for our community needs, but it's also good for our soul, man. Spending 30 minutes, an hour out of doors working or spending time in nature, period, is a way for us to detox the stress hormones that come onto us by virtue of living in this racist society. Right? It's literally a healing that is waiting for you on the land. So I'll just say that, you know, as far as the health and wellness part, you know, us not eating in the ways that our foreparents ate is a cause of a wide variety of chronic illnesses. Um I know somebody in the room knows somebody with diabetes. I know somebody knows somebody with cancer, high blood pressure. But think about it. When your grandparents worked on their farms, right? They ate wild. Chitlins is wild crazy. I don't eat chitlins, but that's not because I'm shaming anybody. I just can't stand the smell. Fried cracklings is crazy. But imagine if you in the field, you busting your tail, working on these farms, you can eat wild, crazy stuff because your body is burning off these cholesterols and these salts and all that different type of stuff. We we go to work and sit in the cubicle all day and think that we can eat all types of wild, reckless, crazy stuff. It's just our our daily lifestyle is not conducive for the type of foods that we are in love with eating. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 23:46

I have more for that.

SPEAKER_03 23:47

So we gotta get back to working the land, we gotta get back to being physically fit and physically active. And I tell you, man, nothing will get you your steps, like rocking out on your garden, rocking out on your farm, and then you get tomatoes, you get peppers, you get collard greens, all that stuff comes with it. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:04

What you got for it? So before I became a chef, and before I, my very first job, I was in the military. So I'm a vet, right? And one of my deployments, they had some refugees that we took and brought on to our encampment. Within 30 days, they had spikes in their cholesterol, they had spikes in their sugars. Why? Because they went from eating the food that was native and indigenous to them to eating the food that they were giving us as soldiers, and it spiked every level that was in their ecosystem, right? And it was because they had stopped eating and living the way that they were normal, that was normal to them to come into ultra-processed food. Like I decided, once COVID happened, to go back, and once I learned what it was to be with the animals and to be able to take their lives, I can look at that animal, and just because I took its life, I can tell you about what it ate by the color of its fat. I can look at its kidneys, and I can tell you whether or not they are edible because at one point that was all that our ancestors was given was the offal. That's what really, that's what dirty rice is. It's your liver, it's your kidneys, it's the organ meat. They had this new commercial for these people called Primal something, where they're telling you to eat all these beef organs and all that. Because organ meat is fortified in all of the vitamins and nutrients that we need. That's why our grandparents and our aunties and stuff love beef liver with onions. And we can't stand it. But that liver gravy is delicious. But you ain't eating that piece of liver. But you have someone like me who can slaughter an animal and I can look at every organ and I can tell you, we give thanks that you gave your life, but you have parasites. You have things that we cannot eat, that our body cannot break down. You will not find that if you're going to stores and they are mass-producing their meat because it's an oversight. But then it's a recall later. Saying, oh, this is where we had a botulism outbreak, we had an E. coli outbreak. Now, going back to what Daron does, when he's doing a leveling land, the gradient of even this right here, if you had animal or livestock at the top where that house is, and then that gradient comes down, you can't plant within right there because the feces from them animals is going to be the runoff that's going to come down. So, therefore, that's where your E. coli comes from. That's why every time you turn around, the lettuce is being recalled, because they have no care of how they take over land and then mass-produce so that they can mass distribute for us to eat. We as African Americans, you have people out here that I can see that have different ethnic backgrounds. If you go back to the spice profile of your DNA, you can heal yourself if you know how to use spices the right way. I have over 250 spices that I deal with in my home in efforts to correct some of the craziness from eating just to be eating because you're hungry.

SPEAKER_02 27:28

I could talk to y'all all day long. We gotta we do have to wrap up. So, starting with you, Jeron, if you could tell folks where to find you, um, any events that you have upcoming, and then the same thing for you, Shaptai.

SPEAKER_03 27:42

Oh, yeah, you can find me on the farm. Um so Sankofa Community Orchard is our primary farm. It's in Southside Richmond. It's a six-acre urban uh agriculture, food justice, and climate resiliency demonstration. Every Saturday we do pop-up uh pay what you can't market. Uh basically, whatever you got is the EVT, no dollars, some dollars. We got fresh veggies for you. Um, you can also find us uh online at the naturalfestival.com. Happily natural day, our annual festival. It's coming up August uh 29th, uh last Saturday in August. And then you can follow me on Instagram or any other social media. Just look up the Ron Chavis, D-U-R-O-N-C-H-A-V-I-S. I hope to connect with you. We teach. I'm here to invite you. If you are looking to learn how to grow your own food, come holler at us. We are that's our mission to try to get as many people back to growing our own food as possible in the city, rurally. We have access to land. We're trying to make it so people can connect to the land that we have, andor take the land that they already have and turn it into something productive. Thank y'all.

SPEAKER_01 29:00

Y'all can get y'all some dang on vegetables. You know how much they cost? Shoot, green peppers in the store is a dollar and fifty-four cents a piece.

SPEAKER_03 29:10

It's real, man. I don't think people have to get that.

SPEAKER_01 29:15

Okay, Saturday, and actually he was kind of cute with it. It's Saturday from 12 to 2. You get there at 2.20, you ain't gonna have nothing. Okay, because they're gonna be gone. All right. And and if you notice, right, there is no competition. This is collaboration, right? This is what we're supposed to do. I'm gonna big up anything and everything that he has going. And we'll and if I have something and he knows he would do the same for me because this is what we're supposed to do, right? Okay, so for me, I have just started this series of fire and memory. It's a heritage dinner series, and we are doing the first six chapters tomorrow. It's sold out. I put it up two weeks ago, didn't really do no whole lot of advertising, but because I know that I'm operating in the space that I'm supposed to, it's sold out. Yeah, I am doing it with Dr. Lenny Sorensen. If you do not know who that is, she is a Virginia historian. She is an 84 year old woman who has dedicated her life to teaching American food ways from the 1800s.