From Fried Chicken to Kimchi Grits: Nostalgia for Southern Food Beyond the Lost Cause

In the U.S. South, nostalgia isn’t a concept—it’s an industry. This chapter focuses more specifically on popular food culture in order to show the heterogeneity of nostalgic negotiations with Southern history and cultural memory. The three restaurants which form my case studies demonstrate a range of nostalgic, pop-cultural engagements with U.S. Southern history in Atlanta, Georgia: Aunt Pittypat’s Porch, Mary Mac’s Tea Room, and Empire State South. These restaurants point to the ways in which nostalgia, even in a region deeply associated with the concept, works in multiple ways—nostalgic restaurants can serve to recreate a Southern history that never was or they can serve as “time capsules” to revisit more personal pasts.