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Gumbo Life: Tales from the Roux Bayou (Hardcover)

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Ask any self-respecting Louisianan who makes the best gumbo and the answer is universal: "Momma." The product of a melting pot of culinary influences, gumbo, in fact, reflects the diversity of the people who cooked it up: French aristocrats, West Africans in bondage, Cajun refugees, German settlers, Native Americans--all had a hand in the pot. What is it about gumbo that continues to delight and nourish so many? And what explains its spread around the world?

A seasoned journalist, Ken Wells sleuths out the answers. His obsession goes back to his childhood in the Cajun bastion of Bayou Black, where his French-speaking mother's gumbo often began with a chicken chased down in the yard. Back then, gumbo was a humble soup little known beyond the boundaries of Louisiana. So when a homesick young Ken, at college in Missouri, realized there wasn't a restaurant that could satisfy his gumbo cravings, he called his momma for the recipe. That phone-taught gumbo was a disaster. The second, cooked at his mother's side, fueled a lifelong quest to explore gumbo's roots and mysteries.


Gumbo Life, rendered in Wells' affable prose, makes clear that gumbo is more than simply a delicious dish: it's an attitude, a way of seeing the world. For all who read its pages, this is a tasty culinary memoir--to be enjoyed and shared like a simmering pot of gumbo.

Product Details
ISBN: 9780393254839
ISBN-10: 0393254836
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Publication Date: February 26th, 2019
Pages: 288
Language: English
