Citizens of the World: A Stoic Podcast for Curious Travelers - How a South Carolina Slave Became the Most Celebrated Chef in Charleston

Episode Date: September 29, 2018

Charleston, South Carolina, consistently tops the lists of ‘world’s best cities to visit.’ It’s also a city that was built on the sweat and blood of slaves, and learning about this history should be part of your travels to this region.    Before slavery was abolished in 1865, Charleston was the slavery capital of the United States. Four million slaves lived in America – 10% of them in South Carolina — and about 40% of the slaves brought to the U.S. came through Charleston Harbor.    This episode is dedicated to the incredible story of Nat Fuller, a Charleston slave who somehow managed to start his own catering and restaurant business, and then went on to become the most celebrated chef in the city. But that’s not all. When Charleston was in confused ruins after the Civil War, Nat hosted a Reconciliation Feast, which brought together black and white diners for the city’s first integrated meal in its history.    I talk to with David Shields, a University of South Carolina professor and author of The Culinarians: Lives and Careers from the First Age of American Fine Dining. I also interview chef Kevin Mitchell, who helped organize and participated in the 150th anniversary celebration of Nat Fuller’s Reconciliation Feast.     I’m your host, Sarah Mikutel. Ready to travel? Sign up for my newsletter and get your free guide to cheap airfare.    Thank you so much for listening to this show. I know you’re busy and have many listening options, so it means a lot to me that you’re here. You are the best.   Visit postcardacademy.co for more travel stories, guides, and inspiration.   This podcast is brought to you by Audible. Not a member yet? Postcard Academy listeners can get a FREE audiobook and a 30-day free trial if you sign up via audibletrial.com/postcard   This podcast is also brought to you by World Nomads. Need simple and flexible travel insurance? Get a cost estimate from World Nomads using their handy calculator at postcardacademy.co/insuranceDo you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free Conversation Cheat Sheet with simple formulas you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you’re in a meeting or just talking with friends.Download it at sarahmikutel.com/blanknomore and start feeling more confident in your conversations today.

Welcome to the Postcard Academy, your weekly travel and culture podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Micatel, and I want to thank you for listening, subscribing, and telling a friend about this show. This episode is brought to you by the audiobook service, Audible. Get a free audiobook and a 30-day free trial if you sign up using the link, audible trial.com slash postcard. I am so excited to share this week's story. A listener asked me about featuring a city in the U.S. that wasn't New York or San Francisco. took her up on her suggestion and started looking into Charleston, South Carolina, which is often voted best vacation spot in the U.S. But as I was researching Charleston, I stumbled upon such an incredible story that I had to share it with you. This is the story of Nat Fuller, an African-American man who was a slave for most of his life until the Civil War ended slavery in 1865. And yet, while he was a slave, Nat somehow managed to start his own catering and restaurant business, and he

became the most celebrated chef in all of Charleston. But that's not all. When Charleston was in confused ruins after the war, Nat hosted a reconciliation feast, which brought together black and white diners for the very first time for an integrated meal. Slavery had literally just ended, and now the former slave was taking the initiative to bring the community together. For this episode, I spoke with chef Kevin Mitchell, who helped organize and participated in the 150th anniversary celebration of Nat's Reconciliation Feast. I also spoke with David Shields, an author and University of South Carolina professor. David rediscovered Nat's story as part of his research, and he includes Nat's story in his book

The Culinarians, Lives and Careers from the First Age of American Fine Dining. David also wrote Southern Provisions, in which he talks about the history of Southern Food, how its original ingredients have almost disappeared, and how a growing movement of chefs and farmers are trying to recover the rich flavor and diversity of southern food. I start off speaking with David about his research and how it led him to Nat Fuller. Fuller belongs to an extraordinary lineage that also I want to be brought to the fore. One of the things that really irked me when I was writing Southern provisions was the lack of any sort of history of the professional world of cooking in the United States.

Prior to, you know, like James Beard and Julia Child, you know, I was trying to find information in early New Orleans restaurants and hotel cooks and Baltimore and Richmond and things like that. And so I eventually was forced to look myself. And one of the things which I discovered was that in every major city, it was usually an African American in the 19th century controlled a vent-cook ring, like Thomas Downing in New York, or George Downey in Newport, or Joshua B. Smith in Boston, or Benjamin Jake's in Baltimore, John Dadney, and Richmond, Abraham Cobb and Savannah, and Fuller. Eliza Seymour Lee and Tully and these people in Charleston. And eventually, I got so irritated, I decided I would have to write that history myself. And so my latest book, The Culinarians, which is about the lives and careers of American chefs,

caters and restaurateurs from the first restaurant in 1793 to the First World War. And one of the things I wanted to do was to recover the extraordinary stories. of people like Fuller and his tradition. Before slavery was abolished in 1865, thanks to the Union victory of the Civil War, 4 million slaves lived in America, 10% of them in South Carolina. The capital of South Carolina was Charleston,

which was also the slavery capital of the United States. About 40% of the slaves brought to the U.S. came through Charleston Harbor, and thousands of them died before being auctioned off. By the 1800s, Charleston had become a very wealthy city. built on the sweat and blood of slaves. Most slaves in South Carolina toiled in the fields, and the cash crop here was actually rice, not cotton.

But in the city of Charleston, you could find some slaves working inside plantation homes. As early as the 1790s, foreign visitors who came to Charleston called it the nay plus ultra of worldly felicity, but they were horrified that this wealth was based on the enslavement of other people.

And they talked about this paradox that was Charleston. Here they found this master piece of civility, but this was purchased on the servitude of an entire race. What's interesting about it is that the white plantocracy and merchant class that ran the city was entirely at ease with having a professional class of African Americans serving them. Virtually the entire Charleston market was run by black butchers and black vendors. and having African-American people handling food service. Now, they're also French and German,

but a genius of African-Americans as culinaryians was generally accorded. So we have that sort of curious dimension to the world, too. And the quality of food was always remarked. The variety of ingredients available in Charleston's markets were only rivaled by Washington Market in New York. Nat Fuller was one of those enslaved African Americans, and in addition to being a caterer and a restaurateur, he also ran Charleston's game market in the 1850s.

So he knew how to obtain quality ingredients, even during the hardest times of the war. But who was Nat Fuller? And where did he come from? Nat is born to one of the Fullers, are owned land on the south of the Ashley, across the river from Charleston. They're two or three brothers who own substantial tracts of land,

and one of them fathered Nat Fuller. And he appears in a sale when he's about 12 years old, and then he is resold. And there's actually a kind of lawsuit about it. Apparently, is a very precocious young man, and one of his masters didn't like the potentials for trouble there. An unquestioning servant is someone much more agreeable to certain kinds of people in power. And he is bought by a young Virginian who comes in to set up the lottery in Charleston.

And you have to realize that in the early 19th century, accumulation of capital is very difficult. Banks are very untrustworthy. They keep failing. And one of the best ways for projects to aggregate capital is to hold a lottery. And the lottery collects money from various people and can be applied to various things. So Gatewood is the person who organizes lotteries in order to build railroads. And he's an extraordinarily smart man who,

gets into virtually every important capital improvement in Charleston. And he builds this extraordinary house. In one way that you sort of consolidate your standing and your cred in the city is to be a master of hospitality. And in order to do that, you have to be able to stage dinners. And in order to stage an impressive dinner, you have to have a cook who can operate on a level that competes with the best restaurant and hotel cooks in the city. So Gatewood decides that he's going to have the teenage Matt Fuller train with Eliza Seymour Lee, who trains most of the house cooks for the major families in Charleston.

She's sort of like the central figure in the ratcheting. up of the general cooking in the city to a kind of quasi-professional level in the 1830s and 40s. As David says in his book, The Culinarians, Eliza Seymour Lee was a free black pastry cook, who was the greatest teacher of cuisine to enslaved and free African-Americans in the Antebellum South. She inherited the shop and skill of her mother, Sally Seymour, the founding matriarch of the greatest of South Carolina's African-American cooking dynasties. Pastery. chefs were the most versatile, because in addition to desserts, they also had to master a world of savory pies and other entrees. Eliza taught Nat how to do sugar baking and confections, and she most

likely taught him the art of curating meat as well. I asked present-day chef Kevin Mitchell, who portrayed Nat Fuller in the anniversary celebration of Nat's reconciliation feast, what kind of food Nat would have been serving after he trained with Eliza? Most of the enslaved and even some of the freed cooks would be classical French cuisine because at one point, you know, a lot of the planners that came to Charleston came to Charleston from France. So when you look at the menus from some of the catering parties and things that he did, it was classical French. It wasn't necessarily what we know today. You know, it wasn't like fried chicken. There was baked macaroni, which in essence is macaroni and cheese, but at that point, it was called big macaroni. The one main thing you would

always see would be rice. Rice was on every table, even if you were a French planner, if you were from the Caribbean, if you were a Charlestonian, you ate rice. Because, of course, rice is the one crop that built the city of Charleston. Without rice, there would not be a Charleston, South Carolina. Rice was heavily cultivated here in Charleston, and planners necessarily didn't know how to cultivate rice. So how are they going to do it? They go to countries in West Africa that are very conducive to the same growing climate. Rice grew plentifully in not only in Africa, but it grew in other places like Europe and, of course, Asia. However, these planners went to Africa, and they brought the...

people over to cultivate rice. So when people talk about slavery and they talk about, you know, kind was a cash crop. Yes, cotton was a cash crop. However, in Charleston, it was rice. Nat's training with Eliza and as a butler paid off. His master, William C. Gatewood, wanted to advance his commercial and social ambitions by hosting these elaborate dinner parties at his house. Nat, of course, was managing these affairs. Charleston had several important clubs in associations, which hosted a world of different events and balls, and they appointed Gatewood as steward because the reputation for his dinners were unparalleled. And who did Gatewood secure as caterer for these events?

His own cook, of course, Nat Fuller. As a result, virtually every significant club man and woman in the city knew of Nat's cuisine, and of his capability of organizing large-scale events. Nat prepared extraordinary feasts unrivaled in their elaborateness. The menus began with turtle soups and oysters, pies and pastry, relishes, various types of pickles, prepared meats, roasts, brunch dishes. Nat was also the first person to be a significant maker of cocktails in the city. He was a master punchmaker and cocktail brewer in the New Orleans tradition.

And while all this was happening, Gatewood becomes one of the partners setting up steamship lines to Cuba and New York. And this is important because he takes Nat with him on these trips to New York City. And Nat gets familiar with the game and meat market and makes connections in New York, which at the time was the center of game selling in the US. So Nat was not only the finest cook in Charleston, but he was also a businessman and nurturing connections he know he'd be able to use down the line. Eventually, Nat asked Gatewood if he could go off on his own and start his own business. Now imagine that. Nat is a slave. What gave him the courage to do this, and why would Gatewood say yes, especially since

that had been so essential to building up Gatewood's own career? By 1850, Gatewood had arrived. You know, he had reached that point or height in the social world of Charleston that he didn't need to curry anyone else's favor. You know, he was the steward for the clubs. He did, you know, was the partner for the for the theater and he was the partner in so many important financial concerns in the city that there was no more Everest to climb and he could always hire, you know, the services of his or command them, you know, for a big event. So I think that's one of the reasons. Nat marries at this Juncture. He marries a pastry chef. And I think Nat wants to set off and have a family. And he wants to

establish the family, you know, under his own roof rather than the roof of his master. And Gatewood is a rather sympathetic fellow. And, you know, he was a real young man when he bought, you know, a teenage Nat Fuller, and they sort of grew up together. The complexities of the master slave relationship are hard to wrap our minds around. While no slave can be considered lucky, David said there were distinct benefits to being a house servant to an urban southern capitalist rather than to a planter or a tradesman. Gatewood did let Nat go off on his own. First, Nat established himself in Charleston's game market, in part to earn enough money to buy a high-in set of porcelain from France. If you were going to be a great event caterer in any major city, you had to have the highest

quality serving bowls and stemware and flatware to lay down on your table, linens and all. The caterer was responsible for everything. After earning enough money for his French porcelain, Nat set up his catering business. Now, you might be wondering if, at this time, Gatewood freed Nat from slavery, and the answer is, he wasn't allowed to. In 1820, South Carolina passed a law saying that private citizens could not free slaves. Slaves could only be emancipated by an act of the legislature. And so already free black people in South Carolina had their freedom of movement severely restricted, and free black people from other states were not allowed to move there.

But what Gatewood could do was invest in that. And at various points, I mean, Gatewood finances dimensions of Nat's free enterprise in the 1850s. He's the person who's the guarantor of seven, Church Street, the building that will become the bachelor's retreat. He's the person that gives the letter of credit that enables Fuller to go to the, you know, New York game market on the first trips to secure the meat to bring down there. So Gatewood, you know, treats Matt as you would any talented partner. Now, it's not, it's an asymmetrical power relationship, but nonetheless, you know, it is one where there is an exchange of values.

And he invests in the hopes of greater returns later on like any capitalist would. And he, he, of course, benefits from putting money and putting support behind Fuller when he goes off on his own. It's a very different mentality than that of the planter, you know, whose wealth is generated out of ground. You know, capitalists see wealth generated out of investing in other people working in other places. And it's a different mentality. From 1850 to 1860 or 61, Nat worked almost exclusively as a caterer. Then he opened The Bachelor's Retreat, the swankiest restaurant in Charleston. I asked chef Kevin Mitchell to talk to me about the bachelor's retreat.

On the first floor was basically Nat's butcher shop. So he would sell, he sold butchered meats. He would sell fowl and turtles and lamb and beef and so on and so forth. And African Americans were able to come on the first floor and purchase goods. But of course, we're not allowed to eat in the restaurant. On the second floor was where I guess the main kitchen was. and there were some dining areas on the second floor. And, of course, on the third floor was more dining.

And we believe it was called the bachelor's retreat because at one point, women were not allowed to eat in the restaurant. At one point, men and women did not eat together. He served oyster soup. He served turtle soup. He served different types of mutton. And he would serve chicken with classical French sauce. He served desserts that were classically French, too.

So he was served like a Charlotte Ruse or a Blancge, and a Blanc homage is very similar to Panicata. It's a custard dessert, but it's not with egg. It's made with gelatin. He loved to serve ice cream. He was a big fan of vanilla and pineapple ice cream. What we found on a lot of his menus, he introduced Charlestonians to drinking champagne,

a drink that we actually served, that are reconciliation there called the Brandy Smash. We were able to use brandy made from an heirloom variety of watermelon that only grows in South Carolina. Kevin mentioned the anniversary of Nat's Reconciliation Feast. 150 years earlier, when Charleston surrendered to the union in February 1865, Nat Fuller became a free man under the Emancipation Proclamation Provision. The Massachusetts African American Regiment, the one portrayed in the film Glory,

was given the honor of patrolling the city streets. Charleston's upper-class white people fled the city, fearing that it would be torched. Ironically, many of them fled to Columbia, South Carolina, which actually did burn. But the Union troops occupying Charleston didn't set fire to it, in part because it was already in ruins from years of bombardment, and the food supply was exhausted due to the blockades.

The 15,000 people who remained in the city were surviving on rice rations, But there was someone who was well-connected enough to organize a blowout feast in celebration of the war ending. That person? Yes, Nat Fuller. As David notes in his book, Nat's time-running Charleston's gay market in the 1850s gave him the lines of communication he needed to secure food. He had connections with New York marketers, Philadelphia brokers, railroad clerks. Both black and white people were subject to his hospitality and to his generosity. And this generosity meant something in a city fed on daily rations of beans and rice. And with these supplies, Charleston's renowned, presiding culinary genius, hosted a reconciliation

feast that brought together both black and white people to sit down and break bread together. This was an incredibly fancy affair guarded by the soldiers of the Glory Brigade. Incredibly, this amazing accomplishment almost was lost to history, until David and Kevin decided to recreate the meal 150 years ago. later. Here's Kevin. David asked me to stand in as Nat Fuller. Doing the dinner can kind of stem from an article that he wrote for the Charleston magazine called Charleston's Top Chefs. And in the article, he talks about Eliza Seymour lead. He talks about Sally Seymour and he talks about that. And at the end of the article, he just posts this really crazy question, like,

what if someone out there recreated that dinner from 150 years ago? And they just kind of left it at that. And I think that's kind of how the wheels got to turning. And then when we met and he asked me, I initially was like, yeah, okay. And then when I started getting the emails and realized that he was really serious, I really, you know, I was like, wow, how am I going to do this? I mean, it's 150 years later. Am I going to be able to make the huge impression 150 years later that Nat Fuller did?

And then, of course, me taking on the role and being 100% responsible for all the food and researching the recipes and researching menus, we took a full year to the day of planning the dinner. Where it was going to be, who was going to be involved, what the menu was going to be, who was going to be invited. Celebrity chef Sean Brock offered up McCready's Tavern, his restaurant, to hold the event. In the kitchen, Kevin's students from the Culinary Institute of Charleston helped recreate some of Nat's best-loved dishes, which hadn't been tasted in 100 years. Outside, a Civil War reenactment group guarded the dinner, just like at Nat's Feast. Chef B.J. Dennis portrayed Tom Tully at the dinner, and worked with Kevin to put on an epic night

for a diverse group of community leaders who attended the feast. And a pre-dinner cocktail event was held at the site of Nat's Bachelor's retreat, which is now an art gallery. It was the best, at that point, it was like the best night of my life. And biggest dinner of my career and it's opened up so many doors for me to be able to speak about my work and what I do and get people to understand the history of African Americans and cooking. Two weeks before this anniversary feast, an unarmed African American was shot by a white police officer. And two months after the dinner, a white supremacist entered a historically black. Church and murdered nine people. It was a really, it was a crazy moment in the, in the life of Charleston.

I think it made people realize how important dinner was and what a huge step we were taking in, I guess, the healing of racial issues and racial tensions in the city. I believe that anything is possible. But I also was like, this one dinner is not going to be the end-all-be-all. This one dinner has to be one of the steps in the healing of racial tension in the city of Charleston. We wanted to show the nation. We wanted to show America what Charlestonians are really made of. Here's David once more on why he's dedicated so much time to researching and recognizing Nat Fuller's legacy. You know, Charleston right now is considered one of the world destinations for tourism

because of its extraordinary hospitality, its expertise of its cookery, and for its sense of history. And I wanted to give once again a kind of hearing to the most visionary and future-oriented person operating in the public sphere after the war. And so Fuller had such a remarkable history. And his culinary talents were so remarkable that he could marshal his old customers, those who survived to return to his table. And he was a figure that was looked to by the African American community as a kind of leader of the cultural sphere. You know, Charleston has had a peculiar way of, I don't know, handling the African-American dimensions of its own history. And it has this sort of sentimentalized world of antebellum cooks and mammies and things like that.

And I wanted, instead of a generalized picture, some specific content, a real person. who stood for something complex. And Fuller left a remarkable record. I mean, it is a remarkable career. Thank you again, David and Kevin, for sharing that's incredible story. If a slave can become the most celebrated chef in Charleston, I don't think any of us have an excuse

not to go after what we want in life. Visit postcardacademy.co for more inspirational stories, and while you're there, sign up for my newsletter, and you can get a free guide on how to find the best travel deals. And if you are looking for travel insurance, and I don't leave home without it, on Postcardacadmy.com, you can find a handy little calculator from World Nomads, and that will give you a cost estimate based on when and where you want to go. That's all for now. Thanks for listening, and have a beautiful week wherever you are.

Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free conversation sheet sheet with simple formulas that you can use. news so you can respond with clarity, whether you're in a meeting or just talking with friends. Download it at sarahmicatel.com slash blank no more.