by Hanna Raskin

It was a warm evening in New Orleans in 2007. I’m certain of the year because I was sweating St-Germain, same as every other Tales of the Cocktail attendee. The elderflower liqueur had debuted at the spirits extravaganza, and suddenly every martini, margarita, and Manhattan was being zhuzhed with hints of lychee and ripe peach.

For many years I went to Tales not just to catch up on what was then straight-facedly called mixology, but to eat around the city. On that night, I was bound for the cash-only Coop’s Place, which is how I ended up befriending another fried chicken fan at an ATM on the edge of the French Quarter. The stranger joined me for my meal—there are too many over the course of a leisure day in New Orleans to bother with formal titles such as “supper”—and confided that he knew a better place for chicken with Cajun spices woven into its bronzed crust.

“There is a Popeyes of no return,” he told me.

Notably, he didn’t share its address. But the moment was as memorable as a drumstick and thigh fried by the finest cooks in the Popeyes cosmos, since it cemented for me that restaurants are inseparable from the stories we tell about them.

Remember the St-Germain I was oozing a few paragraphs back? If you want to fact-check my tasting notes, you can buy a bottle at just about any liquor store. St-Germain is the same regardless of when or where you find it. By contrast, a restaurant meal is so intensely personal and idiosyncratic that two people who order a seared pork chop in the same dining room on the same night might have wildly different experiences depending on who’s expediting, who’s serving, and who’s sitting across the table.

In other words, when we talk about restaurants, we’re talking about people, not products. That’s one of the many reasons that the scrupulously prepared takeout boxes offered by beloved restaurants during the pandemic were so demoralizing. Without a story, it’s just food.

Human beings want both so badly that they’ll spin restaurant stories even if a conglomerate like Popeyes might prefer they didn’t.

I haven’t spoken to anybody at Popeyes corporate, so it’s entirely possible that the execs there agree that a single location of the chain outshines the rest. My guess, though, is they’d claim each store is as good as the others. Yet, so long as each store employs its own crew and attracts its own group of regulars, the storytelling—done mostly by those determined to flex some agency in the face of corporate messaging—is sure to persist.

The myth of the one greatest location isn’t unique to Popeyes. By now, Interstate 95 travelers can probably weigh in on which Buc-ee’s kolache counter beats them all. First comes the restaurant, and then come the stories, which we’ll have long after the restaurant’s gone.

In fact, this issue of Gravy is chock-full of such narratives, along with reflections on how they’re formed and what they mean. As someone who’s spent the last twenty years reporting restaurant stories, you might assume I’ve heard them all. But fresh, surprising tales are still out there—and lots of them are here.

Within these pages, you’ll find journalism, poetry, personal essays, criticism, visual art, and fiction produced by storytellers from various states, professional backgrounds, and personal circumstances. Their chronicles touch on every kind of restaurant, from family-owned soul-food kitchens to casual-dining chains, from places where tourists pulled in by the busload to tasting-menu dens that trade in exclusivity.

These pieces share an attitude. I don’t believe in astrology, but if this summer 2024 issue of Gravy was a sign, those born beneath it would be candid, feisty, confident, and a whole lot of fun. As a maître d’ would say upon seating you: You’re in good hands.

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