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The multiplicity of African American cooking styles and their intersection with those from other parts of the African Diaspora and from around the world that were served in the neo-soul restaurants became the hallmarks of African American food in the last decade of the twentieth century and the opening one of the twenty-first. Cookbooks celebrated them and continued to proliferate, as African American cooks and chefs re-created their favorite dishes in print for home cooks, food journalists and dietitians culled their best recipes, and food historians documented and traced some of the roots and variations of the food of the African Diaspora. Cookbooks also recorded the cooking of African American churches and detailed heritage recipes from historically black colleges and black fraternal organizations. The regional aspects of the foods of the African American South came under scrutiny, as did those of the African continent and throughout the diaspora. The University of Alabama library now boasts an African American cookbook collection that has thousands of volumes—a testimonial to the prolific output of the black culinary authors of the period.

A few black chefs and a small but growing number of black foodies attended not only mainstream food events but also created their own, like Joe Randall’s A Taste of Heritage, where they cross-pollinated and shared recipes and inspirations; and Taste of Ebony, held for three successive years in the mid-2000s, which lavishly celebrated black chefs for an invited public that tasted wine from South Africa and black-owned California vineyards and sampled the offerings of black caterers and chefs from around the country and across the globe. Other events, like Harlem’s Men Who Cook, gave the general public a feel for what was going on in the country’s African American home kitchens. Growing numbers of African Americans began to attend culinary schools and try to make their way to the summit of the culinary world.

The future, though, was not always rosy. Despite increasing opportunities and a growing appreciation of African American foods, there were still proportionately few African Americans who had risen to the ranks of superstar chef. The question of why so few African American chefs was much debated. Many recognized that the role of chef offered little inducement to those who had been enslaved for centuries, then traditionally relegated to lower-l evel service roles receiving low pay and no glory. Those who could afford the often-expensive tuitions at culinary schools discovered upon graduation that despite their abilities, they were often ghet-toized, and the soul food debate still raged. “Part of the problem with African-American chefs is that people don’t think of us as cooking anything other than ribs or barbecue,” argued black chef Joe Randall, a forty-three-year veteran of the hospitality and food service industry. Even one who had attained the coveted status, Patrick Clark, while stating that he felt no prejudice directed toward him personally, recognized the difficulty for young black chefs. It seemed that despite a long history of culinary attainment, black chefs might again be thwarted from grabbing the brass ring of full culinary equality as signaled by financial success. But the final chapter remains unfinished.

In the post-millennium era, the food world has continued to grow and has become more complex. Food justice has become a major topic, addressing the systematic gastronomic disenfranchise-ment that is suffered by people in poor countries around the world as well as in the nation’s poorer neighborhoods. The cry for fresh, seasonal, and local ingredients has brought people black and white to farmer’s markets searching for fresh foods produced by individuals not agribusinesses. Urban gardening has gripped the imaginations of many, and blacks who are generations from Southern dirt now find themselves harvesting crops of tomatoes grown on a fire escape or taking snippets of rosemary from a window