commemorating
50 years of
The taste of country cooking
In 1976, The Taste of Country Cooking helped change how America understood Southern food. Through recipes, memory, and story, Edna Lewis affirmed the richness of Black and Southern foodways for generations to come.
Fifty years after the publication of The Taste of Country Cooking, The Edna Lewis Foundation is commemorating the occasion with a nationwide community-building and fundraising effort, inviting communities across all 50 states to host their own celebrations of Miss Lewis's enduring influence on American cuisine on the Foundation's behalf. From restaurant dinners to potlucks, farm gatherings to classrooms, the campaign is designed to be open, participatory, and deeply local.
Email board@theednalewisfoundation.org for more information.
Upcoming Events
Ridge to Root: Honoring the Shared Legacies of Edna Lewis and Barboursville Vineyards
Thursday, November 5, 2026 | 6 - 9 pm ET
The Edna Lewis Foundation, in partnership with Barboursville Vineyards and Oenoverse, invites you to a special night where two legacies converge at the table.
In 1976, Edna Lewis’s seminal book, The Taste of Country Cooking, proclaimed the food of the American South one of the world’s great cuisines and celebrated the joys of local, seasonal cooking, decades before “farm to table” became common parlance. That same year, Barboursville Vineyards began proving that Virginia soil could speak through wine with the same specificity and integrity. Their fifty-year pursuit of terroir has helped define what Virginia wine is today.
Lewis gave voice to place through food. Barboursville has given voice to place through wine, and on Thursday, November 5th, we celebrate how each has left a legacy that extends beyond Virginia into the broader story of American food and wine culture.
Ridge to Root brings together Barboursville Vineyards and The Edna Lewis Foundation for an evening tracing Virginia's landscape from the Blue Ridge to the soil beneath it. Guests will gather at Barboursville Vineyards for an evening pairing storytelling with wine tastings and a family-style dinner in honor of two legacies rooted in the same place.
This dinner kicks off Oenoverse’s Two Up Wine Down Wine Festival and benefits the Edna Lewis Foundation’s programming and scholarships that support the next generation of Black foodway stewards in culinary arts, agriculture, food studies, and storytelling.
Using The Taste of Country Cooking as their guide, Chef Leah Branch will present family-style fare drawing on ties to Miss Lewis's documented food traditions, with storytelling from the evening’s emcee, Deb Freeman.
Space is limited to 65 guests.
Ridge to Root Dinner
Thursday, November 5, 2026
6:00 - 9:00 pm ET
Barboursville Vineyards
17655 Winery Road
Barboursville, VA 22923
PAST EVENTS
In partnership with Gage & Tollner, Knopf Cooks, and BEM Cultural Foundation, the Foundation hosted a benefit dinner honoring Edna Lewis in the very restaurant where she cooked from 1988 to 1992, raising money for our programming and scholarships.
