*We caught up with celebrity chef Alisa Reynolds to dish on her new Onyx Collective and Hulu food show “Searching for Soul Food,” which follows the culinary influencer as she discovers what soul food looks like around the world.
Chef Alisa takes viewers inside “the stories, the people, and the traditions of each place she visits, bringing her own flavor right along with her,” per the synopsis. “The international journey finds Chef Reynolds exploring the culinary worlds of Mississippi, Oklahoma, Appalachia, South Africa, Italy, Jamaica, Peru, and Los Angeles.”
“I think that everything about Searching for Soul Food is unique,” Chef Alisa told EUR in an exclusive interview. “The search for soul food is unique. I haven’t seen that, an international travel show with a Black woman is definitely unique”
She added, “But the show itself is unique in terms of the graphics, the history, this upbeat look at the past without being burdened down by all the stuff that makes us upset and channeling that all into food, legacy and love that brings us today to bring us together and in the privacy of your own home, learn some history and maybe kill some stereotypes that you had and makes you hungry,” Chef Alisa explained. “So I think that Searching for Soul Food, I would hope that it invokes a lot more emotions than just hunger. A hunger for knowledge, a hunger for all kinds of stuff.”
Directed by Rodney Lucas, viewers will follow Chef Alisa to Naples, Italy where she experiences the passion of Neapolitans for the dish perfected by its poorest people, which became of the most beloved comfort foods in the world. In Jamaica’s Portland parish, Chef leaves the beaches for higher ground to uncover the little-known story of resistance behind one of Jamaica’s most iconic foods, according to the news release.
In Los Angeles, Chef Alisa hits up the LA food culture scene to find the source of its soul. One of the more memorial spots she visited was Appalachi, where Chef Alisa uncovered “the heart and humanity beneath the stereotypes and behind the food of people in Appalachia,” per the news release.
“Appalachia was interesting,” she told us. “Just going to a place where I heard that I was not welcome and knocking down some of those stereotypes and finding that thoroughfare of love and lack in their story or lack in love.”
Chef Alisa hopes viewers take away from this series “a sense of compassion, a sense of history on a plate, a sense of when you’re eating next time you’re going to think, ‘Wow, this dish came a long way’”.
She added, “I want people to look at their food a little bit different and understand where soul food came from, and every time they travel, think about some of the indigenous people and some of the people there that had to create these delicious delicacies from nothing.”
Check out our full conversation with Chef Alisa via the clip below and tune in to “Searching for Soulfood” now streaming on Hulu.
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