![]() “Mea culpa!” Harris said, putting the phone away. ![]() He is a meticulous custodian of the vibe at Reverence diners must agree in advance to a code of conduct that includes a no-electronics policy. “Is it an emergency?” he said, with a cocked eyebrow. Across the open kitchen, Jackson rose from where he’d been positioning a garnish. ![]() “Excuse me,” she said, reaching into her bag. Harris was reminiscing about the trips to North and West Africa that she used to take with her parents when her iPhone rang. (It was important for Harris to ground the narrative of her book in Africa, to root the culinary story of a diaspora. Satterfield is new to the country, and Harris guides him through markets, restaurants, and villages on camera. The region figures prominently in her books. The initial episode takes place in Benin, a place that Harris first visited in the early seventies, during a research trip for her doctoral thesis on Francophone theatre in West Africa. Later, Harris recalled, “Roger said, ‘You need to be in this show!’ And I was, like, ‘I could have told you that.’ ” After the screening, the two of them stayed up late at Harris’s house, drinking wine and talking. But, when she and Williams met, “it was like the Vulcan mind meld,” she said. She’d gone to a screening of “The Apollo,” a documentary directed by Williams, who was then in preproduction for “High on the Hog.” Harris was wary of the cadre of Hollywood types who now had custody of her favored child. The accident occurred on July 13, 2019-Harris remembered, because it was the day before the annual Bastille Day dinner that she hosts at her house on Martha’s Vineyard. “I am in that first episode only by accident.” “I’m watching the younger generation take its lead, which makes me feel old,” she continued. She periodically fussed with a psychedelic Hermès scarf draped around her shoulders. She is seventy-three and wears her graying hair in a high ponytail. “It’s been interesting to see how Fabienne and Karis saw the book, especially with an eye to youth,” Harris said. Most of the show’s creative leads are Black. The producers Fabienne Toback and Karis Jagger bought the rights to the book they brought in the director Roger Ross Williams and hired the writer Stephen Satterfield-tall, smoldering, swooningly intelligent-to be the series’ host. The television version of “High on the Hog” is based on Harris’s work, but it isn’t exactly her show. “I’ll make you something else,” he declared, and began to slice. “I can’t do shellfish, I’m so sorry.” Jackson, horrified, whisked the plate away and leaped balletically to a storage bin, from which he drew a frilly cluster of mushrooms. ![]() “Did you say this was an oyster?” Harris asked Jackson, considering the bowl. Her twelfth book on food, “ High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America” (2011), is the inspiration for a four-part series, which débuts on Netflix next week. She is a professor emerita at Queens College and a prolific author. Harris is arguably America’s leading scholar of Black culinary history. J., as Harris’s fans call her, the chef and owner, Russell Jackson, had opened. The restaurant is normally closed on Mondays, but for Dr. Harris sat at the counter at Reverence, a tasting-menu restaurant on a leafy Harlem corner, gazing down at a small bowl. Jessica Harris Illustration by João Fazenda ![]()
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