Summer read: Chef Edward Lee’s ‘Buttermilk Graffiti’ and its shoutouts to the Gulf Coast

Here at 225, a lot of books come across our desks for review. We tend to write about books by locals or published through Louisiana presses, while national releases get put on a shelf for staff to take and read as they please. But every now and then—and possibly with the help of a targeted marketing campaign—we’ll come across a book by an out-of-towner that still speaks to our mission of all things local.

Edward Lee’s Buttermilk Graffiti is a travelogue of the Kentucky chef’s journey to, as the book’s subhead says, “Discover America’s New Melting-Pot Cuisine.” And of course, no food writer would pass up a visit to Louisiana and the Gulf Coast.

While a food essay on beignets at Café du Monde might elicit an eye roll, Lee takes it a step further. He notes the restaurant’s mostly Vietnamese waitstaff and draws a connection between the beignet and the Korean “hoedduck,” a rice flour doughnut.

Elsewhere in the book, Lee talks soul food in Montgomery, Alabama, and delves into why restaurants along the Gulf Coast often favor cheaper, imported shrimp even though fresh, wild-caught Gulf shrimp is just outside their kitchens.

Each chapter ends with a couple of Lee’s original recipes related to the regions he visits, marrying local cuisine with his Asian heritage.

In the Los Angeles Times’ book review, the reviewer notes that while Lee has become a celebrity chef the likes of Anthony Bourdain—having even appeared in Bourdain’s The Mind of a Chef series—it still reads like an old-fashioned book with “your chef as Kerouac, driving across the country and scribbling down notes on kitchen tables and restaurant counters. … Lee gives us a story that isn’t just another celebrity chef hitting the road.”