In this New Orleans museum, Texas food is on display
New Orleans is known for its bustling and flavorful food scene, but this year the city’s Southern Food and Beverage Museum is giving traveling foodies something to chew on from the Lone Star State.
Home to more than 5,000 artifacts and items related to food history, the 15,000-squarefoot museum, also known as SOFAB, features visual profiles of Southern state foodways and delicacies, including a smorgasbord of treats from Texas.
The Texas exhibit, which features hundreds of items, pays homage to our favorite foods, with stacked cartons of Blue Bell ice cream, a bottle of Big Red soda, a brief breakdown of Texas-style barbecue, a Whataburger soda cup and takeout bag, plastic molds of kolaches and a Día de los Muertos altar featuring popular hot sauces. And in recent months, the ode to all things delicious in Texas has gotten an update.
“It just felt like Texas needed room to roam,” said museum president Brent Rosen.
The original exhibit focused on the history of Tex-mex and featured various old cooking tools and a chuck wagon. Considered the official state vehicle of Texas by the Statesymbolsusa website, the chuck wagon was known to carry cooking equipment and food that preserved well while traveling. (Salted meats, coffee, beans and sourdough biscuits were common for transport, while food items like chili, chiltepin and jalapeño peppers, pan de campo, or “cowboy bread,” and prickly pear cactus were commonly cooked onboard.)
But many of the Texas-centric items at SOFAB were originally stored in curating cases, making it difficult to explore, Rosen said.
The revamped setup still accentuates Tex-mex and traditional Mexican food, with a shrine that includes traditional cookware, Pace salsa and a tortilla press. But now it puts fan favorites on full display too, including new additions from supermarket giant H-E-B, thanks to recent donations from the Les Dames d’escoffier International, a philanthropic organization of women leaders in the fields of food, beverage and hospitality. Though the display omits Houston’s Shipley Do-nuts and the Pappas franchise restaurants, Rosen said it’s an ever-growing work in progress that is subject to suggestions.
Maddie Hayes, curatorial and programming manager, said curators have plans to include more Whataburger memorabilia, complete with the burger joint’s uniforms displayed on mannequins, and to eventually show the evolution of various H-E-B items on shelves. A graduate student researcher based in Houston is also compiling oral histories of around a dozen Houston restaurants that exemplify the cultural food scene in Texas and its international influence.
The museum’s other exhibits are also must-sees for foodies and history buffs alike.
Focused on Southern states as far-reaching as Maryland, the museum layout is inspired by the history of SOFAB’S current location, which was most famously home to Dryades Public Market — a fixture of New Orleans’ historic Central City neighborhood for more than a century.
“We sort of take the ideas of market stalls and expand on that, picking more of a specific piece of that state’s history and building a whole space around that concept,” Rosen said.
Louisiana is understandably the largest state exhibit, with information on Cajun vs. Creole cuisine, a rundown of the history of the po-boy and pralines, and details on some of the oldest restaurants in New Orleans.
Florida’s exhibit features the model of what is considered the country’s first barbecue pit; Tennessee’s houses an extensive display of whiskey; while Maryland’s notes desserts like the layered Smith Island cake and Otterbein’s Cookies. Mississippi’s
space explores barbecue and the somewhat miraculous history of The Shed Barbeque & Blues Joint, an Ocean Springs barbecue joint that burnt to the ground in 2012 but was able to nourish responding firefighters with the surviving barbecue. The Shed was rebuilt that same week thanks to the outpouring of the community, and the charred remnants of The Shed were used to rebuild a replica that stands in the SOFAB today.
SOFAB’S expansive Popeyes exhibit details the growth of the
Louisiana-born fast-food chicken and biscuits company from its inception and leads into the Museum of the American Cocktail, which includes an absinthe display and the evolution of the cocktail told through a collection of memorabilia, tools and glassware. And if that makes you thirsty, SOFAB boasts the third oldest bar in New Orleans.
“Our goal is to predict ahead of time what the exhibit will make you crave and create it at the bar,” said Rosen, adding that mint juleps are an ode to Kentucky and at least one cocktail features Sotol, a Mexican spirit that’s derived from the desert sotol plant common in Texas.
The museum is also currently running its “Birthplace of Brunch” exhibit through Mardi Gras, flexing New Orleans’ role in the creation of the beloved breakfast-lunch combo, complete with history, dining-ware and drag attire — highlighting
how in the ’80s, the LGBTQ community added vibrancy to the brunch scene by hosting drag shows that aimed to raise both awareness about HIV/AIDS and money for research to find a cure.
Reactions to the exhibits have shown museum directors just how meaningful food and representation of food history can be.
“People come in and get crazy about things,” Hayes said. “And that’s what we want. We want people to feel passionate.”
Former bartenders have gushed over the display of cocktail culture. Families have debated and argued about the true origin of fried pickles, and some have even gotten emotional when seeing their favorite hometown and childhood foods. A museum partner shed a tear once seeing a box of chocolates — the same kind his grandmother would gift him each year, Rosen remembers.
“I didn’t really understand what we were doing until that happened. … People have decades of relationships with some of these foods,” Rosen said.
Much of what the museum displays has been the product of community, with exhibits made up largely of donated items. Restaurants have given old signs and items from their establishments, and individuals often go out of their way to ensure their home state is well-represented. Hayes said a family from Alabama traveled around their
home state collecting items. Within three months, they had around 50 items from restaurants and grocery store shelves to donate to the museum. They were delighted to earn the title of “guest curators,” she said.
SOFAB founder and foodie Elizabeth Williams, who worked to develop major museums in New Orleans, including the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, officially opened SOFAB in 2008 in its first location at New Orleans’ Riverwalk.
The current space, which debuted in 2014, features ample space for foodies and intrigued community members, with two commercial kitchens — one for teaching, cooking classes and demonstrations, and another used for events, pop-ups and rental space. The hefty barbecue pits out back are prime for demonstrations and courses on the cultural variations of barbecue and smoking meats, and its raised garden beds are used for growing herbs and vegetables used during children’s summer camps and to craft exhibit-inspired cocktails. The museum also boasts a library with 30,000 books, more than 3,000 menus and an array of artifacts, such as pamphlets, cocktail napkins and stirrers — an asset to researchers and graduate students within the food studies field.
The museum is working on a mobile app that gives people greater access to the museum offerings, and staff plan to digitize thousands of archived items. Future exhibits include a close look at sodas — think Dr Pepper, Sprite, RC Cola and Mountain Dew — that have been crafted in Southern states, Rosen said.
In the meantime, the museum is accepting donations and ideas, Rosen said.
If a particular item hasn’t been featured, it’s likely because no one has suggested it, Rosen said, adding, “We would love to have it!”
So what Texas foods, restaurants or culinary-related items do you think should be included in SOFAB’S state exhibit? Send your suggestions to brittany.britto@chron.com.