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PAUL:

From Beatles inspired dishes to family style feasts, Chef Enrika Williams proves that nostalgia can be deliciously innovative. Hey, it's Paul Wolf with a front-row seat to conversations on culture from Jackson, Mississippi. We call our podcast Soul Sessions. It's the people, places and events that make the City With Soul shine. On today's show, we're joined by Chef Enrika Williams, whose culinary imagination drops from her childhood memories, pop culture and pure gratitude.

From nerding out about Apple varieties with Chef Hunter Evans at Elvie's to watching him shine at the James Beard House in New York recently, Enrica shares what makes Jackson's collaborative food scene so special. Plus she gives us a glimpse of what's cooking for the upcoming Jackson Food and Wine Festival and reveals the food trends she sees emerging in 2025.

Chef, I first met you at Fauna Foodworks in Cultivation Food Hall. And while the food hall is out of business, your Fauna Foodworks continues as a catering business. You were doing some really innovative things back then and you continue to push the boundaries with your work. So I have to know what drives you. What makes you the chef that you are?

ENRIKA:

Well, thank you for that. What makes me the chef that I am? I think primarily is nostalgia. I'm always just like reminded of things, people, places… something that I had, an experience that I had. Believe it or not, pop culture, television, cartoons, PBS. I had really amazing teachers in public school. Like, I was just always surrounded by opportunities to be myself and to be created. So I've always just had like this space to create things. So I have all of these tabs and I have all these mental journals of things that are just like stockpiled in my brain and I'm like, when something kind of sparks an inspiration, I just kind of pull from it and then I'll elaborate on it.

So it'll be something like… case in point, I was in Galveston last week—well, it's two weeks ago—and I was watching Netflix. And so one of my childhood favorite movies, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, that movie came on and it just brought up so many memories for me. And so I was actually there during a brunch for my aunt for her birthday. And so I took out my notes and I just started writing things. So it always starts from some sort of spark. And so from that, I'm like, you know, Sergeant Pepper and, you know, Mustard: Colonel Mustard, just all of these things and just what kind of feeling that I have listening to The Beatles and then seeing the Bee Gees and Earth, Wind and Fire and Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. Like all of these things just start to kind of stack on top of each other and it just starts to process. I'm just inspired by life and I know that sounds like really convoluted and corny, but I really am. I'm still so excited about learning new things. I always want to tell people thank you in some sort of way, I always want to like pay homage to something that inspired or honor it in a way. And so whenever I'm cooking, that's what I'm trying to do is just, is to say thank you.

PAUL:

I love that nostalgia, pop culture and gratitude. are, those are some things when they talk about there being love in the food, that's the love, right?

ENRIKA:

That is absolutely the love. Yeah.

PAUL:

And your family, I'm sure, encouraged you to follow your passions. They had to have known when you were much younger that, you know, she's, she's got something here.

ENRIKA:

She's different. She's different. I know, my parents… my father has since transitioned, but my parents are, I still speak of them now, they are amazing. I never felt like I could not do a thing. If I was interested in something, it was supported. There were no girl toys, boy toys. There was nothing that, “if you're a girl, you can only do this. Only boys do that.” I was just given such an opportunity to just expand on anything that I had an idea about. My mama's favorite thing was “Look it up.” And so she created this monster of looking things up. So I'm a really good researcher. I'm nosy. And then I just had really like, I just can't stress enough: I went to public school and I had the most amazing teachers. So I have a profound sense of gratitude to educators that just always showed me and expected more of me and pushed me in that. So I was just always just surrounded by this, “Absolutely. You can, you should.”

PAUL:

You've done so many collaborative events with chefs across the country. And here in Jackson, you're a frequent collaborator with Hunter Evans at Elvie's and the Mayflower.

ENRIKA:

I'd like to go on the record. hope that I'm not wrong in saying this. We're like friends in real life, but we have such a good time together, nerding out about food. Like Hunter is just as excited about varieties of apples as I am. Like we can go on and like hours and talk about the most mundane thing about food. And it's really good when you're in spaces, when you collaborate on any level with anything to find people that not only share what you're doing, but they mirror that back to you. It just creates like this whole space of just opportunity to create things. And so we just, have our culinary play dates. I'm with the Harvest Dinner. I think this is like the fifth one, but it's always like really fun working with him. Like I just get to be my complete culinary nerd self and it's accepted and it's okay. It's actually encouraged.

PAUL:

So no boundaries.

ENRIKA:

Nope. None. No boundaries at all.

PAUL:

You were recently in New York City as part of the Beard House dinners featuring the collaborative efforts of Visit Mississippi and Visit Jackson, along with partners from across the state. I know you've cooked there before. So what was it like to go back and experience a dinner from our own Mississippi chefs?

ENRIKA:

I'm just still taking it all in. So it was Visit Mississippi and Visit Jackson as well as visit Oxford and The Coast. We had chefs from different regions. So we had chefs from the coast, central, and the Delta. So we also had spirits and beer to collaborate with each one of those. I was not surprised as I've said this to everyone that's asking. I was not surprised at the quality and the level of food that they put out. I was not. I was just more excited that New York and people who came to visit got to experience it and see what we already know. So it was just like, we're able to share that. All the food, delicious City Grocery was there, Vestige was there, of course, Hunter, Cathead Vodka, Fly Llama from the coast—the beer, the craft beer—and a Wonderbird Gin. And it's just so amazing because the biggest thing that we took away, that I took away from it was just the collaborative and the supported efforts just from people who weren't able to make it to the dinner. They were still there in some capacity. Homeplace Pastures had amazing pork that they gave as part of that. It was just, you know, there were herbs and different rice and grains and just different mushrooms. There were all kinds of things that I just, I was very proud. I was very full to be a part and to lay witness to it. It was just a beautiful, hospitable, warm space. It was freezing cold outside—Friday night was reception and Saturday was the dinner. And it was amazingly warm and beautiful and lovely and very much, the hospitality state inside.

PAUL:

You've got another collaboration coming up in March as part of the JXN Food and Wine festival. It's the second year for this big event. And I got to give a little plug: tickets are on sale right now. And if, if you miss out, you're going to miss out. So don't wait, get the tickets. But you're going to be collaborating with Chef Nick Wallace at his brand new restaurant called Hen and Egg. It's at the old Sun and Sand downtown. How excited are you to pair up with Nick and to be a part of this festival for the second year in a row?

ENRIKA:

So I'm really excited about it for a couple of reasons. So last year's food and wine festival was just a single day and it was a lot of fun. So we just had like the tasting tent and we got to like experience a lot of things. So I'm most excited about dinner on Friday at Nick Wallace's new place. So it's actually four chefs, including myself. As me, it's Nick Wallace, Chef Vish Bhat from Oxford. And also we're having a guest chef, Gabrielle Pascuzzi, who is from Oregon. And so we are pairing up and collaborating on family spread dinner. So we're doing like a family style service. We're now two seatings for that. And I'm still in the process of like trying to figure out a few things, little details. We have some things cooking up about what we're going to do. but I just love the opportunity again, to get to work with different people, especially with different people from different places to kind of get an idea of how they prepare food, their food personality. I think this year's Food and Wine Festival is going to be full of unexpected surprises. that's just going to add to the whole vibe and feel of the food and wine.

PAUL:

It's a continuing education for both chefs or for all of you to, be in the same space and to play off of each other as it were. Are there other names of chefs that you're looking forward to at this year's JXN Food & Wine festival?

ENRIKA:

Of course, I'm always partial to local. They're going to be so many chefs there. I know there's some alum from Top Chef that are coming in as part of Nick's invite. I'm always excited to be in a space where there are new chefs to glean information and, pick their brains. But I am Jackson. So I have to be partial to the local talent that I'm most excited to see.

PAUl:

Chef, looking ahead to this year, this fresh year, 2025, what are some of the food trends that you're seeing out there across the country?

ENRIKA:

Food trends that I'm seeing across the country is plant-based foods are not just regulated to fruit salads and salads anymore. There are a lot of restaurants, there are a lot of chefs that are taking plant-focused foods, so plants and the veggies are the main, and then as a side is the protein. So I think that people are starting to incorporate more vegetables, incorporating more healthier ways to eat. Because a lot of times I think when people think of plant-based or vegan or pescatarian, any of those terms they think flavorless, they think boring, they think limited, or they just think of just certain things. And I think that the way that people are incorporating plants, fruits, vegetables, grains into their food, it's just really giving people a new platform to express themselves. It's another way. You know, it's easy to put a piece of meat on the grill or roast it, but it's another thing to really treat a vegetable or even fruit in the same way and get really beautiful results. So I think people are gonna, besides just, meat and potatoes, I think they're gonna eat more of their vegetables. I think that's gonna be a very big trend.

PAUL:

All right, chef, give us one tip for 2025 for the home chef. Maybe it's somebody who's looking to eat better or just maybe take up the love of culinary arts.

ENRIKA:

Try different things. Try other cultures, foods. We are connected with food. We eat the same, but sometimes when you see another culture prepare something that you've had your entire life in a different way, they use different spices, they do something different that just adds to your experience. And it's always just really beautiful to have a variety of things. You don't have to have a pantry full of expensive ingredients. Expensive does not mean delicious all the time. It doesn't. You know, I just say try different things. It's not expensive.

It's just different. And I think that helps with just with the experience. I think that that helps you feel more confident and trying new foods because you're not limited to what you know, you're learning something else. So you want to try and incorporate that into what you're preparing.

PAUL:

That’s Chef Enrika Williams. From her creative collaborations with Hunter Evans to her upcoming dinner at Nick Wallace's new Hen and egg restaurant during the JXN Food & Wine Festival. She reminds us that the best dishes come from a perfect blend of innovation and gratitude. Want to taste it for yourself? You need to get those festival tickets for JXN Food & Wine. They are going fast. Head to our show notes at visitjackson.com/soulsessions.

This podcast is produced by Visit Jackson, the destination organization for Mississippi's capital city. Our executive producers are Jonathan Pettus and Dr. Ricky Thigpen and I'm our managing editor.

Do you want to know more about all the great things happening in Jackson? There's constantly good news coming out and we love to tell all about it at visitjackson.com.

I'm Paul Wolf and you've been listening to Soul Sessions.

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