“Mountain people are resilient”: Chef Ashleigh Shanti on Black foodways, Hurricane Helene and more

Chef Ashleigh Shanti, along with 12 other “Top Chef” alumni, received coveted recognition from the James Beard Foundation last week. Shanti was nominated for Best Chef: Southeast — which includes Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia — for her Asheville fish fry restaurant, Good Hot Fish.

Shanti’s new cookbook, “Our South: Black Food Through My Lens,” explores Black and Appalachian foodways, highlighting the resilience of the people, the significance of the culture and the ingredients and dishes that connect generations.

A contestant on “Top Chef: Houston” in 2022, Shanti was previously nominated for the James Beard Rising Star Chef award. Since settling in Asheville, she has focused on Good Hot Fish, which she describes as a “modern-day fish camp” celebrating Black ingenuity, fish fries, ancestral influences and the richness of regional food traditions.

In “Our South,” Shanti writes, “Southern Black cooking means more than we’ve come to believe … while hot buttered cast-iron-pan cornbread and crunchy, juicy, lard-fried chicken have their roles to play, they are far from the entire story.” Her book spans the full spectrum of Appalachian and Southern Black cuisine, covering the backcountry, lowlands, midlands, Lowcountry and homeland.

She also references Malinda Russell, the first Black American to publish a cookbook. Russell’s “A Domestic Cook Book: Containing a Careful Selection of Useful Recipes for the Kitchen,” published in 1866, served as an inspiration for Shanti. “Like Malinda Russell, I, too, am on a quest for freedom—to be freed from the confines of what is expected of me, cooking while Black in twenty-first-century America,” she wrote. 

Salon recently spoke with Shanti about Good Hot Fish, “Top Chef,” Hurricane Helene, Black foodways, Appalachian food traditions, her favorite ingredients and more.

The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length. 

For those unaware of your journey since competing on “Top Chef,” can you break it down for them? 

Since competing on “Top Chef: Houston” in 2021, I’ve written my first cookbook, “Our South” and turned my pop up Good Hot Fish into a brick and mortar in Asheville, North Carolina.

What stands out for you as a formative moment that got you into cooking or food at large? 

Standing at the feet of the women in my family for Sunday dinners and holidays. As a kid, the kitchen was always the gathering place in my family and I distinctly remember food serving as the great unifier for all of us.

What would you say are your three most used ingredients? What is your favorite cooking memory? 

My three most used ingredients right now would have to be cornmeal, seasoning meat and sorghum molasses. My favorite cooking memories are our outdoor family fish fries.

What’s your biggest tip for cutting down on food waste? 

I reduce food waste by creatively utilizing every part of the ingredients I use. If it’s a vegetable, I’m using it from seed to stem — pickling or fermenting some parts, stewing other parts and saving its cooking liquid for another use.

How do you practice sustainability in your cooking? 

At Good Hot Fish, we only use sustainable seafood that comes from our coast. We use the MSC [Marine Stewardship Council] Blue Fish Guide to Sustainable Seafood as our standard 

Do you have a favorite recipe in the book? Or even just a favorite section or chapter?

I live in Asheville, North Carolina and post Hurricane-Helene, this community has become even more special and meaningful to me. I’m glad I got to capture its beauty and the sense of community that exists in this special region [in the book].

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Is there a recipe in the book that you think is perfect for a beginner cook? Or is there a more involved recipe in the book that you think would make for a great weekend project? 

Leather Britches makes for a great community-building project!

How would you say your identity informs your cooking? 

As a Black chef, the lens in which I cook is so vast, being not only influenced by my family’s foodways, but the African Diaspora is also so rich — and its impact is reflected in so many different cuisines, not just my own.

Can you speak a bit to how the Black and Appalachian foodways have influenced you, both personally and professionally? 

Appalachian foodways are unique and not often highlighted as a type of Southern cuisine. Post-Jim Crow era, many freed Black people found place in the mountains of Southern Appalachia which has contributed to the richness of food traditions here.

You posted a message on Instagram last month after the hurricane, highlighting the resilience of “our Appalachian mountain town” — could you speak a bit to that?

Mountain people are resilient. This is a place where many different cultures and backgrounds unite and come together to look out for one another as a community. 

For anyone unfamiliar with Good Hot Fish, how would you sum up its ethos? 

Good Hot Fish is a modern-day fish camp nestled in the Southside of Asheville, a place where small Black business once thrived. Our space pays homage to that and highlights fish fries being at the center of black community gatherings.

Is there a number-one go-to, hottest menu item at Good Hot Fish? Or do you have a personal fave? 

The Cabbage Pancake is one of our most popular items and it’s a dish that has followed me throughout my career, so it’s taken on many different forms, each one better than the last.

What does the cookbook title “Our South” mean to you? 

In writing my first cookbook, it was an important moment for me where I felt like I finally held ownership of my own stories and the name reflects that.

“Our South” delves into five distinct geographic regions. How do these regions differ in terms of ingredients, flavors and culture? 

Cooking seasonally being one of the cornerstones of Southern cooking, a lot of readers will find diversity in the ingredients that are found in certain regions that you won’t see in others. 

For instance, ramps are distinctly Appalachian.

Are there any particular key ingredients in the cookbook that you think are most important or significant within Black foodways? Do you have a number-one favorite ingredient to work with?

The book highlights a list of kitchen essentials that every self-respecting Southerner should have in their pantry. It’s where I recommend readers start their Southern cooking journey.

Could you speak a bit to how you bridge history and modernity through your recipes, highlighting and honoring the past but bringing it to the future? 

The historic recipes I’ve been thankful enough to have access to leave a lot of room for creativity with measurements, like “palmful’ and “a little bit.” A lot can be left up to interpretation which is where I get to turn my “chef brain” on.

What’s next for you, ideally?

I am knee-deep in reopening Good Hot Fish after a six week-long closure due to Hurricane Helene. My community is my biggest focus. 

In the future, I’d like to see a few more Good Hot Fish locations throughout the South.