High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America (Review)

“Tell me what you eat, and I’ll tell you where you come from,” said Romuald Hazoumè, a visual artist from Benin in the new Netflix series High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America

High on the Hog follows host Stephen Satterfield, a chef, sommelier and food writer, as he traverses the African diaspora to trace the historical origins of African-American cuisine. The first of the four episodes is the most emotional. Satterfield starts in Benin where he visits one of the largest open air markets in West Africa. Along with culinary scholar Dr. Jessica B. Harris (whose book is the inspiration for the series’ title), they try different dishes from Benin cuisine. Satterfield breaks down in tears when after visiting a site that honors all the Africans that went missing, died, or were carried away to slavery.

From there, Satterfield travels across America — from the Carolinas to Texas to Los Angeles and New York. Along the way, we see how the host’s culinary travels coincides with the pathways of chattel slavery to Western expansion. In Satterfield’s tracing of the journey of the ingredients that find themselves on the plates of Black people, we trace their entire journey across the Atlantic. Viewers can learn facts they probably hadn’t known before — the origins of foods like…