Deconstructing My Namesake

› WASHINGTON, DC, 2010........................

In 1985, I was apprenticing with Nach Waxman at his Kitchen Arts & Letters in New York, preparing to open my own culinary bookstore in Charleston, South Carolina. I hadn’t decided on a name yet, but I was leaning toward the Educated Palate, which was roundly rebuffed by nearly everyone I knew. On New Year’s Day I attended a party at another southern friend’s apartment. I agreed to bring the hoppin’ john, the celebratory southern dish made with rice and cowpeas (dried field peas). When I arrived with the dish, my friends began calling me “Hoppin’ John,” and the name stuck. There was no doubt what my business would be called.