There are quite a lot of respectable joints where you can load up with collards and fried chicken straight from the steam tray, especially in St. Petersburg, but it took someone like Edyth James to bring Southern into the City. As at her former digs — the Caribbean-inspired Saffron’s — most of the food isn’t fancy stuff, just impeccably seasoned and finely prepared, like collards laced with sweet reduced cider vinegar or black-eyed peas cooked just this side of collapse. Savannah’s grits are piles of massive, fluffy grains engorged with moisture and ideally seasoned, the kind of grits that don’t need any help from butter or cheese but, just for good measure, are stuffed with butter and cheese anyway. Gravy is a revelation; jambalaya is piled with tender seafood; and low-country pimento cheese will remind you why it’s good that we Floridians can claim to live in the South.
This article appears in Sep 12-18, 2007.