From the 1993 paperback edition (University of North Carolina Press):

Hailed as an instant classic when it appeared in 1987, John Egerton’s Southern Food captures the flavor and feel of what it has meant for southerners, over the generations, to gather at the table. This book is for reading, for cooking, for eating (in and out), for referring to, for browsing in, and, above all, for enjoying.

Egerton first explores southern food in more than 200 restaurants in eleven southern states; he describes their specialties and recounts his conversations with owners, cooks, waiters, and customers. Then, because some of the best southern cooking is done at home, Egerton offers more than 150 regional recipes, including barbecue, spoonbread, muscadine jam, and key lime pie, with informative and amusing information about each one.

John Egerton has lived—and eaten—all over the South, and currently resides in Nashville, Tennessee. His articles on food and a variety of other subjects have appeared in the Washington Post, Saturday Review, New York Times Magazine, and many other publications, and his books include The Americanization of Dixie and Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South.