Randall, Joseph 'Joe' (Glascoe)

Impact on the world

Founded the African American Chefs Hall of Fame in 1993 as part of his Taste of Heritage Foundation, specifically to recognize Black culinary professionals the broader industry had long overlooked, and co-authored 'A Taste of Heritage: The New African American Cuisine' with food historian Toni Tipton-Martin in 1998, a foundational text that helped launch a wider national conversation about the depth and influence of Black culinary traditions and was inducted into the James Beard Foundation's Cookbook Hall of Fame in 2023; he founded Chef Joe Randall's Cooking School in Savannah in 2000, mentoring two generations of cooks over sixteen years, and chaired the Edna Lewis Foundation, already profiled in this collection through Lewis's own entry, working to preserve his close friend Lewis's legacy and protect Southern Black culinary heritage more broadly.

Life & background

Born Joseph Glascoe in McKeesport, Pennsylvania in 1946 and adopted as a child by his aunt and uncle, physician Joseph Randall, he was raised in Harrisburg by a father who worked as a mason and civil rights activist and who, after a ten-year legal fight, became the first Black recipient of a Pennsylvania liquor license for a country club in 1959; Randall got his first job as a dishwasher for his uncle Richard, a Pittsburgh hotelier and restaurateur with strict standards for employee conduct and dress. After joining the U.S. Air Force and working as a military cook stationed near Albany, Georgia in 1963, where he first recognized something distinctive about Southern cooking, he returned to Pennsylvania in 1964 and found work at Harrisburg's Harrisburger Hotel under chef Robert W. Lee, an Atlanta transplant who became his formative mentor only after Randall proved, through sustained dedication, that he was serious enough to receive what Lee had to teach. He went on to work in more than fifteen professional kitchens across the country, including Buffalo's Cloister restaurant and Baltimore's Fishmarket, taught culinary arts at five institutions including California State Polytechnic University at Pomona, and relocated permanently to Savannah, Georgia in 1999 after the president of the Savannah College of Art and Design, impressed by a dinner he cooked for her, hired him to run the college's food services. Known widely as the Dean of Southern Cuisine and recognizable by the Kente cloth he began incorporating into his chef's uniform in the late 1990s as a deliberate expression of pride in his African American identity, he served as sergeant at arms of the American Culinary Federation and president of the United Culinary Association, was honored alongside Edna Lewis, Patrick Clark, and Leah Chase, all already profiled in this collection, in the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture, and continued working as executive chef of Savannah's Good Times Jazz Bar & Restaurant into his late seventies; reflecting late in life on how long broader recognition from the James Beard Foundation had taken to arrive, he said simply that he saw no reason not to remain joyful and loving toward people, since he wanted to be loved in return. He died at his Savannah home on February 14, 2026 at age 79, surrounded by family, survived by his wife of 47 years, Barbara, and their three children.

Sources

1. The HistoryMakers; Southern Foodways Alliance; African American Chefs Hall of Fame; Los Angeles Times obituary; St. Joseph's/Candler Smart Living