Smalls, Alexander

Impact on the world

Won both a Grammy Award and a Tony Award for the cast recording of a Broadway revival of 'Porgy and Bess' during an earlier career as a professional opera singer, before transitioning entirely into the restaurant industry and opening a succession of acclaimed New York restaurants centered on Southern and Lowcountry cuisine, including Café Beulah, Sweet Ophelia's, and The Cecil; his 2017 cookbook 'Between Harlem and Heaven,' co-authored with chef JJ Johnson, won the James Beard Foundation Award for Best American Cookbook, and his broader body of culinary work has consistently foregrounded the specific Gullah Geechee foodways of his own Lowcountry South Carolina upbringing.

Life & background

Born in Spartanburg, South Carolina in 1952 into a Gullah Geechee family, a distinct Black American community descended from formerly enslaved West and Central Africans who settled the Atlantic coastal regions of Georgia and the Carolinas and preserved unusually direct linguistic and culinary ties to their African origins, Smalls graduated from Spartanburg High School in 1970 and pursued formal vocal training first at Wofford College and then at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts in opera performance in 1974, followed by further study at Philadelphia's prestigious Curtis Institute of Music. He built a substantial career as a professional opera singer through the 1970s and 1980s, ultimately winning both a Grammy and a Tony Award as part of the celebrated cast recording of a Broadway revival of George Gershwin's 'Porgy and Bess,' before deciding to leave performing entirely for the restaurant industry, opening Café Beulah in New York in the 1990s specifically to introduce a broader audience to the Southern and Lowcountry cooking traditions of his own upbringing. He went on to open Sweet Ophelia's and The Cecil, the latter widely credited as one of the first upscale New York restaurants to center African and African diaspora cuisine specifically, drawing direct culinary lines between West African, Caribbean, and American Southern cooking traditions on a single menu; his 2017 cookbook, 'Between Harlem and Heaven: Afro-Asian-American Cooking for Big Nights, Quiet Nights, and Everything in Between,' co-written with chef JJ Johnson, won the James Beard Foundation's award for Best American Cookbook and was praised by fellow chef Kwame Onwuachi, already profiled in this collection, who blurbed the book as colorfully blending African and African American heritage into a singular literary and culinary creation. Smalls has continued working as a chef, author, and cultural commentator on the history and significance of African diaspora foodways, frequently framing his restaurants as deliberate acts of culinary reclamation rather than simple commercial ventures.

Sources

1. Penguin Random House (Notes from a Young Black Chef blurbs); James Beard Foundation