Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min<\/p>\n
The parade of soup bowls that perfumed the air of chef Shola Olunloyo\u2019s South Philadelphia<\/a> home kitchen with spice and heady broth could not have been more different. A buttery brown stew enriched with veal and bacon. An ethereal orange pur\u00e9e of squash that harbored habanero heat and delicate shellfish. A modernist collage of deconstructed elements \u2014 oxtail, pork belly, and frilly tripe dabbed with a gingery green mince of Caribbean herbs \u2014 artfully posed over a shallow splash of dark broth. But each one answered to the same name: pepper pot. <\/p>\n \u201cPepper pot! Smoking hot!\u201d <\/p>\n So went the chant of the colonial-era vendors whose pepper pot cauldrons simmered on street corners across Philadelphia, America\u2019s first capital city, with a \u201cpleasant feast\u201d made from an improvised variety of inexpensive cuts of meats, often including ox foot, tripe, and \u201ca great portion of spice.\u201d This iconic soup, largely produced by Black women from the West Indies, was immortalized as a city staple in an early 19th-century booklet chronicling the street cries of Philadelphia<\/a>, a painting of an 1811 market scene painting<\/a> by John Lewis Krimmel that hangs in the Philadelphia Museum of Art<\/a>, and, more than 150 years later, Andy Warhol\u2019s Pop Art series of Campbell\u2019s soup can prints<\/a>. <\/p>\n Over time, pepper pot evolved into a broad diversity of styles, hinted at by the starkly different interpretations on the table at Olunloyo\u2019s home. Olunloyo, a culinary consultant and the chef of Studio Kitchen<\/a>, had gathered a small group of Black chefs there for a pepper pot summit \u2014 to taste and compare recipes, reflect on its legacy, and, perhaps, spark a local resurgence.<\/p>\n \u201cI was excited to learn that Philadelphia had a distinct dish that was not just cheesesteaks or pretzels, and to be a part of understanding what cemented Philadelphia\u2019s culinary reputation,\u201d says chef Omar Tate, who served us a test run of a pepper pot he plans to add to the menu at Honeysuckle<\/a> this fall. <\/p>\n Chef Chad Williams, who was unable to attend the June gathering, is planning to serve a version of pepper pot on the tasting menu soon at his Michelin-starred Friday Saturday Sunday<\/a>. He\u2019s starting his process with the flavor memories of a pepper pot his grandpa Chester once made in West Philadelphia<\/a>, along with other variations Williams cooked earlier in his career, then \u201cworking our way backwards.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve got to put it on restaurant menus again because if we don\u2019t cook it, it dies,\u201d says Angela Brown, a private chef and former culinary director for Rex at the Royal<\/a>, who led off the lunchtime event with a hearty rendition of the dish she learned from her great-grandmother. \u201cThis new generation of cooks doesn\u2019t know anything about pepper pot, so it\u2019s nice to bring it back.\u201d (The meal was also documented for radio<\/a> by NPR reporter Justin Kramon for WHYY\u2019s The Pulse.)<\/p>\n The rise and fall of pepper pot<\/p>\n The effort can\u2019t come soon enough. In 2026, pepper pot as we once knew it has become nearly extinct. Campbell\u2019s stopped producing it in 2010, coinciding with a dwindling appetite for tripe. History-minded chef Adam Diltz still produces it occasionally at Elwood<\/a>. There have been efforts by local food historians<\/a> and home cooks to keep its memory alive. The last local restaurant to regularly serve pepper pot was City Tavern (although chef Walter Staib\u2019s West Indies version was without tripe), before the replica of the historic tavern closed in 2020<\/a>. <\/p>\n The timing of this pepper pot party is not a coincidence. Reflections on history have been at the forefront of this year\u2019s celebration of America\u2019s 250th anniversary<\/a>. Food historian William Woys Weaver, among the tasters at Olunloyo\u2019s house, argues in his forthcoming Pepperpot City<\/a> that no proto-Philadephia dish may be as meaningful \u2014 or elusive \u2014 to grasp. <\/p>\n Weaver unearths a stunning array of pepper pots in the book, due out in October, from the humblest market-stall versions to those ladled from the gilded tureens of society\u2019s hautest tables: There are myriad variations of meats, seafood, seasonal produce, dumplings, and numerous cultural influences. The breadth of iterations makes it impossible to define Philadelphia\u2019s pepper pot as one specific thing, aside from the inclusion of tripe (usually, but not always) and the presence of spice. It was a way of life and cooking more than a particular bowl of soup. <\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s pepper pot? It\u2019s whatever you had there right in front of you,\u201d says Weaver. \u201cThese chefs did not live by written recipes, but oral traditions they learned from a mentor. That\u2019s why there were so many different kinds. Each person cooked from their soul.\u201d<\/p>\n The ever-morphing nature of the soup became emblematic of colonial Philadelphia as a focal point for the New World melting pot, he says, where the confluence of Black, white, and Creole foodways began to define this newly founded country\u2019s culinary personality. <\/p>\n \u201cThe City of Brotherly Love helped create a singular identity that helped shape what we know today as American cuisine,\u201d writes Weaver. \u201cEspecially when winnowed through the hands of Black cooks.\u201d<\/p>\n Diverse foodways, all in one dish <\/p>\n Philadelphia\u2019s pepper pot shares Afro-Caribbean roots with a number of soups that go by the same name in the Caribbean and South America, although they\u2019re distinctly different, since many are flavored with the caramelized cassava juice known as cassareep. It is also cousins with the callaloos<\/a> and pepper soups of West Africa, as well as New Orleans gumbo and Haitian soup joumou<\/a>. Pepper pot reflects Philadelphia\u2019s unique status as a haven for free Black communities who had access to the tropical foodstuffs \u2014 allspice, habaneros, sea turtles, and pumpkins \u2014 arriving at its vibrant port on ships that also supplied the West Indies slave trade.<\/p>\n For this reason, many, including Weaver and food historian Jessica B. Harris, have come to regard early Philadelphia as the northernmost Creole city. <\/p>\n \u201cNowhere is this connection more apparent than in Philadelphia\u2019s pepperpot soup,\u201d Harris writes in her book Beyond Gumbo. In a recent interview, she elaborated: \u201cYou\u2019ve got a port bringing foods from other places and people also who are coming in from all over, enslaved and free. This kind of urban polyglot mix \u2014 that is the matrix of Philadelphia. And then you start getting their food. You know women of West Indian origin are going to make use of their skills and call on their memories to make something palatable to the people in this new place. All those things come together in pepper pot.\u201d<\/p>\n That lineage was especially resonant for Angela Brown, whose deeply flavored and nuanced stew of veal, bacon, and tripe took on a buttery texture from a dark roux and delivered just a gentle glow of peppercorn spice. <\/p>\n \u201cAs a Black woman, when I think about all those women in the 1700s out there on the wharfs cooking soup to sell for the day and praying they get enough money, I feel sort of sad that my ancestors had to work that hard,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Yet cooking pepper pot also brought her joy, because it conjured warm memories of Brown\u2019s childhood in Mount Airy. She\u2019d walk to the neighborhood butcher for a pound of tripe, then closely watch her great-grandmother, Carrie Smithers, make it, beginning by sizzling the holy trinity of celery, bell peppers, and onions in rendered bacon fat and veal drippings. <\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s the reason I knew how to layer it,\u201d says Brown. \u201cI was very close to my great-grandmother, and she would be so proud that I made it delicious. I might have even made it better than hers.\u201d <\/p>\n Brown\u2019s soup was the closest we\u2019d taste that day to the thick, meaty tripe stew from Campbell\u2019s that stamped pepper pot as a Philadelphia specialty, along with a version popularized nationwide on the dining cars of the Pennsylvania Railroad. <\/p>\n \u201cBut there never really was a single \u2018Philadelphia-style\u2019 pepper pot. It was a marketing device, because this was a diverse city and pepper pot changed with every neighborhood,\u201d says Weaver, who documents several 19th-century soup halls known as \u201cpepperpot hotels\u201d across the city, along with recipes that range from Esther Levy\u2019s Jewish beef-and-mutton pepper pot from 1871 to pepper pot with crab, asparagus tips, and dumplings from a culinary instructor named Aunt Matilda in 1879. \u201cEvery Philadelphia recipe I\u2019ve seen is different.\u201d <\/p>\n A recipe published for the Philadelphia World\u2019s Fair in an 1876 cookbook from the Women\u2019s Centennial Exhibition Committee featured two kinds of tripe in a veal knuckle broth studded with veal dumplings. Another completely different pepper pot called gingambo au potiron \u2014 with sea turtle broth, seafood, and a Brazilian pumpkin \u2014 emerged from the \u00e9migr\u00e9 Creole neighborhood called Hamiltonville<\/a>, on the Woodlands estate<\/a> southwest of the University of Pennsylvania<\/a> campus.<\/p>\n A soup that unlocks memories<\/p>\n Coincidentally, Olunloyo served us a variation of that same seafood-pumpkin pepper pot, a dish he grew fond of making regularly when he launched his career at Deux Chemin\u00e9es<\/a>. The late chef-owner there, Fritz Blank, had amassed a legendary cookbook collection and befriended both Weaver and Harris, who published Blank\u2019s recipe in Beyond Gumbo.<\/p>\n Olunloyo\u2019s soup skipped the turtle broth for rich fish stock and swapped out pumpkin for butternut squash. The froth of its silky orange puree \u2014 enriched with vermouth, cream, and leeks \u2014 sparks with Scotch bonnet, ginger, and a scant pinch of aromatic mace. Sweet little bay scallops, added to the bowl raw, cook in its warmth alongside mussels and other shellfish. It was an elegant reminder of the refinements that European-trained French chefs gave to the high-society kitchens of early Philadelphia, one of \u201ctwo separate strands\u201d \u2014 the vernacular creativity of its street foods being the other \u2014 that shaped the city\u2019s culinary evolution, says Weaver. Ever-evolving pepper pot existed in both spheres. <\/p>\n For Olunloyo, whose career as a consultant and supper club chef<\/a> has been most influential in its advocacy of modern methods and cutting-edge technology, diving back into pepper pot has been a reminder of his formative years as a cook and the enduring value of classic techniques. <\/p>\n The dish transports him even farther back to his childhood in West Africa and the pepper soups he grew up eating in Nigeria. In addition to his seafood-squash pepper pot, he served the group a boldly spiced version of that pepper soup \u2014 a rustic, bone-in stew of goat, beef neck, and tripe flavored with a blend of Nigerian seeds and dried chilies, with an extra hit of habanero and fresh green shiso he snips over each bowl to replicate hard-to-find African scent leaves. The connection to the West African roots of pepper pot\u2019s creators could not have been more obvious. <\/p>\n \u201cTaste is not linear,\u201d observed Omar Tate. \u201cIt is kind of like a spiral, the memory is trying to circle back home at every point when you pick up an ingredient.\u201d <\/p>\n The importance of historical Black dishes in 2026<\/p>\n For Tate, whose pepper pot efforts sit squarely within the provocative explorations of the Black American foodways<\/a> Honeysuckle is known for, the point of the exercise for him was not to recreate history \u2014 \u201cI\u2019m not interested in copy-and-paste tradition\u201d \u2014 but to modernize it for today\u2019s tastes. His rendition with oxtail, pork belly, and honeycomb tripe was partly inspired by the Krimmel painting of a woman serving a market crowd of early 18th-century Philadelphians. But Tate\u2019s deconstructed presentation, with each element suspended above locally raised vegetables and a puddle of intensely flavored broth spiced with fish peppers from Honeysuckle partner Plowshare Farms<\/a>, looks like the melting pot in reverse. (Seeds for the fish pepper<\/a>, an heirloom chile used by Black caterers in Baltimore in the 1800s, were publicly reintroduced by Weaver in 1995.)<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve never been able to fully sit in the idea of what tradition is because of my relationship to Black history in America, and realizing that the strongest, most consistent Black tradition is being uprooted constantly all the time,\u201d he says. \u201cYes, we are preserving culture and honoring the past, but I\u2019m constantly trying to disrupt what I know about that, because it helps understand how people navigated change.\u201d<\/p>\n In this respect, the timing could not be more keen for a pepper pot tribute and the conversations it starts about the important role Black chefs played in shaping the nation\u2019s cuisine. Keeping history front and center through food remains a powerful act, especially after the administration of President Donald Trump abruptly altered displays at the President\u2019s House<\/a> on Independence Mall to sanitize George Washington\u2019s role there as an enslaver<\/a> of nine people, including the seminal chef Hercules Posey<\/a>. <\/p>\n \u201cWe tried to honor their history and make sure tradition was preserved, but now that\u2019s been disrupted and they have to be reimagined,\u201d said Tate of the enslaved individuals previously commemorated at the President\u2019s House, where the changes, he said, have deeply affected him. \u201cThat can only come through the possibility of taste and oral history.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cYou have to cook it to keep it alive. Much of what makes dishes truly great is difficult to put into a recipe \u2014 the flavor, the experience of the dish, and making sure that gets pushed forward into the future by cooking it hand-to-hand. It can\u2019t always come from a book.\u201d<\/p>\n Pepper pot keeps evolving<\/p>\n The beauty of Philadelphia\u2019s pepper pot is that it has proven to be less of a specific recipe than a culinary approach tied to this city, a resourceful way to coax tender sustenance and comfort in a stew flared with spice and the memories of a faraway land using whatever was locally available. As Tate and others at the tasting noted, such dishes have, in fact, continued to thrive with the arrival of new waves of immigrant communities, even if their fiery tripe-laced soups go by other names. <\/p>\n Vietnamese b\u00fan b\u00f2 Hu\u1ebf. Mexican menudo. Mauritanian tripe and cow skin gravy over Jollof rice. Spicy Korean beef gopchang-jeongol. Polish flaki. Italian trippa alla Romana. Excellent versions of all these and more can be found here, which, in the context of Pepperpot City, means they, too, could be considered as part of a grand centuries-old Philadelphia tradition that\u2019s not quite ready to fade away. <\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re all pepper pots,\u201d insists William Woys Weaver. \u201cThat\u2019s our local word for it, you know! Let\u2019s stop pretending that pepper pot is one thing. Pepper pot is Philadelphia\u2019s soul soup.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min The parade of soup bowls that perfumed the air of chef Shola Olunloyo\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294495,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[121888,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-294494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-pepper-pot-soup-shola-olunloyo-omar-tate-brown-tripe","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294494\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}