Dr. Kathy Starr bringing generations to the table at Catfish Row Museum
Published 6:21 am Wednesday, June 18, 2025
By Jim Beaugez
Long before Dr. Kathy Starr wrote down a single recipe, her family’s story — one that crosses an ocean, survives enslavement, and stays together against the odds — was already being told through food.
Starr’s great-great-grandmother arrived in New Orleans from Africa aboard a slave ship in 1863, where she met her husband and started a family. In the cruel uncertainty of the era, when married couples and children could be separated between plantations, she relied on what she knew best: her cooking.
“She knew how to prepare 50 different ways what looked like the yam she had known from home,” Starr says. “She expressed to the landowner’s wife that she could do it, and that’s what kept the family together. She fixed a candied yam and baked bread from scratch with sweet potatoes. That’s what my grandmother said saved them.”
On June 21 at 2 p.m., Starr will bring that legacy to Catfish Row Museum in Vicksburg with a cooking demonstration featuring sweet potato pies made from scratch as well as healthy ways of preparing Mississippi Delta catfish.
Starr’s foundation in Southern cooking goes back to the Fair Deal Café in Hollandale, where she was raised by her grandmother Frances Fleming Hunter, who was known as “Miz Bob” to the community and “mom” to her. She was already helping in the kitchen before she could reach all the ingredients and implements, standing on pots to boost her height.
In 1989, she published her first book, “The Soul of Southern Cooking,” based on family recipes she used at the Fair Deal, which earned Starr a Congressional honor and appearances on cooking shows and talk shows, as well as features in magazine and newspaper articles. After the book became a hit, she began to think about all the recipes she didn’t include.
“I had over 327 of my mom’s recipes that I held off on,” she says. “I decided that I wanted to go a step further with what she had taught me, and it just took me some time to pull it together. Now I’m at the point of releasing the book.”
That second collection, “Miz Bob’s Second Batch,” builds on the culinary legacy she brought to audiences with her earlier cookbook. The collection is slated for release later in 2025.
But Starr’s work has never been just about ingredients and instructions. She’s spent her life documenting how food connects families, communities and cultures. As a founding member of the Southern Foodways Alliance, she was in the room in Birmingham, Ala., when the organization first came together, alongside culinary icons like the late Leah Chase of the New Orleans institution Dooky Chase.
“We began to talk about what we wanted Southern Foodways to look like,” she recalls. “We weren’t just documenting food. We were documenting lives.”
At Catfish Row Museum, Starr plans to prepare 20 sweet potato pies the same way she makes them in her Lawrenceville, Ga., home. From the dough to the final plating, Starr insists on doing everything the way she was taught as a child.
“We’re going to do everything from scratch, all the way from the crust,” she says. “Everybody wants to act like they can’t cook the crust, that it’s so hard. I don’t get it. I’ve done this since I was five.”
While she’ll prepare the sweet potato pies for tasting, Starr will also speak about the nutritional wisdom baked into traditional Southern food. It doesn’t have to be heavy or unhealthy, she insists. “Yes, you can use Smart Balance instead of butter to bake your catfish to keep it healthy,” she says. “It sure tastes good, and it is excellent on the palate.”
Next up for the museum’s Summer Chef Series are Malcolm White and LeAnne Gault, who will lead an event on July 12. Chef Enrika Williams will bring her signature style for “Bohemian Bites and Southern Roots” on July 26, while Chef Taylor Bowen-Ricketts closes out the season with “Southern Fresh: Tradition with a Twist” on Aug. 9.