Poppy’s Plate Stays Warm and Full

Her honeyed voice drives a weekly half-hour of foodie heaven on WWNO’s Louisiana Eats. Her pinned hair and bold lipstick hold the frame each Friday night during WYES’s Steppin’ Out. Her cookbooks are lively conversations on New Orleans food, past and present (and she wouldn’t dare bore you with just recipes). And somehow there’s still more of Poppy Tooker to give, and she intends to give it.

Born in New Orleans, Tooker was blessed with great-grandmothers who cooked. She eventually became the family chef, catered for her mother’s friends as a teen, and as a young woman, rerouted her theatre major into a now-decades-long career enthusing about cuisine. “I figured out when I was in college that food gave me the same thrill that theatre did,” said Tooker, “and that I was probably going to have a better, happier life with food.”

We sat down recently to talk about her famous gumbo, how she handles critics, and her love for the dinner table. Find excerpts below.

On delicious storytelling: 

With Louisiana Eats, you have to listen closely sometimes to be sure that’s what you’re listening to because I keep such a thin thread of food somehow going through everything. The show is not about recipes. It’s really about people. It’s telling people’s stories in a delicious way. I try to teach myself something every week. I figure if I learn something, it’s likely the listeners don’t know it either.

[Read this: In "Gravy," Tina Antolini uses food as a vehicle for Southern redemption.]

On her gumbo: 

Honestly and truthfully, I think the thing I’m most famous for is my gumbo. I beat Bobby Flay in a gumbo throwdown. It got me on CBS Sunday Morning with Wynton Marsalis. Since then, I’ve even been flown places to make gumbo for Wynton—and occasionally the whole Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. And it’s because Wynton’s got such a jones for my gumbo. We did that CBS Sunday Morning segment, and I thought that was going to be the end of the story. About six months later, I was in my kitchen and the phone rang. Oddly enough I was prepping gumbo to go do at a really big event. This man’s voice says to me, “Baby, I need some gumbo.” I said, “Who is this?” He said, “Poppy, it’s Wynton and I need some of that gumbo, because you do not play, girl! How can I get some of that gumbo?”

He’ll call me up and go “How can I get some of New Orleans’ finest?” And I always think to myself “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, this is like the gumbo version of the booty call.”

On her critics: 

My show inspires people to do things. It’s all about being happy. One time, I got some pushback at the radio station because there was some tragedy going on. They aired my promo during a break, and it was like, “Doo da doo doo …” They said, “You know, it was just a little discordant with everything that was going on in the world.” And I said, “You know what, that’s too damn bad. Because if the world is coming to an end and someone hears a thirty-second promo and it makes them smile for just one second in a really truly miserable day, then I’ve done my job.”

This man’s voice says to me, “Baby, I need some gumbo.” I said, “Who is this?” He said, “Poppy, it’s Wynton and I need some of that gumbo, because you do not play, girl! How can I get some of that gumbo?

I used to get pushback from [one of the station managers]. He used to tell me, “You don’t sound enough like an NPR-style reporter. Let me show you how to fix your delivery.” It was an intimidation tactic. He was just laying it on thick about everything I was doing wrong. Every time he’d start that with me… well, they had this tracking on the homepage. Once I said, “Really? Let’s go to the station homepage.” And Louisiana Eats was first and third for most downloaded and listened to podcasts that week. I said, “Somebody likes what I’m doing.”

And Harry Shearer, the god of all voices, he has told my producer before that he loves listening to Louisiana Eats because when he’s listening to it, he knows exactly where he is. When he listens to NPR from the rest of the country, it all sounds the same. 

On her heroes: 

Leah Chase is like another mother to me. She’s so sage, and she’s so good through and through. She’s so brutally honest, and she just keeps working. I really, really admire that. I have a lot of admiration for Susan Spicer, who only seems to have the go button. There doesn’t seem to be a stop button on her. I don’t know how she does everything she does. Diana Pinckley, God rest her soul, was one of the most inspiring, awesome, amazing people. She was such a great connector and could make things happen. I served on boards with her. She was actually the one who was on the board of WWNO and pitched the radio show when they started talking about doing local radio. Then I saw her at the farmers market, and she said, “How’d you like to do a radio show?” I said “I could do a radio show!” She said, “Well good, I pitched it for you today, so they’re going to call you.”

On faith in the food community:

 The L’Hoste family, Lester and Linda L’Hoste, had a bumper crop of citrus before [Hurricane Katrina]. After the storm, they had about half the fruit, but they still had a lot of fruit. All the leaves had been blown off the trees. They didn’t know how any of this was going to go. But they were down in Braithwaite. They had no phone. They had virtually nothing, but they did have a house. Slow Food USA worked with me. We sent out an email in December that said for $25, you would get a box of citrus delivered for Christmas. It was navel oranges and satsumas. Anywhere in the country except for California and Hawaii, which were the only states that didn’t let you. The L’Hostes didn’t have internet access, so they had no way of taking the orders. So all the orders came through me. And then I couldn’t transmit them in anyway, so I printed out all the orders, and I’d hand-carry them to Linda. Then Linda would go home and she’d fulfill the orders with the promise that the check was in the mail. People across the United States bought hundreds of boxes of citrus and kept the L‘Hostes afloat. And Linda got every single check. Everybody paid. Which is the sort of thing that really gives you faith in people.

The thing I learned after the storm is that if something really bad happened to you, and maybe it happened to your friends and your neighbors and your normal support system, if you’re lucky enough to be part of a food community, you’re going to be okay. Because your food friends are coming to help you. There just seems to be an inordinate number of really amazing people in the food world. From the high chair, when someone’s caring for you and putting food in your mouth. Later on, it’s a plate of food in front of you or beautiful vegetables that they’ve grown and brought to market. It’s that same sort of nurturing, wonderful correlation between life and food and love. 

poppytooker.com